Remains of military and repercussions for whistleblowers

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAK/is_3_55/ai_111268867/
Excerpt:

Cremated Remains Of U.S. Troops Dumped In Landfill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9C3WUwIrOo

http://www.freep.com/article/20111112/NEWS07/111120384/Mortuary-workers-say-they-were-punished-speaking-out-military-remains
Excerpt:

Mortuary workers say they were punished for speaking out on military remains

Nov. 12, 2011  |  

Dover Air Force Base mortuary workers Mary Ellen Spera, left, James Parsons and William Zwicharowski say they faced retaliation for reporting problems on the job, including troops' remains that got lost. / PATRICK SEMANSKY/Associated Press

BY RANDALL CHASE

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WYOMING, Del. -- Three whistle-blowers whose complaints about the handling of soldiers' remains led to an investigation of the nation's largest military mortuary say they were shocked and disturbed by some of the practices they witnessed.
The workers at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary in Delaware also said Friday that they went outside the chain of command after supervisors failed to address the problems and retaliated against them.
James Parsons, who was fired in September 2010, says he thinks it was because he had reported an incident in which a supervisor told him and another worker to saw off an arm bone that protruded from the body of a Marine so the body could be placed in a uniform for viewing before burial.
"I never ever saw anything like that," said Parsons, an embalming technician. He refused to comply, leaving the task to a probationary worker. Parsons said the worker, perhaps fearing for his job, sawed off the limb.
"It wasn't our decision to make, as far as I'm concerned," added Parsons, saying consent should have been sought first from the Marine's family.
Parsons said he was reinstated almost immediately after being fired and assured there would be no further retaliation after he contacted a lawyer for the Office of Special Counsel, an independent investigative agency within the federal government.
Mortuary workers Mary Ellen Spera and William Zwicharowski said they, too, faced retaliation from superiors for questioning practices and reporting problems at the mortuary, including two incidents in which portions of human remains went missing.
Spera and Zwicharowski both received letters of reprimand for what supervisors deemed to be failures on their part. Zwicharowski, who has experience in dealing with mass casualties, also was suspended for five days for showing up at the mortuary after being told his help was not needed in dealing with victims of the 2009 Ft. Hood shootings. He later was placed on eight months of administrative leave, for reasons he said he still does not know.
All three whistle-blowers said the problems have since been fixed, and that the families of fallen troops can be assured that the remains of their loved ones are being treated with dignity, honor and respect.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that harsh criticism of the Air Force's investigation of lost body parts at Dover prompted him to order the Air Force to consider imposing stronger punishment on those responsible.

http://news.yahoo.com/dover-mortuary-whistle-blowers-shocked-problems-231804309.html
Excerpt:

Dover mortuary whistle-blowers shocked by problems

By RANDALL CHASE - Associated Press | AP – Fri, Nov 11, 2011

WYOMING, Del. (AP) — The body of the Marine lay on a gurney at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary, an arm bone jutting out from the torso.

Embalming technician James Parsons wondered how he would be able to get the stiffened arm back into position so that a uniform could be put on the corpse for a viewing. Parsons and a co-worker asked their supervisor, Quinton "Randy" Keel, what to do, and he told them to take the arm off, then left, according to Parsons.

"I'm thinking, 'This is just wrong. We shouldn't be doing this,'" Parsons recalled, contending that consent should have been obtained from the Marine's family first.
Parsons refused to cut off the arm and instead stood and watched as his co-worker — a new employee still on probation — grabbed the saw and removed the limb, which was then placed alongside the Marine's leg inside an undergarment that would be covered by his uniform.
A phone message left at a listing for Keel in Felton, Del., was not immediately returned Friday night.
After stewing for months about what happened, Parsons bypassed the military chain of command and reported the episode. He was one of three co-workers to complain about what they saw as callous or sloppy handling of remains at the main military mortuary for America's war dead.

This week, the Air Force said it had punished three top officials at the Dover mortuary for "gross mismanagement," including two instances in which body fragments from remains shipped home from Afghanistan were lost.

One of the cases involved fragments of ankle bone embedded in human tissue associated with two crew members recovered from an F-15 fighter that crashed in Afghanistan. The other involved a piece of human tissue an inch or two long.

The investigators concluded that the removal of the Marine's arm had not violated any rule or regulation. But the Air Force has changed procedures to ensure that a representative of the deceased's service, in this case the Marine Corps, has a say in whether the family should be contacted before a body is altered so significantly.

All three whistle-blowers — Parsons, Mary Ellen Spera and William Zwicharowski — said in an interview Friday that the problems at the mortuary have since been fixed and that the families of fallen troops can be assured that the remains of their loved ones are being treated with respect.
"Please trust us when we tell you that your loved ones are taken care of at Dover," Zwicharowski said. "Your loved ones can't speak for themselves when they come through here, but we are going to speak for them, and we're going to represent them."
Col. Robert H. Edmondson, commander of Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations at Dover at the time, received a letter of reprimand. Trevor Dean, Edmondson's top civilian deputy, and Keel, director of the mortuary, were reassigned to jobs dealing with families of the fallen and are no longer involved in mortuary operations.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has since ordered the Air Force to consider imposing even stronger punishments.
The three whistle-blowers said they went outside the chain of command after their supervisors failed to address problems there.

"In house, it was falling on deaf ears," Zwicharowski said.

All three said the Air Force retaliated against them. Parsons said he was fired in 2010 but reinstated almost immediately, while Spera and Zwicharowski said they received letters of reprimand. Zwicharowski also said he was put on administrative leave for eight months and at one point was labeled "mentally unstable."

The Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency within the federal government, is investigating the claims of retaliation.

Air Force spokesman Todd Spitler declined to respond directly to the claims of retaliation but said the actions of the whistleblowers have resulted in changes at the Mortuary Affairs Operations center.

"For the record, the employees who brought forth their concerns gave the Air Force an opportunity to make the operation at AFMAO better and stronger," Spitler said in an email. "Their initiative allowed the Air Force to bring corrective actions and long-term improvements to management of AFMAO."
The three mortuary workers said they have no regrets about what they did.

"You've got to do the right thing," Parsons said.

http://www.kxan.com/dpps/military/pattern-emerges-of-usaf-errors_3985098
Excerpt:

• Photo

In this Oct. 27, 2003 file photo, visitors leave the new Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs at Dover Air Force Base, Del., after opening ceremonies.  (AP Photo/Dee Martin)

Report: Troop remains dumped in trash

A published report says the remains of many more troops have …

Pattern emerges of USAF errors

Updated: Wednesday, 09 Nov 2011, 3:24 PM CST
Published : Wednesday, 09 Nov 2011, 3:22 PM CST

WASHINGTON (AP) - Gruesome revelations about mishandling the nation's war dead mark the Air Force's second embarrassing failure in three years, following the time when airmen mistakenly flew a B-52 armed with nuclear weapons across the country.
The nuclear and mortuary missions are arguably the Air Force's most sensitive. Both require precision and are unforgiving of error. Neither is publicly visible. Shortcomings in either carry a heavy cost.
In both caring for battlefield casualties and maintaining custody of nuclear weapons, the Air Force has linked its failures indirectly to the intense demands and strain of fighting two wars simultaneously.
The first lapse cost senior Air Force leaders their jobs. Word this week that mortuary workers at Dover Air Force base in Delaware lost body parts of servicemen returning from Afghanistan now clouds the tenure of the leaders picked to prevent more scandals.
Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the Air Force's top general and its senior civilian in 2008 in response to a series of nuclear-related errors, starting with the mistaken arming of a B-52 bomber in 2007 with nuclear missiles and the unaware pilot flying over the U.S.
Less than a year after that lapse, the U.S. mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile. Independent reviews condemned the Air Force for a dramatic deterioration in managing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Since then, the service has instituted broad changes to improve oversight and management of the nuclear mission and inventory.
The current Air Force chief, Gen. Norton Schwartz, and his civilian boss, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, were picked by Gates to clean up sloppiness in the nuclear mission and get it back on track.
Now they are mired in the messy aftermath of Tuesday's disclosures from Dover. There is no sign that Schwartz or Donley will be sacked over this, although George Little, press secretary for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, told reporters Wednesday that Panetta had not yet ruled out "further accountability."
So far the Air Force has acted against three supervisors at the Dover mortuary, a colonel who was in command there and two civilians. Col. Robert Edmondson has since been placed in a noncommand position at the Pentagon; Trevor Dean and Quinton R. Keel were moved to other jobs at Dover.
Schwartz may face questions on this from Congress when he appears Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify on another topic.
The committee's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said Wednesday he was "deeply distressed" to hear of the Dover problems and has asked his staff to review the Air Force's investigation, which was based on allegations by three whistleblowers at Dover.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a member of Levin's committee, called the Dover revelations "appalling beyond words." She said she could not understand why Schwartz did not fire those involved once he heard of the mistakes.
Richard DeNoyer, national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the Dover trouble "exceeds on many levels" the anger that erupted in 2007 at disclosures of mistreatment of war wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and reports in 2009 of mislabeled or misplaced graves at Arlington National Cemetery.
"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," DeNoyer said.
In explaining what went wrong at Dover between 2008 and 2010, Schwartz said the main problem was a combination of "action and inaction" by the three supervisors that amounted to "gross mismanagement."
There also was inadequate coordination between the two sets of staffs that perform the main duties at Dover: the medical examiners who autopsy and identify the remains and the morticians who do the embalming and other work to prepare remains for return to their families.
Schwartz and other Air Force officials also cited a connection to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular, they noted the emotional strain on the mortuary staff as they perform the gruesome work of caring for war dead. Many of those killed have been mutilated by roadside bombs.
The Air Force said that about 4,000 remains and partial remains were processed at Dover between 2008 and 2010. The casualty count was even higher in earlier years of the Iraq war. Dover is the only U.S. mortuary to receive and handle U.S. war dead from abroad.
"They operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are routinely responding to the trauma of war, working to return the remains of our fallen warriors to their families under challenging circumstances that are rarely encountered," anywhere else, Schwartz said.
In hindsight the Air Force also blamed its nuclear missteps in part on the demands of war.
"We found that there were some issues in our nuclear enterprise because we were so committed to the wars,"

Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler, head of the U.S. Strategic Command responsible for nuclear weapons, told Congress last week, before the Dover revelations. "We found that perhaps at some level we had taken our eye from some of the most critical pieces of what it takes to have perfection as the standard."
Nuclear weapons played no role in either war. Kehler was asserting that because so much effort, attention and resources were being directed at Iraq in particular, the Air Force lost its focus in other areas.
The Air Force has not performed the lead combat role in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The service's aerial refueling, surveillance, reconnaissance, transport and close-air support missions have been an important feature of both conflicts.
There is a toll, nonetheless, on those at Dover charged with caring for the war dead, particularly when seen in the light of expectations among military families of mistake-free handling of every set of remains.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61737/frederick-w-kagan/the-us-militarys-manpower-crisis
Excerpt:
THE ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS
The current manpower crisis in the U.S. military predates both the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the Iraq war. The problem started in the early 1990s, when George H. W. Bush began recklessly cutting military spending without paying enough attention to the foreseeable (and unforeseeable) uses to which the military would be put. Bill Clinton accelerated these cuts, even as the number of U.S. forces deployed abroad steadily grew. By the end of the decade, the U.S. military was overstretched and inadequately staffed for the missions it faced.
Calls for Washington to reverse some of the cuts began to proliferate. Just what critics were asking for, however, varied dramatically. Some recommended an increase in traditional military spending. But others demanded that more money go to research and development (R & D) in order to spur a "revolution in military affairs." These RMA enthusiasts viewed the 1990s as a "strategic pause": the United States faced no imminent threat, they argued, and so should use the time to gird itself for future challenges by developing new technology.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/LIES.html
Excerpt:
On Sept. 8,1992, Bill Clinton said, "The only people who will pay more income taxes are the wealthiest 2 percent, those living in households making over $200,000 a year."
In response to a Bush-Quayle ad that people with incomes of as little as $36,000 would pay more taxes under the Clinton plan, Bill Clinton said on Oct. 1, 1992, "It's a disgrace to the American people that the president (Bush) of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, that is so without foundation, so shameless in its attempt to get votes under false pretenses."
Yet the NY TIMES in the analysis of Clinton's budget wrote, "There are tax increases for every family making more than $20,000 a year!"
"While Clinton continued to defend his middle-class tax cut publicly, he privately expressed the view to his advisers that it was intellectually dishonest." (The Agenda, by Bob Woodward, p. 31)