Improving America's Security Act of 2007

IMPROVING AMERICA'S SECURITY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - March 01, 2007)

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ACCOUNTABILITY AT WALTER REED

Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, yesterday I had the privilege of spending 3 hours at Walter Reed Army Hospital, specifically looking at outpatient care. As a result of that visit, I have come to several inescapable conclusions about the leadership of the armed services over this important area.

First, we have to start with a foundational premise, and that premise is our wounded deserve the best. The men and women who have crossed that line and say ``I will go' and go and get hurt and come home deserve the best our military can give them--not Building 18.

There are so many problems at Walter Reed, and legislation has been introduced that I am honored to cosponsor that will address a lot of these problems--systemic bureaucratic problems: not sufficient counselors, not sufficient training, not taking care of the families of the wounded. A lot of necessary issues are covered in that legislation. But today I thought it important to spend a few minutes talking about the leadership.

We have to make up our mind around here whether we are going to say ``support the troops' and provide oversight and accountability or whether we are going to mean it. If you are going to have accountability under these circumstances you have to look at the culture of leadership. You have to look at the very top of the leadership tree over Walter Reed. In this instance the leader, General Kiley, was at Walter Reed at or near the time Building 18 opened. It is clear that General Kiley, the Surgeon General of the Army, knew about the conditions at Building 18. More importantly, he knew about the other problems.

The irony of this situation is General Weightman, who has only been there a year, stepped up and said, I take responsibility. I am the commander here now. Just minutes ago he was relieved of his command, while General Kiley is quoted repeatedly as if there is not a problem--he is spinning: ``I want to reset the thinking that while we have some issues here, this is not a horrific, catastrophic failure at Walter Reed. I mean these are not good, but you saw rooms that were perfectly acceptable.'

They are not perfectly acceptable. You have people who are stationed at Walter Reed who have better barracks than the wounded. That is unacceptable. Our wounded should get the best. The people in better barracks can be placed in apartments in town. When the decision was made to let these men move into Building 18, they could have moved into the better barracks and the people who are stationed there permanently could have been stationed elsewhere.

On Building 18 he said the problems--by the way, he lives within a block of Building 18, General Kiley--``weren't serious and there weren't a lot of them.' They are serious and there are a lot of them. He said they were not ``emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families.''

Back in December, when the vets organizations met with General Kiley and enumerated these problems about the wounded and their families and the problems they were facing in outpatient, General Kiley said, ``very important testimony.' That was it.

I want to make sure there is no misunderstanding. Colonel Callahan, who is in charge of the hospital at Walter Reed, was open and honest and clearly cared, as did most of the leaders I talked to around the table. But I went away with an uneasy sense that all the legislation we pass and all the paint we can put on the walls is not going to solve this problem if we don't begin to speak out for accountability within the leadership of the military.

When we had the scandal at Abu Ghraib, noncommissioned officers were disciplined. Up until the relieving of General Weightman today, no one above a captain had been disciplined in this matter. It is time the leadership at the top takes responsibility and that is why I have called today for the Surgeon General of the Army, LTG Kevin Kiley, to be relieved of his command over the medical command of the United States Army so the message can go out loudly and clearly: We will not tolerate treatment of our wounded in any way that does not reflect the respect we have for them.

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