Crack the Whip, Claire!

Missouri’s junior senator, Clair McCaskill (who I worked tirelessly to elect) is emerging at the forefront of the Medical Hold scandal. After careful and considerable deliberation, McCaskill issued a statement yesterday calling for the firing of Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley. McCaskills remarks came in the wake of Maj. Gen. George Weightman, Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s commander, being relieved of his command earlier in the day.

“It’s clear that General Kiley, the surgeon general at the Army, knew about the conditions at Building 18,” McCaskill said. “The irony of this situation is General [George] Weightman stepped up. He’s only been there a year.” McCaskill said in calling for the resignation or firing of General Kiley.

Kiley is the former commander of Walter Reed, and the Washington Post reported Thursday that he was informed of the problems in 2003 that, unpalliated, have emerged as a scandal in 2007. Yet Weightman is relieved of command, and Kiley is back in charge.

“I Felt Sick”

“This is about a system that is not trying to make it easy for the wounded to get what they deserve,” McCaskill said during a news conference Thursday with Obama after introducing their bill.

[Snip past the commentary about Obama’s rock-star status]

How did McCaskill, still waiting to move into a permanent office on the Hill, seize the reins on such a highly charged issue with such a high-megawatt candidate for the White House?

Upon reading the Sunday newspaper reports, “I felt sick,” McCaskill said.

“Somewhere along the line, someone saw this and said to themselves, ‘We’re not supposed to complain.’ Any fresh set of eyes looking at rotting ceilings and peeling mold, and realizing our battle-weary men and women are being forced into those circumstances would say, ‘Whoa. This is wrong.’ Somebody ought to have pounded the table somewhere.”

She directed her staff to collect information about the problems and how she could help fix them.

In the Senate hierarchy, McCaskill knows her place — fourth from the bottom in seniority. She figured more senior colleagues would quickly wade into the controversy. The outrage level was blinking red, after all. Still, there was no harm in being prepared.

At the time she directed her “staff” to get on it, that staff still consisted of one overworked legislative assistant – but she has since added more, including an infantry Captain who was part of the Iraqi invasion to advise her on military affairs. One of his first acts was to go tour Walter Reed.

Earlier this week, McCaskill and her top aides gathered in her small, temporary office to prep her for her own tour Wednesday. A key question to the hospital brass would be: In light of the problems, where is the accountability going to be in the senior chain of command?

McCaskill was already cynical: “It’s going to be like the prison,” she told them, referring to the scandal over Abu Ghraib, a U.S. military prison in Baghdad. “The guys at the bottom will be held accountable and the guys at the top will not.”

Stepping up

After her tour, she said most of the top officials she met recognized how steep a climb they face to restore trust. But some “seemed very closed-minded and defensive,” she said. “One bragged this process has to be dispassionate, which seems to me to be oxymoronic.”

Her bill with Obama has begun to draw bipartisan support, including the backing of Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican. Hearings on the problems will start next week.

“Introducing legislation is not anything exceptional,” said Ross K. Baker, an expert on the Senate at Rutgers University. “What is exceptional is if it eventually improves the conditions at Walter Reed. She would be in a charmed circle. Very few freshmen are able to author a major piece of legislation.”

Keep it up, Claire. You occupy the seat once held by Harry S Truman. It is your legacy as the occupant of that seat to hold feet to the fire, blisters be damned.

McClatchy recaps the scandal highlights for your convenience

Problems at Walter Reed

The problems at Walter Reed pertain not to the quality of medical treatment for wounded soldiers but rather to the care for those who are well enough to be outpatients:

•Seriously wounded soldiers outnumber hospital staff 17 to 1. As a result, recovering soldiers, some with psychological issues, are asked to oversee other patients.

•Case managers for the wounded are overwhelmed and sometimes untrained.

•Building 18, a decrepit former hotel housing 80 recovering soldiers, had mold on the walls, secondhand furniture, soiled carpets, rodents and cockroaches.

•Bureaucratic delays stem from Army computer systems that do not interact, leaving the typical soldier to file 22 different documents with eight Army commands.

•Disoriented patients and their relatives get little help dealing with the 113-acre campus or the confusing paperwork.

[crossposted from Watching Those We Chose]

Assault on Dignity

Just when I think I have reached the limits of my disgust and anger at the Walter Reed 'medical hold' scandal, another outrage comes to light, and new heights are achieved.

I have avoided this topic because it just offends me on so many levels. It offends me as a healthcare professional. It offends me as the daughter, sister and wife of a Sailor, a Soldier and an Airman, respectively. It offends me as an American Citizen, ostensibly served by the sacrifices of our military. It offends me as a human being.

Honestly, I don’t believe I am in possession of a single, solitary unoffended sensibility.

The level of disgust and outrage I feel is not compatible with a reasoned discussion of the subject, and this topic is too important to me to alienate anyone with an invective-laden tirade that questions the parentage of various command level medical officers and elected officials.

Retaliation

How dare those soldiers in Building 18 talk to the press and allow the public to become aware of the conditions troops in medical hold have had to deal with, and the indignities they have already suffered?

The troops in medical hold have been told they will now roll out at 0600, and have their quarters ready for inspection by 0700. Not to worry, amputees and others with special needs! They have break-away uniforms for you!

These are combat veterans who have paid a heavy price with a precious coin, at the behest of their government, and they are being treated like they are back in basic training. It is outrageous. It is maddening. It is unconscionable.

And no matter how the pentagon tries to spin it from the lower levels while Gates expresses his outrage, this is a retaliatory move, and the interests of the troops are not being served.

I am curious about something and have been since the story broke. Suddenly elected officials are demanding accountability, and medical officers are falling all over themselves to accept responsibility.

Well, Duh. Command knew what the deal was. Command always knows, and don’t believe otherwise. Those soldiers weren’t sequestered to Bedlam, unsupervised, existing entirely in a vacuum.

My first thought was to wonder where the hell they have been for the last four years.

Are they admitting that all those trips out to Walter Reed with news crews in tow were just 15-minute photo-ops; benefiting only the politicians by having pictures snapped while they look admiringly at a plucky amputee who just wants to get back to his unit?

Are they admitting, ipso facto, that those soldiers cease to matter as soon as the lens-caps go back on and the mics go dead, and their utility to the politician has been expended?

I think we should trawl the nets and find those pictures and hang them around the necks of the media whores who send our young men and women off to fight and die in unjust and unjustified wars – the media whores who are deeply concerned for 15 minutes while the cameras roll – the media whores who allowed troops who did their duty live in squalor as they struggle to recover from war wounds.

Failing to step up and do what’s right, neglecting ones responsibilities – these are the kinds of things that prompt me to press a hot iron against your flesh to brand the word feckless onto your person.

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]