Sacred Spending

by digby

In this article about the search for the missing soldiers in iraq, I came across this astounding figure:

The military still spends about $100 million a year finding fallen soldiers from earlier wars—a B-24 navigator shot down in 1944 was recovered in Croatia and buried in Michigan just two weeks ago. Before the Korean War, though, American GIs—like British colonial soldiers—were buried in foreign lands where they fell. Bringing home the dead for burial is a relatively modern phenomenon.

Can that figure be true? If so, it’s completely irrational.

I certainly have no problem bringing home the bodies of fallen troops but $100 million for earlier wars? What on earth could they be spending it on?

There is simply no way that they can be legitimately spending that much money to search for missing bodies in Vietnam and Korea. This sounds like a good old Military Industrial Complex scam to me. Does anyone know anything about this?

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