(SEE READER RESPONSES) …Sen. John McCain blocks return of the body of Richard Somers, (1804) namesake of Somers Point
Sen. John McCain blocks return of the body of Richard Somers, (1804) namesake of Somers Point
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The Press of Atlantic City, Pleasantville, NJ ^ | December 24, 2011 | Rob Spahr
Posted on Sunday, December 25, 2011 12:33:36 AM by rabscuttle385
SOMERS POINT — Master Commandant Richard Somers will have to wait a little longer to come home, if it happens at all.
Efforts to repatriate the remains of the city’s namesake and U.S. Naval hero — killed with his crew aboard the USS Intrepid in 1804 in Tripoli Harbor during the First Barbary War — date to the 1840s.
Spurred by this year’s political upheaval in Libya, the movement seemed to finally have the congressional backing it needed to order the Department of Defense to take action regarding the return of the bodies of Somers and his men to the U.S.
However, the language in an amendment to the 2012 Defense Authorization bill that ordered the return of the bodies was changed at the last minute in favor of a diluted order for the issue to be further evaluated.
And this was done, supporters of the measure say, at the request of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Navy prisoner of war.
“Sen. McCain told our group, told the families, that he had no problem with the amendment, which appeared to have unanimous, bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. Then literally at the last minute, in the cloakroom of the Senate, he stood up and opposed it,” said Michael Caputo, coordinator of the Intrepid Project, which is spearheading the repatriation effort. “We were at the top of the hill. This was the furthest the families had ever come toward repatriation, and then Sen. John McCain, ‘Mr. Veteran,’ sucker-punched us and knocked us back down the hill.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pressofatlanticcity.com …
via Sen. John McCain blocks return of the body of Richard Somers, (1804) namesake of Somers Point.
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John McCain is a mystery to me-I can not explain why he did not tell the world Obama is a damn born in kenya foreigner unfit to be president of anything except a gayness or Islam rhetoric bullcrap convention-why John does the things he does is illogical-I admire the old soldier McCain-the POW with tremendous bravery-John needs to be telling us what the heck is really going on-being a hero himself John knows this aint time for fiddling around in returning this faithful warrior to his homeland