Vowing Quick Action on Walter Reed

The facilities at Walter Reed have been in decline for decades, known to military officials and journalists alike for years, and yet we're supposed to believe that Congress will act swiftly to solve the problems? Right.

In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday, Schumer asked for an independent commission, possibly headed by former Secretary of State
Colin Powell, to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.

"To think that men and women are serving their country in the most honorable and courageous way possible and all we give them is a dilapidated, rat-infested, run-down building to recover is a disgrace," Schumer wrote. "My fear is that Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg, and merely highlights the pervasive and systemic mistreatment of our service members."

President Bush last week ordered a comprehensive review of conditions at the nation's network of military and veteran hospitals. They have been overwhelmed by injured troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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 Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who had fired the medical center's previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman, and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army's surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed. Gates said that 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.

They'll be quick to name a blue-ribbon panel that will outline changes, that will be quickly forgotten or dropped by the wayside as the next crisis demanding Senatorial attentions shows up.

As described in the article, Walter Reed is the crown jewel in the military's medical community, and yet it was slated to be realigned by BRAC. How come that part isn't mentioned in this article. There was a good reason that BRAC called for the facility to be realigned. Some of the problems outlined in the Washington Post expose were as a result of pending closure and funds diverted to the construction and operation of the new facility.

The mission at Walter Reed has been hampered by the outdated and archaic facilities and could be better served by more modern facilities elsewhere. The realignment is scheduled to be completed by 2011, when the new campus of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is scheduled to be opened.

Unless Congress is going to accelerate the switchover to the new facility, the infrastructure problems at Walter Reed are going to continue. Paperwork changes and bureaucratic changes may improve some aspects of care at Walter Reed, but one could say that for every medical facility in the country - from private medical care services to government operated health care facilities.

Infrastructure Woes

Glenn Reynolds posted about the Walter Reed scandal and the way that it claimed not only the Center's commanding officer, but the Secretary of the Army. Many of the structures on the Center's grounds are outdated and inadequate for current needs. That's one of the reasons that it was set to be closed by the BRAC, but the larger concern is the state of the infrastructure throughout the military's vast holdings.

Many buildings were constructed during World War II and designed to be temporary structures. 60+ years later, and they're still in daily and heavy use. The problems didn't happen overnight, and the solution wont come overnight either.

If you think that the problems are confined to barracks and hospital facilities, you'd be wrong as well. These problems extend to the most secretive and crucial facilities for the nation's nuclear defense.

Imagine the US nuclear production infrastructure being housed in structures that were designed and built in 1942 and with a designed life expectancy of 4-5 years.

That's exactly what you have in the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That's where HEU is produced for nuclear weapons. However, there's a multi-billion dollar program underway to modernize and consolidate facilities so that the nation's nuclear infrastructure can function well into the future:

The Y‑12 National Security Complex is a sprawling landscape of over 800 acres within the city limits of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Constructed in the early 1940s during the Manhattan Project, Y-12 was developed as a self-contained city with over 500 buildings, 26 miles of road, 10 miles of electrical lines, and 35 miles of piping. This footprint, however, is much too large given the current and future mission of the site, and many of the facilities and services are nearing the end of their useful lives. Several buildings and systems have been out of service for years, and other parts of the infrastructure are beginning to deteriorate faster than they can be managed.

The inventory reduction and consolidation will improve security and provide new and healthier work environments.

I came across this information while reviewing stories about the military approving a new warhead design to replace existing warheads on US missiles throughout the inventory. Critics complain that this isn't the right time to go ahead with new warhead designs, despite the fact that the new warheads are supposed to be more reliable and ensure that the US nuclear deterrent capabilities are available. With a reduced nuclear arsenal, the reliability of individual weapons becomes ever more important since each missile takes on new importance and significance.

Friday Night News Dump

The Secretary of the Army has resigned over the ongoing mess at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey resigned Friday as the Bush administration struggled to cope with the fallout from a scandal over substandard conditions for wounded Iraq soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The surprise move came one day after Harvey fired the two-star general in charge of the medical center in response to disclosures of problems at the hospital compound.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman was relieved of command of Walter Reed yesterday. Expect to see more changes made, though it will take time to fix the bureaucratic nightmare that is firmly entrenched in many parts of the military, including patient care.

Relieved of Command

The head of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which has been the focus of scrutiny over the level of care at the facility in the past few days since a Washington Post expose claimed that conditions were horrible there, has been relieved of command.

The Army said Thursday that the two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center has been relieved of command following disclosures about inadequate treatment of wounded soldiers.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command as well as Walter Reed hospital, was relieved of command by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey.

In a brief announcement, the Army said service leaders had “lost trust and confidence” in Weightman’s leadership abilities “to address needed solutions for soldier outpatient care” at Walter Reed.

It remains to be seen how the Army addresses the concerns over patient care to make sure that the wounded soldiers arriving on base receive top quality care.

The Washington Post Discovers Shrapnel, But Not Body Armor

Who knew that shrapnel wounds cause grievous bodily damage to soldiers? Anyone who has gone to war since Henry Shrapnel invented the technology more than 200 years ago.

When U.S. service members or civilians such as Bob Woodruff of ABC News get injured or killed in Iraq, official accounts often blame roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. But many times it's the searing hot, sharp-edged, comes-in-all-sizes shards of metal and debris known as shrapnel that actually cause the wounds.

Walter Reed is full of soldiers whose bodies are riddled with shrapnel. Many carry around the fragments doctors have left inside them, to work their way out over time. Removing embedded shrapnel, doctors say, can do more harm than good. And the body can "tolerate it fairly well," said Col. Russell Martin, the general surgeon consultant to the Army surgeon general.

This is apparently news to the Washington Post, which thinks it newsworthy that US soldiers are coming home with shrapnel wounds that would simply amaze and astound a casual observer as to how they'd survive the wounds in the first place.

The fact is that more soldiers are coming home with shrapnel wounds because of things like Interceptor body armor and other protective devices that weren't available to earlier generations of soldiers. Medical advances also mean more soldiers come home alive, though scarred from their injuries.

That's the rub of the article. It talks of shrapnel in a vacuum. It makes no mention of how and why these soldiers are coming home to tell their stories.

Crook Takes Credit For Repugnant Acts

WARNING - STRONG LANGUAGE ALERT - WARNING

A short time ago, I wrote of a thoroughly repugnant incident where a soldier recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Medical Center received a most disgusting letter.

At the time, it was thought that it was the work of child who was acting at the behest of an adult. We have now learned that it is the work of a sick and twisted adult - not a child at all.

Michelle Malkin has the details. I have absolutely no intention to link to the heartless, witless, and spineless thing that sent these letters to current and former members of the US Armed Forces. However, his letters may have constituted criminal actions that can and should be investigated.

Two Babes and a Brain, which helped break the original story, doesn't mince words - Crook's a S#ithead. At a minimum.

What this shows is that there is still a segment of the US population that thinks it appropriate to spit on members of our armed forces because they do not approve of the way that they're used, let alone that they exist for the protection of all of us. It's one thing to hold a principled stand against war, or to oppose the war in Iraq, but to personally attack members of the Armed Forces is beneath contempt.

Stuck on Stupid and AJ Strata both comment on the idiocy of Crook. And Stuck on Stupid notes that Crook has been involved in anti-military a$$hattery in the past.

Thoroughly Repugnant

If you want to protest the war....knock yourself out. If you want to march till the cows come home....by all means, have at it. But don't spew your hatred directly at the soldiers who are injured and sacrificed so that you have the liberty and freedom to protest. Stop using children to promote your agenda. Its shameful and disgusting and the rest of America won't stand for it.

What was so thoroughly repugnant?

This:

Dear Soldier,

Have a great time in the war.

And have a great time dieing in the war.

From,

Miguel Gallier

P.S. Die

These are the folks that are so supportive of the troops after all. We wouldn't want to question their patriotism, their support for the troops, or their intellectual honesty. And this comes on the heels of Sen. Kerry calling the troops terrorists again on this past Sunday's Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. The key graf:

Let me--I--first of all, there is so much more that unites Democrats than divides us. And Democrats have much more in common with each other than they do with George Bush's policy right now. Now Joe Lieberman, I believe, also voted for the resolution which said the president needs to make more clear what he's doing and set out benchmarks, and that the policy hasn't been working. We all believe him when you say, `Stay the course.' That's the president's policy, which hasn't been changing, which is a policy of failure. I don't agree with that. But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you've got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You've got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis. And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not...

This isn't just a slip of the tongue, but part of a pattern of behavior on Kerry's part for the past 30 years. It started as soon as he got back from his tour of duty in Vietnam and hasn't stopped since. Perpetuating myths and lies, which get repeated as fact and never questioned by those who should know better.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin has more, including the address of the soldier who received this letter:

Joshua Sparling
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

UPDATE:
Others who actually support the troop by slamming those who make baseless accusations (Kerry) or inflict emotional distress on those recovering from their injuries sustained in combat (Miguel Gallier) (and updated as needed): T. Longren, The Political Teen (who has the Kerry video), Weapons of Mass Destruction, Say Anything, Pundit Guy, Sundries Shack, Sister Toldjah, JunkYardBlog, Truth Laid Bear, SoCalPundit, AJ Strata, The American Mind, and Opinion Journal.

UPDATE:
The Indepundit comments on a Code Pink demonstration that goes awry when their usual meeting stop is already taken by a group of pro-American folks who want to support the troops who are on the mend at the VA hospital in San Diego.