At Arlington Cemetery, Army Ready for Drastic Measures
Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post (July 1, 2010)

The situation at Arlington National Cemetery keeps getting more and more complicated. I wrote last week about the mismanagement of Arlington’s burials and you can find that post here: Fixing Arlington Cemetery. To its eternal credit, the Washington Post has doggedly followed the story and the above article ran today.

Arlington Cemetery’s problems have gotten to the point that the article’s lead is the following:

The secretary of the Army said Wednesday that officials were prepared to dig up graves, open caskets and take DNA samples from the deceased if it is necessary to sort out the record-keeping chaos at Arlington National Cemetery.

“If we are so authorized and if it is necessary, we have not ruled out the possibility of actually opening caskets,” said Army Secretary John McHugh, noting that it would be an extreme measure, “. . . and should it thereafter become necessary for DNA . . . that would be something we would contemplate.”

I want everyone to pause for just a second and think about what Army Secretary John McHugh said. The burial problems at Arlington are so severe that military officials are willing to publicly discuss mass dis-interments and DNA testing. This is the last scenario that I know anyone in the entirety of the United States government wants to happen but Arlington’s problems are probably that bad. My hunch is that the entire scope of what’s wrong is a lot worse than even the cemetery investigators comprehend.

Arlington National Cemetery has over 330,000 graves. The already identified problem areas are a smaller piece of the entire cemetery but if the situation grows and grows then the US Military (particularly the Army which handles the cemetery) will have an unprecedented debacle on its hands.