Dishonorable Discharge

It seems that the Bush-era Department of the Air Force and Defense Department really didn’t give a damn about those who made the ultimate sacrifice for out country.

The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the secretive practice three years ago, records show.

The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said. There are no plans, they said, to alert those families now.

This is another chapter in the story of the shameful practices at Dover Air Force Base from 2004-2008. During this period, the ashes of soldiers who were cremated were dumped in landfills in Delaware and Virginia. One Marine had his arm cut off so he could be put into his uniform for an open-casket viewing, even though his family had not requested he be prepared for such.

Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) is pissed off about this, as all of us should be.

Air Force and Pentagon officials said last month that determining how many remains went to the landfill would require searching through the records of more than 6,300 troops whose remains have passed through the mortuary since 2001.

“It would require a massive effort and time to recall records and research individually,” Jo Ann Rooney, the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary for personnel, wrote in a Nov. 22 letter to Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.).

Holt, who has pressed the Pentagon for answers on behalf of a constituent whose husband was killed in Iraq, accused the Air Force and Defense Department of hiding the truth.

“What the hell?” Holt said in a phone interview. “We spent millions, tens of millions, to find any trace of soldiers killed, and they’re concerned about a ‘massive’ effort to go back and pull out the files and find out how many soldiers were disrespected this way?” He added: “They just don’t want to ask questions or look very hard.”

Now, someone will come on here and accuse me of politicizing this tragic affair. But I’m not. Having served as a civil servant under every President since Reagan, I can honestly say that the worst 8 years of my life were under W’s administration. A group of RWNJ’s came in with a sense of entitlement and did everything they could to screw over their employees and the taxpayer. Ignore the law? Yep. Ignore regulations? Sure. W had numerous agency heads who were either forced out of their positions for ethical “lapses,” being convicted, or just ignoring things like what occurred at DAFB. Whistleblowers were fired or transferred to G-D-awful places (as Rick Perry wants to do). And for the Air Force to now say that it would be too much work for them to get to the bottom of this is just shameful.

Keep up the pressure, Cong. Holt.