Adding insult to injury

January 6, 2007

I can only imagine how painful and insulting it was for these families to receive these letters.

The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

“Army personnel officials are contacting those officers’ families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters,” the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.

Apparently, under normal circumstances, the database for such correspondence is “thoroughly reviewed” to remove the names of wounded or dead soldiers, but the December mailings inadvertently used an older list. An Army statement said it “regrets any confusion.”

Is there any level of our government which is competent?

  • The US military as Nathan Hale: the armed forces regret that you have but one life to give for your country.

  • I flashed on the novel “Dead Souls” where a Russian went around buying dead serfs in order to amass a fake fortune. Maybe the military will send all of these soldiers as part of the 20,000 surge.

  • If the U.S. military needs soldiers to enlist, why don’t they just send requests to those who voted Republican in the last election. They must support Bush’s war, and from the way they talk, they sound eager to go over to Iraq.

  • LOL @ 2 & 3.

    Apparently, under normal circumstances, the database for
    such correspondence is “thoroughly reviewed”

    Gee, do you think they’re in a hurry or something? Desperate for warm bodies? Nah.

    Hell, I’d find such a letter insulting even if I were perfectly healthy. “Go back. To THAT? Getdafuckouttaheah.”

  • Ed,
    you forgot cluster fuck, goat rope, rat screw, and the “Ah, shit” that negates any “Attaboys” you may have been awarded previously.

    I would like to thank the US Army Non-Commissioned Officer Corps for giving a good little Catholic kid from Nebraska a rather colorful vocabulary.

    5,100 OFFICERS? The Army is THAT short? Good God, the Army’s worse than I thought. That sounds like a number they’d be short in the post-Vietnam Army.

  • John McCain likes to opine that the “only thing worse than a broken army is a defeated one.” Well, the Chimp in Chief is hell-bent on delivering a two-fer.

  • ml, @4

    Not a bad idea, especially if applied to all soldiers, not just officers. With 3K dead, it would increase what we can supply by a big margin (my percentage-math fails me, but, from 9K to 12K is a sizeable jump, no?) Add the 22K wounded, and the “surge” would be quite respectable. Halliburton could pocket their pay, too. *Quite* attractive…

    PS It wasn’t to amass a fake fortune; it was to gain status. A land-owner (however poor) had a much higher status than, say, a doctor or a banker. And a land-owner owned not just the land but all the “souls” on it and could dispose of them as he saw fit (“serf” was just a prettier name for “slave” in tsarist Russia and the part of Poland owned by Russia). The guy (can’t remember his name to save my life; it’s been 40 yrs since I read the damned thing) was buying those “dead souls” to pretend he belonged to the squire class. It may, or may not, have helped him gain money, but it sure would have gotten him into all the “right” parties…

  • Make no mistake, the Iraq war is a disaster.

    A disaster from day one

    The only question now, is how much will it cost?

    Those that lost a loved one, or a serviceman who lost a limb, already have their answer – the rest of us are still calculating,

    The responsibility to declare war, is given to congress, and congress alone via the constitution from our founding fathers

    yet, this power was transfered to a known drunk driver, G Bush

    Who gave the keys of war, a change of policy to first strike, delegated to an extreme concentration of power to an unworthy ‘decider’ G Bush?

    Well, one of the co-sponsors of the Iraq war resolution, was none other than John Edwards – he of course, voted for it also

    Now, he tells us he admits it was a mistake

    Think about it – if YOU gave your keys to a drunk driver 10 years ago in north carolina, and many people got killed and injured, and you admitted you made a mistake

    would john edwards have advocated you get a big promotion?

    or would he have taken you to the cleaners?

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