The widely acclaimed HBO movie 'Taking Chance' premiered Saturday, February 21, 2009. The story is a factual account of Marine Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl escorting home the remains of a fallen Marine to his family. Private First Class Chance Philips had been killed in action in Iraq. If you have not seen this deeply moving tribute to our fallen Heroes, I hope that you will the take time to view it as soon as you can, as it is a story all Americans should see. It is important for all of us to witness the reverence, honor and dignity, which are bestowed by our military upon each and every one of our brave Heroes who have died for our safety and our freedoms.

Under the direction of maybe legal President Obama on Thursday March 5th, Defense Secretary Robert Gates lifted the ban on media coverage of our fallen Heroes returning home to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. It was a decision that was made to appease liberals who have fallaciously accused our government of hiding the true numbers of our war dead. They have also complained that it is the right of the media to have access to these somber homecomings. Even with Gates' stipulation that it will be left up to the families of the deceased whether or not the media will be allowed to view the coffins of their loved ones, it was wrong to lift the ban.

By lifting this ban what Obama and Gates have done is to open up the gates to the media circus on this solemn and consecrated sacrament. The media has now been allowed to make requests of the grief stricken families to be present when their sons and daughters come home. You can be sure that if the families deny this wrongful intrusion at their time of personal sorrow that the media will not just give up and go away. Imagine, if you can, being a parent waiting for your dead son to arrive and you have a media pitch man yakking away like a used car salesman only this guy wants to take pictures of your boy for a political agenda. There will be more than a little pressure applied by these relentless talking heads hell bent on getting 'the story.' At a time of such great personal loss this is something our government should not allow to happen to the bereaved parents.

Along with the media will come the protesters to demonstrate against the war. Mainstream media coverage means an elevated media exposure to anyone within focus and so these demonstrators will once again clamor to the spotlight. But now they will be able to disrupt the ceremonies and to dishonor our war dead. Likewise, just as in the past, you can be sure that the media will be most interested in capitalizing on the anti-war demonstrations thus displaying these protests even more prominently than the sacraments of our returning warriors. Anyone who thinks that these protesters will show any kindness or veneration to the deceased or to their grieving families is living in la-la-land. If these demonstrators felt anything for the families and the deceased they would choose a more appropriate time and place to demonstrate and would not show up at Dover. Among a few despicable examples of this disrespect in recent years are groups from the Westboro Baptist Church that have demonstrated at the funerals of our fallen Heroes saying that they deserved to die. Others have demonstrated with signs telling soldiers to kill their officers or calling our military criminals, while some have actually tried to stop the shipments of supplies to our troops. Now Gates and Obama have just invited these lunatics to Dover. Honor has no meaning to these types of people so you can be sure that they will try to disrupt the sanctified procedures a propos to our war dead. I am sure that they started booking tickets to Delaware on Friday last.

Gates stated that he 'hopes' the media and others will conduct themselves in 'good taste.' Well he can hope all he wants but with the long and vile track record of our liberal media concerning their views of our military, reaching all the way back to the Vietnam War, and by their misrepresentation of the Iraq War, that Mr. Secretary is a false hope, and both you and Obama know it. Likewise we all know what can be expected from the anti-war demonstrations. The media and the protesters will not come to honor our dead but rather they will come to defile our sons and daughters in an effort to serve their own political agendas. Obama and Gates have made it possible for our fallen Heroes to now be politically exploited when they come home. Once again from this 'honeymoon' administration we are given 'hope' in place of sound judgment, 'change' in lieu of decency.

Politically Motivated

Both the placement of this ban and the lifting of it were politically motivated. The senior Bush applied the ban in 1991 during the first Gulf War. This was in response to an incident in 1989 when three major networks showed a split screen of then President Bush giving a speech in one frame while at the same time showing the arrival of our war dead in the other frame. This of course was unknown to the President and at one point he smiles and looks as if he is making a joke as the other frame shows the coffins being unloaded. He was highly, and wrongfully, criticized for what was really a media gimmick. To avoid anything like this during the Gulf War he banned the media from filming or photographing the return of our war casualties.

More than just the excuse of the media's right to 'be there' the lifting of the ban is in response to liberal claims that the latest President Bush was hiding the true number of our war casualties from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. As absurd as that may sound to us thinking Americans it is a widely held conspiracy 'feeling' among the loony left. What you first have to understand is that the more ridiculous the claim the more it seems possible to liberals. To debunk a liberal conspiracy the second thing you have to understand is that all you need is a little intellect and common sense. Plus it helps to remember that we live on Earth not in some Star Trek movie with inventions and technology that have not yet been invented or with Spock-like alien allies who can read minds.

One example of this absurd liberal lunacy is the Left's National Security Agency (NSA) conspiracy where under Bush the NSA was monitoring each and every one of our cell phone calls, faxes, computers, e-mails, blogs and text messages! I kid you not! Liberals actually believe this! It also would not surprise anyone that liberal wackos believe that the NSA checked out our US Postal snail mail, Western Union money grams, smoke signals and notes left on refrigerators! My Lord, just think of all the post-its they had to sort through! But according to ex-NSA analyst Russell Tice the United States government had access to and was monitoring every communication between Americans made on every medium.

Now think about this for a moment. A country of 300 plus million and somehow a bunch of Americans are hunkered down in a basement somewhere, stuffing sugar laden Ding Dongs into their face and washing that down with non-diet cokes or coffee so that they can stay awake longer to monitor the millions upon millions of communications of every type, every minute of every day, 24-7, 365 days a year. Just think of the overwhelming logistics? Or the manpower and technology needed to pull this off? Think about the rehabilitation that would be needed for the poor saps that had to constantly listen to the likes of such everyday ordinary drivel of Aunt Edna complaining about Uncle Earl snoring all night and the cat pooping outside of the litter box! After just two weeks of listening to the everyday common gossip exchanged by the likes of Verna and Beatrice Whipple out on the farm in Iowa, you would have to put every worker in NSA on suicide watch! Think of the utter chaos that ensues when they run out of Ding Dongs and are forced to come down from that sugary high!

Even if we have the technology why would we do it? Were they hoping to hear that the number four horse, in the third race at Belmont was a 40 to 1 lock? Or maybe they were after the Colonel's secret recipe? Were they listening in on 1-900 sex calls, and if they were did the NSA employees get paid for listening or did they have to pay the NSA? It is absurd, crazy, ridiculous and impossible! But then Tice gave this information to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who of course  accepted every word without question. Except for being confronted by Fox News in a parking lot about his wild claims, Tice hasn't been heard from since. But, this absurd conspiracy lives on and Tice is being quoted on liberal blogs and by street corner crazies everywhere. Meanwhile people constantly talk about how inept our government is, and they are right, but then they totally accept the nonsense that this same inept body of idiots can somehow pull off the most complicated and difficult shenanigans that the liberals can come up with! Folks our government is not James Bond. Yet liberals want us to believe that the same group of individuals who could not keep a handle on the dealings of two Federally controlled mortgage companies, Fannie and Freddie, could keep track of every word 300 million Americans were saying and writing. Unlike liberals, now you know why conservatives don't advocate the use of drugs, it makes you dream up some really crazy sh…, well you know.

With just a fragment of intelligence and common sense one can also discharge the liberals' obscene death count cover up conspiracy. And I do mean just a fragment of both. If a person would just stop and actually think for a moment about how stupid these accusations are then it really doesn't take much intelligence or common sense to understand the lack of validity in such outrageous claims. But then that is the liberal left's method of operations; the more outrageous or impossible the claim the more people will believe it. So lets look at this liberal accusation that the latest Bush administration had banned the media from Dover to cover up the actual number of our KIA's.

Foremost even liberals must admit that it was not G.W. who imposed this ban in the first place. This ban was already in place when he first took office, a time when we were not at war. Except for the return of the men killed by the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole, this ban had been held in place since it was initiated by the elder Bush in 1991, including throughout the Clinton administrations. It is noteworthy that liberals made no such claims of wrongful death counts against Clinton who had ordered troops into Bosnia and Somalia among other conflicts. Therefore the liberal claim that for political reasons G.W. initiated this ban to hide the true number of our war dead does not hold up.

Second the liberal conspiracy buffs never mention a number that they believe is the accurate total. Instead they just throw out this ban to hide theory like a high inside fastball straight at our brain casings and we are all supposed to jump back and yell, "Whoa!" As of March 6, 2009 the Defense Department's total for our losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, and including other actions in our war on terrorism, are 4912. This total includes all deaths in surrounding areas such as Pakistan, Kuwait and even the Philippines. My question is how many more of our Heroes do the liberals believe have been killed? Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, one hundred, one thousand, or perhaps, is it ten thousand? With almost 5000 KIA's, why would the Bush administration feel that it would benefit politically to hide a number of others, say another one hundred causalities? The fewer the number of causalities that are supposed to be hidden the weaker the argument becomes. What could Bush possibly gain politically by hiding one, two or even two hundred more KIA's? Maybe the liberals want us to believe that G.W. and his evil sidekick VP Dick were hiding a bakers' dozen just to see if they could get away with it?

Likewise it is impossible to believe that a greater number of our loved ones' deaths could be hidden from the American public. How do you not account for say, five hundred men and women who just do not come home? Or, as the liberals claim, if these coffins are not being accurately counted when they come into Dover, then certainly these coffins are addressed when the remains are turned over to the families. With every military funeral widely reported locally, how do you bury a few hundred Heroes that nobody in their hometowns knows about, especially in this age of instant information and communication? Here the liberals' conspiracies of the NSA eavesdropping and the missing causalities collide head on. On one hand the liberals want us to believe that technology is so advanced that spies are able to listen and read everything we say and write at real time. On the other hand, despite all of this technology Americans cannot communicate well enough to know that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of our military Heroes are dying, sent home and buried yet we do not know about it.

Lastly, despite what the liberals and their mainstream media slackers believe, our young men and women in the military are not stupid. If there were significant numbers of our war dead who were not being accounted for our servicemen and women would know and they have the courage to speak up. Likewise if the number of our children who have been lost to these wars was far greater than what has been reported don't think for a moment that the parents of these Heroes, and Veterans of this country, would not be up in arms. The liberal claim that the Bush administration was hiding the true cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unfounded and ridiculous. Hiding a few would serve no purpose, hiding too many would remain impossible. The political and professional repercussions of either would be most grave to the parties involved. It is just another far fetched politically motivated fantasy by the far Left. But then anyone with a just wee bit of intelligence and common sense should be able to see that, right?

Getting Personal

It would be different if the media had stated that they wanted access to these hallowed proceedings at Dover to honor our dead. I could understand their desire to be present if they wanted to report on these sad homecomings so that America could share in the mourning of our lost Heroes. Yet I cannot find mention of these sentiments anywhere. Instead of honoring or commemorating our dead, they only want to count the coffins for political reasons.

The liberals and their mainstream media have not been fair or objective towards our military and its personnel for a very long time. In one breath liberals will tell you that our children who join are the low-lying fruit of our society. Liberals insist that these fine young Americans are the poor, the misguided and the unwanted of our society. In the next breath they will tell you that they support our troops. Liberals have repeatedly stated that our sons and daughters who enlist are too dumb to continue their educations in college or that they just can't find or keep a job. Again, in the next breath they will insist that the only reason that our children enlist is for the free ride to college through the GI Bill. So our children are at first too dumb to get into college so their only recourse is to enlist, but then they are only enlisting to get into college. Silly isn't it, as usual liberals want it both ways.

But to the liberal mindset there can be no other reasons for young Americans to serve their country. While liberals may speak of duty, honor, Patriotism and country first, they cannot conceive of the concept that these values are the driving force behind so many of our children who voluntarily enlist in our Armed Forces. Liberals just cannot understand the unselfish willingness in which these brave young Americans so readily step forward to serve. Such a sacred call to duty is as foreign to a liberal as their hell bent flight to socialism is to the rest of us.

Our children's sacrifices mean nothing to the liberals and their media. As the death count rose I watched as media talking heads counted off the rising total as if anxiously awaiting that total to hit that next magic level of 1000, then 2000. There seemed to be no emotion as they ended their daily reports with, "Four more soldiers were killed today in Iraq, bringing the total number of KIA's to 957 since the war began." They could have been talking about stock averages. Numbers without faces to use as bench marks to advance a political agenda and bring further criticism upon an administration.

Just as I stated in my 2003 poem: 'The American Soldier In Iraq''

"What once was a front page headline
Now hardly gets any print
When once the names of every KIA was somberly posted
Now hardly a mention of the dead
Numbers of the total figures replacing individual names"

It is true that any smaller group in a society is a composite of that society. Collectively college students, policemen, doctors, teachers, the Elks Club and so on all belong to groups made up of the various members of our society. In being so they mirror our society in combining race, culture, education, religion, income, social standing and so on. Likewise this applies to our voluntary Armed Forces, for, as with any other group it is a mixture of our culture, reflecting our society's advantages and its problems. Yet in no other group is the whole condemned for the actions of a few like the United States' Armed Forces. When a teacher runs off with a fifteen-year-old student no one claims that all teachers are pedophiles. If a doctor has an affair with his nurse, no one declares that all doctors are adulterers. If a member of the Elks Club is convicted of rape surely no one then thinks for a moment that all Elks are rapists! Yet if one Marine kills a non-combatant then all Marines are murderous war criminals. When half a dozen soldiers abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib then immediately everyone in our military are a bunch of Nazis. Nowhere else in our society will you find this phenomenon and it is perpetrated by the liberal media and their cohorts in shame, the anti-American left who now insist on being present when our Heroes come home.

In the past seven years how many times have you seen a positive report by the liberal media concerning our military's actions in Iraq? How many up close and personal segments were shown about the heroism, sacrifice and positive accomplishments made everyday by members of our Armed Forces? If you can't remember I understand because they have been few and far between. Instead we have been steadily assaulted by the negativity of the liberal media concerning the conduct of the war, our military and our leaders. It was shameful. What we got were thousands of stories about one incident, Abu Ghraib. With screaming headlines and news flashes we were told that Marines had committed the murder of innocent civilians and that they had been put on trial. But it was barely mentioned when these Marines were exonerated. And so it goes. With the lifting of this ban we can be sure that the negative story lines will continue. I would guess that within two months there will be a liberal report, and as usual lacking any real facts or proof, that states that the Bush administration had lied about the number of causalities in the Iraq War. I would bet that it comes from Olbermann.

As the son of a World War Two Veteran, the father of a Marine Afghanistan Veteran, and myself a Veteran of the Vietnam War I freely admit that I am biased towards the military. But I am even more so to the outstanding people who serve in our military and their families. We are 'The One Percent' of the population who serve or have served our nation in the military in peace and in war. While I will not even try to suggest that I know how the parents of our fallen Heroes may feel, I want them to know that we share in the loss of your loved ones. He was my Brother. She was my Sister. We shared a common bond that others cannot know. I have come to know many parents, brothers and sisters who have lost a child or sibling in the service of our country. Whether that sacrifice was in WW II, Korea, Vietnam or the Iraq War, the one thing that each one has told me is that they have never gotten over that loss. To them their child will always be that young man or women that they remember. Time may heal all wounds, but it can never erase the pain of losing a child. I am deeply sorry that Chance Philips and his Brothers and Sisters have been lost to this war. But I am grateful for their duty and sacrifice. I am also thankful that Chance was able to come home to the quiet dignity that he deserved at Dover Air Force Base, before Obama and Gates allowed the liberal circus to commence.

Until we may once again gaze upon their smiling faces, let it remain so, that in our hearts and minds our fallen warriors will stay forever young, as their light continues to shine through all of us.

God Bless Them And Keep Them

God Bless America

Semper Fi,
Mike

"Copyright 2009.  Michael E. Tank .  All rights reserved.  No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."