Walter Reed: How Long Have They Known?
Like everyone else reading the Washington Post’s multi-part series on the disgraceful mistreatment of Iraq War veterans, I am wondering “How long did this go on? Who is accountable for this?”
According to the Post, some of our soldiers have languished there for two years. Two years in a decrepit moldy building littered with dead roaches and mouse droppings.
It’s President’s Day today, so no one’s at work in the Federal Government. But I know who I’m calling tomorrow: the Republicans on the Senate and House Veteran’s Affairs Committee, who until a few months ago were running the show and setting the agenda with as little input from the Democrats as possible. I’d like to know how someone like Lindsey Graham, who’s always talking up his Air Force credentials and his support for the troops, missed this little story. I’m wondering how Arlen Specter didn’t know that injured veterans were living in squalor just blocks from the White House, with easier access to a bar than to counseling and emotional therapy. Maybe he was too busy sneaking legislation to the PATRIOT Act allowing the Bush administration to purge attornies it doesn’t like so much. Where was ranking member Larry Craig, or is that something he’d prefer not to discuss?
Is anyone else sensing a pattern here among Republicans to just kind of let things go until it’s too late? The President was warned that bin laden was “determined to strike in the US”: his response was to say “we’ll you’ve covered your ass” and do nothing until it was too late and 3,000 innocent Americans were incinerated.
Then there’s Iraq, where everything that should have been done was left to fester, including: coming up with a coherent reason for invading in the first place; a plan; a plan B; the potential for insurgency; etcetera etcetera etcetera, and now it’s too late and we’re stuck.
Then there’s Hurricane Katrina, in which Bush’s federal government, Homeland Security Department, and FEMA managed to lose New Orleans: bodies are STILL BEING FOUND. PEOPLE ARE STILL HOMELESS.
Then there’s the Mark Foley scandal, which the Republican House Leadership knew about going back possibly as far as 2000 and chose to ignore, going to the extent of leaving Democrats out of the loop.
Let’s talk about the Medicare Part D Donut Hole: the GOP was too busy lying about the cost of the reforms to notice that thousands of seniors were going to lose substantial coverage, but by then it was too late and Granny had to make her famous meatloaf with Alpo so she could afford her heart medicine.
And now we come to the plight of the veterans at Walter Reed. Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull worked on this story for four months: some of the soldiers have been stuck in this Kafkaesque nightmare for two year. How long did the Republican leadership plan to ignore this situation?
Again and again and again, the party of personal responsibility reveals itself to be the party of the improvident and the unconscionable.
