Bob, a funeral is a private affair for the family to say goodbye to somebody they loved and lost, and to pay tribute to them. The president's being there, especially with Secret Service in tow, would COMPLETELY overshadow that. I live in a fairly rural area, and when a soldier dies, its front page news. I promise you, if Bush was there, itd be his picture, not Carterville's tank commander, on the front page.

If I were the president, I might MAYBE, go to a wake, but I would never overshadow the person being honored.

Hate to defend him, but it's a good call here. Besides which, you cant get to every funeral and run the nation, so how do you choose. No president in history has ever gone to every funeral from a conflict he was involved in.

I kind of disagree with the implications of the post, in so much as I agree that Bush has a perfectly legit excuse for not attending funerals. And that is that it wastes his time, he can't attend them all so why bother, and no president has ever regularly attended soldiers' funerals.

I don't, however, buy the excuse. The war is unpopular, and the administration naturally wants to convey the image of a successful campaign. Coffins are bad for that. One would also presuppose that not acknowledging the funerals wouldn't cut it - the administration would do well to also ban photos of coffins. Which it has.

So, this one is completely open to interpretation. But anyone in his heart of hearts has to admit that the outright ignoring of deaths in Iraq seems pretty obvious and pretty strategic. The notion of protecting dead peoples' integrity just doesn't wash. Wasn't that Bush I saw giving a speech from the pile of rubble in New York?

It makes sense to expect a president to honor at least ONE of the men who has been killed in his broken, politically motivated war. Publicity, time, or inclusivity never prevented Bush from attending 9/11 funerals, or exploiting the deaths of the victims in political ads. "Bubble Boy Index" is a valid statement to make for a president who has repeatedly shown a penchant for sheltering himself from the unpleasant results of his own politics.

He had the time to feed a plastic turkey to a single unit. He had the time to land on the flight deck of a single carrier. It wouldn't take much for the most powerful man in the free world to, out of respect for the family, exclude the press from an Arlington funeral ceremony. Additionally, Bush fancies himself a modern day Lincoln -- an emancipator who recited the Gettyburg Address at Ground Zero. Lincoln attended the most famous funeral in American history: the dedication of the first National Cemetery. No... This is all about a boy in a bubble who is unable to express empathy and who maintains a policy of "out of sight, out of mind".

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