Officials say mission is worth cost
By Ashley Rowland, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, November 26, 2007
With every passing year, finding the missing gets harder.
Witnesses die, or forget where a pilotÕs jet crashed, or where a servicemember was shot. The ground where they lay erodes with time. Eventually, their bones crumble and disappear.
Still, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command keeps looking for the 88,000 U.S. servicemembers who have gone missing in combat since World War II.
ItÕs an enormous, expensive undertaking that requires a staff of 400. The commandÕs annual budget for Southeast Asia alone is $21 million.
On average, anthropologists at JPACÕs lab in Hawaii Ñ the largest in the world Ñ identify the remains of six servicemembers each month. And leaders say finding them is worth the cost, in terms of both money and human effort.
ÒIf we can afford to put these kids in uniform, strap jets to their back and send them off to war, then we can damn well afford to spend what it takes to get them back home,Ó said Ambassador Charles Ray, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, during a phone interview.
You talk about how much it costs to find these guys. How much does it cost to conduct a war? Once you spend money to conduct a war, itÕs worth spending a little trying to bring our fallen soldiers home,Ó he said.
Brig. Gen. Michael Flowers, commander of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, said time is JPACÕs worst enemy, but the agency is expanding.
By 2011, JPAC plans to more than double the amount of floor space in its forensics laboratory and consolidate its operations into a new building in Hawaii, where it now operates out of several buildings.
ÒWe will continue this mission until the president says stop,Ó he said during a phone interview. ÒThis isnÕt about a cost-benefit analysis. This is about the promise that we make to bring the individuals back to their families.Ó
Searching for the missing is physically demanding and sometimes dangerous. JPAC excavation teams have hiked in the jungle, climbed cliffs and trekked through riverbeds to find them.
Team members must be in top physical condition, and they may be trained in mountaineering or scuba diving. Seven Americans and nine Vietnamese surveying a potential JPAC excavation site died in 2001 when their Russian-built helicopter crashed into a mountain.
ÒWe spend a lot of time rehearsing what to do if someone was injured,Ó said Lt. Col. James Saenz, commander of JPACÕs Detachment Two, responsible for searching for missing Vietnam War servicemembers.
He doesnÕt foresee JPACÕs work ending in his lifetime. But as time makes finding remains more difficult, technology is making identifying them easier. DNA testing lets anthropologists make identifications if they have just five grams of bone, an amount slightly larger than the size of a quarter.
But sometimes, not even that much bone is left after years of erosion.
ÒItÕs almost a race,Ó Saenz said. ÒTime is making it hard, but technology and improvements in our process is having us pretty well-balanced.Ó
When combat ends in the Middle East, JPAC will be responsible for finding the remains of those missing Ñ both military and possibly some civilian contractors covered by legal agreements with the U.S. military.
Currently, four Americans are missing in Iraq, and none are missing in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military has a legal responsibility to recover remains of some contractors, Ray said, but to some extent, thereÕs a moral responsibility to recover civilians as well.
ÒAt this point, I would have to say that yes, there would be certain contractors we would be responsible for. One can only guess what the political will will be in the future for those who are not coveredÓ under legal agreements, he said.
© 2007 Stars and Stripes