Donna Knox: Comments on Clinton Memorial Day Speech
Over the
Memorial Day weekend, President Clinton gave a speech about veterans of U.S.
wars. I was not able to attend any of
the D.C. ceremonies, but I have read several newspaper accounts. Unless the media have systematically
withheld portions of Clinton's remarks, he confined his comments to veterans
who came back and to the war dead. His
references to the missing were all in terms of men who had died, as though
there were no question about men who were captured alive and held back.
The
President owes the missing men and their families an open discussion of the
live prisoner issue...the fact that men who were known to be alive in enemy
hands never returned; that men were known to have been taken to China and the
Soviet Union; that men have been sighted over the years in North Korea with no
acceptable explanation to the families of missing servicemen.
Instead,
what we most often hear are comments about war dead and the search for remains,
sometimes accompanied by vague reference to the fullest possible
accounting. When that phrase is used in
the context of remarks about graves and remains, it is taken as a commitment to
finding all the bodies and bringing them back.
The live POW issue should not have to be inferred from the President's
remarks. It should be addressed
outright and in no uncertain terms.
DPMO head
Bob Jones met with President Clinton before Clinton's remarks over the
weekend. I asked Mr. Jones if the President
addressed the live POW issue in his speeches. While there were no direct
statements about men having been held back, Mr. Jones said the President made a
strong statement about leaving no stone unturned to get the fullest possible
accounting. Mr. Jones also said that the President is aware that questions
about live POWs exist. It would be nice if the President acknowledged this
issue to the world and specifically addressed what can be done to bring about
cooperation on this aspect of the accounting effort, instead of talking
consistently about fallen heroes, war dead, and remains, as though that is all
that the fullest possible accounting is about.
It is
difficult to believe that our government is committed to the fullest possible
accounting, when the most important aspect of that effort...live POWs...is
routinely ignored or side stepped at the highest levels. If we expect this policy of indirect denial
to change, we must work to educate the Gore and Bush advisors, so that the next
administration adopts an attitude and a foreign policy of true commitment to
the fullest possible accounting...which is not the same thing as remains
recovery.