White House Against Troop Pay Increase

President Bush is threatening to veto the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill would increase the pay of enlisted and officers. The White House has objected to sections 804, 809, 845, and 846. Those have already been strickened from the bill. The pay increases appear to be what the White House objects to.

The Army Times reports the White House calls the pay increases "unnecessary."

Bush budget officials said the administration “strongly opposes” both the 3.5 percent raise for 2008 and the follow-on increases, calling extra pay increases “unnecessary.”

“When combined with the overall military benefit package, the president’s proposal provides a good quality of life for service members and their families,” the policy statement says. “While we agree military pay must be kept competitive, the 3 percent raise, equal to the increase in the Employment Cost Index, will do that.”

This administration has no problem approving record breaking spend or sending troops into combat. They wil battle over a 0.5 difference in troop pay. The lack of compassion these people have continue to amaze me.

Jon Soltz of Votevets.org nicely summed up Bush's stupidity.

With the military dreadfully unable to meet recruiting goals, or retain our best men and women, you think the president would see the wisdom of paying troops as much as we possibly can. That's just the practical side of the equation. On the moral side, how could the president possibly oppose a half a percent increase in pay over what he asked for, when he has offered absolutely no hope that troops will ever be able to get out of the Iraqi civil war, and back home?

There is the matter of Bush fighting over military personal pay after his appointee's mismanaged Walter Reed. This is fucking disgraceful.

Kathy Castor On Walter Reed

Kathy Castor talks about the difficulty of finding out the medical status of Corey McGee. Castor was seving on the Hillsborogh County Commission. McGee's family and Castor knew he was in Walter Reed.

Castor said she and McGee’s family had a hard time trying to get a status report on McGee or even track him down. Castor, who wasn’t in Congress at the time, said she enlisted help from election officials, but found the bureaucracy incredibly difficult to navigate.

Castor’s speech came during the debate today on the Wounded Warrior Assistance Act of 2007, which is supposed to address many of the deficiencies uncovered by a Washington Post investigation earlier this year.
She said the legislation is critical to “erase the moral stain on our nation’s conscience.”

"Supporting our troops does not mean that you simply salute as you send them off to war, ask them to serve and sacrifice for our great country," said Castor. "But it also means that they are supported when they come home."

In related news: the Wounded Warrior Assistance Act passed 426-0. The White House said the bill was premature and Congress should wait for the task force findings on Walter Reed. It is amazing how the White House fights Congress on stupid stuff and keep controversies on the front page.

One of the best parts of the bill is for each wounded U.S. military personal to have independent medical advocate.

(a) Assignment of Independent Medical Advocate- Section 1222 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:

`(d) Independent Medical Advocate for Members Before Medical Evaluation Boards- (1) The Secretary of each military department shall ensure, in the case of any member of the armed forces being considered by a medical evaluation board under that Secretary's supervision, that the member has access to a physician or other appropriate health care professional who is independent of the medical evaluation board.

`(2) The physician or other health care professional assigned to a member shall--

`(A) serve as an advocate for the best interests of the member; and

`(B) provide the member with advice and counsel regarding the medical condition of the member and the findings and recommendations of the medical evaluation board.'.

Quote of the Day

"I found the situation at Walter Reed to be overblown by both politicians and the media."

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH)

Was she expecting the rats and cockroaches to be bigger?

Unseat Bill Young

Karen Thurman of the Florida Democratic Party is launching a full court press against Rep. Bill Young. The Congressman was silent about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. Young came up with hard-to-swallow excuses for his inaction.

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

Florida Democrats is urging citizens to write letters to newspapers in protest against Young.

Bill Young's Lame Excuses

Bill Young offers his reason for not blowing the whistle on Walter Reed.

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

So Young was supporting the military establishment over the soldiers getting fucked over at Walter Reed. Fan-fucking-tastic!

“What else do you want me to do? I am not going to go into a hospital and push my way into a medical situation,” Young said after the hearing.

Young said he “separates my life as a member of Congress and the work I do on a volunteer basis,” visiting military hospitals with his wife almost every week.

Since Young saw mistreatment of soldiers on me time he was off-the-clock. Well, that settles that. Now doesn't it?

Walter Reed Petition

John Edwards has a petition to improve the health care at Walter Reed and other VA facilities.

This week, Congress is holding hearings prompted by the scandal at the Walter Reed Army Medical center, but Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg.

We must speak up right now to ensure Congress takes on this nationwide problem and guarantees quality health care to every American service member and veteran.

Please add your name today:

Sign the petition.

Walter Reed Testimony

SSG John Daniel Shannon testified to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee about his experience as a patient at Walter Reed.

My wife constantly reminds me that I have benefits I’ve earned. Left to myself, I don’t really care most of the time. My professional ethics as a Sergeant are: “My soldiers will always come before myself”; “confirm, deny, and never lie”; “no excuses, mission first”; and “no one is more professional than I.” These ethics have dictated my growth, over the years, into a leader of personnel who truly believes in self-sacrifice. In fact, these very ethics guided my decision-making process on the day I was wounded, while making sure one of my men was not. Finally, these ethics lead me to seek help for a broken system in the only way I believe remains.

The command keeps talking to us about using the “open door policy.” The open door policy is a system implemented by military leadership at all levels that allows soldiers to raise their concerns about any given situation. If that soldier’s concerns are not satisfactorily met by a leader, that soldier can take those concerns to the next level of authority and continue this process until their concerns are addressed. I understand this policy and agree with its intention. However, during the time I’ve been here, I’ve seen the chain-of-concern passing our needs and concerns up the chain frequently. When changes are not made, the open door policy ultimately becomes a tool for leaders to squash problems and keep them in-house. Now, once this situation has been made public, the “powers that be” see fit to relieve some people of duty who are doing the best they can with what they’ve been given.

This is an obvious example of a broken system trying to survive when what it really needs is to be fixed. I lost the ability to trust the system and sought an open door that would bring public attention to the problems here. Things are now getting done. Some of the lower leaders at Walter Reed have paid a price—possibly with their very careers—as action is taken by higher levels of authority to show they are “fixing” the problem while, at the same time, trying to save themselves from accountability for their dereliction of duty. I believe that is an indicator of how the situation was handled in the past. And I quote, “There’s not a problem until the wrong people have a problem with it.” And, finally, sometimes the wrong people are made to pay the price for someone else’s mistakes.

Thank you again for allowing me to the opportunity to share my experience at Walter Reed with this Committee.

Shannon was released while still being disoriented. Shannon waited weeks with no one from the Veterans Administration contacting him about when he will continue his treatment.

The rooms at Walter Reed would put a crack house to shame.

Spec. Jeremy Duncan, who was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, spoke about dilapidated conditions in the residential structure at Walter Reed, known as Building 18.

He testified that the walls of his room had holes in them and black mold growing on them.

“It wasn’t for anybody to live in a room like that,” Specialist Duncan said. “Most wounded soldiers, you know, you have just come out of recovery, you have weakened immune systems — the black mold can do damage to people.”

In short, he said, “I wouldn’t live there if I had to.”

This is just the beginning of the horror stories.

Privatization At Walter Reed

The Army Times published a portion of a memo Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi sent to Maj. Gen. George Weightman.

The memorandum “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,’” the committee’s letter states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The letter said Walter Reed also awarded a five-year, $120-million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

They also found that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed had drooped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, 2007, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with only 50 private workers.

Conservative ideologically believes in privatization. The problem is they can't prove it works. What privatization really is about is throwing money at political cronies. Case in point is Al Neffgen.

When he spoke at an employee town hall meeting recently, CEO Al Neffgen of IAP Worldwide Services, Inc. was making a point about customer satisfaction.

For IAP, the customer is the government, and the company’s services range from building Army camps in Iraq to providing ice to US hurricane victims. To Neffgen, a veteran of more than 30 years in government contracting, the point was important. Customer satisfaction matters, especially when a company is growing by acquisition.

The Defense Department's Defense Contract Audit Agency found Halliburton was aware of accounting problems and refused to turn over documents.

"It has come to my attention that DCAA has been denied access to and/or copies of internal audit documents and reports performed on KBR operations," the letter said. "This is of great concern to me and is not in the spirit of open communication, trust and cooperation that we agreed to" at an earlier meeting. The letter was sent by Francis P. Summers Jr., a regional Defense Contract Audit Agency director in Texas, to Al Neffgen, KBR's chief operations officer.

An off-the-record Halliburton official said that the documents were confidential. The official implied that an audit may violate the law. Halliburton believes the taxpayer doesn't have the right to know if the company is providing proper services in Iraq. Neffgan defended the overbilling in testimony to Congress. Mr. Neffgen has interesting ideas about keeping the customer happy.

In Bizaaro World, David Bernstein blames public health care for Walter Reed's problems.

If private companies had mismanaged outpatient care for veterans the way the V.A. system has, there would be strong calls from all the usual quarters for a government takeover, and proclamations of how we can't trust "greedy" for-profit companies to take care of veterans. Funny how this thought process doesn't seem to work in reverse, except among "free market ideologues," who have been criticizing the V.A. for years.

It is hard to believe Bernstein made it through law school.

Why Bill Young Remained Silent On Walter Reed

What I get on bloggers about is to pay attention to the details. Think for five seconds before blowing off a story as unimportant. The Washington Post ran a story about the horrible conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Bill Young was quoted in the story.

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

Young said that even after Kiley left Walter Reed to become the Army's surgeon general, "if anything could have been done to correct problems, he could have done it."

The Buzz linked to the story. Susan S started the first comment that set off a negative avalanche for the Congressman. Beverly Young gave a lengthy defense of her husband in the comments. In their defense, Bill and Beverly Young have donated much of their personal time to helping wounded soldiers. That is well-documented. The question is why they didn't do more? A powerful Congressman like Young could hold press conferences and get on talk shows to create pressure to improve conditions at Walter Reed. He didn't.

Republicans go against their best judgement to keep the White House from having to deal with controversy. Party discipline outweighs all other considerations. Salon documented in 2005 that wounded soldiers had to pay for their own meals. One soldier said, "You know they treat us like shit up here."

Young could have held a press conference with wounded soldiers and have them tell their stories of horrible treatment. Instead, he refused to publicly speak out. His loyalty to the White House outweighed his disgust about walter Reed. This explains everything that is wrong with the Republican Party.

Susan S deserves a lot of credit for bringing this story forward.