Privatization Behind Disaster at Walter Reed Hospital

[Gimpy]

The Bush administration?s drive to privatize government services and its push to reduce veterans? benefits appears to be one of the causes of the disaster at Walter Reed Hospital.


Media reports over the past few weeks have exposed conditions at Walter Reed Army hospital and in the VA hospital system. Wounded or sick soldiers are often forced to wait months for much needed services. Patients at Walter Reed Hospital have been forced to live in crumbling rooms with rodent feces, insects and mold, according to the story in the Washington Post.


The Army Times is reporting that Rep. Henry A. Waxman, who chairs the House Government Oversight Committee, subpoenaed the former commander of Walter Reed, Major General George Weightman, to ask him about a leaked memo that points to the privatization of the hospital as the source of many of the problems.


According to the Army Times, the memo described how privatization caused as many as 250 members of the staff to leave in what appears to be a cost-cutting measure.


A company called IAP Worldwide Service, run by a former Halliburton executive, took a $120 million contract to run portions of the hospital?s services called facilities management.

Immediately after, facilities management staff was reduced to 50 privately employed workers.


The memo further indicates that Army and Defense Department officials at the highest levels had been made aware of the wretched living conditions at Walter Reed.


Waxman?s committee states that the Pentagon under the Bush administration?s orders has shown "an ideological commitment to privatize government services" and has consistently sought to replace federal workers with less-skilled, non-unionized, under-trained private staff.


The drive to reduce or gut veterans? service dates from the beginning of the Bush administration but received a public airing in January 2005 when Pentagon official David Chu ironically told the Wall Street Journal (1-25-05) that the cost of veterans? benefits was "hurtful" to national security.


It has long been the policy of the Pentagon to reduce access to services and to mandate that various departments withhold information from veterans about which benefits they may be eligible for. Additionally, the Bush administration has ordered increases in fees for the use of medical benefits to veterans.


So far Gen. Weightman has been fired as head of Walter Reed and the exposure of the scandal has forced Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to pressure Army Secretary Francis Harvey to resign as well.


It's obvious that privatization has immeasurably damaged thousands of lives of veterans, many returning from the war in Iraq many others having served over the past decades.


Rep. Waxman?s committee needs to expose this situation fully and root out the responsible parties, both in the private sector and the government, no matter how high up the investigation goes.


Without a doubt, the tragedy at Walter Reed and in many VA hospitals mirrors, both ideologically and practically, the administration?s drive to gut funding has contributed greatly to these conditions.


We need the full truth about the effect of privatization within the defense department as well as with veterans' benefits and the VA hospital system, and can't afford to hide behind ideological smokescreens or partisan politics. We also need to know what business or personal relationships motivated the awarding of the Walter Reed facilities management contract to IAP Worldwide Services.


Welcome to 2007 and the Walter Reed scandal. A story years in the making. A story that up until last week has been banned by the government and the military.

Certainly the information was out there. All they had to do is talk to a minority Democratic congressmen on the Veteran Affairs committee who watched helplessly as House Republicans voted to increase veterans' medical fees and reject increased funds for veterans' health care which, in effect, cut their benefits.

How easy would it have been for, say Bill O'Reilly from FOX-NEWS, to expose this national embarrassment? In 2005 Congressman Bob Filner (D, CA) from the this committee spoke on a national radio show and he made it quite clear what was happening.

"We were promised and, more importantly, organizations representing veterans were promised by the House Republican leadership that a $1.8 billion increase over the President's inadequate budget request would be included in the Veterans Appropriations bill to provide for the health care for veterans," Filner then said. "Well guess what? It was not!"

So why did the Conservative Right's echo chamber choose to ignore this disgrace? It's a tough one to answer, especially when they (Republican politicians, right wing talk radio, O'Reilly, etc) spend so much time characterizing the democrats as the anti-soldier cult.

The answer is found by paying any attention to talk radio or Fox News where they'll cover anything else, anything to evade the insidious truth.

Like; Anna Nicole.

Bittany's hair or lack of same

American Idol nudie pics.

Al Gore's perfidious hypocrisy.

Obama's connection to racist churches

And, on, and on, and on.

Do you see anything on that list that mentions the national shame that is Walter Reed Hospital? Why of course not, then they'd have to EXPLAIN IT!

Would there be any mention that it was House Republicans who had ousted Conservative Republican Chris Smith as the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee when he sought higher funding for veterans services than the Bush Administration desired? And replaced him with that bastion of right-headedness, Sreven Buyer? A HELL-UV-A-LOT HELP he was for veterans, huh? Not!

You would think that someone with the impeccable journalistic cred like National Review's Jonah Goldberg would step up and get to the bottom of this national ignominy. Yet how could he be expected to find the time to expose the breakdown in veterans' care when he was immersed in writing a column to expose Dana Priest - the Washington Post writer who with Anne Hull, revealed the military's dirty, rat infested secret - for having "an agenda." If only we all had Priest and Hull's agenda. Damn these people like Goldberg, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, they should be forever be hanging their heads in shame.

Would Fox News scroll Veterans Affairs Committee's Lane Evans (D IL)'s comment that "The Republican budget resolution will decrease critical services and inflict real pain upon service members, veterans and military families during a time of war," and that "Congress should be ashamed." Certainly not, it would embarass the Whitehouse. Now we can't have that, can we?

What makes it even more unbelievable is how Bill O'Reilly's supposedly crack research team could have missed it.

I don't know how long it will take the Republican voter to realize he's been swift-boated by the very leaders and mouthpieces who swear themselves in support of our troops; our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, friends and comrades who have been pawns in this fiasco that we have allowed.

"There are always mistakes in wars," seems to be the almost daily defensive cry from these conservatives in justifying the unprecedented monsoon of mistakes this administration has rained down on this country. Perhaps this unfolding scandal at Walter Reed and the disastrous results of "privatization" within our military and the Veterans Admistration will finally stop Republicans from voting against the American soldier's best interests.

This is NOT about 'politics'----------it's about doing what's right for our troops!