Rummy's wife knew all about Walter Reed - even asked questions

[donsu]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21324938-2703,00.html


Squalor surrounding wounded Iraq veterans shocks America

- long snip-

Problems at Walter Reed have been known to officials at the highest level for some time. Joyce Rumsfeld, the wife of then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made a surreptitious visit to the hospital at the urging of a concerned friend last October.

She attended a support meeting for the wives and mothers of soldiers and heard their complaints. At the end of the meeting she asked a social worker whether her husband was getting the truth about conditions there or whether the soldiers he met were being hand-picked to paint a rosy picture. They were being hand-picked, the social worker replied.

When Walter Reed officials found out that Joyce Rumsfeld had been secretly invited, her friend - a frequent volunteer - was told she was no longer welcome at the hospital.

The underlying problem, according to injured veterans, is that the venerable hospital has been overwhelmed by the number of casualties in a war that was supposed to be over quickly.

Roughly two Americans were wounded for every one who died in the Second World War. In Vietnam and Korea, the ratio was three to one. With advances in medical treatment, in Iraq it is seven to one.
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7 to 1


wonder what the conversations between rummy and Joyce were like.

in that marriage does Joyce even get a voice?

does anyone know what kind of woman she is?

[niyad]

1. still trying to wrap my mind around that creep being married (same way I felt learning that KKKarl

is married) one simply doesn't think of them in that way.

don't know what kind of woman she is--but she IS married to him.

[Kagemusha]

2. Yeah that's a point I made when this first came up..

Just because she knew doesn't mean Rumsfeld knew. In some marriages that would be true. Here? No idea.

[shance]

3. Doesn't matter if they knew or not, HE WAS SUPPOSED TO KNOW.

Anyone with one atom of a conscience would have known.

Intentionally avoiding the truth is no shield from being an instigator and creator of the crimes being committed.

[Kagemusha]

5. Well that's just saying the wife angle is meaningless. And I agree.

Rumsfeld shouldn't need his wife telling him this so if she didn't tell him, or if he didn't listen, either possibility is irrelevant. Rumsfeld's job, and failure to do that job, is what is relevant.

[MADem]

4. I've heard she's a nice lady, from people whose opinion I respect.

I've had no immediate interaction with her, though.

Rummy resigned shortly after her October visit, in the first week of November. Given the shitstorm surrounding him vis a vis operational matters, the WRAMC imbroglio with these outpatients was probably just a small cherry atop a sundae of Defense Department disaster.

Isn't that last paragraph you cited troubling--it's almost as though the implication is, if these darned soldiers would just DIE in a greater ratio instead of surviving, well, we wouldn't have this problem now, would we?