Wow
Manifesto
Catching up on a bunch of things that I e-mailed to myself to post about last week but never got a chance to. In an article about the Walter Reed scandal, Newsweek writes about how concerned President Bush is about the care of our veterans. In a article about the contrast between the White House's official silence about the Libby verdict with the immediate response to the Reed scandal, authors Richard Wolff and Holly Bailey include this nugget:What a difference two years make. Back in 2004, John Kerry repeatedly raised the issue of poor care for veterans through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Bush’s response was dismissive. In their last televised debate, Kerry said Bush “hasn’t fully funded the VA and the VA hospital [sic] is having trouble and veterans are complaining.”This is really interesting and offers everything you really need to know about President Bush. I can't believe that it is offered almost as a throw-away in a Newsweek article.
Bush’s response? “Of course we’re meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that. We’re expanding veterans’ health care throughout the country. We’re aligning facilities where the veterans live now. Veterans are getting very good health care under my administration, and they will continue to do so during the next
four years.”
posted by Chill at 3/12/2007 10:15:00 PM
2 Comments:
My impression is that a difference exists between VA facilities (see here) and the Army hospitals--of which Walter Reed is one.
The former are run by the Veterans Administration and the latter are run by the DoD. The former are supposed to be excellent, and the latter, well ... the Walter Reed story shows that they're not so excellent.
Thus--and I don't say this easily--Feckless Leader may have been right in his defense of VA hospitals.
I didn't read Bush's response as solely about the VA as I guess I should have. I was more focused on the dismissive tone. But you are obviously right, there is a difference and I should have made that clear.
I guess the point is this, if you can ever get out of the Army then you are in line for some really terrific health care. Of course with the back-door draft, the extended tours, and redeployment of injured soldiers, it looks more and more like the only way that will happen is in a body-bag.
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