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Iraqi Pilot to be Buried in Arlington
An Iraqi air force pilot will be buried Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery. It will be the first interment there of an Iraqi citizen. The late Capt. Ali Abass is the first Iraqi to be honored with burial at Arlington National Cemetery. The remains of Capt. Ali Abass will be buried with some of the remains of four members of a U.S. Air Force team who died beside him when their plane crashed near the Iranian border. Abass will be one of about 60 foreign nationals buried at the national cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington. More than 260,000 Americans have been laid to rest there since the Civil War. The event, with a 21-gun salute and a flyover by Air Force jets, will be witnessed by senior U.S. and Iraqi military officials, symbolizing the cooperation between the military services of the two nations. "Things like this tend to draw us closer together," says Lt. Gen. Michael Wooley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. Even after the United States withdraws from Iraq, "there will be long-term personal relationships" between the pilots and air crews of the two nations, he says. Abass was popular with the Americans. He bonded with them because of an earlier incident, according to an Air Force statement. After he and a U.S. officer were forced to make an emergency landing on an Iraqi road, some vehicles approached and Abass had the American hide behind a nearby sand berm. He then convinced the visitors that he worked for the Iraqi agriculture department. The Americans who died with Abass were part of an Air Force special operations team based at Hurlburt Field, Fla., that is helping train the Iraqi air force. Wooley says the crew was scouting for emergency landing sites for future use, including an unused airstrip in the area near Iran, when the accident occurred May 30. The cause of the crash, near Jalula, Iraq, remains under investigation, but Wooley says there was no indication of hostile fire. Posted by: Bobby 2005-08-11 |
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