Is Sixty Years Too Long a Wait?
Segregated black pilots in WWII, flew 10,000 sorties into Nazi Germany and never lost a bomber they escorted. Congress awarded them a medal (after 60 years) and can't seem to get it produced while they are still alive to accept it.
Army combat engineers can build a bridge across a river and have tanks crossing on it in ten hours. George Bush can decide to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to L. Paul Bremer, the guy who initially screwed up Iraq, and the presentation happens double-quick.
You did a helluva job, Paul.
But for some reason or another, five months after Congress voted to bestow its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, on a couple hundred remaining heros still living from WWII, the award is not yet given or even produced.
A word about these guys, the Tuskegee Airmen. They were a segregated United States Air Force squardron, 994 black pilots who were trained at Tuskegee Institute in 1942.
Their squadron, led by Benjamin Davis, Jr., himself initially barred from fligh…