The Patriot Post® · Shot Down, Twice

Shot down over Laos in 1969, the bodies of two MIA Vietnam era Air Force aviators were recovered and returned home for burial at Arlington National Cemetery this week. Major James Sizemore and his navigator Major Howard Andre were buried at Arlington National Cemetery, laid to rest side by side, just the way they flew.

However, the Air Force refused the traditional ceremonial flyover to honor these men. Captain Rose Richardson noted, “The Air Force is unable to support the flyover request for Major Sizemore due to limited flying hours and budget constraints.” In other words, this is the latest entry in Obama’s “blame the Republican sequester” charade. However, volunteer pilots with the Warrior Flight Team stepped into the gap and provided a flyover, including a Douglas A26 Invader of the type Sizemore and Andre were flying when they were shot down 44 years ago. The Invader was joined by P51 Mustangs off its wings.

The Patriot Post has now written about Obama’s moratorium on honor flights several times since his sequestration cuts began, and each time we have noted that, while Honor Flights have been denied, Barack Obama continues to use Air Force One and its entire contingent of additional Air Force aircraft and support crews to commute to political fundraisers, stump speeches and vacations, at enormous expense. It’s not that we think Obama should book his flights on Expedia, but the fact that the Commander in Chief continues to use this most costly Air Force asset for purely political or pleasure trips while denying honor flights for fallen warriors, is disgraceful.

Obama should be called out on this disgrace by the national media. But conservative Beltway commentators have shamefully not seen fit to mention this unmitigated hypocrisy once.