Monday, October 19, 2009

Military Reverses Ban On Afghanistan Soldier Death Photos


Back in 2001, after 9/11, I was working on the archaeology survey of West Point Academy, on parts that had to be cleaned up due to damages to large trees by Hurricane Floyd. I had previously worked on the archaeology of the EPA National Priority site across the river in Cold Spring, NY in the 1990s, where the West Point Foundry was located, and cannon founding, proofing and test firing went on at the west side from the east side of the river. Anthrax I recall had appeared in the mails, later to have been found to be from the US Army, and a jetliner crashed into Queens, NY bound for the Dominican Republic, killing all on-board. Security at the Point was more thorough than usual and entrances blocked by large vehicles. Listening to the TV in the small motel the crew stayed in nearby, after work in the former Raritan River flooded Bridgewater, NJ and some testing at a Picatinney Arsenal former rocket assembly facility, I was interested in the report that we were going into Afghanistan, according to Japanese news reporting, to clean-up the airfields that the Russians had left behind, in what my Dad called "Russia's Vietnam". Well eight years later I've yet to see a report on airfields other than that the largest one in Asia is being built there according to DW-TV. Some policy huh? Airfields.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Note: As I recall, a Panamerican employee found one Orient Fishtail type projectile point there, broken, perhaps from the shovel, in a hillock. Many were found with burials and grave goods in 1956 on Long Island at the 'Sugar Loaf Hill Site" near the native Shinnecock Reservation and the point is found elsewhere, (Fischetti Site I volunteered on West Meadow, and others). They characterize"...the Orient culture of Long Island and seems to constitute a horizon marker for the Late Archaic-Early Woodland transitional zone in eastern and southern New York." ("The Stony Brook Site And..." NYS Museum Bulletin 372, Jan. 1959, reprint 1965, Albany, NY.)

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