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Mother Encourages Photos of Coffin
To protest Pentagon policy, Nadia McCaffrey
invites the media to disseminate images of her
slain son's return from Iraq.
by Regine Labossiere and Eric Slater
SACRAMENTO - The mother of a soldier killed last
week in Iraq planned to openly challenge the
Pentagon on Sunday night by not only allowing the
media to take pictures and video as her son's
coffin arrived at Sacramento International
Airport, but by encouraging outlets to publish
and distribute the images."I don't care what [President Bush]
wants," Nadia McCaffrey said of the
administration's policy that bans on-base
photographing of coffins returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan.
She planned to hold a short
ceremony in front of reporters and photographers
inside a Delta Airlines cargo terminal at the
airport shortly before Flight 1583 was scheduled
to arrive from Atlanta at midnight with the body
of her son, National Guard Spc. Patrick
McCaffrey, 34.
It was to be the most dramatic
protest of the ban since April, when a website
operator obtained images of returning coffins,
and newspapers and television stations around the
world published some of them.
Although her scheduled ceremony
did not violate the ban - which applies only to
military facilities - it was a protest against
the policy, McCaffrey said.
Patrick "did not die for
nothing," she said in a telephone interview.
"The way he lived needs to be talked about.
Patrick was not a fighter, he was a
peacemaker."
Patrick McCaffrey was killed
June 22 along with Lt. Andre Tyson, both members
of the Santa Rosa-based 579th Engineer Battalion,
when the two were ambushed by insurgents near
Balad, Iraq.
McCaffrey invited the media to
photograph the casket of her only child, who was
the manager of a Silicon Valley collision repair
company. He was married, had two children and had
enlisted soon after the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001.
Patrick, his mother said, had
grown deeply disillusioned about the war.
"He was really, really
disappointed and hurt about the way Americans and
Europeans were treated" in Iraq, McCaffrey
said. When he called home, every two days, he
also said he was ashamed by the allegations that
American troops abused Iraqi prisoners.
"He said we had no
business in Iraq and should not be there,"
McCaffrey told The Times in another interview,
shortly after her son's death. "Even so, he
wanted to be a good soldier."
On the eve of the war in Iraq,
the Pentagon ordered all bases to adhere to a
2000 ban barring the photographing of caskets of
soldiers killed overseas.
Since Sacramento Airport is not
a military facility, it is under no obligation to
keep the media away. Both the airport and the
California National Guard worked Sunday to
arrange for the ceremony.
The Pentagon's rules "are
specifically for the airlift command, when [the
caskets] are on the military plane," said
Lt. Jonathan Shiroma of the California National
Guard. "This is a commercial jet, so it's a
different jurisdiction, so to speak. We cannot
stop the media from filming."
Shiroma added that it was the
Guard's policy to follow the wishes of the family
- sometimes helping keep the media at bay during
services, sometimes helping arrange for cameras.
A spokeswoman for the airport said that although
its security personnel were helping with
arrangements, the Guard was performing the
majority of the work.
There appeared to be no
precedent, however, for Sunday's planned protest
against the spirit, if not the letter, of the
Pentagon's ban, which has come under attack by
both Republicans and Democrats, and some current
and former military leaders.
Critics have accused the Bush
administration of banning the photographs in an
attempt to limit opposition to the war, whose
death toll has risen to more than 850. They also
criticized the administration after Pat Tillman
was killed in Afghanistan. A National Football
League player, Tillman turned down a $3.6-million
contract to join the Army, and after he was
killed - apparently by friendly fire - the
Pentagon published several pictures of Tillman
marching and training, something it did not do
when other soldiers died.
Patrick McCaffrey's body was to
be driven in a motorcade from the airport to a
funeral home in his hometown of Tracy, where
services were scheduled for Thursday. His mother
said she planned to speak out against the war at
the service.
"This is enough," she
said. "We have to react."
© Copyright 2004 Los Angeles
Times
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