Official thread # 5---- Walter Reed neglect hearings on Cspan 1:

[Sydnie]

Thread 1 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x340490#340490

Thread 2 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x340919#340919

Thread 3 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=341287&mesg_id=341287

Thread 4 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=341287&mesg_id=341287

House hearing on Walter Reed neglect starting on CSpan1 Now
Posted by Greeby on Mon Mar-05-07 08:51 AM

http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspan_rm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS

[tridim]

1. New panel is up.. CSPAN will be switching to the House in 4 minutes.

Will it move to CSPAN3?

[Sydnie]

6. Probably have to switch to the online coverage at that point

Link at the top of this thread.

[POAS]

7. I'm trying to follow on radio (XM)

[Sydnie]

10. C-SPAN radio should not be leaving the coverage then

they just announced that, so you should be good to go!

[POAS]

12. Yea they just announced a 10 minute

break for a "technical issue"

[eleny]

16. I can't get it on C-span radio

I get some discussion but not the hearing. Do you havea link for radio?

[POAS]

20. Radio is not covering right now, in a

10 minute break

[Sydnie]

22. POAS said they are taking a 10 minute break for tech problems

:shrug:

[POAS]

23. I think cspan website has streaming up!

[Sydnie]

31. Radio working now - LINK

http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspanradio.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CSR

[Cameron27]

17. No, it's not on cspan3

I don't know where the heck to find it.

[POAS]

18. "3" is replaying CPAC

right now discussing "The Future of Liberalism"

Glad I have the sound off!

:puke:

[Quiet_Dem_Mom]

35. CBSNews.com is also streaming the hearing.

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=1n

A brief CBS promo streams before the hearing video begins.

[Cameron27]

2. Let's get it properly started

K&R

:kick:

[POAS]

3. K & R

Thanks Sydnie

[flashlighter]

4. hello

:kick:

[POAS]

5. Hi and welcome to DU

[Monkeyman]

8. I have never seen so many Brass covering their butts like this

[POAS]

11. They have big brass ones...and I don't mean

b***ls either.

[tridim]

13. Covering their brAsses.

Good one!

[POAS]

15. brASSES, I like that!

[Hepburn]

21. My thoughts exactly.

Do I correctly understand tht Kiley said he only heard about this because of the WaPo article?

[Sydnie]

24. He was very specfic

in saying that he only heard about THESE Particular problems from the WP. Not that he hadn't heard of others though.

[POAS]

9. Need 2 more Rec's

[eleny]

14. K&R

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

19. k&r

[Ivote]

27. Unbelievable

K&R
:kick:

[eleny]

25. CNN reporting on it - A clip of Kiley just played

He blamed the management "at the junior level". I missed that earlier. He can never take a moment of blame.

He's another person with no conscience.

[atreides1]

48. Just another example

Of the lack of leadership that permeates the military at the top, no real leader would point fingers at their subordinates or their superiors. A real leader would have stated that the failure was theirs
and theirs alone.

Kiley, like so many who lead the US military are no better then the hacks that surrounded men like Hitler and Stalin, they will do anything to save their asses, even sacrifice those under their command!!!!!

[jmowreader]

98. I think that's kinda unfair in this case

I'd like to know some things:

First, what was Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC)'s funding level in President Clinton's last budget? We need to go back that far, at least, because it was the last budget we had before Bush started stacking up bodies like cordwood.

Second, what was the Bush funding levels for WRAMC between the time Bush submitted his first DoD budget and the time of the war?

And third, how much has the funding gone up since the start of the Iraq War?

We can dump a lot of this crap directly on Kevin Kiley's pointy head since he was the Surgeon General of the Army for the last three years, he fucking LIVES at WRAMC, and even a quarter-ass general will walk the grounds of the installation he's assigned to on occasion. There's no way he couldn't have gone into Building 18, noticed that there are holes in the walls, and at least asked for a skid of plaster and a box of trowels, and enough copies of "Plastering For Dummies" to pass out to the patients. Call it occupational therapy or something.

I'll tell you where the vast majority of the blame needs to be placed, though, and it's NOT with the shitty generals the Army put in charge of the Medical Department. It's with Bush. He has systematically defunded the government, and there are two reasons he did it: he wanted to save enough money from the federal budget to kinda sorta pay for his tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent of all Americans, and he wanted to fuck up the operations of the government enough to "prove" that only "responsible private business" (you know, like Halliburton, Enron, SAIC, DynCorp...) was able to provide the functions of government that, for some strange reason, the fat, bloated, irresponsible federal government was perfectly able to provide for the 224 years the United States had existed prior to his stealing office.

Anyway, you strip the government of all the money it needs to operate, and shit falls apart. This General Weightman guy they canned last week, who his subordinates claim was at least not a total prick like Kevin Kiley is, probably got barely enough funding to provide direct patient care. Maybe NOT even enough funding to do it. If he needed $500 million to care for the people Bush got blown up in Iraq and shot up in Afghanistan, and all he had was $450 million, he wasn't going to spend any money on facilities maintenance...because the money was simply not there. If General Weightman had diverted the $30 million he probably needs to fix the place up (new plaster, new plumbing, new roofing, a truckload of Janitor In A Drum, guns to kill the rats, a couple skids of Raid...) from patient care to facilities maintenance, the news would be full of stories about how he shortchanged patient care.

Right now we have a perfect opportunity to start rolling back some of Bush's tax cuts. If we're slick about it, we can make Bush happy as hell to sign it, too. We simply up the top two brackets maybe one percent, up the capital gains tax rate one percent, put a ceiling on a few tax credits, earmark one hundred percent of the new revenue for military heal thcare, and inform Shrub that if he vetoes it every newspaper in America will have a story on the front page claiming Bush's nonsupport of the troops. I think we can get a veto-proof majority in both houses for this because the increase is not onerous, it's only on people who can clearly afford it, and all of the revenue is going to something every decent American supports.

[atreides1]

103. Here's some of the information you wanted

1:
S. 2132 - Department of Defense
Appropriation Bill, 1999
Reported from the Committee on Appropriations on June 4, 1998, by a unanimous vote of 27-0.

The Committee's recommendation for the Defense Health Program is $10.3 billion, which is $281.5 million above the budget request


S. 2593 -- Department of Defense Appropriation Bill for FY 2001
Reported as an original bill from the Committee on Appropriations on May 18, 2000, by a unanimous vote of 28-0. S. Rept. 106-298.
Of the $14.19 billion appropriated in this title, a total of $12.13 billion is provided for the defense health program, including: an additional $337 million for defense medical research programs; $175 million for breast cancer research, $100 million for prostate cancer research, and an additional $137 million for the Senate Armed Services Committee's reported retiree pharmacy benefit



H.R. 3338 -- Department of Defense Appropriation Bill for FY 2002
Reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute from the Committee on Appropriations on December 4, 2001, by a vote of 29-0; no written report.
The Committee recommends an appropriation of $18.38 billion for the Defense Health Program, which is $477.5 million above the budget request.



S. 1438 -- The National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2002
S. 1438 approves the budget request of $17.9 billion to fully fund the Defense Health Program, including new benefits authorized in FY 2001 and an expansion of long-term benefits, including coverage for comprehensive care in skilled nursing facilities, home health care, and extended benefits for military dependents with certain disabilities.


Looking at the FY 2003 budget there was no dollar amount shown for the Defense Health Program, which includes all military health programs to include WRARMC. It could mean that the amount for DHP was lumped together with the rest of the appropriations.

[jmowreader]

106. Thanks, and it doesn't look good for the home team

The military offers a service called the Exceptional Family Member Program, or EFMP.

The kind of dependents the Army calls "exceptional" the civilian populace calls "special." Better known as "differently abled," "handicapable" or whatever the phrase of the day is. EFMP is by far the most expensive part of the military's medical budget, the membership rolls get bigger every year (especially since our leadership decided turning Iraq into the Nuclear Battlefield was a good idea, and our troops decided that impregnating their wives after every rotation to Iraq was a good idea...I live right outside a military base and work in a store soldiers like, and not a day passes you don't see a soldier under the age of 25--they're fairly obvious--with his pregnant wife and their four children) and they're expanding services.

Which is good, if you consider that a very large part of the reason children have to be enrolled in EFMP is that they were created from seed Bush's war deformed, but it's still expensive as all get out.

I would like to find a hard number on the EFMP budget. I believe that if you were to pull the EFMP fraction out of the total healthcare budget and correct for inflation, you'll find the actual amount of dollars the military has to spend on healthcare has gone down since the last time we had a legally elected president, while the load on the healthcare system has gone up.

[POAS]

26. Radio back live NOW

[Sydnie]

28. Testimony today was more about lack of medical care than

it was about bldg 18! Isn't that the truth!

[POAS]

32. Trying to get the focus on the system failures

and away from a specific problem at B-18.

[eleny]

30. Thank you!

[POAS]

34. your welcome :-)

[POAS]

29. We always get "We're going to do better" what makes

these promises different.

[eleny]

33. Yes - it's their highest priority, for sure

[POAS]

36. Waxman up

listing those fired recently to Gen Schoomacher(sp)

Sighting previous reports on failures.

I did not know--------I was not aware------he's following the script!

[eleny]

41. Waxman is really putting it to him

He's got the General boxed in with specifics. I wish we could see him. Thankfully, C-Span is showing it later today.

[Marie26]

37. Has anyone mentioned the privitization?

IAP or Cerberus? Shadiness in how IAP got the contract? IAP's Halliburton connections? I'm really hoping they delve into the corruption behind the mismanagement.

[Sydnie]

39. Not in such specfic detail

Just that it was happening.

[w8liftinglady]

40. waxman did

[POAS]

42. Yep, don't remember the

specifics though. I can probably summarize---"I knew NOTHING" would have been the operative word of the day!

[Marie26]

99. Thanks

I'm glad it was at least mentioned, though it's not like they'd get any info out of these guys anyway.

[POAS]

38. Who do you look to to get your information?

The Surgeon General-----??????????

[Cameron27]

43. I just tuned in ...

is this Waxman questioning Cody?

[POAS]

44. Waxman yes

[Cameron27]

45. Thank you :-)

Waxman: Why should we feel confident this is going to change?

Because of all the *wonderful* things that all the *wonderful* people are doing for the soldiers.

This is a joke right.

[POAS]

50. I going to

:puke: and then :nuke:

[Sydnie]

46. Why is it going to change?

Because we're going to change it.

Give me strength!

[POAS]

51. As the song says

"because of the wonderful things we do!"

[POAS]

47. One more guy that knew nothing

one more guy making assurances that the problem is getting fixed :nuke:

[eleny]

49. The General's agreement on all points is also appalling

It's the theory of "just confess because you can possibly get away with anything at least once". He deserves to be taken out behind the woodshed.

[POAS]

52. Lynch up clarifying his earlier atatements about

newspapers and news reports..

CYA alert!

[POAS]

53. What are we doing to prepare for

the SURGE we can expect from the SURGE?

[Sydnie]

54. Nothing!

They are just hoping they die rather than need treatment. Doesn't it sound like that to you?

[POAS]

57. You just reminded me of the opening scenes from

"Enemy At The Gates" where the rear troops shot their own soldiers trying to retreat.

And yes, I agree!

[POAS]

56. we are hiring more

case workers.

B-18 being emptied and rebuilt.

In other words we are doing our jobs and have been doing so all along!

[Cameron27]

55. Alert:

Combat affects soldiers!

And here I thought these guys were being unresponsive to the questions!

[POAS]

58. Yea like the "doughboys" came back

in full health from WW I.

[Cameron27]

59. I don't know whether to laugh or cry..

they're confirming post traumtic stress really exists for godsake. Whoop-dee-doo.

[jmowreader]

100. Apples and oranges

There are two MAJOR differences between the casualties of World War I and the casualties of Operation Iraqi Liberation--today's weapons are much more devastating, and military medicine is far better.

In World War I, we fought trench warfare with rifles. In OIL, every soldier on both sides carries a rifle that's more devastating in its effect than the 1917-era machineguns. Everyone's artillery is bigger and more lethal. And our tactics are far different.

In World War I, every soldier carried a field dressing. In OIL, every soldier carries a bag of Ringer's Lactate and an infusion set, and the soldier next to him can start an IV. In World War I, wounded soldiers were evacuated on trucks, and we use Blackhawk helicopters now. When they get to help, the World War I soldier could expectto be treated in a tent. The OIL soldier will be treated in a mobile hospital that's so nice, any 1917-era medical school would have been proud to teach in it if they could get their heads around all the computerized equipment in it.

So basically, we can tear up a 21st-century soldier worse than we could a Doughboy, and we can save his life more effectively. Oh yeah...we also buried soldiers where they fell in World War II. You remember the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the old man James Ryan visited the US military cemetery in France? Well, France is full of those cemeteries.

The Doughboys didn't come back in full health from WWI, but the ones who were even close to being as shot-up as the ones we get back now would all have died.

[POAS]

60. At what point since 2003 did it

dawn on us that soldiers were coming back surviving serious injury that would have died before.

Followed by a very pregnant pause! I swear I heard him swallow hard!

[Hubert Flottz]

61. The one question I'd like to hear asked...

If the Army can't cope any better than it has to date, with the numbers of wounded coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan...WHAT IN THE HELL, will you do when Bush invades Iran?

[POAS]

62. The answer would be

"hopefully fewer would be coming back"

[Hubert Flottz]

69. You're right they'd have a stupid answer.

Like all their other answers.

[POAS]

63. Who's up?

Asking why, if money is not an isue why does everybody talk about solutions that would cost more money.

Are we trying to do it on the cheap?

[Cameron27]

64. I don't know but it sounds

as if he's trying to give them a way out with funding issues.

[POAS]

66. Maybe he is but

I like the comment of trying to do this on the cheap the way we are fighting the war on Terra!

[Cameron27]

70. Yes, that was a good point.

I'll have to see how far they take the money issue. Hopefully right up to the White House.

[POAS]

80. Staff Sgt on an earlier panel said

they say they don't want to take money away from the soldiers in the field but, he pointed out, they should be in two completely seperate budgets so that neither soldiers in the field or those at home get short chnged!

[POAS]

65. Failure of leadership all the way down to the lowest levels

We may come back with a package for more money

[POAS]

Heads up Cspan3 covering

Homeland Security committee hearing on TSA employee rights issues!

[LEW]

67. I just keep thanking the voters last November

because if the repukes were still in charge this hearing would not be happening, and the story last week would not have gotten any legs. It is very apparent these problems are long standing and ignored all the way up to shrub.

[POAS]

71. Don't worry, I'm sure a few privates will get a courts martial

out of this! :sarcasm:

[Hepburn]

68. Question: What is going on? More hearing time to come today?

And, if so, will it be on CSpan 1?

Thanks!

[POAS]

72. The Walter Reed hearing is almost over.

It will be replayed later (Time???)

Span 1 is covering House live!

[Hepburn]

74. Thanks....

...I am picking up something on CSpan radio, but did not know if it would come back on regular CSpan.

[POAS]

77. They have to cover the House when in session on cspan1

[POAS]

73. Foxx up now (R-NC and fantasy land)

Same complaints of problems we hear from civilians with disabilities. Social Security is broken also!

[POAS]

75. One softball question and out for Foxx

Thinking of easy questions is hard work!

[Sydnie]

76. If WR is the model we all are dead already

We will be better off staying home and dying in our own beds then going to a facility if THEY are the standard!

[POAS]

78. They want the Army to be the model for the civilian

medical problems solution.

Lord help us!

[POAS]

79. McCollum

We still have soldiers from Korea and nam trying to get into the Vets medical program. What kind of heads up are you giving them for what to expect?

Answer: Damned if I know!

[POAS]

81. Peter Welch (D)

Bringing up privatization ar WR

[POAS]

82. Has the move to privatize

been detrimental to services?

Answer: I'm no expert on privatization but we want soldiers doing things that only soldiers can do.

Now I'll begin equivocating...and passing the buck.

[POAS]

83. IAP gets

120 million and then downsizes to increase profit.

Answer: we have no control over that.

[POAS]

85. Q: I s Weightman a scapegoat

All of us were upset and we weren't aware of the conditions and Secretary had lost confidence.

Issues here beyond a few sgts.

Weightman good man, but I support Secretary's decision.

[Sydnie]

84. Soldiers doing things only soldiers can do

that's it right there. That's how they can say that they can maintan an all volunteer system. When there was a draft, they drafted people to peel potatos and shuffle files. Now, they just hire that out and those that volunteer gets guns. Period.

[POAS]

87. Private doing it for a profit! Bottom line!

[POAS]

86. Holmes-Norton again

[POAS]

88. Sending soldiers directly into the middle of

a civil war. How do we make it easier for them when they return to navigate multiple systems (Army vs. VA)

[POAS]

89. Soldier needs to be better educated about

how to pick his poison, VA or Army disability.

[POAS]

90. Chairman(?): Hearings in future will expand

beyond Walter Reed.

Seeking cooperation in future investigations.

[POAS]

91. Hearing closed...............back in 45 days.

[Sydnie]

92. Starting the replay of the first panel already!

If you missed it.

[POAS]

93. On XM they are playing

Homeland security hearing on TSA

[Sydnie]

94. C-SPAN 1 tv n/t

[POAS]

95. got it now, thanks

[Sydnie]

96. I tuned in late too

want to catch up on what I missed.

[malaise]

97. Thanks n/t

[w8liftinglady]

101. warning-bring your hankies..esp when mcleod testifies.

[trashcanistanista]

102. So True

This is gut wrenching to watch. Tuning in to the replay.

[POAS]

104. Repeating again tonight at 8:30-Cspan 2

[rodeodance]

105. NBC eve, news doing great report on WReed Hearings--guest is Dana Priest.