Military cemetery "overcrowded from your dirty little war"

...to paraphrase the great John Prine.

From Wapo/Reuters:

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (Reuters) - A Kansas military cemetery has run out of space after the burial of another casualty of the Iraq war, officials said on Thursday.

"We are full," said Alison Kohler, spokeswoman for the Fort Riley U.S. Army post, home of the 1st Infantry Division.

But not to worry.  Kansas' two Republican Senators, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, are on the job to support the troops, both dead and pre-dead.  They want a new military cemetery built pronto!  

"We truly owe our military members a debt of gratitude and the least we can do is provide them with an honorable burial ground," the senators wrote.

The very least we can do!  And if all else fails, we can fall back on good old heartland ingenuity:

Fort Riley can bury bodies on top of other bodies if family members want to share a plot, said Kohler.

'Nuff said.

•  Tip Jar

  I guess this is how it's done.  I haven't posted a diary in a long time.

  by grassroot on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:28:46 AM PDT

•  Because of advances

  in battlefield medicine, a far smaller percentage of soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan than died in fewer wars. That's a good thing, but it means that many, many more are coming home with serious injuries. We really need to be prepared to take good care of all of them and their families for decades to come.

  by coolsub on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:37:08 AM PDT

  •  Not to mention the psychological trauma

    Even though the costs of the war and occupation have been distant for many Americans so far, I fear the "war will be brought home" (to borrow another phrase from the Vietnam period) in very unpleasant ways in the years to come.

    by grassroot on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:44:31 AM PDT

•  My G-d...

  ...these SOB's can talk of building a new cemetary,
  but can't see past the BS that's filling in the current ones.

  What are they putting in that Kool-Aid?!

  by JeffW on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:42:00 AM PDT

•  Your flag decal won't get you

  into a cemetery any more.

  Shortage of grave space mostly due to recent deaths of WWII vets and other, older vets.

  Old Soldiers Not Fans of New Cemetery Plans

  Fort Riley Cemetery Supervisor Larry Githerman says the fort has done everything short of expanding. It has pulled up roads, and routinely stacked husbands and wives under the same marker.

  Standing between rows of tombstones, Githerman said he dreads the call he knows is coming any day.

  "Well, basically, I'm going to have to tell them that there is no space left in the cemetery," Githerman said, "and there's nothing that can be done."

  Albert Curley says he already feels spurned.

  "I'm 85, and like I told 'em, I'm living on borrowed time," he said.

  Despite the U.S. military's current deployments, the expansion has not been driven by causalities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 4,000 U.S. troops have been killed in six years of fighting.

  Last year, older veterans died at a rate of about 1,500 each day.

  Read/listen here to NPR story:

  http://www.npr.org/...

  by operculum on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:45:52 AM PDT

  •  It's true of course...

    ...that the major cause of military cemetary overcrowding is the death by natural causes of the massive numbers of aging WWII and Korea vets.

    But it's also true that an immediate effect of this overcrowding is that there is no place to put the (relatively few) combat dead from Iraq.  And that was the thrust of the Reuters article.

    by grassroot on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:56:30 AM PDT