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NeoCons meet Stephen King - Were war dead cremated at a Pet Sematary??

by Mikasi | May 10, 2008 at 08:30 am | 211 views | add comment

This is one of those stories that make even the most ardent administration supporter wonder if military outsourcing has gone too far.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of U.S. service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended Friday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement.

The facility, in an industrial park near Dover Air Force Base, has cremated about 200 service members, manager David Bose said Friday night. It uses separate crematories a few feet apart to cremate humans and animals, he added.

Pentagon officials said they do not think any humans were cremated inthe pet crematory. "We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever at thispoint that any human remains were at all ever mistreated," Pentagonpress secretary Geoff Morrell said late Friday.

The practise bagan when the Air Force at Dover contracted out to have service funerals done by local funeral homes. Dover Base does not have the facilities to do on site. The beginning of the end happened when an Army Officer stationed at the Pentagon went to Dover to attend a comrades funeral.

Discovering a pet crematorium was part of the facilities used, he notified his bosses of possible indignities. They notified their bosses and so on until the situation was on the desk of the Defense Secretary.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates found "the site and signage insensitiveand entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen,"Morrell said. "The families of the fallen have the secretary's deepestapology," he said.

In his company's defense, the crematory manager explained that no service members were put through the pet creamtorium and in fact it would have been physically impossible for that to happen.

Bose said his company owns one pet crematory that is square and toosmall for most humans, who are cremated in two larger, rectangularcrematories in the same room.

He was adamant that there had "not been any people gone through the pet crematory."

As a response, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne ordered yesterday, Friday, that the base would "cease using the off-site crematory, use only crematory facilities thatare co-located with licensed funeral homes, and have a militarypresence during the off-base process at the funeral-home facilities."