Top officials knew of neglect at Walter Reed
How can Congress and the White House talk about supporting troops and yet do nothing about this problem for years?
MSN-Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army’s surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.
A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army’s top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.
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March 1st, 2007 at 5:47 am
John, you know the answer - most are self serving opportunists and traitors. That coupled with much, much incompetance…
March 1st, 2007 at 6:48 am
“Support personnel”
March 1st, 2007 at 8:12 am
Hugh
How can people in Congress sleep at night knowing this was going on since 03?
March 1st, 2007 at 8:30 am
This is another area where I say I’m glad we have Democrats. The Bush faction of the Republican party just wants these people to go away. And plenty of other Republicans have had their hands full defending the Constitution and the “homeland” from the onslaught from every direction.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Debate was not allowed on ammendments proposed to address these things in 2004 and 2005. I watched on CSPAN as Pat Murray (D-WA) offered an ammendment to fully fund the VA, after having found a $5 billion dollar gap in the budget. The bill she wanted to attach it to was the emergency suplemental allocation for the wars…
paraphrasing “How can we so easily sign off on billions for these wars, a large portion of which is being paid to contractors who aren’t accomplishing what they’re being paid to do, yet at the same time refuse to fully fund the VA?”
Senator Frist would say that the VA is not underfunded, but for the most part, nobody responded directly to what Senator Murray was saying. Ammendments were not allowed from Democrats (as was the case with most bills crafted during this period of the GOP majority), and so the gap remained.
A month after the bill is signed, the White House suddenly announces that they’ve “discovered” a budget gap in the VA funding. A Republican named (I believe) Chris Smith was chairman of a committee that was responsible for oversight of such matters, and when he started speaking up about the underfunding of the VA, Tom Delay had him removed from his leadership position and replaced with someone who would remain silent.
All of this is out there. All of it is true. It sounds partisan, and it is. It doesn’t make it any less true. The Republican Congress didn’t want to spend anything that wasn’t going towards the balance sheets of private corporations, and throughout this period they passed legislation that did things like:
Classify a veteran earning over $25,000 a year as “wealthy”, thereby justifying higher copays and a yearly pay-in cost…it was found that some veterans considered “wealthy” were paying $11 for pills the government only paid $4 for.
Remove death benefits for families of soldiers who died while training for Iraq.
The Democrats were not complicit in all of this. And if we’re going to start talking about it, we need to get it right.
March 1st, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Breaking News:
The Army said Thursday that the two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center has been relieved of command following disclosures about inadequate treatment of wounded soldiers.
March 1st, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Another bad apple tree?
Whoever the two-star general is, he/she is a scapegoat. The military is going to cut off a few heads, bar the media from covering anything inside, make the surviving soldiers hit formation at a ridiculous hour of the morning (punnishment for having the audacity of speaking to reporters)…they’ll fix the ceilings and kill the rodents…
Things will remain as they have been in terms of the beurocracy, soldiers will continue to be ground up like hamburger meat, and they’ll claim to have cleaned it all up.
I can guarantee this is what happens. Along with the royal treatment for a handful of soldiers who will then be offered up to the press with fabulous things to say about the system.
Stay tuned.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
John, in your post #3 you asked:
“How can people in Congress sleep at night knowing this was going on since 03?”
Excellent question as most normal folks would not accept these conditions. I’ve heard it explained that politicians are psychopaths to some extent. They truly are selling their souls as well as their country. The stakes are so high these days. Not just common graft, but open borders, S.P.P., multicultural suicide, etc. This is the end of our nation, as we know it and the corruption goes on! We are due for a very hard adjustment to bring us back, or the long decline will continue until the last wimper is barely heard.
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:32 am
(Of course I was being sarcastic when I implied that only Republicans are fighting the b.s.)
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 am
I’m again repeating myself. I’ve repeated this so much I can’t remember when and where I’ve repeated it.
My son worked a neurological rotation while a medical student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
He worked with VA neurologists who were not allowed to speak to the press or the public by the GOP regime about conditions in the VA or Walter Reed.
Walter Reed was ‘closed to neurological transfers’ during the early stages of the Iraq invasion. It may still be closed to such transfers.
So WWII vets, Korean vets, Vietnam vets, Afghanistan vets, Desert Storm vets were denied care for existing conditions to hold beds open at Walter Reed.
Let me be clear on this.
If any vet with an existing head injury needed care, VA doctors and private doctors could not send them to Walter Reed for diagnostic tests or TREATMENT!
These men were allowed to sit in waiting rooms while doctors HOPED …. and hope was all the doctors had … while the doctors hoped for miracles.
My son completed his medical degree and now lives in Boston.
He works one month a year for free at VA clinics in the Boston area.
I consider what he told me in 2003 about the VA to be fact.
Bush lies. People die.
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Mad Dog,
Were those vets in need of neurological care sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital, which is a short trip into Maryland?