"Dear John Doe"

Army sends "Dear John Doe" letter to families of war dead

Fight for Israel

The US Army apologized Wednesday for mistakenly sending letters to 7,000 families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with the salutation "Dear John Doe."

The letter, which was mailed December 20, contained information about private organizations offering assistance to families who lost a soldier, but omitted specific names and addresses.

"The salutation says 'Dear John Doe,' which was basically sort of a placeholder where the name of the individual or the recipient was supposed to be," said Paul Boyce, an army spokesman.

Boyce said the error was not caught when the 7,000 letters were printed, sorted and sent out to family members.

It learned about it from recipients who wrote back to say "the information was absolutely wonderful, but what you need to know, though, is that my particular letter had a glitch," Boyce said.

"When we looked we noticed that all of them had that particular problem," he said.

General George Casey, the army chief of staff, is sending a personal letter of apology to each of the families, he said.

"There are no words to adequately apologize for this mistake or for the hurt it may have caused," Brigadier General Reuben Jones, the army's chief administrative officer, said in an army statement. More