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Now i'm pissed!!!!! President Bush: THE CURSE OF GOD IS UPON YOU!
274 soldiers' remains were thrown in Virginia dump site
The number of dead U.S. soldiers whose remains were dumped in landfill has been revealed and it is much higher than the military originally admitted.
The Army had initially said it was unable to tell how many of the soldiers' bodies, repatriated from Iraq and Afghanistan, had been part of the process that has been a national scandal for America.
But it has now been revealed that the remains of at least 274 troops - comprising 976 body fragments - that could not be identified or were later recovered from the battlefield were incinerated and sent to a landfill site in Virginia, operated by Waste Management Inc.
The families of the dead had authorized the military to dispose of the remains respectfully and with dignity.
However, the relatives were completely unaware that the remains were being dumped in landfill while the landfill site was not informed what was being thrown away. The Dover mortuary changed its policy to burying the parts at sea in June 2008.
The figures come from a report based on information from a database at the mortuary, where the remains of most war dead return.
According to The Washington Post, Air Force officials claim they don't know when the practice began but that its first record of such a procedure was on February 23, 2004.
The secretive practice which ran for five years, between 2003 and 2008, when the remains of some 6,300 dead soldiers passed through Dover Air Base mortuary.
The scandal is the latest to hit the military base which receives all America's war dead and prepares them for burial.
It was earlier revealed that body parts belonging to deceased soldiers were lost or sawed off without the family’s permission.
A damning report found that an arm bone belonging to a dead marine was hacked off without asking his parents by staff at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
An ankle and some soft tissue went unaccounted for due to ‘gross mismanagement’ and may have been mixed in with the remains of other soldiers.
An 18-month probe into Dover's mortuary, pictured here, revealed one soldier had his arm cut off by staff without the family's permission
Whistleblowers also claimed that the fetal remains of dependents of military personnel were shipped from Germany back to the U.S. in cardboard boxes that had already been used.
The scandal at Dover Air Force base began after complaints by three whistleblowers - civilians who worked as embalmers or technicians - who sparked an 18-month investigation by the Air Force Inspector General.
A separate probe was carried out by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency which looks into claims by whistleblowers.
Among the most egregious instances was when the family of one marine asked to see his dead body one more time - and staff at Dover had hacked his arm bone off.
The heat from a bomb attack in Afghanistan had caused the soldier’s arm to fuse at 90 degrees to his body so he was unable to fit into his uniform or his casket.
But instead of speaking to his family to see what was for the best, staff went ahead and trimmed it anyway.
The investigation found the two body parts that went missing were a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghanistan in April 2009.
The investigation found two body parts went missing entirely, including a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghainstan and a small piece of flesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan
The second was a small piece of fleesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan in July 2009.
The investigation found two body parts went missing entirely, including a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghainstan and a small piece of flesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan
The investigation did not discover what happened to them - but raised the possibility they fell out of the plastic bags where they were being stored in the morgue refrigerator and got mixed in with the remains of others.
The whistleblowers also drew attention to shipping of fetal remains belonging to relatives of military personnel back to the U.S.
Instead of being transported in the more dignified aluminium cases they were shipped in re-used cardboard boxes.
In a statement accompanying her report Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said the findings were ‘deeply troubling’.
She said: ‘The mortuary for the United States military should boast the best conditions and best practices of any mortuary.’
The report added that there was a ‘pattern of the Air Force’s failure to acknowledge culpability for wrongdoing relating to the treatment of remains of service members and their dependents
The Dover scandal comes just months after it was revealed Arlington National Cemetery had 211 graves either mislabelled or containing the wrong person's remains
The Dover scandal comes months after it was revealed Arlington National Cemetery had 211 graves either mislabelled or containing the wrong person's remains
There were also cases of remains being moved without families' consent or graves left empty when they should have remains in them.
The cemetery is considered sacred ground and has been the final resting place of the nation's veterans since 1864.
More than 300,000 servicemen and women are now buried there.
General Norton Schwartz, the chief of staff of the Air Force, apologised for the mistakes made at Dover.
He said: 'We understand the obligation of this work, the sanctity of this work, the need for reverence, the need for dignity and respect of our fallen, just as if these were our sons and daughters'.
An Army and FBI probe is still investigating the outrage at the nation’s most hallowed military graveyard.
The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of portions of troops’ remains by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burial at sea.
The mortuary in Delaware, the main point of entry for the nation’s war dead and the target of federal investigations of alleged mishandling of remains, engaged in the practice from 2003 to 2008, according to Air Force officials. The manner of disposal was not disclosed to relatives of fallen service members.
Air Force officials acknowledged the practice Wednesday in response to inquiries from The Washington Post. They said the procedure was limited to fragments or portions of body parts that were unable to be identified at first or were later recovered from the battlefield, and which family members had said could be disposed of by the military.
Lt. Gen. Darrell G. Jones, the Air Force’s deputy chief for personnel, said the body parts were cremated, then incinerated, and then taken to a landfill by a military contractor. He likened the procedure to the disposal of medical waste.
Jones also could not estimate how many body parts were handled in this way. “That was the common practice at the time, and since then our practices have improved,” he said.
Gari-Lynn Smith, portions of whose husband’s remains were disposed of in the landfill after his 2006 death in Iraq, said she was “appalled and disgusted” by the way the Air Force had acted. She learned of the landfill disposal earlier this spring in a letter from a senior official at the Dover mortuary.
“My only peace of mind in losing my husband was that he was taken to Dover and that he was handled with dignity, love, respect and honor,” Smith said. “That was completely shattered for me when I was told that he was thrown in the trash.”
An Air Force document shows that the landfill is in King George County, Va. Officials with Waste Management Inc., which operates the landfill, said the company was not informed about the origin of the ashes. “We were not specifically made aware of that process by the Air Force,” said Lisa Kardell, a spokeswoman for the company.
The Dover mortuary changed its policy in June 2008, Jones said. Since then, the Navy has placed the cremated remains of body parts in urns that are buried at sea.
Asked if it was appropriate or dignified to incinerate troops’ body parts and dispose of them in a landfill, Jones declined to answer directly. “We have recognized a much better way of doing things,” he said. “Let me be emphatic: I think the current procedures are better.”
The disclosure of the landfill disposals comes in the aftermath of multiple federal investigations that documented “gross mismanagement” at Dover Air Force Base, which receives the remains of all service members killed in action in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere overseas.
On Tuesday, the Air Force acknowledged that the mortuary had lost a dead soldier’s ankle and an unidentified body part recovered from an air crash; had sawed off a Marine’s arm so his body would fit in his casket; and had improperly stored and tracked other remains.
The Air Force disciplined three mortuary supervisors after an 18-month investigation, but has not fired any of them, despite calls from lawmakers and veterans’ groups for tougher action.
“What happened at Dover AFB exceeds on many levels the nationwide anger that resulted from reports of mistreated wounded at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007 and reports of lost or misplaced graves at Arlington National Cemetery,” said Richard L. DeNoyer, the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “You only get one chance to return our fallen warriors to their families with all the dignity and respect they deserve from a grateful nation — and that mortuary affairs unit failed.”
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Tuesday commended the Air Force for the “thoroughness” of its investigation. His spokesman, George Little, said Wednesday that Panetta is leaving “open the possibility for further accountability” and that “there is no excuse for this kind of incident to occur.”
Under military culture and regulations, the armed services have a special obligation to care for fallen troops and their families. All troops killed overseas return to Dover in flag-draped transfer cases and are honored in what the military calls a “dignified transfer” ceremony.
Smith,spent more than four years trying to find out what happened to her husband’s remaining body parts before she learned of the landfill disposal. Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith served more than 16 years in the Army and volunteered for dangerous duty defusing and destroying bombs in Iraq.
He was killed when stepped on a pressure plate that triggered a buried bomb.
Initially, Gari-Lynn Smith said she was led to believe that her husband’s entire body was returned for the funeral. When Dover officials told her that his body was too badly mangled for an open-casket funeral, she said she became worried that some of his remains had not been buried with the casket.
“I knew he was blown up and had amputated limbs, but I was not getting a straight answer from the Air Force about what had happened to his body,” Smith said.
She received her husband’s autopsy report in 2007 and learned that some remains had not been found in time to include in the casket.
Shortly after Scott Smith’s death, his parents had filled out a Defense Department form giving the Air Force permission to “make appropriate disposition” of any partial remains discovered after the body was buried, according to Pentagon records.
Gari-Lynn Smith said she believed that Dover officials would treat the remains with respect. The deceased soldier’s parents declined to comment.
In April, Trevor Dean, a senior official at the Dover mortuary, informed her in a letter that some of her husband’s body parts were cremated and dumped in a landfill in King George County. In the letter, Dean listed her husband’s first name incorrectly, an oversight that Smith saw as yet another sign of disregard for her spouse.
“This has been nothing but a nightmare,” she said.
Dean was formerly the top civilian deputy at the mortuary. The Air Force said he received a lower pay grade and voluntarily accepted a transfer to a lesser position in September as a result of separate allegations of mishandling of remains. He still works at Dover.
In an e-mail Wednesday, Dean declined to comment about the Smith case or the landfill practices. “We are pleased with the positive change in the program,” he said in reference to reforms the Air Force says it has implemented at the mortuary.
Relatives of other service members whose remains were mishandled at Dover said Wednesday that they were shocked to learn of the errors.
Stan McDowell, the father of Capt. Mark R. McDowell, who died in an F-15E fighter jet crash in Afghanistan in July 2009, said the Air Force informed him Saturday that it couldn’t account for a four-inch piece of flesh that may have belonged to his son.
“They were very apologetic, and it was all heartfelt,” Stan McDowell said. “We know Mark was a Christian, and that he’s in heaven. So we look at it like — okay, so maybe there are some remains that did not end up in his burial site. . . . That’s not really a concern to us. And the reason is: We know Mark is separated from his body, and that he’s in heaven.”
The Air Force said it was uncertain whether the missing piece of flesh belonged to McDowell or his friend, Air Force Capt. Thomas J. Gramith, who was killed in the same jet crash. The other remains of the two airmen are buried together, under the same headstone, at Arlington National Cemetery.
Patricia O’Kane-Trombley, Gramith’s mother, said she was assured by the Air Force’s promises to ensure that something like this never happens again. “I don’t like mix-ups. Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “If Tom were here, he’d say, ‘What can we do to make this better?’ ”
Staff writer Christian Davenport and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Daily Mail & Washington Post
Hey, Dubya, i hope you die horrible death you arrogant stupid piece of monkey shit!
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