Obama Administration Denied Veterans' Request to Visit World War II Memorial

Obama wants his shutdown, and he’ll have his shutdown.

The White House and the Department of the Interior rejected a request from Rep. Steven Palazzo’s office to have World War II veterans visit the World War II memorial in Washington, the Mississippi Republican told The Daily Caller Tuesday.

Palazzo helped the veterans commit an act of civil disobedience against the Park Service Tuesday, when the heroes stormed through barricades around the closed memorial.

The veterans were visiting the memorial as part of Honor Flight, a non-profit that provides veterans free transport to the nation’s capital to visit the memorials to the wars they fought in.

“We got the heads up that they will be barricaded and specifically asked for an exception for these heroes,” Palazzo told TheDC. “We were denied and told, ‘It’s a government shutdown, what do you expect?’ when we contacted the liaison for the White House.”

Palazzo’s office was in touch with the heads of the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and the Capitol Police. He says all these officials rejected his request to allow the veterans, many of whom are octogenarians and some of whom are in poor health, to attend.

The memorial ordinarily has no staff on site, as it has no facilities or amenities. It is costing more money to put barricades around it and place Park Police on site than the memorial’s normal operations. The choice to close it off and create the image of a memorial closed to the veterans it honors was a deliberate one. Obama intended it to anger Americans that their veterans are being denied access. The message of the decision apparently went out among all of the Democrats in Congress, as not a single congressional Democrat showed up to help the veterans.

Obama didn’t count on the veterans, some of them in their 80s and up, flipping the script on him.

Honor or Freedom Flights happen every day. One is happening today. We will have a correspondent on the scene. The barricades are still in place. What will the Obama administration do?