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REPUBLICAN PRESS RELEASE

September 26, 2007

Buyer sends message to Vietnam Wall vandals

For more information, contact: Jeff Phillips (202) 225-3527

Washington D.C. — Calling the recent defacement of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial a cowardly act, Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, called on the vandals to step forward and accept responsibility.

“The coward or cowards who defiled this shrine should come forward and accept responsibility or go back under the rock from which they came,” Buyer said today.

Buyer referred to an act of vandalism earlier this month that damaged the memorial and attacked the memory of ’s Vietnam War veterans. On September 7, an oily substance was found on 14 of the memorial’s 140 inscribed black granite panels that commemorate the lives of more than 58,000 men and women killed or missing during the war. The damage to the memorial, known to millions as “the Wall,” has not yet been fully repaired.

“When I stand before the Wall and look on those names, I feel great humility in the presence of what this memorial represents,” Buyer said. “These men and women died so that our very way of freedom might endure. It is an obscene perversion that others would creep out in the dark of night to deface the memory of heroes. The memory of these patriots endures in our hearts, whatever hateful attacks vandals may attempt.”

While no one has yet been connected with the vandalism, anti-war protesters earlier this year defaced other Washington landmarks. In January, protesters spray painted a Capitol terrace. Protesters later defiled the Lone Sailor statue at the United States Navy Memorial.

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Larry Scott  --