Great injustices done to fallen veterans

Dover Air Force Base is where the remains of most of our fallen service members come home. We have all seen the flag-draped caskets at Dover. We have seen the president travel to Dover to pay his respects to the fallen on behalf of all Americans. We have seen the precision and solemnity of the ceremonies at Dover designed to honor those who have perished to defend our freedom.

But we have not seen what has happened to the remains of the fallen as they have been processed at the Dover Mortuary. Be grateful you have not seen it.

At the heart of this scandal are the revelations that body parts of the fallen have been lost, that body parts have been dumped in landfills, and that a fused arm bone of a Marine was sawed off so that he could fit in his dress uniform and his casket.

These practices came to light through the efforts of whistle-blowers. Their reward was that the Air Force fired them in 2010. Fortunately, the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that handles whistle-blower complaints, began its own investigation of this. What it found was that, rather than admitting and correcting the problems, the Air Force attempted to cover them up and retaliate against the whistle-blowers.

But wait, there's more. The final resting place for many of those processed at Dover is either a VA cemetery or Arlington National Cemetery. The VA has 131 cemeteries with 3.1 million graves. Thus far, incorrectly marked or unmarked graves have been discovered in California, Texas, Ohio, New Mexico, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It has become clear that this incompetence dates back decades.of 4

At Arlington National Cemetery, it's worse — much worse. More than 330,000 are buried at Arlington. The problems of unmarked graves, wrongly marked graves and burial urns dumped in dirt piles date back to 1997 inspection reports. The remains of as many as 6,600 are now believed to be erroneously marked. Upward of $10 million has been spent to automate Arlington's antiquated paper record-keeping system. The automated system doesn't work, and the money was wasted.

The FBI has now joined Army agents investigating criminal practices at Arlington. In testimony before Congress, Arlington's former deputy superintendent took the Fifth. His boss, the former superintendent, testified that Arlington's problems were because it did not have enough money and staff. It's the bureaucrat's autonomic defense!

How about putting a sign on Arlington's front gate reading, "Please feel free to pay your respects at any grave. Your guess is as good as ours whether it contains the remains of your loved one."

The Fort Hood massacre

Nidal Hasan is the sole suspect in the shooting rampage Nov. 5, 2009, at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.

Hasan is a Muslim whose parents came to America from Palestine. He joined the Army in college and graduated from Virginia Tech University in 1995. In 2003, he received his medical degree from the federal government's Uniformed University of the Health Sciences. He was trained in psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

During residency training, he gave a lecture titled, "The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the United States Military." The lecture was not related to health or medicine and was jarring for many who heard it.

Hasan was known to express extremist views, which were brought to the attention of his superiors and the FBI. There can be little doubt that his behavior, his views respecting Islamic extremism and his email exchanges with Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam and senior leader of al-Qaida, were more than enough to warrant his discharge. of 4

In the spring of 2008, he was given poor evaluations and warned that he was doing substandard work. Meetings to discuss what to do about Hasan included the Walter Reed chief of psychiatry, the chairman of the psychiatry department of the medical school, two assistant chairs of that psychiatry department, and the director of the Walter Reed Psychiatric Residency Program.

But instead of being discharged, Hasan was promoted from captain to major in 2009.

And in July of 2009, he was transferred to Fort Hood. Four months later, the massacre occurred.

Hasan's trial will settle part of this nightmare. But it may not settle or even illuminate why he was transferred rather than discharged. It's vital that the truth of that be discovered. Because it's possible that he was transferred principally to "get him out of town."

What if his superiors, not wanting to cope with the real possibility of being hung out to dry by the military in a protracted discrimination complaint from Hasan, simply chose the cowardly course of making him somebody else's problem? If that's what happened, then in my book they are not just cowards who acquiesced to political correctness, they are accomplices to murder.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee's report on this preventable tragedy calls it a ticking time bomb. It concludes, "The Fort Hood massacre could have been prevented. Our investigation found specific and systemic failures in the Government's (DOD and FBI) handling of the Hasan case and raises additional concerns about what may be broader issues."

Prostitution of Secret Service

A Secret Service agent, who clearly had no electrical activity above his collar bone, gets into a hotel corridor shouting match over money with a prostitute with whom he has spent the night. The screaming match brings Caribe Hotel security and the Colombian police. They alert the American Embassy. The net effect was that all of the 20 Secret Service agents and military personnel involved were outed with their pants down.

Now, given the ubiquity of situational ethics and morality, I suppose many will say, "What's the big deal? Boys will be boys." But that skirts entirely the matter of the president's security. What if some of the women had been spies or linked to the Colombian drug cartel?

In addition, while Washington may try to convince us that this escapade in Cartagena is a unique event, I doubt it because we have learned that the motto for married men in the Secret Service is, "Wheels up, Rings off."

One aspect of this breach of security that cries out for further inquiry is the extent to which the White House and Capitol Hill, including the Republicans, have so quickly rallied around Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan. Such unanimity of support strikes me as odd and raises the question: Why?

I don't know why, but I do know how FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover maintained his power base for almost 50 years. He abused his authority by compiling dossiers on the personal lives of virtually every politician in Washington. They all knew it and wouldn't cross him.

Conclusion

These problems are pervasive and pernicious. Even worse is the fact that practically no one in Washington will give voice to them. Is it any wonder the federal government doesn't serve the American people?

I have a close friend who is a retired Air Force colonel. He once told me, "Lee, it's what people do when no one is watching that counts." That's a high standard and the right standard. Washington's nowhere close.

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