{"id":65729,"date":"2016-05-12T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T15:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=65729"},"modified":"2016-05-12T11:02:05","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T15:02:05","slug":"congress-approves-interment-of-female-pilots-at-arlington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65729","title":{"rendered":"Congress approves interment of female pilots at Arlington"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Reuters<\/a>, both houses of Congress have approved a bill that would allow more than thousand women pilots of the World War II era to be have their remains interred at Arlington National Cemetery. <\/p>\n

The Senate passed the bill late on Tuesday and the House approved it on Wednesday, sending it to the White House for President Barack Obama to sign into law.<\/p>\n

The women performed training and transport missions in the United States during the conflict so male pilots could be sent overseas.<\/p>\n

Unlike male veterans, however, they could not be interred at Arlington, the best-known but very crowded U.S. military cemetery, because authorities have insisted their service was not the same as active duty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the Associated Press<\/a>;<\/p>\n

“It’s been just 19 weeks since the Army’s decision to kick out our pioneering female World War II pilots was brought to light, and we’ve been fighting ever since,” said Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., one of the bill’s sponsors and a retired Air Force fighter pilot.<\/p>\n

The WASPs served in a unit called Women Airforce Service Pilots. They flew noncombat missions to free up male pilots for combat.<\/p>\n

During the war, the women were considered civilians. But since 1977, federal law has granted them status as veterans. They had been eligible since 2002 to have their ashes placed at Arlington with military honors. In March 2015, then-Secretary of the Army John McHugh ruled that WASPs never should have been allowed in and revoked their eligibility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have to admit that I was ignorant on this subject until it became a political issue recently. I always thought that they were eligible. If Teddy Kennedy is eligible for a spot in Arlington, these women are certainly qualified. But, since it was McHugh who made them ineligible, the whole smacks of political theater – something that the president can point at as an accomplishment in a largely failed presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Reuters, both houses of Congress have approved a bill that would allow more than … Congress approves interment of female pilots at Arlington<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}