Burning the U.S. flag is the correct thing to do...

....when the U.S. flag is desecrated beyond repair and consequentially must be declared "retired".

This practice is a code of flag practice tried and true for many, many years. Honestly I found this to be a little surprising, granted I was ignorant of this application and topic, but I can understand it as established.......

......with that said, emotions ran strong when a severely mutilated flag found at WTC disaster was recovered. Nothing could be done except making an entirely new one.....Of course, it was deemed "retired". (Perhaps I will find a news link later describing the event and emotional conflict) A nice, little memorial was set up to pay homage to the flag by those presiding over the process...as you can imagine, an angry, and furious public contingent had particular issues....What was set up to do a nice little thing turned into a very heated debate....and finally, within provisions of the code a compromise was made where (I believe) a majority would be displayed despite it's dilapidated state and a very, small portion was offered to the memorial retirement process.
I wonder considering the events, should it just have been processed (preferrably by burning) as dictated by flag code rule?

Should it have immediately been put on display?

and, was the compromise the right thing to do?

Here is the link describing "flag retirement": http://members.aol.com/StanDCmr/flagret.html