It was refreshing to see the honest emotion and exasperation of Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri last week as she questioned two former Arlington National Cemetery officials about mismanagement of some of the nation’s most hallowed ground.

All Americans should share her anger.

McCaskill chairs a Senate subcommittee looking into management and contracting problems, as well as up to 6,600 mislabeled or unmarked graves at Arlington. It’s a shocking situation that Former Arlington Superintendent John Metzler and former deputy superintendent Thurman Higgenbotham did their best to duck during committee testimony.

Higginbotham actually invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions that he thought might incriminate him. Metzler, who was allowed to retire from his post with full federal pension benefits, denied knowing anything about burial problems until a report was released in June. That seems unlikely considering he admitted he was aware five years ago that cemetery officials had unearthed two urns during a construction project and couldn’t match the remains with graves or names. A 2007 report to Congress also cited instances in which Arlington crews opened what they thought were available gravesites only to learn they already were in use.

The most recent report from the Army Inspector general specifically cited 211 graves that were mislabeled or unmarked at Arlington, but based on a survey of three sections of the cemetery last month, senators say the number could be as high as 6,600. Investigators found more than 100 unmarked graves, scores of gravesites with headstones not recorded on cemetery maps and at least four burial urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area with excess grave dirt.

Metzler’s response was to put the blame on other staff members and a lack of resources, saying it was “painful to me that our team at Arlington did not perform all aspects of its mission to the high standard required.”

McCaskill’s portrayal of the situation as a “long scenario of catastrophic incompetence” may have been an understatement.

In addition to the human costs of this incompetence, the committee is looking at millions of dollars worth of apparently botched contracts.

“We’ve got waste,” McCaskill said. “We’ve got abuse. We’ve got fraud. The whole trifecta.”

Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for presidents, Supreme Court justices and other historical figures, but it is best known as the burial site for thousands of U.S. military veterans, many of whom died in service to our country.

The financial mismanagement and the mishandling of graves and remains is an affront to those the cemetery was founded in 1864 to honor. Cemetery officials apparently won’t take any responsibility for the situation, but the nation must.

McCaskill and the other members of the Senate subcommittee are right to be outraged. They now need to turn that outrage into practical action to clean up the situation at Arlington and restore it as a place of honor for those buried there and the rest of the nation.