# Why Do People Display the POW MIA Flag? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 8, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635 "2008-07-08T01:25:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/21 "2008-07-08T15:01:26Z")
Into GQ territory: Do MIAs still get scheduled promotions up until when they are declared dead? How long does that take? Are any of the Vietnam-era MIAs still on the government payroll? How does “missing in action” differ from “missing, presumed dead?” ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/22 "2008-07-08T15:03:30Z")
[QUOTE=Dinsdale] One thing that surprised me was seeing it flying above the local post office the other day. ISTM that private individuals should certainly be free to fly any banner they wish, but I would not expect the same of a public institution. Does anyone know what - if any - relationship exists between POW/MIA groups and federal government institutions? [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=RTFirefly] It was basically a way for the wingnuts to refuse to admit defeat over Vietnam, AFAICT. [/QUOTE] We stayed home on the Fourth of July this year. I watched the official celebrations from Washington, DC, on PBS. The POW/MIA flag was flying prominently directly underneath the Stars and Stripes from the flagpole atop the West Portico of the United States Capitol. > [@](#): > > **WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 1998** – The flag of the National League of POW/MIA Families will fly over the Pentagon Sept. 18 as the Defense Department observes National POW/MIA Recognition Day > > Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen will host a ceremony, honoring former POWs, unaccounted for service members and civilians, and their families. Scheduled keynote speaker is retired Air Force Col. Norman A. McDaniel, a POW for more than six years after being shot down over North Vietnam in 1966. Also taking part will be military elements from the services, former POWs, MIA families, military associations and veterans groups. > > In the fiscal 1998 defense authorization bill, **Congress directed military and other federal activities to fly or display the league flag on Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day and Veterans Day. Congress in 1990 designated the league flag as the national symbol of concern and commitment for a full accounting of Americans missing in Southeast Asia.** Source: [http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42269](http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42269) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/23 "2008-07-08T15:06:40Z")
[QUOTE=Lightray] How is it then, that the Library of Congress database I posted lists [this guy](http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/c/c600.htm) still as Prisoner of War status? [/QUOTE] Technical question: Cocheo was a civilian, not a combatant. How can he be a prisoner of war? ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/24 "2008-07-08T15:07:58Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] Technically the scope of the POW/MIA flag is limited to “southeast Asia,” I believe. [/QUOTE] Here’s some interesting info on the flag: [http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/powday/flaghistory.htm](http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/powday/flaghistory.htm) I sent an email to these guys asking if it is strictly for Vietnam or if other wars can hijack it. I’ll let you know if I get a response. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/25 "2008-07-08T15:31:16Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] Into GQ territory: Do MIAs still get scheduled promotions up until when they are declared dead? How long does that take? [/QUOTE] In at least one case, yes. In Iraq, [Matt Maupin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_maupin) was promoted from PFC to Staff Sergeant by the schedule, as if he were not missing. **RTFirefly** , am I to understand by your ??? that you didn’t know that “wingnut” was an insult? If someone you cared about ever went missing you’d surely feel the same way and you know it, so stop with the act. People who display the flag do so out of respect due the lack of knowledge of their family members’/brother-in-arms’ final disposition. Are we all wingnuts? I frequently wear a POW/MIA patch on my flight suit out of respect for all MIA/POWs, not because I think that the dastardly North Vietnamese are still holding people captive. I wish you would take stuff like that into account before you open fire. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/26 "2008-07-08T15:32:02Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] That’s not exactly an official government site you’ve got there. It doesn’t even look like an impartial site. It looks like an axe-to-grind site. ETA: I see one of the main links off the main page is titled, “Facts about Hanoi Jane.” Yep, real good cite you’ve got there. [/QUOTE] That was not the place where I got the information that Cocheo was still listed as a prisoner of war. As I stated _in the quote you took from me_, he is listed as such _in the Library of Congress database_. The POWnetwork site had the most information about his case of what google brought up, so I added that, since I had already posted the link to the Library of Congress database. Or are you trying to demonize the Library of Congress database cite for his being a prisoner of war, by association? And the POWnetwork site actually lists references used on their Cocheo information; if you’d like to refute the information they provide about Cocheo, feel free. **dropzone** , I’m guessing that Cocheo was a civilian contractor for the US of some sort in the Vietnam war, and so probably listed as a prisoner of war because of that. It was hard to tell from what google brought up; that POWnetwork blurb was about the extent of what I found after a quick search. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/27 "2008-07-08T15:35:02Z")
[QUOTE=Kalhoun] Here’s some interesting info on the flag: [http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/powday/flaghistory.htm](http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/powday/flaghistory.htm) I sent an email to these guys asking if it is strictly for Vietnam or if other wars can hijack it. I’ll let you know if I get a response. [/QUOTE] The site seems to indicate that the flag encompasses the Korean War as well. But it appears from the wording of U.S. Public Law 101-355 that Americans missing and unaccounted for anywhere other than southeast Asia are out of luck. Maybe that’s part of the answer to the OP’s question: because, while we may be trading partners with Vietnam these days, we’re still pissed at North Korea. I daresay you could probably fly the flag in acknowledgement of other wars, and nobody would complain. They’d just laugh quietly and mock you from afar over your ignorance of flag etiquette and Congressional law, and the spirits of dead American servicemen everywhere would hate you from beyond the grave. Actually, this brings up a significant issue: legally, any American MIAs from Iraq or Afghanistan have no official flag! They have no flag! There’s absolutely nothing to hang on a flagpole and look at, in their honor! People may be forgetting them even now! Fortunately I have total confidence that sooner or later the government will rectify this terrible burning oversight. Personally I would have thought that the “not forgetting MIAs” sentiment was sort of implicitly encompassed by the American flag itself, but I gues not. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/28 "2008-07-08T15:51:29Z")
what about MIAs from the Spanish-American War? Are they still getting promoted? ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/29 "2008-07-08T15:53:59Z")
Dude, POW/MIA from more recent wars don’t _need_ a flag. They get magnetic ribbon decals for people to put on their cars and ruin their paintjobs. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/30 "2008-07-08T16:11:04Z")
[QUOTE=Kalhoun] My husband flies one. For us, it’s in remembrance of those who were held or lost and didn’t come back. [/QUOTE] That’s stupid. You should just fix the hole in the sheetrock. I’ll have to remember this thread the next time some anti-war lefty tries to put on an earnest face and claim “Oh, I support the troops, they’re just doing their duty, it’s the war I’m against”. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/31 "2008-07-08T16:11:19Z")
This article is pretty interesting on the different sides of “full accounting” and “bring them home” [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/laos.html?c=y&page=1](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/laos.html?c=y&page=1) ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/32 "2008-07-08T16:13:48Z")
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF] **RTFirefly** , am I to understand by your ??? that you didn’t know that “wingnut” was an insult? [/quote] Yes, I did. > [@](#): > > If someone you cared about ever went missing you’d surely feel the same way and you know it, so stop with the act. If something bad happened to someone I knew, and were unable to speak for themselves anymore, I’d be pissed as hell if some bunch of liars with an axe to grind used my friend’s life as a tool for promoting their biased agenda. You know me well enough to know that. > [@](#): > > People who display the flag do so out of respect due the lack of knowledge of their family members’/brother-in-arms’ final disposition. Are we all wingnuts? I frequently wear a POW/MIA patch on my flight suit out of respect for all MIA/POWs, not because I think that the dastardly North Vietnamese are still holding people captive. I wish you would take stuff like that into account before you open fire. Look, if you’ve been duped by wingnuts into wearing their symbol, you’re not the wingnuts, and it’s not your fault. Ignorance happens. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/33 "2008-07-08T16:14:39Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] Fortunately I have total confidence that sooner or later the government will rectify this terrible burning oversight. Personally I would have thought that the “not forgetting MIAs” sentiment was sort of implicitly encompassed by the American flag itself, but I gues not. [/QUOTE] Well, the owner of the email address is MIA. It came back undeliverable. This country is flag-obsessed. It’s not enough to BE a patriot or a mourner or whatever…you have to make a big honkin’ announcement so the whole world knows how “whatever” you are. Sigh… ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/34 "2008-07-08T16:22:28Z")
Thanks for the info, **Duck**. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/35 "2008-07-08T16:28:32Z")
[QUOTE=Lightray] That was not the place where I got the information that Cocheo was still listed as a prisoner of war. As I stated _in the quote you took from me_, he is listed as such _in the Library of Congress database_. The POWnetwork site had the most information about his case of what google brought up, so I added that, since I had already posted the link to the Library of Congress database. Or are you trying to demonize the Library of Congress database cite for his being a prisoner of war, by association? And the POWnetwork site actually lists references used on their Cocheo information; if you’d like to refute the information they provide about Cocheo, feel free. [/quote] As you well know, there isn’t a hell of a lot there to refute: > [@](#): > > Name COCHEO, RICHARD NEWELL > Reference Number 1010-0-01 > Date 680131 > Rank – > Status PP > Country VS/ > Service V > Return Date > Race C > Coordinates (Latitude/Longitude) > Aircraft/Vehicle Type GROUND I’m not trying to demonize it; I have no idea whether it means anything besides ‘this is how they were once characterized.’ Multiple U.S. government commissions, beginning with the Montgomery Commission, have examined the MIA records, one by one, for plausible evidence that the North Vietnamese held U.S. prisoners after the POWs were freed in 1973. The notation of ‘PP’ on a Library of Congress database doesn’t change the reality that they found nothing particularly persuasive. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/36 "2008-07-08T16:41:36Z")
[QUOTE=Lightray] **dropzone** , I’m guessing that Cocheo was a civilian contractor for the US of some sort in the Vietnam war, and so probably listed as a prisoner of war because of that. [/QUOTE] You are right that it’s [probably how he qualified.](http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm) > [@Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War](#): > > Article 4, Section 4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model. And you guys think I’m incapable of learning new things! ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/37 "2008-07-08T16:59:08Z")
[QUOTE=Dangerosa] This article is pretty interesting on the different sides of “full accounting” and “bring them home” [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/laos.html?c=y&page=1](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/laos.html?c=y&page=1) [/QUOTE] I hadn’t read that article since it was published. It doesn’t go into the sides as I remember, but it does talk about the effort. The story is that a pilot goes down over Laos in 1968. We know approximately where. He says he is going to bail out and then - MIA. Don’t know what happens. His name appears on a POW list in 1972, but when the other POWs on that list were released, Masterson wasn’t - his name appears to have been there in error. In 1993 the US was admitted into Laos to look for this guy. And they looked in again twice in 2004 and once in 2005. They find coins, they find shards of human bone, too damaged and/or small for DNA testing. They find pieces of plane (most of it has been scavenged by natives). They find parts of the parachute assembly. This work takes a large team, including someone qualified to disarm the bombs that they find - the ones that had been attached to the plane. Its archeology. They find both sets of dogtags and parts of the service pistol and the steel instep from his boot. It looks to everyone that he never bailed out. They turn over this information to his wife whose says “he’s still out there alive in a POW camp in Laos.” I think she is the kind of nutbar RT is talking about. Even had the family gotten closure - which this family didn’t, that’s a lot of resources to throw at retrieving remains and finding out what happened 40 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/38 "2008-07-08T17:13:42Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave] I’ll have to remember this thread the next time some anti-war lefty tries to put on an earnest face and claim “Oh, I support the troops, they’re just doing their duty, it’s the war I’m against”. [/QUOTE] Wtf? How does anything in this thread have anything to do with lefties and/or anything else at all that you seem to be talking about? ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/39 "2008-07-08T17:18:04Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave] That’s stupid. You should just fix the hole in the sheetrock. I’ll have to remember this thread the next time some anti-war lefty tries to put on an earnest face and claim “Oh, I support the troops, they’re just doing their duty, it’s the war I’m against”. [/QUOTE] I’m sorry the alternate universe isn’t working out for you, but you’ll need to be clear when you post here on Earth. What was the sheetrock comment pertaining to? Did you post in the wrong thread?? ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2008, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635/40 "2008-07-08T17:43:29Z")
[QUOTE=Kalhoun] I’m sorry the alternate universe isn’t working out for you, but you’ll need to be clear when you post here on Earth. What was the sheetrock comment pertaining to? Did you post in the wrong thread?? [/QUOTE] Maybe you should read post #3 to this thread. According to Sampiro, you have a MIA/POW flag because you “had to cover that hole in their sheetrock somehow and the Confederate battle flag was too controversial.” It’s certainly not about honoring the service of brave Americans, it’s because you’re an inbread hillbilly yutz. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Wtf? How does anything in this thread have anything to do with lefties and/or anything else at all that you seem to be talking about? See Sampiro’s very offensive comment above. RTFirefly classifying anyone who displays this flag a a “wingnut”, cheerfully admitting that he is doing so with intent to insult. See an American serviceman who proudly wears an MIA/POW patch on his flight suit in recognition of the sacrifices made my his predecessors being ridiculed as having been “duped by wingnuts” and “ignorant”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-display-the-pow-mia-flag/455635.md?page=3)