Veterans: With Friends Like This . . .
. . . who needs enemies?
The scandal over the shabby treatment of America’s returning war wounded and veterans is getting uglier by the day.
The Blotter reports that a proposal to keep seriously wounded veterans from falling through the cracks of the bureaucracy was shelved in 2005 when Jim Nicholson took over as the secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.
As a result, seriously wounded veterans continue to face long delays for health care and benefit payments after being discharged from the military.
The program, called the Contingency Tracking System, had been approved by Nicholson’s predecessor but died once Nicholson took over the VA, former VA program manager Paul Sullivan told ABC News.
Sullivan said he was told the cost of the system — less than $1 million to build and requiring a handful of staff to maintain — was prohibitive.
More here.
10 Responses to “Veterans: With Friends Like This . . .”
Anyone who believes that any computer database that would need to be installed at hundreds of facilities, track several million individuals, and would require a huge amount of data entry would require a couple of people and one million dollars is an idiot.
Doesn’t the government have a long history of failure to deliver on computer systems (like the FBI electronic casebook?).
Sullivan sounds like your typical government program manager who had his program cut and is not disgruntled.
As frequently is the case in Washington, the wrong people have been left in place to deal with this scandal. Nicholson’s major qualifications for getting the job in the first place may have been his close ties to the Republican Party as RNC chair, and contributor to the demise of the Gore campaign, rather than actual experience as an advocate for better care for veterans. Elsewhere in the media, he is being labeled the “Brownie of the VA”. Another case of a patronage job handed out to a party hack. What other results would you expect???
I’ve always liked this saying:
Veterans: With Friends Like This, who needs enemies?
Where were all these Democrats while we’re piling on the Presdient? Hell, they live right there in Washington, why weren’t they going to visit soldiers? For that matter, where were all the high-minded Republican politicans for that matter? If they had visited, they would have seen the conditions and should have done something about it.
I’m 53 years old and I’ve been using the VA system for years, neither political party has ever done anything great for it.
The system is vulnerable to congressional budget cuts, so yes, Congress is also responsible. A few have tried to improve veterans’ care. How tragic that it took a national scandal to draw attention to the problems. I have no doubt that this would have just kept getting worse if it were not for Dana Priest’s expose in WaPo.
Nicholson’s job is to advocate for veterans, and make sure the VA runs smoothly. With two wars going on, isn’t it his duty to make sure that injured servicemen get the benefits that are owed them?
kritter:
Amen, brother!
Nicholson is all too typical of Bush-era Cabinet secretaries. Instead of advocating for the department’s constituency, he dutifully follows the Dear Leader’s behind-the-scenes moves to squeeze the gonads of veterans in need of help while we hear endless imprecations from him about supporting the troops.
Shaun- That would be amen, sister, LOL!
BTW- I would have to agree about the Bush Cabinet- most of them are foxes guarding the henhouses or slavish loyalists to the Bush agenda. Gates is the first one that seems to have backbone, but as I said earlier, he should have gotten rid of Kiley- who knew for a long time about WR’s conditions, and failed to respond, and have recommended to Bush to get rid of Nicholson. Weightman, having just arrived on the job, was the fall guy.
kritter:
Ugh! I apologize.
Shaun- apology accepted, brother!
kritter,
apparently congressmen from both sides have been speaking out about the va conditions for years now, but no one (that includes the msm and blogs) were really listening…and we all should be ashamed
however, the republican party has been in power throughout this entire war, and they have held the purse strings….so the buck must stop with them
that is, until they blame clinton for fht whole mess
and nicholson should resign…i really wonder how he sleeps at nite