Galloway: Walter Reed Hospital Scandal is 'The Last Straw'

February 18, 2007
Galloway: Walter Reed Hospital Scandal is 'The Last Straw'

Who among the smiling politicians who regularly troop over to the main hospital at Walter Reed for photo-op visits with those who've come home grievously wounded from the wars the politicians started have bothered to go the extra quarter-mile to see the unseen majority with their rats and roaches?

Not one, it would seem, since none among them have admitted to knowing that there was a problem, much less doing something about it before the reporters blew the whistle.

Within 24 hours, construction crews were working overtime, slapping paint over the moldy drywall, patching the sagging ceilings and putting out traps and poison for the critters that infest the place.

Within 48 hours, the Department of Defense announced that it was appointing an independent commission to investigate. Doubtless the commission will provide a detailed report finding that no one was guilty -- certainly none of the politicians of the ruling party whose hands were on the levers of power for five long years of war.

They will find that it all came about because the Army medical establishment was overwhelmed by the case load flowing out of Iraq and Afghanistan.