- When the body of US soldier Artimus Brassfield was flown
to the military mortuary at Dover, Delaware, there were no TV pictures
of a flag-covered coffin and hero's salute - the White House has banned
media coverage at the base. But can Bush's efforts to hide the body bags
quell growing public disquiet over the death toll in Iraq?
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- When the silver casket lid went down on Artimus Brassfield
a reflexive, convulsive sob echoed through Ebenezer ministries. In the
seconds it took for the coffin to be draped with the American flag, Pastor
Seon Thompson reminded the congregation that this was a celebration of
his life. By the time the drummer had given them the beat for "He's
gone to be a soldier in the army of the lord," they had found their
voice.
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- Brassfield, 22, also went to be a soldier in the 4th
infantry division of the American army. By all accounts, throughout his
short life there were only two things he really wanted to do - play basketball
and join the army. And so the tank driver from Flint, Michigan, was playing
basketball at a military base in Samiri, Iraq, on October 24 when a mortar
struck and killed both him and 26-year-old JosÈ Mora instantly.
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- Brassfield was so determined to enlist that he took the
entrance test three times. But while he enjoyed serving in the forces,
his letters home suggest he had mixed feelings about serving in Iraq. His
concerns were personal, not political. The weather was too hot and he was
homesick. He asked his mother not to send him chocolate as it would only
melt and he looked forward to buying a truck with Michigan plates and eventually
opening his own barber's shop.
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- "I'm pretty blessed to be in Saddam's home town,
Tikrit," he wrote in an email to his father. "It's very nice
here other than the fact that we're in Iraq and there ain't no escaping
it." In a letter to his mother, he tells her: "Be thankful to
the Lord that we are American because I don't see how these people live
like this."
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- Brassfield was buried with full honours, the purple heart
and bronze star presented to his wife Andrea. In the distance, the bugle
played. It was not clear whether it was just a man puffing his cheeks or
really playing. Since last month the military has been using "ceremonial
buglers" at some military funerals - a tape that can be inserted into
the bugle and sounds like the real thing. "We've got 1,800 veterans
dying each day, and only 500 buglers," said Lt Col Cynthia Colin,
a defence department spokeswoman. "We needed to do something to fill
the void."
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- The mother of Donald Wheeler, who was killed 11 days
earlier by a rocket-propelled grenade, sent her condolences to the Brassfields.
"I hope you never wonder whether or not your son's death was in vain,"
she wrote. "He died for my freedom and your freedom too. What a hero!"
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- The Brassfields have no doubt that Artimus was a hero.
His father, Cary, who served in the military himself, says he is proud
that his son served his country, but he is not sure his heroism was put
to good use: "Evidently the war is over and yet we still have people
dying every day. He was a sitting duck. Who is going to be the next person?
I don't want to say my patriotism is diminishing. But I'm losing confidence
in the purpose of us being there."
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- Artimus's aunt, Karmen Williams, believes President Bush
should withdraw the troops now. "He needs to say enough is enough,
just bring our boys home."
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- For years political orthodoxy had it that America would
no longer know days like these. Not because it was shy about going to war,
but because after Vietnam it was determined not to incur large numbers
of casualties in doing so. The US military would bomb from a great height
or use proxies to enforce its will. Public opinion would endorse the country's
involvement in most military conflicts, so long as the nation did not have
to endure the sight of its young men and women coming home in body bags.
As Henry Shelton, the chairman of the joint chiefs-of-staff, said in 1999,
a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass
"the Dover test" - public reaction to bodies arriving at the
country's only military mortuary in Dover, Delaware.
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- Dr Joseph Dawson, a military historian at Texas A&M
university, says the American public's response to casualties is qualified
by what they believe the soldiers are fighting for. "If the cause
seems significant enough then Americans will bear the loss," he says,
pointing to the huge death tolls in the second world war and the civil
war. "But if the cause no longer appears to be significant they will
not. It's still rather too early to read public opinion about this cause."
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- But now almost every day there is a funeral like Artimus's
somewhere in the country. With victory already declared, two-thirds believe
the number of casualties are unacceptable and more than half believe that
the US will get bogged down in Iraq, according to a Washington Post poll
earlier this week.
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- The shooting down of the Chinook helicopter on Sunday
ended the deadliest week in the war and intensified pressure on the president
to address the issue of casualties directly. "We're now encountering
deaths at rates we haven't seen since Vietnam," says David Gergen,
who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations, "and
I think it's important for the country to hear from the president at times
like these and for the families to know. I think the weight is on the side
of clear expression," he told the New York Times.
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- At the opening of the upgraded Dover mortuary last week,
Senator Joseph R Biden said: "The idea that this facility is opening
at a time when body bags are coming home is not a glad time. Thank God
[the centre] is here, but I wish we didn't need to build it. Everyone thought
this was going to be like Gulf war one, that Johnny and Jack would be home
by Christmas."
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- On December 21 1989, President George Bush senior was
holding a press conference about the US intervention in Panama as the first
American fatalities from the conflict were arriving at Dover.
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- With General Manuel Noriega still at large and half of
America believing the military intervention could not be regarded a success
while he remained so, it was a politically sensitive time. At the beginning
of the briefing the president had told reporters he was suffering from
neck pain. At the end he did a duck walk to illustrate his stiffness. That's
when "the goof-a-meter went off the charts", as one correspondent
put it.
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- Unbeknown to the White House, three major news networks
had moved to a split screen. While the president shared his light-hearted
moment with the press corps on one half, America's dead were arriving in
caskets on the other. It was a public relations disaster. White House spokesman
Marlin Fitzwater described the coverage as "outrageous and unfair"
and vowed to express his "extreme dissatisfaction" to the channels
concerned.
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- Less than a year later the White House decreed a ban
on traditional military ceremonies and media coverage marking the return
of the bodies of US soldiers to Dover. It was an abrupt shift in policy
for what had become a national wartime ritual. Along with yellow ribbons
and flag waving, the scenes from Dover were part of the American war experience.
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- For the next 12 years the ban was largely ignored, even
after it was extended to all military bases during the last days of the
Clinton administration. But this March, shortly before the war began, the
Pentagon handed down a directive that made it perfectly clear it expected
the policy to be heeded.
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- Bush writes to each family, but his friends say he was
offended by what he regarded as Clinton's occasionally gushing public performances,
which he felt turned private grief into political gain. The trouble for
Bush is that the public liked Clinton for his ability to empathise. Bush's
apparent reluctance to publicly identify with the dead is beginning to
look like a desire to disassociate himself from the failure of the mission.
When news of the downed Chinook came through on Sunday he stayed in his
ranch and let defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld meet the press.
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- "The public wants the commander-in-chief to have
proper perspective and keep his eye on the big picture and the ball,"
says Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "At the
same time, they want their president to understand the hardship and sacrifice
many Americans are enduring at a time of war. And we believe he is striking
that balance."
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- Others disagree. They say the growing number of casualties
is the ball, which is precisely why the Pentagon enforced the ban on coverage
at Dover. "You can call it news control or information control of
flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor
at Washington's American University. "Whatever you call it, this is
the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence
has ever undertaken in this country. Casualties are a very important media
football in any war [and] this is a qualitative change."
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- Either way, implementing the ruling has had an effect.
For the first time since war in the television era, the sight of flag-covered
caskets arriving to the salute of military colleagues and the tears of
mourning relatives are no longer part of the national narrative. Bush has
not attended the funeral of a single soldier slain in the war and refers
to the casualties only in general terms. Without Dover, there can be no
Dover test.
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- The bald numbers of the death toll dominate political
debate and public disquiet. But the human impact behind those statistics
has been scattered to communities throughout the country. The bodies travel
from a global conflict to local crises without apparently touching the
national consciousness. Even on a regional level the deaths receive scant
attention. Detroit is only 60 miles from Flint but Artimus's death made
neither of the city's two papers.
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- "This is the fifth soldier in Flint to have died,"
says Ken Palmer, a reporter for the Flint Journal, "and the third
since the president declared the war was over. The first couple had a real
impact. But now I think people are becoming numb."
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- Yesterday, Cary Brassfield woke up to the news that two
more soldiers had died in Iraq and the administration promise that its
campaign in Iraq will be unrelenting. "The ones that are speaking
do not have the same stakes that we have," says Artimus's father.
"They have their political careers. But our homes are being torn apart."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1079608,00.html
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