From Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz, the presidential candidates talk up how much they care for America’s veterans. Well, Sunday’s Post suggests a test: Will any of them fight for the “lost dogs of war”?
Maureen Callahan’s expose shows the Pentagon repeatedly breaking its promise to reunite bomb-sniffing dogs with their handlers on the pups’ return from war. Instead, private firm K2 Solutions routinely places the four-footed veterans in civilian hands.
Never mind that a federal law passed in 2000 mandates that soldiers who handled the animals in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on get the chance to adopt their dogs.
Callahan uncovered evidence that three Pentagon employees took dogs for themselves. And in February 2014, K2 doled out at least 200 of the dogs to civilians — a “mass dump” the Army and K2 then covered up.
K2 tells adopters they can’t give away, sell or profit from the dogs, but two civilians who acquired 13 “lost dogs” in February 2014 have confessed to scheming to sell them to the Panamanian government.
Many of the dogs come home injured or traumatized — by itself good reason to reunite them with their handlers.
“We got blown up together,” one handler told The Post. “Before I was even done with training, I knew I’d try to adopt him.” But when he called K2 to do so, it told him information on the canine was “privileged.”
Maybe the candidates are too busy to champion these dogs and their soldiers. But congressional hearings are plainly in order.
Those dogs belong with the men and women who got shot at beside them.