Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has a story about a womanwho was put in charge of media relations atArlington National Cemetery who tried to open up to media coverage of the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.
As most of us know such funerals have been deemed by the Bush Administration to be counter-productive to its war effort. If people started seeing funerals on TV they might demand an end to the war. Can't have that.
When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.
Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.
"Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I'm sure I'd still be there," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."
Well, Ms. Gray's first mistake was to assume that "doing the right thing" is honored in the Bush Administration. Going along, OTOH, is the key to success and rapid promotion.
In fact, "doing the right thing" will get you harassed first, then fired. It seems that after she tried to improve media access at one Arlington funeral, she was shot down and Defense Secretary Robert Gates got involved.
After Gates's inquiry into The Post column, Gray, still days into her new job, began to get some rough treatment. "Gina, when you leave the building let me know," said a one-line e-mail from her supervisor, Phyllis White, on May 2. Then Gray was instructed not to work overtime without written approval, and then was ordered to take down a Marines poster from her cubicle wall. "Please change your title from public affairs director to public affairs officer," White instructed in a June 9 e-mail.
Gray complained to Arlington's superintendent, John Metzler, and was briefly removed from White and Higginbotham's supervision. But on May 27, White sent an e-mail announcing that "Mr. Metzler changed his mind, I will continue as your supervisor." The acrimony increased. Gray went to the hospital complaining of stress-related headaches; while she was recovering, her BlackBerry was disconnected, "to alleviate you from stress," as White put it.
Milbank finishes the article by noting that Gray was fired on June 27 because Phyllis White said she had "been disrespectful to me as your supervisor and failed to act in an inappropriate manner."
Seems to me there are some supervisors over at Arlington who are acting inappropriately, disrespecting the wishes of families of dead soldiers and placing more importance on the political priorities of the Busch Crime Family than on honoring the sacrifices of our soldiers.