WALTER REED: ANOTHER NATIONAL DISGRACE PERPETRATED BY A ROGUE REGIME

An old buddy of mine-- who prefers to remain anonymous-- called me last year. She's been going to Walter Reed Hospital and Bethesda Hospital bringing wounded service men iPods with music she loads onto them and she was wondering if I wanted to help fill some iPods up. Right up my alley! I guess the brass has kept her, Potemkin Village style, in the nicely painted rooms, with functioning windows and no rats or creepy crawly things.

I saw Bush on TV yesterday trying to cover his Regime's ass. It made me want to throw a shoe at the plasma screen. With all his usual excruciatingly whiny, defensive, passive/aggressive charm he was on the attack. He had heard about the rats at Walter Reed. He had heard about wounded soldiers left to sleep in their own urine. And he was going to get to the bottom of it; after all he is the Decider and he's been Commander-in-Chief for 6 years. And he outsourced the running of Walter Reed to one of Cheney's Halliburton cronies. So who better to solve the mess? And what better way to solve it than another blue ribbon panel he needn't pay any attention to?

After clowning around like a chimpanzee onstage, he addressed the American Legion yesterday: "I'm as concerned as you are about the conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. ... My decisions  have put our kids in harm's way, and I'm concerned about the fact when they come back they don't get the full treatment they deserve." He said the situation is "unacceptable." No one shot him. No one threw rotten fruit at him. No one hurled curses at him. He plunged on heroically-- what a leader he is-- "We have a moral obligation to provide the best possible care and  treatment [to wounded troops]. ... They deserve it, and they're going to get it." He won't tolerate these conditions. Is he your idol?

The vast majority of Americans outside Utah think his entire Regime is unacceptable and they no longer fall for the cheap and tawdry lies Karl Rove puts in his mouth. Almost no Americans think he can solve any problems, just exacerbate them and create new ones. And the care of our wounded soldiers is a new one, a uniquely Bush Regime problem, very much like FEMA. What Bush did for New Orleans is what Bush did for our wounded soldiers. In fact, as Bob Geiger points out today, even in the light of all the fuss and media attention over Walter Reed, Daniel Akaka, Chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, caught Bush trying to cheat vets out of another $3 billion.

The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee last week renounced attempts by the White House to raise fees for Veterans receiving medical care and recommended an increase in funding in the administration's fiscal year 2008 budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs medical care allocation.

Senate Democrats rejected three Bush administration proposals designed to reduce funding requirements, through increased out-of-pocket fees for Veterans, and by deterring certain categories of Veterans from using the VA system, including the following proposed in the 2008 budget:

     •     An increase in prescription drug co-payments from $8 to $15 for "middle-income" veterans.


     •     An annual enrollment fee of $250 to $750 for veterans whose families make $50,000 a year or more.


     •     Eliminating the practice of offsetting VA first-party co-payment debts with collections from insurance companies.

Me, I'd trust Steve's fans with the welfare of our vets before I'd trust scumbags like Cheney (who still hasn't resigned) and Bush. More on impeachment later today.