Controversial Air Force casket photo prompts investigation

Originally posted by mikemck1976

When I saw this photo and story I knew I had to bring it to my fellow A.T.S.er’s…
My first reaction, unlike the MSM‘s, was not one of shock, but one of wonder.
Not “Why did they do that!?”
But, “I wonder what that means?”
Is it that they are sick of the war?
Is it just saying “We are counting ourselves lucky that we are not leaving Iraq in one of these caskets.”?
I my opinion, it means something, and I want to know what that something is.


news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

First of all, this is obviously a "unit" attempting to convey an inside joke to someone close to them. That happens a LOT with units who eat, sleep, drink, play, and fight together. Every family has inside jokes. People need to stop jumping to conclusions (including the MSM), and ask first, then shoot instead of shooting first and asking questions later. It could be a retirement thing, or a transfer thing. You should see some of the plaques I've seen over the years...if it LOOKS bad, it's really not...they are more guilty of lacking judgment when they shot a photo. The ones that look innocent are the ones you have to worry about! LOL!

I'm fairly certain this photo means nothing other than some inside humor that wasn't meant to be interpreted by the public without any explanation as to who, what, or why. It may seem to be in bad taste to those who have never done the job, but I will tell you that some of the funniest people I've ever known are morticians...you don't wanna know the jokes they play on each other with the bodies that come in! LOL! So come on folks, quit being so damned sensitive about everything.

My feeling is....if someone is coming to pick up your trash everyday, don't complain about how they do it. If someone comes to clean out your septic tank when it overflows, don't complain about the smell when they dig it up. If someone scrapes your loved one's body off the pavement and attempts to make it pretty enough for a burial ceremony, don't complain about how they have chosen to view death in order to go to work every day. Your "normal" will not ever match the "normal" of those with jobs who are used to seeing death, and their coping mechanisms and humor will never be understood by those on the outside looking in. So let's all try to be a little less judgmental and a lot more empathetic to the fact that they are our fellow human beings....they aren't monsters, criminals, or anything else.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

sarra1833

thinkprogress.org...

Maybe this is what they had in mind? It was the first thing that popped in my head. Worth considering at least. I couldn't look through the first page of comments so this might be a repeat.

This week, after The Post pressed for information contained in the Dover mortuary’s electronic database, the Air Force produced a tally based on those records. It showed that 976 fragments from 274 military personnel were cremated, incinerated and taken to the landfill between 2004 and 2008. An additional group of 1,762 unidentified remains were collected from the battlefield and disposed of in the same manner, the Air Force said. Those fragments could not undergo DNA testing because they had been badly burned or damaged in explosions. The total number of incinerated fragments dumped in the landfill exceeded 2,700.

Edit:

By Travis Waldron on Dec 8, 2011 at 9:32 am

to give a reference to when.

Last month, the Washington Post reported that the United States Air Force, while overseeing the Dover Air Force Base mortuary that receives the bodies of troops killed overseas, had cremated and disposed some remains and sent them to a landfill in King George County, Virginia. At the time, neither military officials nor Post reporters could verify the number of body parts that had been handled in such a way.

Nvm the time doesn't work out. The desecration story and allegations happened after the pic was taken. I was wrong

reply to post by mikemck1976


Good photo. Full marks for all those involved.

So pleased it's offended the PC fools.

Amusing to see that they are dumb enough to go chasing their tails with an "investigation."

Originally posted by HangTheTraitors

Originally posted by 46ACE

Originally posted by FurvusRexCaeli

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
These are soldiers who have been up to their eyeballs in blood, guts and dying friends for who knows how many deployments each.

They're not soldiers, they're airmen. If they're up to their eyeballs in anything, it's not blood, guts, and dying friends. Probably beer.

Hey: air force pararescue,forward air controllers,and security folks eat as much mud as the next spec "operators". Granted Not everybody serves at f.o.b. "restrepo"! I take offense to you diminishing Serving Airmen.

Let see YOUR"dd 214"!

Whoa, settle down, eh? Having been in the USAF in my youth, it can be said that the grunts and jug-heads get more 'mud' and 'blood' but SURELY we had the higher intelligence level on them.

Sorry grunts and jugs, but why shoot for the ground when you can aim HIGH to the SKY.

edit on 16-12-2011 by HangTheTraitors because: (no reason given)

""Aim high"
or you piss on your shoes!!!!!"

Just proud of my "branch"...at 18 if I wanted to be "sgt fury" ; I coulda' walked into any of the 5 doors Army/ marines/navy/coasties: I wisely chose the USAF and the technical and leadership training set me up for life...My only regret is never holding a flight crew position.

Originally posted by AngryAlien

Originally posted by whyamIhere
These guys are bored out of their minds.

I just think it's kind of a souvenir.

I wouldn't read too much into it.

Ummmm...It's an official photo from the unit and they have some senior enlisted in the photo. This photo was published in the Air Force times and there is a large investigation underway...

here is a link: www.patheos.com...

The photo was reportedly taken in August but only recently published in the Air Force Times. An investigation is now underway. “I don’t know whether any rules have been violated,” says David E. Smith, spokesman for the unit. And therein is the problem.

reply to post by gunshooter

I have to agree with you as well, when I was in, we would do some crazy stuff that was probably questionable to civilians sense of humor, but your right about blowing off steam, and the stresses of being a troop.

Thanks for sharing that video. The link didn't make the quote paste, but people can follow your name link back. That was hilarious and I imagine that is a great way of letting some of the constant stress slip just a little, if only for a few moments. I've always heard it said that the time to really worry about our men in Uniform is when the bitching, horseplay and black humor stops. Anyway... Thanks for the laugh on watching the 'fake grenade' attack.

reply to post by mikemck1976


War's over. Who cares? What can they honestly do.

reply to post by mikemck1976


A quote from a man that has been in top positions for many decades.............a nasty piece of work if you ask me.

Military men are “dumb, stupid animals to be used” as pawns for foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger,
National Security Advisor to Nixon, 1973. (War Criminal, Freemason, Zionist, White House Advisor during the Iraq and Afghan wars).

Wars are manipulated human live chess games played by the elite.

Wake TFU people.

911, if one really researches was abosolutely a false flag operation.

You all got fooled (again) and fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Yes be mad and flame me the messanger..................but you should really be mad at the manipulators, those that send your sons and now daughters off to play their games and conquest foreign lands we have no business in.

While Islam is a threat...........now that we have murdered their innocent children. The real threat is like a cancer, right here in Washington DC.

A government that has sold out to the highest bidder and forsaken it's people.

reply to post by mikemck1976


It's a reference to Osama bin swimmin, after they (apparently) dumped his body into the ocean after they (apparently) killed him, you know when they could have simply arrested him and brought him before a judge so he could tell the world about the various cloak and dagger plots that he was involved in with the US goverment....

This video says a lot in my opinion:

www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by ofhumandescent
reply to post by mikemck1976

 

Military men are “dumb, stupid animals to be used” as pawns for foreign policy.

And the first people you'd hug after saving you if foreign soldiers came into your home town with the one goal of sticking you with a bayonet right where the sun don't shine.

You've no cencept.

reply to post by steveknows


Notice I did not utter that quote. I only quoted Henry Kissinger to show what HE THINKS of military men.

War is stupid and usually a manipulated event people just don't seem to get though.

And while I am 58 and female I can now shoot a 45 pretty accurately and am working on using a semi-automatic rifle.

My trainer says that I am pretty good, should have gone military.

Don't knock the messenger..............I simply quoted Mr. Kissinger. Those were not my words.

And yes I have a concept. I was in nursing and put plenty of gunshot fatalities, stabbings and beaten corpses in morgue drawers (back then we didn't just roll them in, you had to unload and pull the body over and into a drawer.

I've also bared witness to quite a few people as they died so yes my dear sir I do have a concept.

Maybe not of war.................but we Americans were never invaded 911 was a false flag event arranged and paid for by real PTB.

Wow - this is the whole problem in a nutshell.

Here we have a picture of airmen who look like they get along, have good unit going and probably do their job properly.

Is the idea of the photo in bad taste? Yeah, probably.

Should they have more respect for the fact that the casket may have or may be used for a dead service member? Yes, they should.

But - they did not kill any American soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen.

They did not send any Americans to their death in Iraq or Afghanistan for no reason at all.

No one should be upset with this crew but Bush, Cheney, Rumsfled, Obama, Hillary Clinton and a very long list of politicians and members of the last three administrations should have been tried and sent to jail already.

Just like Abu Ghraib when the lowest ranking members were charged for what the highest command ordered people want to blame regular troops.

Sick!

Originally posted by relocator
reply to post by 46ACE

 

This is what I found inregards to there crossed arms..

Most of the Airmen in the photo, among them at least one technical sergeant and one staff sergeant, have their arms in front of them, their wrists crossed and held just below their neck – a hand signal used by aerial port squadron Airmen to mean “stop” or “cargo load secured.”

Source

The 345th TS at Fort Lee is the Air Force’s air transport and transportation schoolhouse. While Airmen in training there are not schooled on dignified transfer of remains, a spokesman for the unit told Air Force Times that transfer cases such as the one that appears in the photo are kept at the base.

An Army staff sergeant who sent the photo to the paper told Air Force Times the image was uploaded to a Facebook page in October and spotted by a former soldier after a friend was tagged in it.

Staff Sgt. Elias Bonilla told the paper that when the person in the photo was contacted about it, he laughed it off. The former soldier began sending the image to other friends, until Bonilla got hold of it and emailed it to the paper.

“I cannot help but picture the faces of my dead [soldiers] that we drug out of burning vehicles, dug out from collapsed buildings,” Bonilla told the paper in an email.

The Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, which oversees all training units in the Air Force, ordered an investigation after being contacted by the paper.

AETC spokesman David Smith said it would take about two weeks to wrap up the investigation.

I guess in 2 weeks we may find out the results of the investigation.