Dead soldier's mother defies Pentagon over body return
The mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq invited news coverage of the arrival of her son’s flag-draped casket at Sacramento International Airport – in contrast with Pentagon policy banning photographs of the coffins of dead soldiers on military facilities.
Nearly a dozen reporters, photographers and television crews were present when the coffin of Army Sgt Patrick McCaffrey, 34, was transferred to a hearse outside a cargo terminal on Sunday.
Nadia McCaffrey, who opposes the Iraq war, said her son “did not die for nothing… The way he lived needs to be talked about. Patrick was not a fighter, he was a peacemaker,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
While she said the invitation to the media was not a political protest, she planned to continue speaking out against the war.
“This is enough,” she told the Times. “We have to react.”
Patrick McCaffrey and another soldier, both members of the California National Guard’s 579th Engineer Battalion, were killed June 22 in an ambush.
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