Here we go again

June 20:

“We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains sent back today, already 200 got sent back,” Trump told a crowd of supporters during a rally in Duluth, Minnesota.

  Reuters

Today:



Yes, like those thousands and thousands of people, including ancient, ancient parents of soldiers who begged him to bring their sons home, right?

Remains believed to be those of 55 American servicemen were flown out of North Korea on Friday, the first visible result of President Trump’s efforts to bring the American war dead home 65 years after the end of combat in the Korean War.

[...]

An American Air Force C-17 Globemaster cargo plane carrying the remains landed later at Osan Air Base south of Seoul, the South Korean capital. Hundreds of American service members as well as a military honor guard lined up on the tarmac to mark the return of the fallen troops.

As the honor guard and the troops stood at attention, 55 small coffins containing the remains were individually carried out of the plane by dress-uniformed soldiers and loaded into six vans. Each of the boxes was wrapped with the United Nations flag, the flag that American troops fought under in the Korean War.

  NYT

Of course, you're asking yourself: How do we know those are actually US soldier remains? And well you should.

The remains flown out on Friday were the first handed over since a joint effort by American military experts and North Korean workers between 1996 and 2005. The group collected the remains of what were believed to have been 220 American soldiers.

[...]

From Osan Air Base, the remains will be transferred to the Hawaii-based Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, where painstaking forensic work will be carried out to identify them. Remains that were returned in the past from North Korea were found to be mixed with those of unidentified individuals and even with animal bones.

Speaking of the Korean War, there's a pretty good documentary streaming on Netflix: "The Battle of Chosin".

Also, I wonder about the remains of the 400 South Korean refugees the US massacred at No Gun Ri.  Were they returned to their families?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8/1:  Along with over 55 boxes, the North Koreans provided only one military dog tag as sole information on the identification fo the remains in those boxes.  There are approximately 7,700 missing US servicemen from the Korean War.