
The Military is Leaving the Missing Behind - svenkatesh
http://www.propublica.org/article/missing-in-action-us-military-slow-to-identify-service-members
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hughlomas
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.

~~~
hartror
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.

~~~
aaron695
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.

~~~
kiiski
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.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
"""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.

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coldcode
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.

~~~
svenkatesh
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

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mpyne
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.

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

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

~~~
JimmyL
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.

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

