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!

[Packo]

Actually, and believe me Gimpy, I am in no way shape or form defending these assholes, the push toward privatization at military bases started during the Clinton administration to get rid of GS employee's under VP Al Gore's reducing government employee program. They actually didn't reduce the number of employee's....just GS and WG employees were given the boot and Contractors hired at lower wages and benefits. The contracts go mostly to "minority" companies. My Deb was one of the ones to go through this as Head of New Parent Support. Since, 3 different contrators have gotten the bid, and each time they have to take a pay cut or benefit cut. It's how the companies are able to outbid the one that's there. Our whole public works department at the Naval Hospital is going "contract", getting rid of the mostly WG positions. I have been watching this for years and watching the quality go down. It's hard to maintain good employee's when every so many years a new contractor outbids the old and workers get no raises for good work and manytimes have to take a cut. What has happened is an outrage but more of the same crap we faced as veterans when we got back. Who here went through classes when ETS'ing to teach us our benefits? Ask just about any Vietnam Vet what most of the VA hospitals were like. Treatment for "PTSD", which was not recognized at the time, was large doses of Thorazine, and anti-psychotic used to treat major psychotic disorders. I'm not sure what the authors mean by "....witholding of information on Veterans benefits"? Before discharge it is mandated that each GI attend TAP, Transition Assistance Program, classes that has VA people attending going step by step explaining benefits and literally going through the medical record of each GI pointing out anything that can be claimed. It's one of the reasons the VA is so clogged as our new Vets are filing for things we didn't even know you could. Not that this is wrong, but the combo of all these claims and NEVER ENOUGH VA EMPLOYEE'S AT REGIONAL OFFICE LEVEL, have helped to overwhelm the system. Our Troops and Veterans have certainly been let down by the current administration and congress and there can be no excuse for that. I've seen the voting records. But I also say that this problem didn't start in 2000. It's been one the service organizaions, as you know, have been fighting for years. I will say this, I believed, "A promise made is a promise kept". Yeah, right, what a bunch of bullshit.

Pack

[Gimpy]

Packo, my dear southern brother, but it WAS NOT Al Gore who started this crap. But, in fact the current Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney!

The war on Iraq and now the Walter Reed scandal has made us all painfully aware of the Pentagon's growing reliance on private companies. Commercial firms have been hired to do everything from cooking meals to interrogating prisoners to providing security for U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer, and recently providing administrative and logistics support to medical holding facillites, like Walter Reed.. Peter Singer of the highly respected Brookings Institution estimates that for every 10 troops on the ground in Iraq, there is two contract employees. That translates to 20,000 to 30,000 contract workers, making them the second-largest contingent (between America and Britain) of the "coalition of the willing."

Military outsourcing is nothing new. The latest wave of military privatization started in the first Bush administration, when in 1990 Defense Secretary Cheney asked Halliburton to study what it would cost to have a private company take charge of getting U.S. forces overseas in a hurry. Later on, Halliburton was hired to do just that in Somalia, employing 2,500 people. Halliburton---- then run by Cheney----was forcefully pushed again into the mix by then speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, as the logistics arm for the war in Kosovo. Halliburton's contract started out as a $180 million deal but soon mushroomed to more than $2.5 billion as the company built Camp Bondsteel and other military facilities on lavish, cost-plus terms.

The 1990s military outsourcing boom was driven by a combination of attemped cost cutting and ideology. When Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense CUT troop strength from 2.1 million to 1.4 million after the first Gulf War. His misguided logic to contracting out nonmilitary functions like laundry and meals, to free soldiers for strictly military duties was a continum of republican idealogy to reduce the size of the federal government and reward political allies with huge government contracts. But the urge to privatize soon expanded to include anything and everything, up to and including hiring former Green Berets and Navy SEALs for serious security and training functions. And, now as we've seen, to take over mulitudes of responsiblities for troops logistical needs as well as medical administrative duties.

The "privatize first, ask questions later" mentality has led to the situation we face now in Iraq and Walter Reed.

Before the 1990s privatization push, private firms had periodically been used in lieu of U.S. forces to run covert military policies outside the view of Congress and the public. Examples range from Air America, the CIA's secret air arm in Vietnam, to the use of Southern Air Transport to run guns to Nicaragua in the Iran/contra scandal. What we are seeing now in Iraq and Walter Reed is the overt use of private companies side by side with US forces that include medical holding facillities. But many of the same issues of democratic accountability and military effectiveness (or more often lack thereof) hold true, whether the use of the companies is overt or covert.

There is a reason that governments have historically maintained a monopoly over the use of military force and care for it's troops. Allowing private companies into the mix interferes with the ability of citizens to hold their government accountable for when and how that force and care and treatment of it's military personnel is used.

What we're seeing now is the disastrous results of Dick Cheneys' misguided vision to "privatize" the military and reduce the size of the federal government.

Plain & simple!

[Boats]

I see this more and more - (former Halliburton executive) Cheney's old organization is tied into the system - BIG TIME! He needs to go real soon. His stirring committee's and kick backs that he's getting need to be investigated. I never trusted this guy and he's got to have some paper-trail that we can get him later on this back door stuff. I smell a rat and not just in the VA but running the white house.

[Packo]

Gimpy,

By the time this program got going, Cheney was gone. He may have started it DOD wide, but it sure didn't stop when Al Gore also endorsed the program of "reducing government." Clinton and Gore were running things, why didn't they stop it? As I said, there is enough blame to go around and I'm not defending these assholes, but......somebody could have stopped it and it INCREASED in the 90's and has been going on ever since unless Cheney had so much power he controlled the Clinton White House.

Pack

[Gimpy]

I'm really not defending Gore or Clinton, they deserve some of the blame as well.

But, when the Republicans were swept into power in 1994 and later that year developed and passed their "Contract With America" which Clinton signed on to. It was obvious that the Clinton administration was swept up into the resulting wave of public support to 'cut government spending'. I'm certainly NOT saying I agree with their decision, simply attempting to place the original 'blame' where it should be. By this time, Cheney and his powerful friends in the republican Congress had forcefully persuaded the Clinton adminstration that "Halliburton" was the only game in town that could accomplish the tasks required.

And, it ALL STARTED with Cheney in the 1990s'!

He KNEW where he was going after leaving office in 1992 at the end of the first Bush adminstration.........HALLIBURTON!

And he damn well knew he would have first crack at using his considerable influence with the Newt Gingrich led Congress to accomplish his mission---------PRIVATIZING THE MILITARY!

We are now reaping the terrible consequences of this man's unscrupulous desire to rape and pillage not only our beloved military, but the very federal government agencies designed and formed to take care of "those who have bourne the battle, his widow and chldren"----------

Cheney deserves nothing but contempt and anger from every single military man and woman, past AND present!

[Packo]

You can add mine in there. I always was against the privitizing these jobs. How can you get good people and keep them when the LOWEST BIDDER gets the contracts? On the way in from lunch I ran into one of my buddies from Public Works. They were just standing around waiting on some contractor welders to show up. They would be watching these guys weld. Problem is, my buddy is a certified Navy Welder but weren't allowed to do the job.....it had to be contracted out. I am so glad I'm retiring! Again, lots of blame to go around, but that's past history. The present is disgraceful......no doubt about it! Don't you love how politicians promise all this stuff, like "promise made.....", then when everything falls to shit, it's "Commission to find out what I did to screw this up" time. Well, it Contractors, and going to war and not counting the real damn costs. I am disgusted.

Pack

[Gimpy]

nothing but agreement from me Packo my southern brother!

There was a segment on N.B.C. Nightly news last night that reported on the "contracting out" (outsourcing) of more than 350 government employees at Walter Reed who were replaced with no more than 50 or so 'private' or 'contracted' employees. It' was obvious as the nose on your face WHERE and WHAT the majority of the problem(s) were.

History will record and document that this will be the "legacy" of Dick Cheney in his unrelenting mission to 'privatize' Federal government!

[Gimpy]

to the top!..........