Army Apologizes for Sending 7000 'John Doe' Letters to Families of Slain Soldiers

Army Apologizes for Sending 7000 'John Doe' Letters to Families of Slain Soldiers

www.foxnews.com

The U.S. Army sent letters addressed to "John Doe" to 7,000 family members of soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce blamed the mistake on a faulty "mail merge" function within a high-speed printer the Army uses to send out mass mailings.

According to the Washington Post, 4,829 U.S. service members have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 -- 4,204 in Operation Iraqi Freedom and 625 in Operation Enduring Freedom.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on (1/7/09) by AllSeeingI]

The fact that we need MASS MAILING to dead vet families is disgusting.

Why cant there be some humane amount of oversight!?

How hard is it really to pay some human to write those letters, or even just proof read each one?!

Must we cut these sort of costs while also having a massive black budget for military spending.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

It 'had' to be intentional, just more mental terrorism.

I am so sorry for the families, can you imagine?

Originally posted by AllSeeingI


The fact that we need MASS MAILING to dead vet families is disgusting.

Why cant there be some humane amount of oversight!?

How hard is it really to pay some human to write those letters, or even just proof read each one?!

Must we cut these sort of costs while also having a massive black budget for military spending.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I agree with you, very digusting, but very indicitive of the US Military. The fact is, we cannot even keep people in the military these days, or meet recruiting goals. So, unfortunately looks like these kinds of tasks are put on an automated back burner so to speak. Very terrible situation for those families.

No-one is suggesting all the letters sent to the families of dead soldiers were "John Doe" letters.

So these 7000 John Doe letters are in addition to the normal letters of commiseration.

Which makes one wonder: how many American soldiers have really been killed in Iraq?

I have read of many tricks the military use to prevent deaths being included in the war-death total.

Dumbasses. Looks like the cut and paste monster has struck again.

I hope the rocket scientist that was responsible for this goatrope is taken out and flogged in public.

reply to post by AllSeeingI

My uncle served as a Special Ops in Iraq in 1991 and the Army sent those letters to the families of his troopers before they were sent on a certain mission, only to come out all alive. Fortunately he was a big momma's boy and always called home to tell her where he was even if it meant a court martial, allowing us to get the letter before she saw it. This is not uncommon, if very cruel, but the people who have to do this have their own longterm baggage to deal with. Imagine spending all day notifying people about death, especially in such an unpopular war, and try to imagine how you would deal with it. The military already is coping with serious susbtance abuse, homicide and suicide issues, this is a really f---g misguided way to do it.

I dealt with the military press corps during my career and I always went out of my way to help them, newspapers generally are very anti-military because so many senior editors either served in Vietnam, were war objectors or knew someone who was killed over there. Death notifications for non-classified missions also are provided to the deceased's hometown paper, which in turn may or may not be slanting news for their publisher's own purposes (if they allowed notices to be published at all, my editor hated the military and went out of his way to screw them). Trust me, the people who mail out these letters know they are being fed a load from the top and it's eating at their conscience.