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MSNBC saying the CG for Walter Reed has been relieved of his command duties.
Link
Whott, go fnck yourself.
MSNBC saying the CG for Walter Reed has been relieved of his command duties.
Link
The military always adores and respects the "chain of command", but when something bad happens, the responsibility always stops well below the top echelons.
I'd say that's about as "top echelon" as you're going to get.
Your stupidity is showing again. CG=Commanding
General.
CNN also reporting that the Secretary Of The Army has resigned as well.
amazing, Sec of Army is VERY high up. exception that proves the rule
Waxman to Force Walter Reed Ex-Chief to Talk About Problems, Contract
By Justin Rood and Anna Schecter
ABC News
Friday 02 March 2007
A powerful Democratic congressman is challenging the Pentagon, which is attempting to block the former chief of Walter Reed Army Medical Center from testifying before Congress next week.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wants to ask Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman about a contract to manage the medical center awarded to a company that had do ented troubles fulfilling a government contract to deliver ice to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The Pentagon has refused to allow Weightman to testify. Waxman's staff has confirmed the congressman has issued his first subpoena as a committee chairman this session to legally compel Weightman's testimony.
According to a letter from Waxman to Weightman posted today on the committee's Web site, the chairman believes the Walter Reed contract may have pushed dozens of health care workers to leave jobs at the troubled medical center, which he says in turn threatened the quality of care for hundreds of military personnel receiving treatment there.
Weightman had been slated to testify before Congress on Monday. The Army has tried to withdraw him from the hearing. Waxman's office confirmed the congressman plans to force the officer to appear by issuing a subpoena for his testimony.
The Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter. A call to Weightman's home went unanswered.
In the letter, Waxman charged that the Army used an unusual process to award a five-year, $120 million contract to manage the center to a company owned by a former executive of Halliburton, the scandal-prone government contractor once operated by Vice President Cheney.
In 2004, the Army determined that Walter Reed's federal employees could operate the medical center more efficiently than IAP Worldwide Services, which is operated by the former Halliburton executive, Al Neffgen, Waxman wrote. After IAP protested, the Army "unilaterally" increased the employees' estimated costs by $7 million, making IAP appear cheaper, Waxman said. Rules barred Walter Reed employees from appealing the decision, Waxman wrote, and in January 2006 the Army gave the contract to IAP.
According to an internal memo written by a senior Walter Reed administrator and obtained by Waxman, the decision to outsource to IAP led the center's skilled personnel to leave Walter Reed "in droves," fearing they would be laid off when the contractor took over. In the last year, Waxman found, over 250 of 300 government employees left the center. The lack of staffing put patient care "at risk of mission failure," warned an internal Army memo obtained by the congressman.
Some of the problems recently revealed at Walter Reed "may be attributable to a lack of skilled government technicians on staff," Waxman wrote in the letter.
A spokeswoman for IAP did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A message left at the home number belonging to Al Neffgen was not immediately returned.
===============
Halliburton's evil alumni doing their sinister deeds.
This story seems to be growing very long, durable legs.
Firing saddens many who knew general in S.A.
Web Posted: 03/02/2007 10:43 PM CST
Sig Christenson And Scott Huddleston
Express-News
When people talked Friday of Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, they didn't sound like they were describing a man who had just been fired.
Gentle. Caring. A soldier's general, they said.
"Two years ago I was working in the Army surgeon general's office, and somebody's comment to me about Gen. Weightman was that there are some people that can be counted upon to do the right thing every time," said Brig. Gen. James K. Gilman, commander of Brooke Army Medical Center and a cardiologist trained in the Alamo City.
If Weightman made mistakes, no one in the Army was saying what they were.
But his dismissal as commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the wake of a scandal over living conditions there left friends, colleagues and patients in San Antonio stunned and angry.
One associate, who asked not to be named, said Weightman, a veteran of the Panama invasion and Gulf War I, walked into a "pre-existing condition" when he took command of Walter Reed in late August 2006.
For seven months in 2003, Rosie Babin lived at Walter Reed while her son Alan Babin of Round Rock was in the surgical intensive care unit.
Babin was near death, his body badly infected after having much of his abdomen shot out in Iraq. Janitors would mop other rooms and the hallway, then enter her son's room without emptying the bucket.
"I would think, 'Oh-h-h-h, there goes bacteria from that room into this room,'" she said.
Things were far cleaner at BAMC's intensive care unit, where he spent the winter of 2003. The hospital, which opened in 1996, is among the newest of eight in the Great Plains Regional Medical Command and has "very, very good facilities," Gilman said.
"I felt like we had arrived at the Taj Mahal," Babin recalled.
The Washington Post said Weightman worked to improve conditions for outpatients and cut caseloads at Walter Reed.
BAMC — which like other medical facilities will be examined closely in the wake of the uproar about Walter Reed — has taken in more than 3,000 wounded troops but has enough capacity to handle dozens more.
Talk of Weightman's exit Friday prompted strong reactions on Fort Sam, where for two years he led the post and was commander of the Army Medical Department Center and School.
And the shake-up isn't over, with the spotlight now on yet another former Fort Sam commander, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, an obstetrician.
He was the post commander and led the Army Medical Department Center and School here until June 21, 2002, before taking over at Walter Reed. In 2004, Kiley was promoted to Army surgeon general.
Fort Sam Houston spokesman Phil Reidinger would not comment on the Army's decision, noting there "is nothing I can say to change it."
But he described Weightman, a friend and one-time fellow infantry officer , as "a consummate professional." He once was the 82nd Airborne Division's surgeon and earned a Senior Parachutist's Badge with combat star after the Dec. 20, 1989, Panama invasion.
"When he was giving the orders or directions to a public affairs officer, the first directive was to do the right thing," Reidinger said of his time working for Weightman at Fort Sam.
BAMC officers say Weightman was known for making weekly visits with patients and families at the hospital and the nearby Soldier and Family Assistance Center, at night and on weekends.
"He's one of the best commanders I have ever worked for," said Col. Carol McNeill, deputy commander for nursing at BAMC. "He continually came by to check on the wounded."
Kim Smith, whose son, Army Pvt. Robby Frantz, was killed in Iraq in 2003, said she saw Weightman at several events on the post. They included Thanksgiving dinners for the wounded at BAMC and at several funerals from San Antonio-area service members killed in the war.
Smith thought what happened to him wasn't right — especially given his short tenure at Walter Reed. She said making him the scapegoat would be a travesty.
J.R. Martinez, 23, a former Army specialist who was badly burned in Iraq, said the hospital's problems didn't happen overnight.
"Nothing in this world happens just like that," he said.
[email protected]
Not 'a Good-News Story'
Why is Gen. Kiley back in charge at Walter Reed?
Friday, March 2, 2007; A12
YESTERDAY THE Post reported that Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley heard years ago from a veterans advocate and even a member of Congress that outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was distressingly squalid and disorganized. That commander proceeded to do little, even though he lives across the street from the outpatient facilities in a spacious Georgian house. Also yesterday, the Army announced that Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, the head of Walter Reed since August, had been relieved of his command. His temporary replacement? None other than Gen. Kiley.
Here's where the story stops making sense. Much of The Post's article detailed the abuse by omission that Gen. Kiley, not Gen. Weightman, committed, first as head of Walter Reed, then in his current post as Army surgeon general. Gen. Weightman, who very well might deserve his disgrace, has commanded Walter Reed for only half a year, while Gen. Kiley, now back in charge of Walter Reed, headed the hospital and its outpatient facilities for two years and has led the Army's medical command since. Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife say they repeatedly told Gen. Kiley about unhealthful conditions in outpatient facilities.
While Gen. Kiley was ignoring Walter Reed's outpatients, he was assuring Congress that he was doing just the opposite. A staffer for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) told us yesterday that Gen. Kiley told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2005 that the performance of the medical holdover program, which covers 69 of the 76 residents of Building 18, "is a good-news story." In response to questions Mr. Davis submitted, Gen. Kiley stated, "the Army Surgeon General has made their care the medical treatment facilities' top priority." At best, Gen. Kiley was ignorant of the conditions at Walter Reed.
We are glad that the Army is finally taking the issue of outpatient care seriously enough to effectively end the career of a major general for presiding over the disgraceful condition of Building 18. But the evidence compiled so far suggests that Gen. Kiley has been more complicit in the scandalous neglect of Walter Reed's outpatient facilities for longer than Gen. Weightman has been. It also indicates that the Army's reshuffle is really about projecting the appearance of accountability, not punishing those most responsible. As Mr. Young said yesterday of Gen. Weightman, "I don't know him. But I know he's the fall guy."
===============
So, will Kiley escape?
Looks like Waxman needs to subpoena Kiley as well as Weightman.
'It Is Just Not Walter Reed'
Soldiers Share Troubling Stories Of Military Health Care Across U.S.
By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 5, 2007; A01
Ray Oliva went into the spare bedroom in his home in Kelseyville, Calif., to wrestle with his feelings. He didn't know a single soldier at Walter Reed, but he felt he knew them all. He worried about the wounded who were entering the world of military health care, which he knew all too well. His own VA hospital in Livermore was a mess. The gown he wore was torn. The wheelchairs were old and broken.
"It is just not Walter Reed," Oliva slowly tapped out on his keyboard at 4:23 in the afternoon on Friday. "The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard. It brings tears to my eyes when I see my brothers and sisters having to deal with these conditions. I am 70 years old, some say older than dirt but when I am with my brothers and sisters we become one and are made whole again."
Oliva is but one quaking voice in a vast outpouring of accounts filled with emotion and anger about the mistreatment of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Stories of neglect and substandard care have flooded in from soldiers, their family members, veterans, doctors and nurses working inside the system. They describe depressing living conditions for outpatients at other military bases around the country, from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Fort Dix in New Jersey. They tell stories -- their own versions, not verified -- of callous responses to combat stress and a system ill equipped to handle another generation of psychologically scarred vets.
The official reaction to the revelations at Walter Reed has been swift, and it has exposed the potential political costs of ignoring Oliva's 24.3 million comrades -- America's veterans -- many of whom are among the last standing supporters of the Iraq war. In just two weeks, the Army secretary has been fired, a two-star general relieved of command and two special commissions appointed; congressional subcommittees are lining up for hearings, the first today at Walter Reed; and the president, in his weekly radio address, redoubled promises to do right by the all-volunteer force, 1.5 million of whom have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But much deeper has been the reaction outside Washington, including from many of the 600,000 new veterans who left the service after Iraq and Afghanistan. Wrenching questions have dominated blogs, talk shows, editorial cartoons, VFW spaghetti suppers and the solitary late nights of soldiers and former soldiers who fire off e-mails to reporters, members of Congress and the White House -- looking, finally, for attention and solutions.
Several forces converged to create this intense reaction. A new Democratic majority in Congress is willing to criticize the administration. Senior retired officers pounded the Pentagon with sharp questions about what was going on. Up to 40 percent of the troops fighting in Iraq are National Guard members and reservists -- "our neighbors," said Ron Glasser, a physician and author of a book about the wounded. "It all adds up and reaches a kind of tipping point," he said. On top of all that, America had believed the government's assurances that the wounded were being taken care of. "The country is embarrassed" to know otherwise, Glasser said.
( Like Iraq, like Katrina, the VA scandal will be indelible stain on dubya/ head/rummy/Repugs. Their legacy is in the toilet. Like all their other lies, "support out troups" if one huge ing lie. )
The scandal has reverberated through generations of veterans. "It's been a potent reminder of past indignities and past traumas," said Thomas A. Mellman, a professor of psychiatry at Howard University who specializes in post-traumatic stress and has worked in Veterans Affairs hospitals. "The fact that it's been responded to so quickly has created mixed feelings -- gratification, but obvious regret and anger that such attention wasn't given before, especially for Vietnam veterans."
Across the country, some military quarters for wounded outpatients are in bad shape, according to interviews, Government Accountability Office reports and transcripts of congressional testimony. The mold, mice and rot of Walter Reed's Building 18 compose a familiar scenario for many soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan who were shipped to their home posts for treatment. Nearly 4,000 outpatients are currently in the military's Medical Holding or Medical Holdover companies, which oversee the wounded. Soldiers and veterans report bureaucratic disarray similar to Walter Reed's: indifferent, untrained staff; lost paperwork; medical appointments that drop from the computers; and long waits for consultations.
( The Repugs yet again willfully misgoverning to get the rabble and sheeple to hate government, to hate even more paying taxes, to support unlimted tax cuts, to want to "drown govt in a bathtub".)
Sandy Karen was horrified when her 21-year-old son was discharged from the Naval Medical Center in San Diego a few months ago and told to report to the outpatient barracks, only to find the room swarming with fruit flies, trash overflowing and a syringe on the table. "The staff sergeant says, 'Here are your linens' to my son, who can't even stand up," said Karen, of Brookeville, Md. "This kid has an open wound, and I'm going to put him in a room with fruit flies?" She took her son to a hotel instead.
"My concern is for the others, who don't have a parent or someone to fight for them," Karen said. "These are just kids. Who would have ever looked in on my son?"
Capt. Leslie Haines was sent to Fort Knox in Kentucky for treatment in 2004 after being flown out of Iraq. "The living conditions were the worst I'd ever seen for soldiers," he said. "Paint peeling, mold, windows that didn't work. I went to the hospital chaplain to get them to issue blankets and linens. There were no nurses. You had wounded and injured leading the troops."
Hundreds of soldiers contacted The Washington Post through telephone calls and e-mails, many of them describing their bleak existence in Medhold.
From Fort Campbell in Kentucky: "There were yellow signs on the door stating our barracks had asbestos."
From Fort Bragg in North Carolina: "They are on my [expletive] like a diaper. . . . there are people getting chewed up everyday."
From Fort Dix in New Jersey: "Scare tactics are used against soldiers who will write sworn statement to assist fellow soldiers for their medical needs."
From Fort Irwin in California: "Most of us have had to sign waivers where we understand that the housing we were in failed to meet minimal government standards."
Soldiers back from Iraq worry that their psychological problems are only beginning to surface. "The hammer is just coming down, I can feel it," said retired Maj. Anthony DeStefano of New Jersey, describing his descent into post-traumatic stress and the Army's propensity to medicate rather than talk. When he returned home, Army doctors put him on the antipsychotic drug Seroquel. "That way, you can screw their lights out and they won't feel a thing," he said of patients like himself. "By the time they understand what is going on, they are through the Board and stuck with an unfavorable percentage of disability" benefits.
Nearly 64,000 of the more than 184,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have sought VA health care have been diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse or other mental disorders as of the end of June, according to the latest report by the Veterans Health Administration. Of those, nearly 30,000 have possible post-traumatic stress disorder, the report said.
VA hospitals are also receiving a surge of new patients after more than five years of combat. At the sprawling James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., Spec. Roberto Reyes Jr. lies nearly immobile and unable to talk. Once a strapping member of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, Reyes got too close to an improvised explosive device in Iraq and was sent to Walter Reed, where doctors did all they could before shipping him to the VA for the remainder of his life. A cloudy bag of urine hangs from his wheelchair. His mother and his aunt are constant bedside companions; Reyes, 25, likes for them to get two inches from his face, so he can pull on their noses with the few fingers he can still control.
Maria Mendez, his aunt, complained about the hospital staff. "They fight over who's going to have to give him a bath -- in front of him!" she said. Reyes suffered third-degree burns on his leg when a nurse left him in a shower unattended. He was unable to move himself away from the scalding water. His aunt found out only later, when she saw the burns.
Among the most aggrieved are veterans who have lived with the open secret of substandard, underfunded care in the 154 VA hospitals and hundreds of community health centers around the country. They vented their fury in thousands of e-mails and phone calls and in chat rooms.
"I have been trying to get someone, ANYBODY, to look into my allegations" at the Dayton VA, pleaded Darrell Hampton.
"I'm calling from Summerville, South Carolina, and I have a story to tell," began Horace Williams, 62. "I'm a Marine from the Vietnam era, and it took me 20 years to get the benefits I was en led to."
The VA has a backlog of 400,000 benefit claims, including many concerning mental health. Vietnam vets whose post-traumatic stress has been triggered by images of war in Iraq are flooding the system for help and are being turned away.
For years, politicians have received letters from veterans complaining of bad care across the country. Last week, Walter Reed was besieged by members of Congress who toured the hospital and Building 18 to gain first-hand knowledge of the conditions. Many of them have been visiting patients in the hospital for years, but now they are issuing news releases decrying the mistreatment of the wounded.
Sgt. William A. Jones had recently written to his Arizona senators complaining about abuse at the VA hospital in Phoenix. He had written to the president before that. "Not one person has taken the time to respond in any manner," Jones said in an e-mail.
From Ray Oliva, the distraught 70-year-old vet from Kelseyville, Calif., came this: "I wrote a letter to Senators Feinstein and Boxer a few years ago asking why I had to wear Hospital gowns that had holes in them and torn and why some of the Vets had to ask for beds that had good mattress instead of broken and old. Wheel chairs old and tired and the list goes on and on. I never did get a response."
Oliva lives in a house on a tranquil lake. His hearing is shot from working on fighter jets on the flight line. "Gun plumbers," as they called themselves, didn't get earplugs in the late 1950s, when Oliva served with the Air Force. His hands had been burned from touching the skin of the aircraft. All is minor compared with what he later saw at the VA hospital where he received care.
"I sat with guys who'd served in 'Nam," Oliva said. "We had terrible problems with the VA. But we were all so powerless to do anything about them. Just like Walter Reed."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
===================
This a great recruiting poster for all those kids who dubya wants to sign to go waster their lives in Iraq.
dubya's estate tax cut for the super rich will cost $745 B.
Could any of that $745B been spent on dubya maimed vets?
The Repugs sought election exclusively to enrich and protect the super-rich and the corps.
you're doing a heckuva job, dubya
22 more months ...
March 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Valor and Squalor
By PAUL KRUGMAN
When Salon, the online magazine, reported on mistreatment of veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center two years ago, officials simply denied that there were any problems. And they initially tried to brush off last month’s exposé in The Washington Post.
But this time, with President Bush’s approval at 29 percent, Democrats in control of Congress, and Donald Rumsfeld no longer defense secretary — Robert Gates, his successor, appears genuinely distressed at the situation — the whitewash didn’t stick.
Yet even now it’s not clear whether the public will be told the full story, which is that the horrors of Walter Reed’s outpatient unit are no aberration. For all its cries of “support the troops,” the Bush administration has treated veterans’ medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can.
What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans’ health care — like the Federal Emergency Management Agency — became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program. By the early years of this decade the Veterans Health Administration was, by many measures, providing the highest-quality health care in America. (It probably still is: Walter Reed is a military facility, not run by the V.H.A.)
But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration’s misgovernment became obvious to everyone.
The problem starts with money. The administration uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend that it has been generous to veterans, but the historical data contained in its own budget for fiscal 2008 tell the true story. The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans’ medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.
To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services. For example, in 2005 Salon reported that some Walter Reed patients were forced to pay hundreds of dollars each month for their meals.
More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care to those who defend our nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq the V.H.A., which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is en led to enroll in its health care system. As the agency’s Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack “special eligibilities such as a compensable service connected condition or recent combat service,” will be turned away.
So when you hear stories of veterans who spend months or years fighting to get the care they deserve, trying to prove that their injuries are service-related, remember this: all this red tape was created not by the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracy, but by the Bush administration’s penny-pinching.
But money is only part of the problem.
We know from Hurricane Katrina postmortems that one of the factors degrading FEMA’s effectiveness was the Bush administration’s relentless push to outsource and privatize disaster management, which demoralized government employees and drove away many of the agency’s most experienced professionals. It appears that the same thing has been happening to veterans’ care.
The redoubtable Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, points out that IAP Worldwide Services, a company run by two former Halliburton executives, received a large contract to run Walter Reed under su ious cir stances: the Army reversed the results of an audit concluding that government employees could do the job more cheaply.
And Mr. Waxman, who will be holding a hearing on the issue today, appears to have solid evidence, including an internal Walter Reed memo from last year, that the prospect of privatization led to a FEMA-type exodus of skilled personnel.
What comes next? Francis J. Harvey, who as far as I can tell was the first defense contractor appointed secretary of the Army, has been forced out. But the parallels between what happened at Walter Reed and what happened to New Orleans — not to mention parallels with the mother of all scandals, the failed reconstruction of Iraq — tell us that the roots of the scandal run far deeper than the actions of a few bad men.
==================
you're doing a heckuva job supporting our troops, dubya
For this to be "a story", it needs to have an element of surprise. Even before going to war, this administration's behavoir surfaced. These soldiers have worn out their usefullness. Just another problem sweeped under the giant WH rug.
Weapons inspectors wore out their usefullness.
Wilson wouldn't play ball. Worn out
Sheinsiki. Worn out
Powell. Worn out
Anyone that disagrees? Worn out
, they wouldn't even keep the re ed Bush's in the family photos.
How is this a surprise?
March 5, 2007
Focus on Veterans’ Chief as Inquiries on Care Begin
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
WASHINGTON, March 4 — As President Bush ordered an investigation of the military’s care of wounded soldiers and veterans last week, Jim Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs, darted between events, seeking to put a positive public face on his beleaguered agency.
In Chicago on Friday, Mr. Nicholson spoke to a group of Navy boot camp graduates, toured the North Chicago V.A. Medical Center, and visited a private trauma clinic to gather ideas on providing special care for injuries like brain trauma.
“If there is even one injured veteran that falls through the cracks then that is too many,” he said in a telephone interview at the end of the day. “It pains me to hear about problems in our system, but I am a compe or, and I am finding that it is strengthening my resolve and deepening my commitment.”
( vomit! I'm all about ME, not about the vets )
In the wake of the shake-up last week in the Defense Department medical system — which included the firing of the two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the resignation of Francis J. Harvey as secretary of the Army — the Department of Veterans Affairs is facing intense political and public scrutiny. The agency operates the country’s largest health care system, serving more than 5.5 million veterans a year.
On Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to conduct a hearing at Walter Reed on the problems there, and the Senate Armed Services Committee has set a hearing for Tuesday. Mr. Nicholson’s agency is also likely to come under scrutiny at the hearings.
“I welcome Congressional oversight, and the oversight of the president and the commission he is forming,” Mr. Nicholson said. “I welcome them looking at us and taking a measure of how we are doing, so we can improve any deficiencies that are found.”
( vomit! You react to vets' problems, you're supposed to prevent vets' problems )
Mr. Nicholson, 69, a Vietnam War veteran and past chairman of the Republican National Committee, was appointed by Mr. Bush to lead the department in 2005.
( yet another incompetent Repug mucky-muck political operative parachuted into a job over his head and with no experience. FEMA/Brownie all over again )
He has been accused by some veterans and the organizations that represent them of being primarily a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and of being slow to respond to increasing strains on his agency as returning soldiers move from facilities like Walter Reed, which is run by the Defense Department, into the veterans affairs system.
Critics say he has under-emphasized his agency’s budget needs to Congress, has not responded to calls for more mental health workers and brain trauma specialists and has failed to overhaul disability claims procedures. Some leaders of veterans groups say Mr. Nicholson is less communicative than his predecessors.
“We’re supposed to be partners, but there is no free flow of information since he took over,” said Bill Bradshaw, director of National Veterans Service for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “We often learn about changes after they are done, and there is little consultation.”
Mr. Nicholson says his agency is making changes. It is putting procedures in place to screen all veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan for signs of brain trauma and the agency is also researching how to shorten the claims process, he said.
“I am willing to take responsibility for the mistakes in the system, but at the same time I am en led to credit for all the good things and advances happening at the V.A.,”
( vomit! I'm all about ME ANd MY REPUG CAREER FIRST, not about the vets )
Mr. Nicholson said. He said the V.A. system had been cited “as among the best, if not the best” integrated health systems in the country. Mr. Nicholson called the 2008 budget request of nearly $87 billion “a landmark request” and said that V.A. financing had increased by 77 percent since Mr. Bush took office in 2001. (Critics point out that there are also increased demands from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
( that "best", as with FEMA, was achieved under Clinton, and degraded under dubya/Repugs )
Friends and colleagues say that Mr. Nicholson, a deeply religious man from dirt-poor Iowa roots, has maintained a chin-up response. But his wife, Suzanne, said the scrutiny and criticisms had shaken him.
“He’s not one to show his emotions. When he is upset and worried a calmness comes over him,” said Suzanne Nicholson, 62. “But it keeps him awake at night. It is terribly distressing and awful for him.”
( sniff, sniff. What about the vets lying in beds all night unattended?? )
His stoicism and determination, said his wife and close friends, are an outgrowth of his tough childhood. Born in the small, rural town of Struble, Iowa, he was the third of seven children of an alcoholic father and a devout Catholic mother who taught her children nightly catechism lessons by kerosene lamp because the family had no electricity and no car to get them to daily Mass.
( so we get a puff-piece job from wifey. WGAF what wifey thinks? )
After high school, he was accepted to West Point. He was an Army ranger and was awarded a Bronze Star in Vietnam. Later, after law school, he became a legal counsel for the Denver Home Builders Association, and later a developer.
Mr. Nicholson was viewed skeptically by some in Washington when he was elected in 1997 to succeed Haley Barbour as Republican Party chairman. But he eventually won respect, even praise, as a skilled fund-raiser and a tough, credible leader. Mr. Bush appointed him ambassador to the Vatican in 2001.
Through his varied careers, Mr. Nicholson has never run anything even close to the size of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which operates 155 medical centers and roughly 900 outpatient clinics. With a staff of 235,000, it is the second-largest government agency behind the Defense Department.
( as always with the Repugs, partisan loyalty far outweighs competence and experience. It's FEMA/Brownie all over again )
His detractors, including some leaders of veterans groups, say Mr. Nicholson has a far less cooperative relationship with their groups than his predecessors had. Some say he is more attentive to his bosses in the administration than the veterans he serves and that he lacks deep experience in veterans affairs.
( just the kind of guy needed to run VA affairs in war time )
“Mr. Nicholson is purely a political appointee who comes from a background of no involvement in veterans issues,” said David W. Gorman, executive director of Disabled American Veterans. “He very much wants to do what he believes is the right thing to do, but not knowing the system as one needs to, he is at a distinct disadvantage.”
Not all veterans representatives are as critica. John F. Sommer, executive director of the Washington office of the American Legion, the largest veterans service organization, said Mr. Nicholson had been attentive to his organization’s needs.
“Are there problems with the V.A.? Sure. But did Jim Nicholson cause the problems? I don’t think so,” Mr. Sommer said. “Especially when it comes to funding, you have to look at the amount of money the V.A. is getting from Congress.”
Some Congressional leaders say Mr. Nicholson and his agency are victims of political maneuvering. “Mr. Nicholson just happens to be in the wrong party,” said Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, the ranking member of the Committee on Veterans Affairs. “People now want to say that not only are they against the war and the way the president has handled it, but now they want to take aim at the way the government takes care of the veterans.”
( and why the not "take aim" if the vet care sucks? Typical Repug, it's not a vet care problem, it's a political agenda )
More serious than complaints about Mr. Nicholson’s style are charges that he has not sufficiently addressed efficiency and preparedness.
( sorta like the entire Iraq war fiasco. It's typical of how Repugs intentionally up the hard work of governing )
Linda J. Bilmes, a professor of public finance at Harvard, recently completed a study of the long-term costs of providing medical care and benefits to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Veterans Affairs, she said, “is overwhelmed in every area.”
Last edited by boutons_; 03-05-2007 at 12:38 PM.
Just curious, do ya'll really think that the problems with the VA are new?
no, but as Rich pointed out repeatedly about the VA being an example of how to run national health system efficiently, and as Nicholson says, the VA was one of the best run federal agencies after it got strong leadership and WH support under Clinton.
Under dubya, AFTER dubya made the decision to invade Iraq, his henchman anticipated the huge increase in VA claims and wrote new rules to exclude vets from care.
Look at the VA budget allocation since March 2003 and prove that it reflects the huge increase in care required to "support our (injured) troops".
And in this extremely critical period for the VA, dubya appoints an incompetent, inexperienced self-serving Repug operative way out of his depth to run VA.
the Walter Reed scandal could be another nail in privatization's coffin...
Smoking Gun: Walter Reed scandal connected to Halliburton & FEMA?
AlertnetNot only is the scandalous treatment of American Troops at Walter Reed military hospital connected to Halliburton and Katrina-era FEMA (see video at link) but it's also, at its core, a deeply, deeply conservative scandal.
"Privatization," or the transfer of any and all services into the hands of market morality, is a fundamental part of the conservative project.
{For its past performance in the public sector, see Energy Crisis, California.}
This time, under some shady cir stances, a private firm IAP was given the contract to take over a number of services at Walter Reed, despite the fact that the employees' bid was lower.
Only after IAP "protested" (according to Waxman's letter to General Weightman PDF) was the employees' bid "increased" and the contract awarded to the private firm headed by ex-Halliburton official, Al Neffgen.
This privatization precipitated an 80% drop in care workers, leading to a human scandal that the market will never ever, ever be equipped to handle. It's neither the market's, nor conservatives', business. At the heart of privatization is the belief that competing desires to make a buck will "take care of everything."
Walter Reed is another in a series of tragic bottom lines.
There are things government does better, go figure....
^I'm sure we just didn't give the free market enough time to "work itself out".
March 6, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Casualties of the Budget Wars
By PAUL D. EATON
Fox Island, Wash.
IN his 1997 book “Dereliction of Duty,” Col. H. R. McMaster wrote that “the ‘five silent men’ on the Joint Chiefs made possible the way the United States went to war in Vietnam.” So it is today with the war in Iraq. Regrettably, the silence of our top officers has had a huge impact not just on the battlefield but also on how we have brought our injured warriors home from it. These planning failures led to the situation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently reported by The Washington Post, which resulted in the firings of the hospital’s commander and the secretary of the Army.
The sad truth is that The Post’s reports weren’t entirely new: Mark Benjamin, of United Press International and the Web magazine Salon, and Steve Robinson, the director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, have been reporting on the disgraceful treatment of our war wounded since 2003. More important, the Walter Reed scandal is simply the tip of the iceberg: President Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Congress all pointedly failed to provide the money and resources for our returned troops wherever they are, both the obviously wounded and those who may seem healthy but are suffering mentally and physically from their service.
Soldiers have long joked: “If you are really sick or injured, Army medical care is O.K. But if you are hurting only a little, especially if it isn’t visible, you’re in big trouble.” The American soldier still receives the best trauma care in the world, especially at Walter Reed. The problem there has been with deplorable outpatient care management. The military health system is seriously undermanned and underfinanced for the number of casualties coming home. Also, there has been little preparation for identifying and treating post-traumatic stress injuries.
Last year, because of spending in Iraq, the Army had a $530 million shortfall in its budget for posts at home and abroad. This forced the Army’s vice chief of staff, Richard Cody, to tighten belts that were already at the last notch.
Hospitals have taken a big part of the financial hit. General Cody has warned Congress that failure to shore up the tottering military health care system could become a “retention issue.” David Chu, the Pentagon’s under secretary for personnel and readiness, told The Wall Street Journal that veterans’ costs “are taking away from the nation’s ability to defend itself.”
The result is that Walter Reed and every other domestic Army post have struggled to house soldiers properly after their release from the hospital. For the lucky ones, family members pick up the slack, making sure that follow-up care is provided, that prescription drug regimens are followed, that therapists show up for rehabilitation sessions. Those without family help tend to slip between the cracks.
Walter Reed, in particular, has another problem. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission decided in 2005 to shutter this critical hospital. I won’t debate that decision now — what’s done is done — but when the commission decides you will close within a few years, money dries up real fast. It is no wonder that buildings fell into disrepair and recovering soldiers slipped off the radar screen.
This was the fiscal environment that Maj. Gen. George Weightman stepped into last August when he took command of Walter Reed. I have known George since he was a plebe at West Point. He is bright, honorable and energetic — and always capable. But as another of his admirers told me, “He was the captain of that ship.” And now he has gone down with his ship — the victim of Mr. Rumsfeld’s wrongheaded cost-cutting and the joint chiefs’ failure to stand up to the civilian leadership.
So, what can we do to ensure that good men like General Weightman aren’t put in impossible situations and, more important, that our fighting men and women get the care they need? A good first step has been taken: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired the secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, who was a true Rumsfeld man and viewed by many as more loyal to his boss than to the Army. But some other prescriptions seem obvious:
•
I would encourage every member of Congress, ever senior Pentagon official and every White House staff member to read the articles Mark Benjamin has written on soldier care, beginning with the 2003 report he did on Fort Stewart in Georgia. The train in this wreck left the station a long time ago.
•
The Pentagon must do something it has, amazingly, never tried: develop an official doctrine on how to “redeploy” a soldier from the combat zone to the peaceful zone. This means hiring mental health experts to thoroughly analyze the psychology of the returning soldier, and making a commitment to building a health care network that can meet the needs of a growing population of injured soldiers.
•
Congress must increase financing for research into traumatic brain injuries, the signature malady of this war. Unbelievably, in its Pentagon appropriations bill for 2007, Congress cut in half the financing for the Army’s main research and treatment program on brain injury (which, no surprise, is at Walter Reed).
•
The government should also expand grants to the Fisher House program, a public-private partnership that has “comfort homes” at every major military medical center. These provide families of wounded troops with housing, kitchens, laundry rooms and other support services. The program serves more than 8,500 families a year, but will struggle to keep pace with the growing number of returning wounded.
•
Like so many government departments, the military has a medical computer system that is made up of a hodgepodge of antiquated machines with outdated software that often can’t communicate with one another. This needs to be replaced with a user-friendly system that can efficiently track the wounded as they make their way through the system.
•
The Pentagon must revamp the Medical Evaluation Board process, the system under which a soldier suffering from injury is screened to see if he should be given a discharge and a disability pension. Cases now are handled in a haphazard way and can drag out indefinitely; each should be held to a disciplined timeline.
•
The general effort by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Harvey to privatize services at Army bases needs to be reined in. Some of the problems at Walter Reed seem to have been caused by the contracting out of maintenance services and other support jobs.
•
While we address the needs of uniformed men and women, we need to assess our civilian employees as well; most are excellent, but some are entrenched and in need of firing.
•
The money to care for our soon-to-be-veteran soldiers should not come from the Defense Department budget. The immense costs of medical care are simply too attractive to Pentagon budget-cutters, creating a conflict of interest between the war effort and the health of our troops.
•
And, of course, we must move the outpatient soldiers out of Walter Reed immediately. It is a small, old installation with few recreational outlets in a neighborhood of Washington that is unwelcoming to patients’ families. Fort Lewis in Washington State, for example, is a large, well-equipped installation in a beautiful area with a good program for recovering soldiers. And the big goal should be to get our wounded troops off bases entirely and back their own homes, with adequate medical care and insurance.
The other day I had a phone conversation with Mr. Robinson, a former Army Ranger whose group aids Persian Gulf war veterans suffering with health disorders. “The problem with Walter Reed and the nation’s defense health program is much more than money, mold and mice,” he said. “It is about leadership.” He’s right. And with Secretary Gates, I expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be able to resume their rightful role in our nation’s defense
Paul D. Eaton is a retired Army major general.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/op...6eaton.html?hp
=================
For-profit medical care in the private sector sucks, because it's for-profit rather than for-care.
For-profit medical care by govt contractors is, like most contracting, is even worse, a grab for money and profits, not about delivering medical care.
^^^Agreed
Isn't America Great
All this fuss caused by an enlisted man's Mommy
Building 18 resident of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Army Spc. Jeremy Duncan was the one who blew the whistle on conditions at the center. His family is from Lesage.
The town is pronounced "Leese Age" and a little known fact is West "BY GOD"
Virginia had more vets die, per capita, than any other state during the VN War.
The Herald-Dispatch
By Bob Withers
HUNTINGTON -- The scandal over Walter Reed Army Medical Center's deplorable Building 18 has cost the secretary of the Army and the hospital commander their jobs. Congress and President Bush are investigating.
And it all started with a Huntington native.
Army Spc. Jeremy Duncan, 30, the only child of Cindy Yent of Lesage, was gravely injured when he was hit Feb. 6, 2006,
by two Improvised Explosive Devices -- one right after the other -- in Iraq.
He suffered a broken neck, two broken arms and several fractured fingers. His left cheek was crushed, requiring his mouth to be wired shut until a anium replacement could be installed.
His left arm was ripped open from top to bottom, leaving a jagged scar from shoulder to wrist. He lost 98 percent of the vision in his left eye and some of his hearing. And when one of the blasts blew his helmet off his head, it took his left ear lobe with it. His face sustained flash burns, there were several concussions and lots of shrapnel in his head.
Duncan was treated on the spot by a medic, including inserting a hasty field tracheotomy -- a tube placed through a hole cut in his neck so he could breathe. Quickly, he was taken to a military medical unit just five miles away, then flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and eventually transferred to Walter Reed.
He has been there a year now, and expects to stay another two month
"When he first arrived, there were only two places you could touch him," his mother says. "Family members had to stay with him around the clock for the first two weeks."
Yent believes the presence of a medic, the nearness of the field hospital and the fact that he was the only member of his unit wearing body armor saved his life.
"All we can do is pray," an Army chaplain in Germany had told her on the telephone.
Duncan says he lived in a "moldy" apartment on Building 18's second floor for six months last year.
His mother was more graphic.
"Wallpaper was falling down," she says. "There were roaches and mouse droppings. When you were in the shower, you could see the bottom of the bathtub in the apartment above his. Jeremy told me, 'Mom, don't come up here. I don't want you to see this place.' "
A mutual friend put Duncan in touch with Dana Priest, the Washington Post's military reporter. She interviewed him at a neutral location, and then he allowed her to take photographs of his apartment.
Duncan is gratified to see something finally being done about conditions at Walter Reed.
"I feel great about it," he says.
And, physically, he's feeling much better. He spends much of his time volunteering to counsel other recovering soldiers, since the Walter Reed staff is so overwhelmed with the continuous arrivals of wounded personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I'm feeling good," he says. "It's just another day."
.......
http://herald-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs...56/1001/NEWS10
Last edited by AFE7FATMAN; 03-10-2007 at 02:22 AM.
The Bush administration simply didn't have the foresight to expect so many casualties since they thought the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms and the entire operation would be a cakewalk. Why anyone would be surprised by this is the real question.
CD
The Bush Administration didn't have any foresight on 99.99% of it's foreign
policy. Rummy, head, and that College Prof from Calif were all stuck
in a time warp from the cold war, with the recent memory of Desert Storm,which was a cake walk.
But how much to spend on Walter Reed? It's been targeted for closure by the BRAC. How much $$ was allocated after the closing announcement?
Just a question that might shed a little light on the subject of money.
the VA has been F'd for years, nothing will change untill they get about 40 bill
and a lot of new CEO Types.
Normally when your slated to close, you get squat for building maintenance,
based upon expericence at 5 different statins that were slated to close.
Why not speed up that process instead of sinking money into that antiquated campus. Ever been there? It's laid out awful for a hospital
as a side bar:
There are pictures in recent Washington Posts of the General Kileys Quarters. A picture shows that Bldg 18 is right across the street from the generals quarters.
An inspection would only require that they look out the window.
The mold in the showers and peeling paint can be seen from the general's living room windows. "Well reverse angle works that way
let's be realistic here.
General Robert E Lee only gave his officers one chance to succeed in their assigned mission. once they failed him ; he never gave them another chance.
maybe that is why the South lost the war.
I give them 6 months, but I'm not betting any of my money or bookie cash things will change.
Last edited by AFE7FATMAN; 03-10-2007 at 04:58 AM.
I have no reason to doubt what you are saying if it is indeed slated for closure. I only think that sometime in the past five years someone in the administration could have figured out that maybe a couple more casualties made their way back to the states than originally expected in the halcyon days before "mission accomplished."
The string of firings is raising questions about just who is being held accountable as the nation prepares to enter its fifth year of the war in Iraq.
Sec pf the Army is gone, and the career of the Walter Reed commander he fired Thursday, Major General George Weightman, is all but over.
The temporary Walter Reed boss, Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley is likely to meet the same fate.
Yet, as the war the Bush administration predicted would be a "cakewalk"
before it began has bogged down, not a single civilian boss or top military commander has taken a similar fall.
The contrast seems stark. Tommy Franks, the Army general who as chief of Central Command scuttled Anthony Zinni's more robust war plan ...
''''my comments
General Zinni' continues to be persona no grata at the Pentgon
I'd follow this man to and Back.BTW the New Surge and strategy
were recommend by Gen Zinni before he was replaced by Gen Franks,
whio conducted a so called war from the Gulf Course in Fla.'''
and agreed with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that invasion-lite was the way to go, got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
So did former CIA chief George ("Slam Dunk") Tenet
and L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, who as Iraqi viceroy fired the entire Iraqi army,
, a move now widely seen as laying the groundwork for a sustained insurgency.
"Where is Jerry Working Now
Franks' successor, John Abizaid, is by all accounts a fine Army officer, but one who spent years stressing the need for a "light footprint" inside Iraq that dragged out the death and dying on both sides.
He'll retire soon to praise and pension. And General George Casey, Abizaid's underling and overall commander inside Iraq for the past 30 months, has just won promotion to Army chief of staff.
That's why the firing of Weightman — who ran Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the past six months — seemed so out of line.
Harvey canned him 10 days after the Washington Post exposed the poor living conditions — and lassez-faire at ude from hospital staff — that many outpatients experienced.
Harvey replaced Weightman with Kiley, the commander of U.S. Medical Command, who had run Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004.
Late Friday, the Army announced that Major General Eric Schoomaker, an Army doctor and younger brother of the current Army chief of staff, would become Walter Reed's new commander.
but on 2nd thought maybe
http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...595473,00.html
with his family connections he can get the carpetbaggers of there ass
and get the Army to back him.
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