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Harry Hope · Guest

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/08/young-knew-walter-reed/

March 8, 2007

CONFIRMED: Top House Spending Official Knew Of Walter Reed Squalor

Congressional Quarterly confirms today that senior House
conservatives, including the chairmen of the appropriations and
oversight committees, knew about the neglect and deplorable conditions
at Walter Reed years before they were exposed by the Washington Post.

Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL), former chairman of the House
Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going
public with the hospital’s problems “to avoid embarrassing the Army
while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”:

“We got in Gen. Kiley’s face on a regular basis,” Young said, adding
that he even contacted the commander of the National Naval Medical
Center in Bethesda in the hopes of getting better care there for the
patient with the aneurysm, though doctors at Walter Reed declined to
transfer him. …

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to
undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give
the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

Young claims he regularly “got in Gen. Kiley’s face.”

But Kiley never responded to Young’s complaints.

Nevertheless, as ThinkProgress noted last week, Young was publicly
praising Kiley during a congressional hearing as recently as January:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/01/young-walterreed/

YOUNG:

Well, Mr. Chairman, I want to join you in welcoming our guests and our
witnesses today, having known especially Don Arthur and General Kiley
very, very well over the years.

I thought they’d get tired of seeing us in their hospitals.

And we haven’t had as much opportunity to visit with the Air Force,
General.

But I know that these gentlemen are committed to providing our war
heroes with the very, very best medical care that is possible.

Also, while Young claims he didn’t want to go public with the problems
at Walter Reed, he was more than willing to use wounded veterans
publicly as a political cudgel.

Here is Young on the House floor on 11/18/05, speaking against Rep.
John Murtha’s (D-PA) redeployment plan:

YOUNG:

So tonight, Mr. Speaker, we need to send a strong message to our
troops and to their families.

For those families who are dealing with the loss of a loved one, for
those families who are dealing with a seriously wounded soldier or
marine who might be at Walter Reed Hospital or at Bethesda Hospital or
at Landsthul in Germany, we need to let them know that we are here to
support them.

____________________________________________________

Support our troops, eh?

Harry