The Military is Leaving the Missing Behind | Hacker News Reader

The Military is Leaving the Missing Behind

propublica.org

29 pointssvenkatesh18 comments

Can anyone please explain why it is necessary to identify the precise remains of the dead, especially those that died so long ago? It seems like a waste of time and resources, driven by a compulsive over-expression of sentiment. In the case of the article, the man died over fifty years ago, and they even have the luxury of knowing where and how he died, shouldn't that be closure enough? Should taxpayers really be funding a staff of 500 for this? I can think of many better allocations for $100,000,000.

Agreed. Sounds like a big waste of tax dollars.

Like prosecuting murderers? That CSI don't come for free. There is a reason society makes un-economic promises to victims of crime and casualties of War. They are not too dis-dimilar when you think about it.

I don't see how these compare: prosecuting murderers is supposed to prevent them from murdering again and, more importantly, discourage other people from murder. What is the parallel effect of proper burial of war casualties?

The families of the victims in both cases. The notion that justice (& dignity) outweigh the bean-counting. It is sort of parallel to insurance in that regards. The victims of crime and war are a small minority, and the rest of society makes small sacrafices on their behalf. If you look at the average cost of a gallon of gas delivered into Afghanistan, it is 100x markup, two orders of magnitude beyond "reasonable".

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020490380...

It is part of the promise your country makes to you and your family as part of you going to war. You know if you are deployed and subsequently killed you know that your country will make every reasonable effort to return your remains to your loved ones.

Seems a minor cost compared to a life, or thousands of lives.

Actually I would imagine anyone who is not dumb or suicidally depressed would prefer their country spent that money on themselves not dying.

So to me, letting soldiers/people die because resources are instead being spent on people who passed away 50 years ago is not a minor cost.

US military budget is, what, ~$700 billion? I don't think a $100 million is going to improve anyones odds of survival if spent on equipment/research/something else, but it can have a big effect on morale if the soldiers know they wont be just abandoned and forgotten if things go badly.

Wow, really just throwing those words around, huh? Luxury, closure enough, compulsive over-expression. But if this isn't a troll comment, a simple first pass analysis would lead you to something similar to 001sky's conclusion.

Proper burial is one of the oldest elements of our culture. We have evidence that it may even predate our species. That said, you are right that $100,000,000 is an absurd amount of resources for this.

"""The top military official at J-PAC, Gen. Kelly McKeague, said he believed the standards for laboratory work to identify a veteran should be higher than the FBI lab’s standard for a death penalty case. With what J-PAC does, he said, there’s “a lot more at stake.”"""

Jesus Christ.

You find Luddites in every field. Not using DNA is like sorting millions with bubble sort because that's the way you learned to sort in 1st grade.

Not using all of the tools at their disposal means that tens of millions of tax payer dollars are being inefficiently spent though, with few results to show for the effort

Unfortunately you do see this kind of thing ("fiefdoms" impeding progress) a lot in the government. Sometimes it works well (Adm. Hyman Rickover at Naval Reactors), but often you get things like this, with people (well-intentioned perhaps) hanging on to a position for so long that they become locked into what worked 15 years ago.

That's not necessarily bad for slowly-evolving fields, but it's certainly not helpful here.

The "#MIA Takeaways" sidebar with pre-filled tweets for key points is an interesting feature I've never seen on a news site before.

This is HN material. It's hacking a different kind of system, is all.

If you've got a good story - like this one - hacking government bureaucracy requires only one thing: getting your local elected representative involved.

Not because they're particularly dedicated to helping out constituents, although many are, but because it's great for re-election. A good congressional district staffer could take this, write up a few letters "from" the Congressperson to whoever's in charge of the person in charge of JPAC, send a release to the local cable channel, and get a pretty good local firestorm going on the issue to shame the DoD into some action. This may not get the investigation going, but it will get some progress...which will be good for the petitioner (since they got some official attention they wouldn't otherwise have), and good for the Congressperson (since they'll be able to highlight this in their newsletters and when they're running for re-election as someone who "gets results"). District staffers live for things like this; take advantage of it.

Pro tip if you have something where you're going to use this strategy: make it as easy and as obvious as possible what you'd like your representative to do. Want them to send a letter to a particular official? Attach a copy of the letter you've already sent that official. Want them to make a call? Include all the information you have about the person you tried to call, their supervisor's information, and the talking points you would have used had you been able to make it. Keep your issue morally black-and-white, and make it very easy to understand how doing X will result in something concrete and simple that the representative can consider an accomplishment. You're competing with a whole host of other interests who want some of this representative's district time, so make it very clear why what you want is easy to do, morally right (according to the morals of the majority of your district), and simple to understand & be convinced of.

Any way we can start sending letters to this guy to pull his head out of his ass?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com