Battleland

Should the president fix Arlington cemetery?

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A House Armed Services subcommittee last week ripped into the new management at Arlington National Cemetery for the continuing burial scandal there. The hearing followed one of my recent articles in TIME that showed how those new managers are sometimes relying on faulty burial paperwork — paperwork that caused the scandal in the first place — to determine the likely identity of remains.

Some veterans blasted the cemetery for using educated guesses instead of digging in the dirt to be sure. Retired Air Force Col. Bill Koch was quoted in my piece, and he testified last week in the House hearing. The remains of Koch’s wife, Jean, were involved in a horrifying, domino-like, burial fiasco at Arlington.

Today, Koch emailed that the president should make sure Arlington really gets fixed. “Thank you Mark Benjamin and Time Magazine for a timely and well written article on the problems that have existed and some still exist at Arlington National Cemetery,” he wrote. “As one who was directly involved in the problem of a misplaced burial, I can only say that maybe it is time to get the Secretary of Defense and the President involved.”

If that’s what it takes.