McCaskill demands explanation over staged arrival ceremonies for fallen soldiers

WASHINGTON –  Sen. Claire McCaskill is pressing the Pentagon for answers following reports -- and an admission by the U.S. Department of Defense -- that it staged “arrival ceremonies” for fallen soldiers.

“This is even more evidence that these recovery efforts are suffering from systematic problems and a lack of coordinated leadership,” McCaskill said in a statement. “Families in this community just want officials to be honest and forthright about the government’s efforts – instead, what they’re often getting is false hope and fake ceremonies.”

Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command -- a unit in the Defense Department -- has been holding arrival ceremonies for seven years, with flag-draped coffins being carried off cargo planes as though they held the remains of American troops that had just been returned, according to an initial investigation by NBC News. However, the remains typically were on site before each ceremony began, at a lab where they were undergoing analysis. The report focused on ceremonies at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. 

“These ceremonies, which have been held numerous times over the past seven years, reportedly represented to veterans and families that the remains had been recently recovered and were arriving in the United States for the first time,” McCaskill wrote in her Oct. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Via: Fox News Political

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'From Merely Stupid to Dangerous: The Sequester’s Effects on National and Economic Security'

A new report on sequestration's impact on defense from the Bipartisan Policy Center:

Because of the structure of defense spending, our national security forces and defense industry have been able to continue operating under sequestration, but not without permanent damage. The full brunt of the cuts hasn’t hit yet, and if we go down the sequester path for too long, we won’t be able to reverse the devastating impacts. It isn’t primarily the size of either the federal budget or the defense budget that poses problems; it is the dramatic change in the composition of those budgets over the decade—entitlements are pushing out investments. And sequester worsens that trend.

Essential government services, especially in defense, are not being performed, and will not be if sequester continues. The combination of sequester cuts and unaddressed cost increases will erode force readiness, stall modernization, and reduce the fighting forces by at least 50% by 2021. The impact of the defense sequester on spending, which drives the economic impact, will double in FY 14 and triple in FY 15, compared to FY 13.

Via: Weekly Standard
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