Bush: USA must honor war dead
ARLINGTON - President Bush, delivering a Memorial Day message surrounded by the graves of thousands of military dead, said this week that the United States must continue fighting the war on terror in the name of those have already given their life in the cause.
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„The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made”, Bush said, quoting from a letter that Lt. Mark Dooley wrote to his parents before being killed last September in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Noting that some 270 fighting men and women of the nearly 2,500 who have fallen since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Bush said: „We have seen the costs in the war on terror that we fight today.”
„I am in awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America”, the president declared, drawing a long standing ovation from the troops, families of the fallen and others gathered at the cemetery’s 5,000 seat white marble amphitheater. „Here in the presence of veterans they fought with and loved ones whose pictures they carried, the fallen give silent witness to the price of liberty and our nation honors them this day and every day”, he said.
The president spoke after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. He ventured across the Potomac River on a sun splashed Memorial Day, Monday, just a short time after signing into law a bill that restricts protests at military funerals.
At the White House, Bush signed the ”Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act”, passed by Congress largely in response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming the deaths symbolized God’s anger at USA tolerance of homosexuals.
The new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.
Monday’s observance at Arlington National Cemetery was not a funeral, so demonstrators were free to speak their minds at the site. Bush’s motorcade passed several on the way in, including a small group that held signs saying: ”Thank God for dead soldiers” and ”God hates fags”.
Bush signed a second bill this week that allows combat troops to deposit tax free pay into individual retirement accounts. Supporters of the legislation argued that rules governing these accounts were punishing soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who earn only tax free combat pay. (World)
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