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The "ceremony" has been "symbolic" for many many years....
More than once teeth and bone recovered on site have been found to have been that of host nation personnel, primates, etc...
No doubt there would be similar outrage if indeed we were "honoring" a North Korean brought back from the Chosin reservoir or a tooth or bone fragment from a primate.
We would routinely arrive in the middle of the night after 8-12 weeks digging and sifting dirt in the jungle someplace, living on site, in tents or on bamboo platforms with mosquito nets and our anthropologists would turn our finds into the lab. The lab then went to work validating those finds prior to a repatriation ceremony being scheduled.
That being said, even if no biologic material was recovered (say...only personnel effects were recovered) a ceremony was still performed prior to those artifacts being given back to the family.
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Primum non Nocere
"I have hung out in dangerous places a lot over the years, from combat zones to biker bars, and it is the weak, the unaware, or those looking for it, that usually find trouble.
Ain't no one getting out of this world alive. All you can do is try to have some choice in the way you go. Prepare yourself (and your affairs), and when your number is up, die on your feet fighting rather than on your knees. And make the SOBs pay dearly."
The Reaper-3 Sep 04
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