The reports in November about the gross mismanagement of soldiers’ remains at the Dover Air Force Base, including the policy of dumping slain soldiers into a Virginia landfill, continue to develop today as new reports suggest the policy, which the Air Force has defended, was much broader than anyone thought.
Now, records related to the period suggest that at least 274 US soldiers slain overseas were dumped in the landfill. Though the Air Force apparently never revealed the policy to top Pentagon officials at the time, this was their standard response to family members telling them to dispose of the remains “respectfully and with dignity.”
Air Force officials said there was “absolutely not” any intent to deceive the public or families about the disposal. At the same time they said they don’t intend to inform the families, saying it would be inconvenient to go back through the files from those years to get contact information.
Rep. Rush Holt (D – NJ), who had pressed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about rumors of the practice in September, was interviewed on the matter by the Washington Post. His response, perhaps the first reasonable official comment when told about the policy, was “what the hell?!” followed by speculating that the Air Force “just don’t want to ask questions or look very hard.”
The Air Force does not appear to even have records of when the policy began, saying it was doing so in at least 2004, but couldn’t rule out that it began earlier. The company that took the troops to the landfill, MedTrace Inc. denied knowing that they were hauling dead soldiers, saying the containers were sealed and labeled “medical waste” by the Air Force. The landfill operator, Waste Management, says they weren’t informed of the policy either and would have rejected human remains for the landfill.
This gets more sickening by the day. It's a sad testimony that the war party views its broken robots like chum to be disposed of. It reveals the unmasked face of warmongers and is truly disgusting.
And we ask the public to believe in this unmoral war, yet the public seems to have little interest. I can only say that those responsible in the Pentagon be should be tried in a civilian court of law
and be imprisoned. Max
Nice to see how the Air Force brass really feels about the men and women who serve under them. No real shock, these are the same Air Force brass who'd always rather spend billions on fancy new planes that are useless in a real war on terror, while underpaying the people they put on the front lines to fight that war. And now we see the true worth that the Air Force brass put on the men and women who voluteer to fight their wars …. they dump their bodies in a landfill with the rest of the garbage. And they are so callous that its too much work and too much inconvenience to even bother to tell the families what they've really done with the remains of their loved ones.
If there's any group of people who've shown that they should have no say in how the world is run, its these Air Force generals who kill from 20,000 feet and who dump soldiers remains in the garbage. Nice to see that the humanitarian traditions of General LeMay are still alive and well in the USAF.
Is there any end to the disgust that the USA forces create? Torture, removing fingers for souvenirs,
murder and now placing their own dead in waste dumps. Please go home from every where you are in the world and leave us alone.
It proves that to our government masters the troops are nothing more than cannon fodder.
Sorta brings whole new meaning to 'fodder units'….
As disgusting as this news is and as totally repulsive as it is, I find that the familes of the fallen soldiers are even more vile and disgusting than the mass murdering generals: It is the height of callousness and hypocrisy when a family, presumably suffering with worry while their son or daughter is fighting a war, then turns around and instead of taking posession of the loved ones remains.. body or ashes… they disgustingly ask the Air Force to dispose of the body for them. They should drown in their crocodile tears and be hung by all the yellow ribbons they put up. Hello?
Has it ever occurred to you that the families are now poorer than ever, for having lost a potential breadwinner? Perhaps they cannot afford a plot in the local cemetery. I would always give anyone whose family member is lost violently the merest benefit of the doubt before I condemn them for simply being survivors.
I would find those in the chain of command responsible and give them a bag and shovel and tell them they are not going to leave the landfill till all parts of our brave serve men are found and buried with honor.
I have always believe that my government treated me like garbage but this was further abuse than I would have ever expected.
We have billions for foreign nations so we could cut a few million and bury our heros as heros and not garbage.
You have my email address, Antiwar.com. Will you please be kind enough to tell why my comment on this story was not posted? What exactly did I say that made it unaccepotable to your thought control police? This is totally unacceptable for a site that presumably believes in freedom of speech and thoughts.. or do you?
Spare me. — AK, Moderator #2
The road from Fresh Kills to the Dover Landfill is not such a long or winding road. Connect the dots. At least at the 9/11 dump site, they sorted through the debris for tokens to give loved ones. The Dover Landfill shows the exhaustion of the leadership since that time, the hopelessness and cluelessness.
Let this be a warning to all you misguided young souls out there who are thinking of joining up to "serve" your empire, er, country. They don't give a S*** about you. You are just cannon fodder and will be -literally- dumped in the trash when done with.
I can feel the love!
This story is such BS this site is making it sound like dead bodies where it's rather body parts, like teeth, gall bladders, tonsils, diseased tissue, ect. Everyone else quit being so damn gullible.