The military has participated in inaugural day ceremonies since President Washington. Since the first inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, that participation has been formalized into a committee, originally called the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee.
JTF-AFIC is a temporary joint military command established every four years at the direction of the Secretary of Defense. For what became the second inauguration of George W. Bush, the committee was established in February 2004. Between then and Inauguration Day itself, the organization grew to about 400 people by December and over 700 people in January 2005.
The ten-day period of the ceremonies marking the second inauguration of Richard Nixon in 1973 were marred by the passing of his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, just two days into Nixon's second term. The ceremonies came to an abrupt end, as the military would have to deal with the state funeral for the nation's 36th president. Because of the inauguration, all the military men who participated in the inauguration participated in the state funeral.
External links
- Military District of Washington
- Official military website
- ... protecting Bush on Inauguration Day, a December 2004 article about the JTF-AFIC from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday July 24, 2008 at 19:27:24 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Copyright © 2008, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.