I had no problem with President Obama going to Dover AFB to see the remains of American servicemen who gave their last full measure of devotion to our nation. When the White House announced that the press would not be included, I agreed with that decision. Unfortunately, the White House then decided that it would make for a great photo op after all, as Human Events’ John Hayward — formerly known here as Doc Zero — points out:

Most of the officials who attended the ceremony, including the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, routinely travel with photographers, but they honored the wishes of the families and left their photo people behind… with one notable exception.

Guess who. …

None other than our humble President, Barack Obama, had a lovely photograph of himself raising a salute in silhouette. The White House distributed the photo among the media, and posted it on the official White House web site as Photo of the Day. The Associated Press made a point of not running it, because they said they won’t publish government images of events the media has been denied access to.

Jay Carney defended the photo op, saying that “no caskets were visible” in the photo released by the White House. But that’s not really the point.  The families of the fallen heroes didn’t want any press coverage at all:

Under a Pentagon policy set in 2009, media coverage at the Dover base is allowed only when family members of the war dead approve. In the case of multiple sets of remains returning as a group, photographers take pictures of those approved caskets only and are ushered away before the remains of any troops whose families declined coverage are brought out of the plane.

The Pentagon said that in this case no family could give permission because any given case could contain the remains of troops whose families did not want coverage. The Pentagon said that during initial notification of next of kin, 19 of the 30 families said they did not want media coverage.

The AP and other media organizations argued that images could be taken of the tarmac, plane or dignitaries that would depict the occasion without showing a casket.

Well, who cares if the families didn’t want press coverage? Obama got his Commander-in-Chief photo op, and apparently that’s all that matters.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!