walter reed

So you get hit by an IED and loose your legs. To rehabilitate you get sent to Walter Reed, where you get the amusement park treatment now:

A year after a scandal erupted over the long-term treatment of soldiers at the hospital, the Army has turned to Disney for help. "Service, Disney Style" is newly required for all military and other government employees at Walter Reed.

Lafferty and her fellow Disney trainer, Mike Donnelly, handed out little plastic Goofy and Mickey Mouse figurines as they led Wednesday afternoon's discussion with the workers -- some in uniform, some in scrubs, some in civilian clothes.

Does this mean they will follow you around trying to get a picture then sell you some over priced picture key chain?

Just now breaking - General Kevin Kiley, the man who oversaw Walter Reed for two of the years it had it's problems is now resigning.

UPDATED - A "senior Pentagon official" has told CNN that Kiley was actually fired.

And I am not exaggerating this either. When you read CQ's latest article on the Walter Reed situation, you will also realize the same thing (if you haven't already):

Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.

But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital’s problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Young and Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., the former chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, both acknowledged in interviews that they were aware of patient care problems at Walter Reed long before The Washington Post exposed them two weeks ago.

I blogged about Bill Young's blatant dereliction of duty, not just as a member of Congress, but also as a human being. Young was one of the key republicans in a position to do something and he ignored it. Why wouldn't he push the issue? The article gives us some details into that:

Young said he “separates my life as a member of Congress and the work I do on a volunteer basis,” visiting military hospitals with his wife almost every week.

Translation - I am on vacation so I can't be bothered with it. This is a sad day for our nation, knowing that a member of Congress flat out refused to use his constitutional authority to try and correct this disastrous situation. Young needs to be replaced next year. Him and his wife need high public exposure for their sorry excuse of inaction.

The article does go on to say that the Democrats also knew of the problems, but did all they could as the minority party. I witnessed Democrats working to get the message out. Last summer, Debbie Wasserman Schwartz, also from Florida, was on the House floor after midnight yelling about what was going on. Of course the Republicans quickly dismissed the complaints. Why? Read the headline of this post again to figure that out.

The headline is best summed up by one paragraph in this article:

Davis, the former chairman of the committee with responsibility for oversight of government programs, said his options also were limited. He said his committee staff first learned in 2004 about problems with wounded soldiers’ health care while investigating their pay problems.

Only two possible answers to this piss-poor excuse; either my headline is 100% correct or the Democrats are just a lot smarter at handling problems than the Republicans. OK - there is a third answer; all the above.

The Democrats are now holding hearings and everyday more bombshells come out about this story. Every Republican in our federally elected offices need to take stock. They allowed this situation to not only come into being, but also continue for 4 years. They proved, without a shadow of doubt, that they do not care about the brave men and women in the United States military.

There is some heart-breaking testimony coming from these hearings today. It is totally unacceptable that the situation was able to reach this low point.

Something I am tired of hearing is this meme that the hospitals are overloaded because of Iraq. This was a war of choice waged by the commander in chief and if he can not make sure his military is able to accommodate the wounded it has generated then he needs removed from office now. Time for the big heads to roll on this.

Perhaps we can start getting hearings into what led to the Walter Reed fiasco:

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's national security panel, headed by Rep. John Tierney, D-N.Y., scheduled a hearing at the hospital's auditorium Monday morning. The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients invited to speak includes the medical center's previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman.

It will be interesting to hear what Weightman has to say on the issue. I really like the idea Chuck Schumer floated yesterday also:

In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for an independent commission, possibly headed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.

Of course the wingnuts will quickly denounce this idea since Powell has been on a truth telling mission about the actual war intelligence. I am sure people inside the administration will also try to block this attempt. Bush already has plans of his own for a commission:

The White House said the president would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed exist at other facilities. Last week, Gates created an outside panel to review the situation at Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.

Yeah - we know how Bush's "bipartisan commissions" are. They will meet and decide what best to be done just for Bush to say "I don't like it" and then all their work is wasted. This is like Katrina, with Bush at the helm. He should not be deciding what course of action is to be taken. That is a job for Congress. Oversight does not happen by the person who is in charge of the military, but rather the people who share an equal role in government. Considering the track record of the White House on such scandals, they just need to stay out of it, and with a Democratic congress now chances are good they will be out of the loop until final findings are ready.

This is a pretty big one. The Secretary of the Army has just resigned in wake of the scandal:

Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey resigned Friday as the Bush administration struggled to cope with the fallout from a scandal over substandard conditions for wounded Iraq soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The surprise move came one day after Harvey fired the two-star general in charge of the medical center in response to disclosures of problems at the hospital compound.

On Monday Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight committee is holding a hearing on the growing scandal. He has subpoenaed General Weightman to testify:

Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman John Tierney sent a letter to Major General George W. Weightman, former Commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, regarding the privatization of support services at Walter Reed and its impact on the conditions at Walter Reed. In addition, the Committee is issuing a subpoena to compel Major General Weightman to appear before the Committee on Monday, March 5.

Things are moving along to fix this disgrace, however we need to know why it was allowed to go one for so long. Who didn't report the problems and who tried to hide them? Those are the money questions right now.

Well it only took 4 years, but the general in charge at Walter Reed has been relieved of his command. There still needs to be more heads rolling on this one though.

"Hospital Officials Knew Of Neglect" - now that says alot, but not as much as the actual article:

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.

So all the outrage we heard last week from top officials was nothing more than a publicity stunt; an attempt to spin something so horrible. That is disgusting, but it gets better worse:

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

(emphasis mine)

So a member of Congress stopped visiting soldiers because they were "frustrated". Why didn't Mr. Young address this on the House floor? Why didn't he show this level of frustration to other members of Congress, and why didn't they act? My only guess is that they didn't want to bring it up because it might make the administration look bad.

And if you think Bill Young sounds familiar, then you are right. At last year's State of the Union address, Young's wife was kicked out for wearing a "support our troops" shirt, the same night Cindy Sheehan was kicked out. As matter of fact, this is what Young said about the incident:

"She has a real passion for our troops, and she shows it in many, many ways," Young said.

"And most members in this House know that, but because she had on a shirt, that someone didn't like, that said, 'Support Our Troops,' she was kicked out of this gallery while the president was speaking and encouraging Americans to support our troops. Shame. Shame."

Now this was well over a year after Young and his wife stopped going to Walter Reed "out of frustration", and yet at the time of the State of the Union, they were claiming this superior support of our troops. It was fine to use wounded soldiers when Young needed them to make political statements, yet when the soldiers really needed him he just ignored it. Beverly Young saw a brave soldier who was wounded lying in his own urine at our military's top medical facility and did Bill Young use any of his congressional power to try and correct this? The Youngs are just as bad as the people who caused this mess at Walter Reed.

This is a perfect example of how the Republicans use our troops for their own gains. When the going gets tough then they run and hide. Young should have been on the House floor every day yelling about what was happening, but he didn't. Him and his wife claimed their support for our troops, yet when he saw troops that really needed support, he turned the other cheek. I believe Bill Young, as well as the Republican leadership, have some serious questions to answer in their complicity to this heinous act.

If a citizen of this country sees a crime and doesn't report it then they can be charged. What has happened at Walter Reed is a crime and the Youngs should be held accountable for their inactions!

That is is from the Army Times:

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

So these brave soldiers go to Iraq and get injured. When they return they are put in rat-infested rooms while they are supposed to heal. Some soldiers decide that isn't right and talks to the media about the problems, and for this they get this treatment? This is highly FUCKED UP!

The article goes on to say how the Pentagon is even trying to black out the media from this story:

The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.

Transparency in government? Not with Hitler in the White House. I believe it is time for Congress to suspend all other actions and investigate solely on this. This is not only impeachment type activity, but most likely criminal activity. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and even possibly Gates are all probably suspects in this. Why is it possibly criminal? Because there is an investigation into donations to the hospital being funneled to other organizations that the higher ups are interested in. All these people are now helping to cover this up. Treating our injured soldiers this way would justify the same fate Saddam had.

TPM has all the details! Heads must roll on this.

A press conference today with the Army's top brass said that their is no lack of funds causing the problems at Walter Reed, but rather it was a "failure of leadership". This is something I had pointed out here , however the right-wing darling blogger, Michelle Malkin, decided to not talk about the actual "failure of leadership" and rather spin it into some partisan created problem, once again proving she has no credibility to her outrageous allegations.

For someone like Malkin, who constantly tries to flaunt her false support of the troops, to take a situation as serious as this and make it grounds for partisan bickering is appalling. She tried to say it was the left using it as a partisan issue, but I haven't seen where that occurred. So we called Bush on it. Isn't he the Commander in Chief? Even the White House is admitting failure in the military on this now, so is she calling the generals and White House liars? Instead of creating a faux partisan fight over this, why don't she work to get the problems addressed? I guess it goes down as further proof of her actual lack of support for our troops.

Malkin has posted on the conditions at Walter Reed and here is how much she cares:

Good. The mess at the VA and in the military health care sysm [sic] is systemic and complicated. Political grandstanding on both sides of the political aisle has impeded reforms for years. The push to modernize and consolidate facilities, including Walter Reed, has been met with fierce resistance--exacerbated by bureaucratic edifice complex. That these failures to prioritize continue in war time unabated is damnable. Any light shone on the soldiers' toll, whatever the motivations and prejudices of the WaPo reporters might be, is welcome, IMO.

CNN just reported that the Army Chief of Staff said he had no idea of the problems at Walter Reed (why do I have problems buying that?). They also reported that the Army will be working "stringently" to correct the problems. Interesting that he had no idea what was going on right across the street.

From the White House that is. They are spinning as hard as they can on the Walter Reed fiasco. Tony Snow showed this spin during the first part of today's presser:

The problem is that this spin isn't going to work. Basically Snow is saying they don't want to talk about it. They are trying to direct everything to the Army. HEY DIP SHIT - Who is the Commander in Chief? This is Bush's army. I thought "he was the decider"?

This is an absolute outrage. The White House giving this typical line of bullshit that they don't want to talk about our injured troops being treated like shit by our military. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should call everyone back from recess today and say "we are addressing this situation". People involved need fired and charged with whatever laws they broke. Bush needs impeached for his Cheney attitude of "go fuck yourself" he displays towards our injured troops.

Starting with a tour of the run down building 18 and then followed up with a one on one with Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org, Keith exposed the problems I have been talking about at Walter Reed this week.

This has become a national disgrace, one that points directly at the administration. As Jon points out, Bush has received every dollar he has asked for from Congress. The treatment of wounded soldiers falls under the D.O.D., not the VA, so that means the Bush administration is responsible for what happened. Of course it is no shock when most of the money the White House gets goes to contractors instead of our military, who desperately needs it.