Bush Signs WW II Memorial Bill

In a day of tribute to the nation’s military, President Bush signed legislation at the White House to create a memorial to American World War II veterans, and saluted the nation’s war dead during ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and in Arizona.

The president began the Memorial Day holiday by signing the measure that will establish the World War II memorial. It drew controversy, with opponents arguing that it would disrupt the vista between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and proponents contending that World War II veterans deserved such a prominent position on the National Mall.

“I will make sure the monument gets built,” the president told an audience of veterans in the yellow-curtained East Room, among them former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who supported construction of the memorial.

In a visit afterward to Arlington National Cemetery, Bush then laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

“Their losses can be marked, but not measured,” Bush said at the traditional Memorial Day ceremonies. “We can never measure the full value of what was gained in their sacrifice. We live it every day, in the comforts of peace and the gifts of freedom.”

On a stopover in Mesa, Ariz., on his way to Los Angeles, Bush spoke in the hangar of a museum of fighter aircraft, standing in front of an F-4 from the Vietnam War era, with aircraft from World War I nearby.

“It’s not in our nature to seek out wars and conflicts,” the president said to several thousand people in attendance. But when war comes, he said, Americans “have stood ready to take the risks and pay the ultimate price.”

“Any foe who might ever challenge our national resolve would be repeating the grave error of our defeated adversaries.”

He paid tribute to Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, calling him “a true hero.” McCain had been invited to join the president but instead kept to an overseas travel plan.

Bush also led the audience in two moments of silence--one for Rep. John Joseph Moakley (D-Mass.), who died Monday, and the other for America’s war dead.