Dead Marine's roadside memorial removed for Bush visit?

Found this in this mornings paper. I don't know how to post to ATS News so I thought it might fit here.

www.sptimes.com...

What became of the vanishing memorial is a mystery. No one had ever bothered it before.

Oscar wonders if today's arrival of President Bush at MacDill Air Force Base was more than a coincidence. The memorial was in sight of the base entrance guard station.

"I'm just thinking that the president's coming and there's a picture of a Marine that was killed," said Oscar. "He doesn't want to know that? He doesn't want to see that? . . . I hope that wasn't the reason."

More of Bushs refusal to see the truth of his actions? Or the work of vandals?
Either way it's disgusting and appalling. The perpetraters of this sad incident should be sent to Baghdad.

Originally posted by longhaircowboy
More of Bushs refusal to see the truth of his actions? Or the work of vandals?
Either way it's disgusting and appalling. The perpetraters of this sad incident should be sent to Baghdad.

The site wasn't vandalized. In fact it was neatly cleaned. This memorial had stood for 3 years, then disappears 3 days before Bush's visit? And of course, NOBODY is owning up to it. What a shock!

The people want the picture of their son back. How cruel is this?

I havent heard anything else in regards to this here in the local media.
I live across the bay from Tampa and sometimes the news there doesn't show up here. Of course this incident made the news because of the proximity to the Prez visit. In his address at SOCOM he asked for patience in the war in Iraq and then motroed over to Bayshore Blvd and shook a few hand all the while bearing that clueless visage.
I'll see if I can't get an update and post it here.

This is about all I could find.

MacDill denies it, the City of Tampa denies it. The White House denies it. So who removed the roadside memorial to Lance Cpl. Andrew Aviles and why?

Seems not to be much in the news at all... Hmmm... who has power over the media? How big of a story would this be if the stuff just disappeared... I wonder.

Mystery Solved. Wait till ya hear the explanation.
www.sptimes.com...

On Wednesday, the mystery was solved.

The poster-sized framed portrait of Lance Cpl. Andrew J. Aviles, and the bricks that surrounded it, turned up in back of a DOT maintenance yard in east Tampa. "It was a miscommunication. We did not think we had pulled up the memorial but it was on one of our crews' trucks and we didn't realize it," said Kris Carson, a spokeswoman for the Florida Transportation Department.

Harvey Hunt, a state maintenance engineer, walked into the yard and saw the missing picture Tuesday. He knew right away it was Andy Aviles.

The portrait was at the end of a line of handmade memorials and real estate boxes DOT had plucked from roadsides. The concrete memorials could damage a car, Hunt said.

That's why a maintenance crew picked up Andy Aviles' memorial. It had become a safety hazard, Carson said.

Initially, she said DOT didn't take it. But that was a mistake, she said. It had been in the back of a crew's truck.

Three years later just when Bush comes to town it's now a roadside hazard.
And some chucklehead even wrote a letter to the editor saying he didn't think it belonged there anyway. Being a vet myself this is the kinda person I would love to throttle with my own two hands.