Caskets of U.S. troops arrive at Dover Air Force Base
(Biggunben)
We heard the first part of this gruesome story a month ago when Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe at the
Washington Post told it. For five years, as the wars in Iraq took the lives of thousands of U.S. troops, officials at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary took the remains of some of the dead, cremated them and unceremoniously tossed them in a Virginia landfill.
The secretive dumping, the subject of an 18-month-long investigation, was deliberately concealed from the families of the dead. They had authorized cremation and "burial" of the partial remains that would be done in a respectful way. The practice ended in June 2008 and was replaced by burial at sea. Even though the Air Force never formally approved of the dumping and it did not meet military regulations, nobody has been fired or disciplined for it. The Air Force has no plans to tell the families of the dead what happened.
At the time the original story was written, it was not known how many remains were treated this way. And it still isn't certain. But, according to the Post's latest piece on the subject by Whitlock and Mary Pat Flaherty, the cremated partial remains of at least 274 troops were dumped in the landfill, more than previously acknowledged.
Anyone who has lost a loved one and not recovered the body, no matter how damaged it might be, or known the body was "disposed of" but not exactly how or where, understands full well the feelings of Gari-Lynn Smith. Portions of her husband’s remains were dumped in the landfill after he died in Iraq in 2006:
[She] 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.
Thrown in the trash.
In a Nov. 28 letter to Congress, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta promised a full review of the situation, digging deeper than was before the case. The review's conclusions are to be delivere no later than 5 PM ET, Dec. 9. That's tomorrow.
The dumping wasn't the only issue at Dover. Whistleblowers at the facility have complained at length about what one of them, William D. Zwicharowski, the mortuary branch chief, called “a spiraling decline in the sacred care of our fallen over the past few years.”
He said that leadership at the mortuary “had very little or no experience in this extremely demanding, challenging ‘zero defect’ mission. . . . Leadership clearly avoided responsibility by not addressing the issue, and it was as if they were hoping it would go away. It did not go away.”
No matter what new elements the Panetta report exposes, no matter how many heads ultimately roll, one thing cannot be undone. Those ashes will remain in a landfill, a garbage dump. No matter how one feels about the wars fought by the men and women whose remains were tossed there, no matter how one perceives the policies that got us there, those who died as a consequence, and their families, deserve better.
In my new neighborhood of Boyle Heights in the eastern reaches of Los Angeles, just a few minutes from where I live, there was a ceremony for more than 1,600 dead people last week:
“The nameless and the named but unclaimed” — 1,639 bodies in all — include the homeless and the estranged, as well as those whose families simply could not afford to bury or cremate their bodies, said the Rev. Chris Ponnet, a chaplain at County-USC Medical Center who led the service.
Interfaith burial rites and prayers were read, including readings from Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian traditions. The ceremony concluded with the reading of the Serenity Prayer, Psalm 23 and a blessing of hands over the burial site.
“I think it’s commendable that the county doesn’t bury them in the dead of the night,” Ponnet said.
“It goes to a deeper part of the humanity of a society that doesn’t place remains just anywhere or nowhere,” he said. “It says we have a depth of humanity.”
Not just anywhere or nowhere. Not unceremoniously. Let's show that depth of humanity for all those who came through Dover. The families of the dead troops whose remains went to that landfill in Virginia deserve a ceremony even if they don't attend. Even the families of the dead who don't know that their kin's remains were dumped will gain peace of mind knowing that the proper respect was shown. There is no need to delay such a ceremony just because we don't know who all of the dead are.
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