The US Congress knows............and does not do shit..............

Air Force dumped hundreds of remains of dead soldiers from Dover base into landfill: report

Parts of 274 heroes were incinerated and tossed in Va. dump

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, December 8, 2011, 11:07 AM

U.S. Army soldiers carry the flag-draped transfer case containing the remains of a soldier at Dover Air Force Base in 2010.

Hundreds of pieces of dead American soldiers were incinerated by Air Force officials and then dumped in a Virginia landfill, for the first time putting hard numbers on the grisly scandal that has rocked the military's largest mortuary, according to a report.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that at least 976 body parts of 274 U.S. soldiers recovered from war zones abroad were ditched in a Kings County, Va., dump after arriving at Dover Air Base between 2004 and 2008.

In nearly every case, the heroes' families, which had authorized the military to handle the soldiers' remains, had no idea that their loved ones' ashes were unceremoniously trashed, the Post report said.

The Air Force came clean about the practice last month after whistleblowers complained about sloppy work at Dover, the main entry for fallen soldiers coming from battlefields overseas.

But it had refused to reveal how many remains went into the landfill, saying that tallying the parts and trying to match them with the more than 6,300 bodies that have passed through Dover would require "massive effort and time," one Pentagon official said, according to the Post.

The Air Force finally released some numbers to the Washington newspaper this week.

In addition to the remains that were matched up with dead soldiers, 1,762 unidentified remains were thrown into the landfill.

In total, more than 2,700 incinerated body parts were chucked, according to Air Force records - though that number may just be the tip of the iceberg.

One military widow told the Post that a mortuary official told her that the Air Force had been throwing cremated remains in landfills since at least 1996.

The Air Force said it has no plans to tell the families of the soldiers' whose body parts were identified.

The mortuary stopped the landfill dumping in 2008 and began burying unidentified soldiers remains at sea from aboard Navy ships.