Like most Americans, I've been shocked recently by reports of the
conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Like
everyone else, I assumed that our veterans who are returning wounded
from Iraq and Afghanistan were receiving the best care possible. After
all, Walter Reed is a prestigious army hospital, and is supposed to be
among the best hospitals in the country.

Do the paragraphs below, which I've culled from various media sources,
sound like one of the best hospitals in the country?

"Staff Sergeant John Shannon, 43, whose eye and skull were shattered
by a sniper in Ramadi, was sent to Walter Reed in November 2004. On
arrival he was given a map of the grounds and told to make his own way
to his room. Badly disoriented and barely able to see, he had to hold
himself upright by sliding against the walls, asking anybody he could
find for directions."

"The Post reported that black mold was thick on the walls and that
roaches ran rampant, except when they were pushed out of the way by
rats and mice. The wounded soldiers, many of whom are wheelchair
bound, had to make their own way a quarter, or half, mile up the
street to the hospital for treatment."

"Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case
managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are
close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the
desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next
appointment."

"On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a
chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers
dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in
charge of others at risk of suicide."

According to Diane Benson, mother of Latseen Benson, 27, who was
recovering from a double amputation at the Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, her son met a parade of VIPs. Every time the President, the
Vice-President or the Defense Secretary passed by, the military
hospital would be thoroughly scrubbed. But the improvements wouldn't
last long.

"I wasn't so bothered by the rats, although there were a lot running
around outside, but I really wanted his room to be swept and kept
clean," she said. "You couldn't get people to mop the blood and urine
from the floor while my son was there with his legs wide open."

Like many Americans, I keep asking one simple question. How could this
have happened in the United States of America? Doesn't President Bush
stand up there almost on a daily basis and try to excoriate anyone who
questions his handling of the war or how ill-equipped our soldiers
are? Much less anyone who disagrees with the Iraq War itself. They're
dismissed as left-wing kooks who are undermining the morale of our
people who are serving in the military. So wouldn't you think that the
Administration would be on top of this issue? If for no other reason
than good PR?

The Bush Administration has been in full spin mode since news of the
conditions of Walter Reed became public. President Bush said in his
weekly radio broadcast on Saturday that he was appalled by the
conditions at the prestigious army hospital, and announced an inquiry
into veterans' care.

"This is unacceptable to me, it is unacceptable to the country and
it's not going to continue," he said.

But it's quite likely that the Bush Administration's push for
privatization may have helped create the Walter Reed disaster. Getting
much less attention in the media are reports that a five-year, $120
million contract awarded to a firm run by a former executive from
Halliburton (a multi-national corporation where Vice President Dick
Cheney once served as CEO) will be probed at a Subcommittee on
National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing scheduled for Monday.

A letter sent by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to Major General George
W. Weightman, the former commander at Walter Reed, asks him to
"address the implications of a memorandum from Garrison Commander
Peter Garibaldi sent through you to Colonel Daryl Spencer, the
Assistant Chief of Staff for Resource Management with the U.S. Army
Medical Command" in order to better prepare himself for his testimony
at the hearing.

"This memorandum, which we understand was written in September 2006,
describes how the Army's decision to privatize support services at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of 'highly
skilled and experienced personnel,'" Waxman's letter continues. "As a
result, according to the memorandum, 'WRAMC Base Operations and
patient care services are at risk of mission failure.'"

"We have learned that in January 2006, Walter Reed awarded a five-year
$120 million contract to a company called IAP Worldwide Services for
base operations support services, including facilities management,"
Waxman continues. "IAP is one of the companies that experienced
problems delivering ice during the response to Hurricane Katrina."

Before the contract, according to the memorandum, over 300 federal
employees provided facilities management services at Walter Reed, but
that number dropped to less than 60 the day before IAP took over.

"Yet instead of hiring additional personnel, IAP apparently replaced
the remaining 60 federal employees with only 50 IAP personnel," Waxman
writes.

A year ago, the Government Accountability Office "dismissed a protest
filed on behalf of employees at the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center,
ruling that the employee group had no standing to challenge the
outcome of a public-private job competition initiated prior to January
2005," GovExec.com reported.

One has to wonder why this aspect of this story has received so little
attention. It seems to explain a lot, doesn't it? The mainstream media
has been obsessively reporting on the conditions in Walter Reed
itself, and has been largely focused on which of the medical center's
administrators were being kicked to the curb, and which politicans
have had what to say about the whole subject.

Fox News, always a world unto itself, hasn't even gone that far.
Instead, they've been reporting on more important issues. Anna Nicole.
Brittany's hair. American Idol nudie pics. Al Gore's perfidious
hypocrisy. Obama's connection to racist churches. Hillary's connection
to Satan.

Have you heard a peep of indignation from Bill O'Reilly against the
Republican Congress who, for the last six years, not only stood by and
allowed the Walter Reed debacle to happen, but actually conspired in
the abomination? Not at all. He would rather spend a few hundred
segments skewering Cindy Sheehan or David Letterman.

Has 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? Not when Rush Limbaugh was busy
blaming anonymous Huffington Post commenters (not bloggers - but those
who made their comments in the ope-to-anyone, including dittoheads,
forums) for wishing the Vice President dead.

Standing in front of the annual Conservative Political Action
Conference, Ann Coulter didn't call Republicans to the floor for their
years of undermining and under-funding veterans. She instead decided
to make use of that time to call Democratic presidential candidate
John Edwards a "faggot."

And the National Review's Jonah Goldberg, instead of trying to get to
the bottom of this national embarrassment, spent most of his energy
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".

In short, the talking heads on The Right, both in the media and in the
Republican Party, have instinctively attacked anyone who questioned
who was responsible for the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed
Medical Center. After all, Republicans have been in-charge, and so the
questioning of any aspect of this issue has been dismissed, of course,
at nothing more than thinly-veiled, politically-motivated attacks.

The conservative politicians have rightly started back-pedaling. They
see the writing on the wall. They realize that there's no way they can
use this issue to launch political attacks against Democrats. So
they're out there making their necessary speeches expressing their
outrage and moral indignation over the conditions at Walter Reed, and
demanding that someone be held accountable. Which, in Republican
terms, means someone should be fired so we can all move on to more
important things. Like Faith-Based Initiatives. Throwing the teaching
of Evolution out of public schools. Making sure gays and lesbians
can't get married. Instead, they let the propaganda wing of the
Republican Part (Fox News, Right-Wing talk shows) do the dirty work
for them.

They don't want us to look at this issue. They know that if Americans
are aware of all the facts, the Republicans might very well suffer
dearly for turning the care of our returning veterans over to a
private company that "is led by Al Neffgen, a former senior
Halliburton official who testified before our Committee in July 2004
in defense of Halliburton's exorbitant charges for fuel delivery and
troop support in Iraq."

I think all Americans agree that something must be done at Walter Reed
Medical Center, and immediately. But what I'll be watching most
closely in the coming weeks is whether all the rhetoric over this
issue is turned into action, or if this all just goes away when
Americans are distracted by some other shiney object and diversion.

That's all the Republicans and their Right-Wing media arm are waiting
for. If they can batten down the hatches, fire a few high level
people, and just hang on, this issue will go away. IAP Worldwide
Services can go back to its highly profitable business of providing
inadequate health care for our returning veterans and supporting
Republican candidates. And Republicans can keep mouthing off about how
those godless Liberals and Democrats care less about America's
soldiers than the God-fearing Conservative high-steppers on the Right.

Personally, I think Walter Reed Medical Center is just another
casualty in the "culture war" that Right-Wing Christians are so
obsessed about. It's another casualty in the Republicans' war against
American Democracy, as they seek to privatize our governmental
institutions, and enrich corporations (by far their largest source of
political contributions) to the detriment of public programs.

Walter Reed Medical Center is a good example of what's going on in
American culture in general, where corporations are taking over our
very infrastructure and seeking ways to charge Americans a fee for
their love of country and patriotism. In this most immediate example
of this struggle, our veterans are suffering the most from the
Republicans' misguided experiment. I hope and pray that the American
public will wake up from its daze, demand that more is done than just
fire a few high profile administrators, and remember who is
responsible for creating this mess in the first place.

In the interim, I simple pray that our soldiers returning wounded from
combat can hang on long enough to be afforded the kind of care they so
rightly deserve, that somewhere amid all the rhetoric and
chest-beating, someone actually gets something done.