The scandal at Walter Reed: What ever would greed-saturated (but never sated) crony capitalists do without a good old-fashioned scapegoat?

By now you've heard, I'm sure, that the commandant of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Maj. Gen. George Weightman [right], has been sacked in the wake of the scandal over conditions and treatment at the legendary (but now-decrepit and slated for shutdown) D.C. facility, which has been a major treatment center for severely wounded military returnees from the Iraq and Afghanistan maiming grounds.

And I'm sure you too responded: Yeah, I'll bet that's whose fault it is. That'll fix everything.

Well, as Steve Vogel and William Brangin point out in the second graf of their Washington Post story, General Weightman took command of Walter Reed just this past August! And the appointment of his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley [right], as his immediate, "temporary" replacement--

surprised some Defense Department officials because soldiers, their families and veterans' advocates have complained that he had long been aware of problems at Walter Reed and did nothing to improve its outpatient care.

So nothing changes. Oh, I'm sure we'll get some "reform" and fixing-upping at Walter Reed--whatever is needed to get the story out of the headlines. But I wouldn't expect a whole lot more. Because in Karl Rove's Bushworld, this scandal, like all issues of negative publicity, involves nothing more than an exercise in damage control.

At this point it becomes harder and harder for the Bush administration to shock some of us with its confounding self-satisfaction (based on absolutely nothing), its blindingly total incompetence, and its equally total disdain, even psychotic loathing, for anyone who isn't part of its inner circle of moneybags cronies and family leeches. And yet they do still manage to shock on a regular basis.

If the American people ever got wise to how much these slugs hate everything decent about America . . . well, it doesn't appear that we'll ever find out, because so much of mainstream America seems so desperate to be fooled.


POSTSCRIPT: DID YOU CATCH BOB WOODRUFF'S ABC REPORT
ON THE TREATMENT OF TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES (TBIs)?

The first 25 minutes or so of To Iraq and Back was devoted to the harrowing story of Woodruff's own remarkable recovery from his injuries in Iraq, which were far more devastating than I ever understood. (He's seen here with his wife, Lee--and the photo shows his "bad" side, the side of his head that was largely blown off.) From that point on, the program justified its billing as "Bob Woodruff Reports." Woodruff took over the reporting of the story of the country's well-meaning but massively underresourced treatment effort for our seriously wounded military personnel. (His own principal TBI treatment, by the way, came not at Walter Reed but at Bethesda Naval Medical Center.)

You can't not feel overwhelming relief and happiness for Woodruff's own loved ones at having their guy ultimately returned to them in something resembling his former form. Then you have to give him credit for making coverage of this story his "beat," for the sake of all those other men and women--and the untold number to come--still in desperate need of treatment.

And then, recalling how compulsively celebrity-driven our culture is, you consider that, while Woodruff is no Anna Nicole (of course Anna Nicole wasn't either before she died), his status as "that news-anchor guy who got blowed up in Iraq" is going to give his coverage a "reach" unlike anyone else's. And it appears that To Iraq and Back, along with related coverage of Woodruff's "return," has generated substantial response. (There's a link on the ABC News website.)


UPDATE: ARMY SECRETARY RESIGNS

The Bush Regime response to the shameful scandal at Walter Reed is typical: find a scapegoat. They picked Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who abruptly "resigned" today. Defense Secretary Gates actually fired Harvey because he was infuriated that he replaced General Weightman at Walter Reed with the even more culpable General Kiley, someone who was just ethusiastically endorsed this morning by reactionary America-hater Joe Lieberman.


THE THING ABOUT DAMAGE
CONTROL, YOU SEE, IS . . .

Thanks for the update, Howie. The thing about damage control is that if at first you don't succeed, well, you've got to roll another head, and so on and so on, until . . . well, until the damage is controlled. One not-good-enough scapegoat demands a better one. So sorry, ex-Sec'y Harvey [right]. Write if you get work.

Say, you don't suppose that he could be the father of Anna Nicole's baby?

And definitely check out Howie's link above to Holy Joe getting his holey head handed to him by Imus for supporting the war and claiming ignorance (as McCain had with Imus) of the mess at Walter Reed, and then claiming that the (re)appointment of Kiley is "a good first step," earning a really derisive slapdown from Imus. (This is the good Imus, the don't-feed-me-bullshit Imus, I listened to all those years before I couldn't take any more of the pompous right-wing evil Imus twin who took him over.) C'mon, Idiot Joe, if you sustain your living as a corporate whore by being a media whore, you've got to be at least a little bit prepared when you go a-whoring.--Ken