Lieberman to Speak for Dems
How about that. Independent Joe Lieberman, back from the wilderness, to deliver the Dem response to Bush’s Saturday radio address on the Walter Reed and VA scandal.
Lieberman, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, plans to say in his brief talk today, which airs shortly after 11 a.m. in most markets, that the reports in the Post “have uncovered completely unacceptable living conditions and inadequate services.”
He listed some points: “Soldiers with brain injuries have gone weeks without being able to get doctors’ appointments. There is not enough staff with the right skills to treat and care for the severely injured troops. And rooms where some soldiers lived were found to be mouldy and infested with rodents.”
He talked about how the White House and Congress “have an urgent obligation now to fix the neglect at Walter Reed and the longer term issues that affect our wounded veterans.”
Among his solutions: Bringing the buildings up to standards that make them reliably clean, safe and comfortable, and make sure no injured soldier has to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to learn if he or she will be reassigned, or discharged from the Army as disabled.
“We must prevent this from every happening again,” he said.
Although Henry Waxman has suggested this is about privatization, the choice of Lieberman suggests this issue is not going to be used to gratuitously smack the Bush administration. Maybe the Dems, limping badly after repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot, figure they need someone with credibility on military matters and have figured out that using the military as a political weapon isn’t working for them. Most likely it’s also a bone to keep Liberman from becoming a Republican. Too much to ask that the Dems are beginning to recognize what a destructive path they are on and might want him to show them the way back.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:58 pm on Friday, March 2, 2007
6 Responses to “Lieberman to Speak for Dems”
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March 2nd, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Army Secretary fired over Walter Reed SNAFU
See previous: “Taking care of the troops” — The rest of the story, Army relieves Walter Reed general of command
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:39 pm
The last of the sane Democrats.
March 3rd, 2007 at 12:17 am
Boy are they reaching. I’m for whatever it takes for improvements.
Those who are eager for socialized medicine ought to take notice. These problems are what happens when a bureaucracy runs things–anything.
March 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 am
“Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the government oversight panel, and fellow committee member Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), told Weightman in a letter that privatization efforts at Walter Reed may have led to the management staff being cut from 300 to less than 60 earlier this year.”
those who are eager for privatized medicine ought to take notice. These problems are what happens when a corporation runs things–anything.
March 3rd, 2007 at 4:26 am
I’m a retired RN who is old enough to remember the medical profession before the government instituted medicare and began the long, slow descent into socialize medicine. Don’t kid yourself. There isn’t a doctor or institution left in this country that doesn’t have to deal with very strict regulation as to both the kind and the level of treatment given, determined not by the individual needs of the patient, but by government statistics. If you want to know why it all costs as much as it does, consider all the little gray middlemen who now determine the cookbook treatments involved in your care, and pray to whatever god you may have that you never come down with anything not in the cookbook.
If you’re unhappy with it, blame yourself and your philosophy that says that a doctor must spend hellish years of hard labor just to become the slave of every person with a sore. I blame the medical profession for allowing themselves to be enslaved.
March 3rd, 2007 at 6:33 am
My Dad died in a VA hospital years ago, but since Bush was not the president no one felt the need to make an issue of it.
These kinds of horror stories are not that unusual. I work for a health care agency and I hear them all the time from all sorts of people.
The truth is health care professionals spend so much time doing paperwork there is not enough time for the patients. You do not have to be a soldier to find that out.