8 sets of remains found in grave at Arlington
The Washington Post reports that in October the Army found 8 sets of remains buried in the same grave marked “Unknown” at Arlington National Cemetery. It wasn’t announced until yesterday;
The investigation began in October after Kathryn Condon, director of the Army’s National Cemeteries Program, became “aware of questionable practices,” she said in a statement. Condon said eight sets of remains were buried under a headstone that read “Unknown,” and cemetery records showed that only one set of remains was to be buried there.
Grey would not discuss how the remains might have ended up in a single plot or what particular laws could have been violated, saying “that will be determined as we move forward with the investigation.”
So the Army has started a real criminal investigation this time instead of just punishing the decedents’ families.
The latest discovery follows a series of revelations in August, in which one grave site at Arlington was found empty, another contained the wrong remains and a third had two sets of remains, only one of which matched the headstone’s name.
Those problems were likely caused by human error, officials said. But the burial of eight remains in a single site “is very suspect,” Grey said.
Human error? Really? It’s incompetence and unrestrained boobery.
Category: Military issues, Politics
Leavenworth. It’s the only acceptable outcome for those who perpetrated this fraud and desecration.
I saw that story yesterday and it just made me more upset about what has been going on at Arlington. I can’t imagine this sort of behavior being practiced at a regular cemetery much less at one of the most revered final resting places in America.
I think sadness is a more appropriate description of my reaction then upset. I am unable to come up with a viable punishment for those that were entrusted with the handling of the deceased. I want them to get this fixed and want their only focus to be getting this rectified. Then we can figure out which circle of Dante’s Inferno we can send the perpetrators to.
Just A Grunt; yeah, I read it yesterday, as well. You and Sparky pretty much sum it up.
The whole situation is heartbreaking. But JAG (#2), I have to wonder how much this happens day to day in cemeteries without so much spotlight. I have read several similar stories about this happening locally, over the last dozen or so years. 50 years ago, we’d have just remained mushrooms.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m appalled. Our military deserves better and their families deserve better.
There is no reason or excuse for this. Burials in this country are a business, and NO ONE in that business is taught the technique of mass-graves. And this happened in Arlington, where only the deepest respect is supposed to be paid to the ones laid to rest there?
At this point, my opinion is this: someone with full intent and knowlege of what they were doing acted in a deliberate and vicious manner toward our military dead.
Flaying them alive would be too good for them.
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$5 says the culprits are members of AFGE: http://uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=16781
Need I say more?
streetsweeper, up until this point, I had never heard of AFGE; so no, I wasn’t blaming labor unions or their members.
Mistakes can be made in any industry or business, so let’s take my area. A doctor removes a healthy appendix once. Mistake. He removes a second healthy appendix. Negligence. He removes a third healthy appendix.
Mutilation.
Hear, hear. Mix up two graves–mistake, but recoverable. Put 8 guys in the same grave with one headstone? Criminal negligence.
Were this to happen in a civilian facility, people WOULD be going to jail, and have.
Oy. It. makes. me. cringe.
I’m sorry, but I live steps away from Arlington cemetery. This place, my part of Arlington. is hallowed ground, and if you’ve visited Arlington or any Church or cemetery from Winchester, to Alexandria to Richmond, to Manassas to Spotsylvania you’d not only know that Arlington started out as a Civil War burial site, but you’d know a common theme…
Confederate war dead, being considered rebels against the Union were dumped in mass graves marked “unknown” from Arlington to Shiloh. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s a truth that anyone who has walked past, say, Christ Church in old town Alexandria and wondered at the largest headstone which reads “23 unknown” followed by “Confederate” knows.
Do not indulge ignorance of our past with histrionics in the present.