The fallout from the Washington Post expose of scandalous conditions at Walter Reed for patients in the outpatient system continues to grow. For Democrats it looks to be the gift that keeps on giving. After all, for sheer irony it doesn’t get much better than this; an administration which tars all critics of its Iraq policies as anti-American lefties who don’t support the troops has presided over a military health care system which has failed to do just that.

Consider what Sen. Joe ‘stay the course” Lieberman, (D-CT) said on MEET THE PRESS:

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN I’m afraid, Bob, that it’s the tip of the iceberg. And I think ultimately we’re going to look back and say that that extraordinary Washington Post investigative series which drew all of our attention because of the mold on the wall and the rodents on the floor at that one Building 18 at Walter Reed, did something much larger. You can fix the wall and get rid of the rodents. But what that series has uncovered, I believe, is that we are not keeping the moral responsibility we have for the men and women who are fighting for us in the war on terrorism, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. We never have made the national commitment commensurate with going to war to give our soldiers the best medical care they can receive from the battlefield to back home. In fact, we are giving them the best possible care on the battlefield and in a lot of the inpatient services at places like Walter Reed. But there’s too much paperwork. And the Veterans Administration, when the handoff from the Department of Defense to the VA occurs, the VA is just overwhelmed an not giving the kind of first-rate treatment to our veterans when they get home that they need, including particularly those who are suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome, psychiatric effects of war, and traumatic brain injury.

Are things going to get worse? Count on it. The reason is that the numbers are larger than we think, as this excerpt illustrates:

SCHIEFFER: You know, Senator Levin, it is clear now that the government is keeping two sets of books, it seems, on the number of nonfatal casualties. What is it? The Department of Defense says about 25,000 something, 30,000 — that range — have been wounded. Now we have the head of the Veterans Administration admitting that 200,000 have come there for treatment. He tried to play it down by saying — I think his quote was, “Some of them just to get dental work.” But I think he may want to rethink that a little bit. What’s going on?
 
LEVIN: Well, what’s going on is that there are two different standards — one by the Department of Defense, one by the Veterans Administration — for what represents a disability, what represents a sufficient situation which is difficult for a soldier or a veteran so that they’re not prepared to return to duty. There is bureaucratic snafus. You know, the administration tried to cut the Veterans Administration budget by a couple billion dollars a few years ago, and it took Congress to restore that needed money. It’s just been, I think, a fiasco in terms of the way this administration has dealt with this war. And part of it has been the lack of planning and preparation for the casualties of war.

Even Republicans are distancing themselves on this: Consider this exchange on THIS WEEK ON ABC:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me begin, though, with these revelations about Walter Reed and our wounded veterans. Senator Lott, the first revelations broke in The Washington Post about two weeks ago. Now, we’re seeing some action. Are you confident that the president and the administration acted quickly enough and have gone far enough?
 
SEN. TRENT LOTT [R-MS]: I think that the president and the Congress have got to do everything that we possibly can to fix this problem. It is indefensible and appalling. I hope that the situation there was not being revealed to various people that went out there. My understanding is that the president gave direction that the problem be fixed and that it be done quickly. I think Gates followed up on what he said during his confirmation hearings when situations like this develop, he is going to act and act aggressively, and he should. We can’t have a situation like this. And I think it’s incumbent on the Congress, also. Why didn’t we know more and do more?

Meanwhile, the Democrats signal that this will be an issue that they will be taking national:

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER [D-NY]: I will say one thing, George, that I’m worried about. I’m worried about if it’s this bad at the outpatient facilities at Walter Reed, how is it in the rest of the country? Because Walter Reed is crown jewel. So I’m actually sending the Secretary of Defense a letter today asking that there be an independent commission, an independent group, maybe headed by someone like Colin Powell, to look at all of these facilities where the soldiers who are on their way to some other destination, how they’re treated.

Meanwhile, what are the Democrats doing about Iraq, the leading cause of all these wounded? Here is Rep. John Murtha [D-PA] on MEET THE PRESS:

REP. JOHN MURTHA: But let me talk about what I think needs to be done. The other day General Pace said, Chief of the Joint Chiefs — said “Look, you’re going to hurt the troops’ deployment if you do what Murtha wants to do, what he’s recommended to the committee.” And I said what he didn’t talk about was our strategic reserve; what he didn’t talk about we’re sending troops back without a year at home; what he didn’t talk about was the fact they’re going in without the equipment they need to fight in combat. That’s unconscionable, and the Congress is going to stop that.
 
The White House is finally beginning to recognize they don’t have the troops, as I predicted they wouldn’t have, to sustain this deployment. They certainly don’t have the troops to increase and to have a surge without breaking every rule that they set, Tim..
 
…
 
RUSSERT: Do you think most Democrats support bringing home the troops in six months?
 
MURTHA: I think most of the Democrats do, I think most of the public support that. The public spoke in the election. They said, “We want this thing to end. It’s not working.” There’s been too much rhetoric, there’s too much optimist (sp) about this whole thing. We need to get this thing out of the way. And this next election, if they don’t get it over with it’s going to be all about what’s going on in Iraq, and I’m convinced only the Iraqi can do it. We’re finally talking to Syria, we’re finally talking to Iran. Those are the type things they should have been doing a long time ago — direct talks with North Korea. This is international. This is more important to the Europeans, and you saw the British pulled their troops out..
 
Tim, the British pulled their troops out at a time when we’re surging? Does that make any sense at all? And they’re putting more troops in Afghanistan? Well, I think we need to pay attention to Afghanistan. That’s where this whole thing started and where we should have kept our attention.

The following excerpt is noteworthy, because it is one of those rare moments of candor on the actual overall impact of Iraq on the U.S. military:

RUSSERT: Besides setting the deadline of six months and bringing troops home, you’ve also said that a U.S. soldier should not spend more than a year in Iraq; this whole notion of the stop loss where young men and women are kept in the service after they serve in Iraq. You also talked about the level of preparation that a soldier should have before they’re sent to Iraq, and you referred to Peter Pace.
 
He responded to you, and this is what he said before the committee on Tuesday, “If the one-year rest at home, no extensions on the battlefield and no stop loss are implemented, we’ve done our homework on that. If those are the rules, then instead of being able to have the 20 brigades on the ground in Iraq that we require, we would have somewhere between 14 and 19 brigades at most. It would have enormous effect on the battlefield with regard to what’s required versus what’s available. I can simply tell you what the effect is, and the effect is damaging on the battlefield.” He’s saying that you are going to damage our ability on the battlefield.
 
MURTHA: Yeah, yeah. What he’s saying in answer to a leading question by a Republican senator. They kept badgering him to answer this question.
 
Now, what is he doing? He’s violating every rule — every rule they set up for themselves. The troops have to be home for a year — is it wrong to insist they have equipment? Is it wrong to insist they have training before they go into Iraq? And the other thing that I’ve said and everybody’s lost sight of — we’ve lost our strategic reserve.. We could not respond to a threat to our national security — China or Iran or any other country that were to threaten us, we couldn’t respond because we’ve completely depleted the readiness.
 
You saw an article in The Washington Post the other day — National Guard, 90 percent of the units are below the rightness level to be deployed. It’s almost exactly the same in the regular forces. We have no active reserve, no ground forces that can be deployed. So he’s breaking all his rules by reducing the standards, taking people and keeping people in, and then sending them back without equipment. The public agrees with me. We should not send troops into combat if they don’t have equipment and if they don’t have the training they need.
 
 

Related posts:

1. Nothing is Too Good For Our Boys So That’s What We’ll Give Them: Nothing: Part 3
2. Nothing is Too Good for Our Boys, Redux
3. Put Up or Shut Up