President Barack Obama sought to dodge racial controversy on Memorial Day, military chiefs back Obama on Guantanamo

President Obama sought to dodge racial controversy on Memorial Day, sending wreaths to a monument for Confederate soldiers and other flowers to a memorial honoring more than 200,000 African-Americans who fought for the Union during the Civil War.

Barack Obama planned to continue tradition and have aides leave a wreath at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, the 600-acre site that once was Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's estate. But the White House also will send a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington's historically black U Street neighborhood.

Presidents traditionally visit Arlington to personally leave a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, a marble structure housing the remains of unidentified U.S. military members who died during war. Presidents then have aides deliver wreaths to other memorials or monuments, generally including the Confederate memorial.

But a group of about 60 professors last week sent a petition to the White House asking Obama to avoid a memorial for Confederate military members who died during the war between the North and the South.

The Arlington Confederate Monument is a denial of the wrong committed against African-Americans by slave owners, Confederates and neo-Confederates, through the monument's denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes," the petition said. "This implies that the humanity of Africans and African-Americans is of no significance."

"President Obama, why not send two wreaths?" Kirk Savage, an art history professor at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. "One to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery and another to the African American Civil War Memorial in the District, which commemorates the 200,000 black soldiers who fought for liberation from slavery in the Union armed forces."

The White House hoped to sidestep the distraction and spend Obama's first Memorial Day as president speaking in honor of the nation's veterans and their families. He scheduled a private breakfast at the White House with family members who had lost loved ones in war.

In person, Obama planned to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and then speak about the nation's military members who died in battle.

"This is not only a time for celebration, it is also a time to reflect on what this holiday is all about; to pay tribute to our fallen heroes; and to remember the servicemen and women who cannot be with us this year because they are standing post far from home — in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world," Obama said during his weekly radio and Internet address ahead of the holiday.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, have made veterans and military families a priority during his young administration. Obama's budget proposed the largest single-year funding increase in the last three decades to revamp the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"Our fighting men and women — and the military families who love them — embody what is best in America. And we have a responsibility to serve all of them as well as they serve all of us," Obama said during his radio address.

"And yet, all too often in recent years and decades, we, as a nation, have failed to live up to that responsibility. We have failed to give them the support they need or pay them the respect they deserve. That is a betrayal of the sacred trust that America has with all who wear — and all who have worn — the proud uniform of our country."

The president also plans to send flowers to the USS Maine Memorial and the Spanish American War Memorial.

Meanwhile, Obama has gained support for closing Guantanamo from current and former military leaders despite opposition in Congress to moving "war on terror" suspects to the United States.

Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in Republican administrations, and Admiral Michael Mullen, the current military chief, said Sunday that the "war on terror" prison should be closed.

"I felt Guantanamo should be closed for the past six years, and I lobbied and presented reasons to president (George W.) Bush," Powell said in an interview with CBS television.

In an interview with ABC television, Mullen said he had long been an advocate for closing the prison because it "has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us."

Asked about Cheney's charge that the recruitment argument amounted to blaming "America for the evil others do," Mullen said, "It's my judgment that (Guantanamo) has had an impact (on recruiting). And it's time to move on."

He acknowledged the difficulties of figuring out what to do with suspects who are too dangerous to release but cannot be tried, and how to ensure that those released do not return to the fight.

He said detainees released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield in increasing numbers over the last year or two, and in recent months the percentage of recidivism has climbed from "five or six percent to the low teens."

Powell also took issue with Cheney's criticism, saying that even Bush had turned against Guantanamo by the end of his term.

"President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantanamo. The problem he had was he couldn't get all the pieces together," Powell said.

"So I think we need to kind of take the heat out of this issue," Powell said.