Walter Reed Hearings Begin
Posted on March 5, 2007
This is not a Partisan issue and I hope the politicians involved realize this fact…
From the AP:
Substandard living conditions found at the Army’s flagship veterans hospital likely exist throughout the military health care system, the head of a House panel investigating Walter Reed Army Medical Center said Monday.
As Congress held its first hearing on the scandal at the medical center itself, Tierney, D-Mass., questioned whether problems at the facility are “just another horrific consequence” of inadequate planning that went into war in Iraq; a problem created by contracting out work there to private business, or some other cause.
Tierney chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s national security panel, which held the hearing Monday in the hospital’s auditorium. The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients invited to speak includes the medical center’s previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman.
Geren, who will become acting Army secretary later this week, told the panel that the revelations of poor conditions at Walter Reed had hurt the Army. Defense Secretary Robert Gates forced Army Secretary Francis Harvey to resign last week and he leaves his post on Friday.
Lawmakers listened closely as several patients came to the hearing with stories of lax or poor treatment at Walter Reed:
Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, who lost his left eye and suffered traumatic brain injuries from a rifle wound, said that after he was discharged from Walter Reed, he was given a map of the grounds and eventually found his way to outpatient quarters by wandering around and asking for directions.
Then, he says, he “sat in my room for a couple of weeks wondering when someone would contact” him about continuing treatment.
“My biggest concern is having young men and women who have had their lives shattered in service to their country … get taken care of,” Shannon said.
Annette McLeod told the committee that her husband, Cpl. Wendell McLeod, was originally sent to the wrong hospital after he was hit in the head with a steel door in Iraq and also suffered a head injury.
Once at Walter Reed, she said, he suffered delays in getting outpatient tests and treatment.
“My life was ripped apart the day that my husband was injured,” she told the panel tearfully. The experience at Walter Reed made it “worse than anything I’ve had to sacrifice in my life.”
“This is absolutely the wrong way to treat our troops, and serious reforms need to happen … immediately,” Tierney said.
Addressing war veterans on Monday, Vice President
Dick Cheney promised that the problems at Walter Reed will be fixed.“There will be no excuses — only action,” Cheney told a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down.”
In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), 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.
President Bush last week had ordered a comprehensive review of conditions.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.
Gates also dismissed Harvey, who had fired Weightman and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army’s surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed. Gates said Harvey’s response was not aggressive enough.
The Army announced that Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker will be the new commander of Walter Reed, which is in Washington. In addition, the Army took disciplinary action against several lower-level soldiers at Walter Reed.
The moves came in response to a series of Washington Post reports about substandard conditions and bureaucratic problems affecting the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to Walter Reed, one of the military’s highest-profile and busiest medical facilities, and its outpatient facilities.
I want to see everyone responsible to pay for this, but, sadly, this must have been going on for a long time. What I want from this investigation is to understand the decision making process that led to this problem. I want to know how someone could make, or was forced to make monetary decisions that led to the mistreatment of our troops. It is only through understanding this that we can prevent it from happening again.
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7 Responses to “Walter Reed Hearings Begin”
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We don’t raise taxes to pay for the war, Bush tells us to keep shopping, we try to do the war on the cheap, we don’t give our troops proper gear to fight the war, cause “you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” said the Secretary of Imcompetence Donald Rumsfeld. And people are surprised what is going on at Walter Reed.
Get your head out of the sand! If the democrats didn’t win either house, this story would’ve never existed! Cause this has been going on since the war started, but no one wants to talk about it.
Anyone who allows soldiers to go through this should be in prison!
There is a lot more to the problem because of the hospitals
that Clinton closed. Fitzsimmons Army hospital was closed
which was used during all wars through the first Gulf war.
Of course there is substandard care because the hospital is
too small to handle what used to be handled by more hospitals.
Lets put the blame where it belongs and not hide the fact that
Hillary’s husband is also to blame.
Bush has had six years to fix the mess. And he’s done nothing! Is there anything you can’t blame Clinton for? Pass the buck! No one ever takes the blame in this administration, it’s embarrassing.
Dethanial neglects to mention that Clinton only closed what the
Pentagon recommended be closed. Besides which, this skirts the
issue, which isn’t that we don’t have enough facilities to care
for our troops, but that through administrative negligence, some
of what we have is grossly substandard. I don’t see how Clinton
can be blamed for the administrative negligence of today.
They only closed what the Pentagon recommended because
high ranking military officers are politically pressured
into doing what politicians want. Just like the General
in Holland who was forced to retire because he told the
truth about Clinton. When the facilities have been sold,
it is hard for anyone to open them again. Yes I blame that
womanizing, pot smoking, draft dodging president. Maybe
he will make me retire.
What do you do? Blame Clinton every time you stub your toe?
Just to let gary know that I have always, until Clinton,
voted democrat and even voted for that low lifer. But
he caused this 72 year old to change his party of choice.
Yes I blame Clinton as being the one president that has
weakened the effectiveness of our armed forces more than
any president in history, and will continue to blame him
for the mess we are in now. Why in the hell did he not
have the guts to continue the hunt for Bin Laden when
he had him in his sights?