Walter Reed's commander knew of the neglect for years

This is off The Washington Post:

Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need."

"I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer.

So apparently Kiley was told of the neglected veterans who were involved in drinking, sharing drugs, and not getting the care they needed at Walter Reed. Kiley was the commander of Walter Reed at that time. Does he investigate these allegations? No. Does he assign an Army officer to talk with Robinson, and look into these allegations? No--Kiley brushes Robinson away with an excuse of just go tell the sergeant major about this, and let this mess languish in the Army bureaucracy.

But it gets so much better. According to the WaPost:

Kiley lives across the street from Building 18. From his quarters, he can see the scrappy building and busy traffic the soldiers must cross to get to the 113-acre post. At a news conference last week, Kiley, who declined several requests for interviews for this article, said that the problems of Building 18 "weren't serious and there weren't a lot of them." He also said they were not "emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families."

Kiley lives across the street from Building 18. If Kiley was receiving reports of the deplorable conditions, then why didn't Kiley just walk across the street and see for himself what the conditions in Building 18 were like? Kiley claims that the conditions in Building 18 "weren't serious and there weren't a lot of them." Did Kiley even bother to go into the building and see for himself? Let's go back to the original WaPost story that broke the Walter Reed scandal:

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And let's not forget this picture here from the WaPost photo essay:

Army Specialist Jeremy Duncan lives in Building 18, where the wall of his room is covered in black mold. The combat engineer was evacuated to Walter Reed from Iraq in February 2006 with a broken neck and a shredded left ear. He nearly dead from blood loss. Michel du Cille - The Washington Post.

All Kiley had to do was to walk across the street from his house, and see for himself what the conditions were at Building 18. I'm guessing that either A) Kiley never bothered looking at the conditions at Building 18, or B) Kiley doesn't support the troops. Continuing with the main WaPost story:

But according to interviews, Kiley, his successive commanders at Walter Reed and various top noncommissioned officers in charge of soldiers' lives have heard a stream of complaints about outpatient treatment over the past several years. The complaints have surfaced at town hall meetings for staff and soldiers, at commanders' "sensing sessions" in which soldiers or officers are encouraged to speak freely, and in several inspector general's reports detailing building conditions, safety issues and other matters.

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

The wife of a congressman complains to Kiley about a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad. When she complains to the nurse, the nurse ignores here. When she complains to Kiley's office, Kiley office--and subsequently Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley--ignores her. I'm even surprised that this Republican congressman, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), knew about the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed, and never bothered to do anything about it. Young claims he reported these conditions to the commanders of Walter Reed, and perhaps to Kiley himself, but leaves the situation at that--Young never bothers to report this problem to the press. Then again, the last thing that a Republican congressman would want to do is to damage his political party in both the Congress and the White House with this deplorable scandal, while the country is involved in an unpopular war, and the Bush administration is demanding that the American public supports the troops by re-electing Republicans into Congress during the 2006 midterm elections--remember, the Democrats support the al Qaeda terrorists because they want to lose the Iraq war. The Democrats don't support the troops!

I don't know what else to say about this scandal? The shock, horror, and disgust about how both the Army, and the Republican leaders in both Congress and the Bush administration have treated these wounded vets from Iraq and Afghanistan like so much garbage. It is incredible.

The more these revelations come out, the more we need to end this war in Iraq.