The Department of Veterans Affairs has mistakenly declared [more than 4,000] veterans to be deceased and canceled their benefits over the past five years, a new snafu to emerge at the embattled department.

Of course, one thing that’s carefully elided is the “evidence” the VA uses to tell a veteran he’s dead.

The department doesn’t keep records of the causes behind such errors.

Can’t have things like this be known to be commonplace:

A clerical error led to the first instance of [Navy veteran Michael] Rieker’s canceled benefits after a VA employee identified him as Michael G. Rieker—though his middle initial is “C”—and declared him dead in the system, according to a department letter sent in December.

Under the system that led to Mr Rieker’s benefits cancellation, the VA’s system automatically cross-checked the name and Social Security number with the Social Security Administration’s so-called Death Master File….

That’s an utterly dishonest response to a simple typo.  For how long had “Michael G Rieker” been dead, and why was a flag not raised over the continued payments to this dead veteran, especially in light of the VA’s having been caught out routinely paying benefits to dead veterans?  Did a “Michael G Rieker” even exist in this Death file?

Not even incompetence sinks to this level of laziness, not in an agency with this one’s long, venerable track record of failure.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.