He's kinda screwed no matter what. Suppose he fires the head of the VA. Why? For knowing it was ****ed up and doing nothing about it? Hell, thats his whole administration. For NOT knowing it was ****ed up in the first place? Again...his WHOLE administration. For failure to provide adequate oversight? Thats three for three.
I'm reminded of the Walter Reed scandal. In 2004 and 2005 articles appeared in 'The Post', and 'Salon' interviewing a 1LT Goodrum who was being court martialed for seeking medical care away from Walter Reed's terrible conditions.
Army officials would claim in 2007 they were surprised by the articles published in the 'Washington Post'- first time they heard of any of this.... :roll:
But wait there is more... in 1999 the problems were identified to senior military officials, nothing was done. In 2001 Cpt. Drake made his superiors, Col. Carroll and Col. Bolton aware of the problems. Gen. Kiley toured the facility and refused to approve funding for improvements in 2002. So this was firmly an issue at the very beginning of the BushII administration. The huge stress the War in Iraq put on ALL of the military medical services should have been a touchstone of a President who would later be heralded as so concerned about the welfare of the troops who were wounded in the war he started.
So what happened after the 'Washington Post' ran the series.... Gates is shocked and appalled- Sec of the Army Harvey fires the Commander of Walter Reed (Gen Weightman) who had been on duty for a whole 6 months... :doh Harvey hires Gen Kiley to run the hospital, and is in turn fired by Gates as not moving fast enough. Kiley retires when the new Sec of Army decides he should be relieved.
That's about it so far as holding people accountable- BushII appoints the Clinton's Sec of H & H Donna Shalala and Bob Dole to head a committee to investigate and recommend fixes.
The VA gets drug into it and promises to overhaul their system as well.
So for 7 years the chain of command knew about the horrible conditions in building 18 (Gen Kiley lived across the street from Blg 18) but not until the 'Washington Post' publishes does the stuff hit the fan.
To quote the White House press release- " first learned of the troubling allegations regarding Walter Reed form the stories this weekend from the 'Washington Post'."
However his press sec Snow claims he doesn't know how the President didn't know about the conditions from all the visits for the last 5 years.
I don't recall President Bush making a major daytime speech on the scandal. When Snow was asked if the President would comment further, the reply was no.
So it does seem like the same old song, but now a President is front and center on demanding a fix, rather than delegate the issue to the SoD.
Anyway as a vet I can say if there was a pattern of cover-up and vets died- people need to go to jail. If supervisors up the chain knew and buried the reports they need to go to jail. My personal thought on the VA is it needs to adopt a voucher program to allow vets to go to local civilian hospitals for care.
Now some posters do the 'our vets deserve the best' dance... well perhaps our wounded vets, but I have been around long enough to know that ain't gonna happen and most vets risked nothing but a paper cut in defense of our Grand and Glorious Republic. Still it would be nice to be treated at least as well as someone on medicare- imagine the stink if Medicare patients had to go to only a handful of facilities and see only the doctors inside that building....