Air Force Dumped Remains Of 274 Troops In Virginia Landfill

[ProSense]

Air Force Dumped Remains Of 274 Troops In Virginia Landfill

By Travis Waldron

Last month, the Washington Post reported that the United States Air Force, while overseeing the Dover Air Force Base mortuary that receives the bodies of troops killed overseas, had cremated and disposed some remains and sent them to a landfill in King George County, Virginia. At the time, neither military officials nor Post reporters could verify the number of body parts that had been handled in such a way.

But after combing through military and mortuary records, the Post found that partial remains of at least 274 dead American troops were sent to the landfill, and far more unidentifiable body parts were disposed of in the same manner:

This week, after The Post pressed for information contained in the Dover mortuary’s electronic database, the Air Force produced a tally based on those records. It showed that 976 fragments from 274 military personnel were cremated, incinerated and taken to the landfill between 2004 and 2008.

An additional group of 1,762 unidentified remains were collected from the battlefield and disposed of in the same manner, the Air Force said. Those fragments could not undergo DNA testing because they had been badly burned or damaged in explosions. The total number of incinerated fragments dumped in the landfill exceeded 2,700.

Knowledge of the practices outraged families of fallen troops and the owners of the landfill, who told the Post they were “pulled in unknowingly” to the situation, and that they wouldn’t want “any part” of troops killed defending the country buried in the landfill.

The practice began at a time when there was little public oversight over the Dover mortuary. George H.W. Bush banned news coverage of the return of deceased troops during the Gulf War in 1991, and the ban remained until 2009, when President Obama ended it. The first record of such a disposal, according to the Post, is from April 2004, and the Air Force decided to end the practice in 2008. It now buries cremated remains at sea.

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[Botany]

1. And all those poor dead troops would not have had .....

.... their bodies burnt or blown up w/out W's unneeded war in Iraq and his failure to address the 8/6/01 PDB allowed
9/11 to happen which triggered our war in Afghanistan.


They should bury those remains on W's ranch, Dick Cheney's Chesapeake Bay Front House, Condi's House, and Rummy's House.

[KansDem]

2. A personal story, if I may...

This sotry sickens me for the following reason--

I guess you could say I come from a military family. I never served but my uncle and my dad did. My uncle retired from the Air Force as a general and my dad “retired” from the Navy as as Lieutenant after a service-connected disability prevented him from serving any longer. He died a few months later.

During the height of the Vietnam War, my mom, a life-long Republican, had a falling out with my uncle (her brother), a life-long ultra-right wing Republican. He was a colonel then. My mom was a moderate Republican, not uncommon then, and against the war. One phone call she had with her brother the Colonel (my uncle) about the war ended when he referred to the Vietnam War draftees as “scum.” It was a heated argument that lead to a period of several years when they didn’t speak to each other.

Now, one must keep in mind that my mom lost her first husband, a member of a bomber crew, over Germany during WWII and a second husband due to a disease contracted while on an extended cruise in the south Pacific. He contracted diabetes and when his ship docked, my mom didn’t recognize him when she went down to pick him up. In fact she walked right by him; he lost that much weight. This was the summer of 1954. He retired that summer and died the following November.

So my mom knew what war and serving one’s country meant in terms of sacrifice. Her first husband died in WWII, and her second served in WWII and Korea. My uncle never saw action. He flew one mission over North Vietnam in the late 1960s as an observer but was prevented from doing it again due to his “importance.” He joined the USAF at 17 and served in WWII but only stateside. He spent the last part of his “service” in Germany acting as a liaison between the USAF and German officials. I imagine he attended many "wine-and-dine" soirees with his German hosts. He never saw war and retired a General.

I never forgot my mom’s anger and disappointment with her brother; that a USAF colonel could call draftees “scum.” It made me wonder about the code of “honor, duty, country” that military types like to proclaim. And it affected my decision not to join the service during that time (I did talk with a Marine recruiter in my late teens but decided not to pursue enlisting).

I always wanted to say to my uncle, now deceased, “If you think draftees are ‘scum’ then don’t start the fucking wars!” It's absolutely disgusting for US military officers to had such contempt for the ones doing the actual fighting.

Iraq apparently is no different.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. Huh?

:wtf:

It's almost impossible to believe that this really was happening.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

5. That's exactly how the PTB views them.

As trash. Whole new meaning to the term disposable heroes.

[great white snark]

6. Horrible, but thanks to Obama's transparency this was uncovered.

In a fucking landfill?!?
:grr: