‘Canine war heroes mistreated by US Army’
Some were left in kennels for up to 11 months, mistreated others may have been put down, says the Pentagon report.
They made up a corps of bomb-sniffing dogs that accompanied brigade combat teams on potentially lethal missions, sniffing out roadside bombs in Afghanistan and saving human lives.
In return for their combat service, the US Army mistreated these canine heroes when they were discharged from the military, the Defense Department’s Inspector General’s Office said in a report issued on 1 March.
An investigation was started after soldiers who had handled the dogs complained about the fate of their four-legged saviours.
Army personnel who handled them said that once the dogs returned to the United States, some were left in kennels for up to 11 months, mistreated through lack of care and attention, and others may have been put down, according to the report. No screening was done of people who wanted to adopt the dogs. Several soldiers searched for and rescued their dogs from Army kennels, the report said.
Army spokesmen did not respond to multiple telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. Reuters was unable to reach former soldiers who had issued complaints containing accusations of mistreatment of dogs with which they had worked. The dogs served in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2014. The report faulted the Army for ignoring multiple Pentagon rules concerning the handling of dogs serving in the military. “The Army did not use the DOD Working Dog Management system, as required by the Joint Military Working Dog Instruction and Army Regulation 190-12,” the Inspector General said in its report.
The report also said that the Army improperly hired a private contractor to provide the dogs, breaking a rule that requires obtaining military dogs from the Air Force’s 341st Training Squadron, responsible for teaching and distributing new active-duty dogs to all of the military services. Snowstorms shut most of Ireland on Friday and forced Britain to call in the army to help battle some of the worst weather seen for nearly 30 years.
After a blast of Siberian cold dubbed“the beast from the east”, southern Britain and Ireland were battered by Storm Emma that arrived from the south and blocked roads, grounded planes and stopped trains.
Overnight blizzards left snow drifts up to three feet (90 cm) deep across Ireland and Scotland. The storm knocked out Ireland’s entire public transport network, closing its airports and leaving roads“extremely dangerous,” the government said.
At the peak of the storm, over 100,000 homes and businesses were left without power. On Friday the Irish stock exchange was shut, as were all schools and most government offices as a status Red weather alert remained across most of Ireland.
“The country needs to more or less stay in hibernation today,” deputy prime minister Simon Coveney told state broadcaster RTE.“Hopefully we can continue to get through these freak weather conditions without tragedy.”
In Britain, a seven-year-old girl was killed in the far southwestern county of Cornwall after a car crashed into a house in icy conditions, the BBC reported. Dozens of passengers were stranded on trains overnight in southern England.
The army was summoned to help rescue hundreds of drivers stuck in the snow and to transport National Health Service workers. Roads and schools were closed and many flights canceled across Britain.
Weather conditions in Scotland, which initially bore the brunt of the Siberian cold front, improved slightly, but the authorities warned people not to travel on Friday and during the weekend.