By Staff
The Bush administration has just about run its course, but even at a too-little-too-late pace, it sure was refreshing to see old-school Defense Secretary Robert Gates (he served under Papa Bush) fire Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey over the shocking neglect of injured veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
It's called accountability and has been absent from government-loathing neocon Washington since 2001.
Gates must have been out of the loop for the memo about how the younger George Bush and his wrecking crew dispose of things which demand accountability.
Recall the outcome of previous poor performances such as former CIA director George Tenet's intelligence that it was a "slam dunk" Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction, so we should invade Iraq.
Of course, since World War II, Pakistan and North Korea getting nuclear bombs, genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, China's invasion of Korea, Russia's invasion of Afghanistan and the Shah of Iran's fall all caught our "intelligence agencies" off guard.
There was Gen. Tommy Franks, in charge of that invasion, whose decisions resulted in an insurgency forming.
Finally, Paul Bremer bungled the occupation of Iraq, strengthening the insurgency, which eventually flowered into full-blown civil war.
You remember how sternly they were dealt with.
Bush awarded Medals of Freedom!
Why has this administration been so nonchalant about shameful blunders, from low-level punishments at Abu Ghraib prison to FEMA Director Michael Brown, late of the International Arabian Horse Association, and his "heck of a job" in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? At root, they disdain government as any kind of positive force.
Incompetence has never been a firing offense in the Bush administration.
Ask Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, who presided over debacle after debacle for years until he was essentially voted out of a non-elective position in the November 2006 mid-term elections.
Blame game: The chief strategy of those who talked the United States into invading Iraq and are now determined to talk their way out of any responsibility for the mess they made is to blame the Iraqis for not seizing the democracy we wanted to impose on them.
U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, who visited the Battle Creek veterans hospital Saturday afternoon, said that night at the Cass County Republicans' Lincoln Day dinner in Edwardsburg, "I was very alarmed – as I'm sure all of you were – to see these stories that emerged about Walter Reed. Defense Secretary Gates is doing an outstanding job getting to the bottom of this and we're going to deal with it as quickly as we can."
"Newsweek's story referenced a Harvard study about the nearly 400,000 servicemen and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and their claims are just sitting there for a year before they're processed. I got a copy of the Harvard study and read it. One of the recommendations is something I intend to do Monday or Tuesday when we come back into session" by reaching out to Democrats.
"That is change the standard for the burden of proof for service-connected injuries," Upton said to applause. "Instead of having it be borne solely by the veteran, we need to say if it's service-connected, they're going to get payment day one. We're going to have an anti-fraud unit to make sure it's not taken advantage of, but they aren't going to have to wait a day for the claims that they need for their disability. We may be able to get this considered on the House floor before the month is out."
And another thing: For those who think the mainstream media don't serve the American public or the national interest, remember where all those TV reports on conditions at Walter Reed originated – with a newspaper, The Washington Post.