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All three Pentagon correspondents landed an assignment even though the storylines were different. ABC and CBS both chose Secretary Robert Gates' presentation of his $534bn budget, a $19bn increase over last year's. NBC covered a coffin ceremony at Dover Air Force Base, the first one observed by the news media since 1991.
ABC's Martha Raddatz was impressed at the scope of Gates' proposals. She called it "the most sweeping change in military thinking in generations" that proposes scrapping equipment programs "that would have seemed untouchable just years ago." She ticked off plans to shift from the F-22 to the F-35 fighter jet, the decommissioning of an aircraft carrier and a build-up in special forces and unmanned Predator drones. "Gates has truly taken on all the sacred cows in the military budget." On CBS, David Martin added a note of caution: "Congress gets the final say and the V-22 Osprey and the B-1 Bomber are just two of the big ticket items previous Defense Secretaries tried to kill but Congress bought anyway."
NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and ABC's David Kerley both brought us the coffin ceremony for USAF Sgt Phillip Myers, a munitions demolition expert who won his first Bronze Star in Iraq and his second, posthumously, in Afghanistan. "This sacred ceremony has happened nearly 5,000 times since the start of the wars but this is the first time we were able to see this nearly silent homecoming," ABC's Kerley observed. NBC's Miklaszewski pointed out that "even out of public view the military cared for America's war dead with the same dignity and precision of a full and open honors ceremony."
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