Digital Bugle Plays Taps When GI's Can't

[GreenPartyVoter]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The playing of taps to honor America's fallen soldiers is a familiar sound, but at thousands of military funerals these days, not all is as it seems.

Instead of a bugler playing the 24 notes, a computerized chip implanted in the horn renders the heart-stirring song.

A push of a button starts the horn. It sounds a tune that not enough people in uniform can play given the pace of dying veterans and casualties from the Iraq war.

Some traditionalists object, but other people say it's an improvement upon the more widely used substitute - someone bending over and pressing a button on a boom box to play a recording of taps.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20040622/D83C3DB80.html