The Walter Reed Pass The Buck Game Is On

Original Article

Daily Kos

Walter Reed:  Passing the Buck

by BarbinMD

By now we are all familiar with the disgraceful treatment the wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan receive as outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  Revealed in a two-part series by Dana Priest and Anne Hull of the Washington Post, was a story of shameful neglect and overwhelming bureauracy.  And now comes the part of the story that we're all too familiar with under this administration; passing the buck, today courtesy of Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley, the Army's surgeon general:

JUDY WOODRUFF: General Kiley, let me begin with you. The secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, said today that the failure lies with some noncommissioned officers -- I think he called them garrison leaders -- who were not doing their job. Do you agree with that?

LT. GEN. KEVIN KILEY, Army Surgeon General:...we had young leaders who felt that accountability and responsibility to take care of problems, but didn't necessarily either feel they had the authority or the experience to properly take care of these issues, as small and as few as some of them are.  [...]

JUDY WOODRUFF: So my question is, is that as high as the responsibility goes with these noncommissioned officers?

LT. GEN. KEVIN KILEY: Well, I would not identify the noncommissioned officers yet. I share the vice chief of staff's opinion that we need to do an analysis of this, and that's ongoing right now. And then, if appropriate, appropriate action will be taken.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How high do you think the responsibility does go?

LT. GEN. KEVIN KILEY: I really can't say. I've asked General Weightman to take a look at this, and I'm waiting for his report. I don't want to influence him in terms of who or what he thinks may be in...

Yes, you wouldn't want to influence the report assessing blame that is being written by the Commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  No bias there. And like Abu Ghraib, it will no doubt be determined that the fault lies with a few low-level "bad apples."

Of course Kiley didn't think the problems were that bad:

But, remember, more than half the rooms were actually perfectly OK.

And those that are problems like mold, there were only about seven of them that had that. The mice and cockroach issue was something that, in fact, the command did address last year, and that was due to soldiers leaving food in their rooms.

Damn those soldiers, it's all their fault.  Never mind that they were relying on carry-out food because the cafeteria was too far away for men and women who had lost limbs or suffered brain injuries.  And now they're pretending that all that was needed to fix the problem was a little paint and new carpets, ignoring the neglect and mind-numbing bureaucracy that left returning veterans and their families fending for themselves.  But Kiley insisted that:

...I continue to be extremely proud of Walter Reed, the staff. As I said this morning at a town hall meeting, I jog around the compound in the morning, and the staff are there at 5:00 and 5:30 in the morning ready to take care of patients.

Isn't it nice that he's able to jog?  

* * * * *

   It's nice to know that the Republican blame game is still active even when it comes to the care of our troops and their medical facilities which many of our soldiers have to stay at.

    If this is the Bush Crime Family's way of caring about our troops, then they are all in deep shit! It's bad enough that Bush and the military can't come up with the equipment that the troops need ,but to then stick then into under-par medical facilities?

                              IMPEACH! INDICT! IMPRISON!

 

Technorati tags: Walter Reed, Military, US Trops, Blame Game