Perhaps we can start getting hearings into what led to the Walter Reed fiasco:
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s national security panel, headed by Rep. John Tierney, D-N.Y., scheduled a hearing at the hospital’s auditorium Monday morning. The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients invited to speak includes the medical center’s previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman.
It will be interesting to hear what Weightman has to say on the issue. I really like the idea Chuck Schumer floated yesterday also:
In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for an independent commission, possibly headed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.
Of course the wingnuts will quickly denounce this idea since Powell has been on a truth telling mission about the actual war intelligence. I am sure people inside the administration will also try to block this attempt. Bush already has plans of his own for a commission:
The White House said the president would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed exist at other facilities. Last week, Gates created an outside panel to review the situation at Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.
Yeah – we know how Bush’s “bipartisan commissions” are. They will meet and decide what best to be done just for Bush to say “I don’t like it” and then all their work is wasted. This is like Katrina, with Bush at the helm. He should not be deciding what course of action is to be taken. That is a job for Congress. Oversight does not happen by the person who is in charge of the military, but rather the people who share an equal role in government. Considering the track record of the White House on such scandals, they just need to stay out of it, and with a Democratic congress now chances are good they will be out of the loop until final findings are ready.