So then-Army Secretary Francis Harvey throws General George W. Weightman - the one official who was demonstrably not responsible for the Walter Reed scandal - under the bus. When the Bush maladministration realizes that the public will not be appeased by cutting loose a guy who’s been at Walter Reed a mere six months, it then throws Harvey under the bus.
And who comes out on top? Why, that’s absolutely right, children: Kevin Kiley, Army Surgeon General and one of the chief architects of the Walter Reed abomination.
No more.
The A.P. is reporting that "[t]he Army forced its surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, to retire." Of course, Kiley’s spinning this as voluntary:
"I submitted my retirement because I think it is in the best interest of the Army," Kiley was quoted as saying in Monday’s Army statement.
Kiley said he wanted to allow officials to "focus completely on the way ahead."
However, Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren apparently didn’t present it as an option: "Geren asked Kiley to retire, a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record."
About damn time.
This is the asshole who, according to Harvey himself, called Dana Priest’s reporting "yellow journalism":
"He called me and said, ‘I’m willing to defend myself. . . . I want to have an opportunity to defend myself, and it was wrong and it was yellow journalism at its worst, and I plan on doing it. Trust me.’ " Harvey said. "I said, ‘Okay, Kevin.’ "
[Ed. note: "’Okay, Kevin’"??!!! WTF kind of response is that??!!!]
This is the asshole who said, of the sqalid patient conditions at Walter Reed, that the problems "weren’t serious, and there weren’t a lot of them."
This is the asshole who had known directly of the problems for months - and had heard complaints from patients’ families for years - and did nothing.
This is undoubtedly the asshole - in conjunction with a number of other Pentagon and administration assholes - who punished wounded soldiers with dawn inspections and gag orders for being so disloyal, so treasonous as to tell a reporter that their hospital rooms were infested with rodent shit and cockroaches, that they were left to lie in their own waste, that they were being fucked over by the same government that put them there in the first place.
And this is the asshole who whitewashed the military’s official "report" on treatment of detainees, finding no evidence of torture or abuse. ‘Cause, you know, it’s kindof hard to find evidence that a detainee has been tortured when you refuse even to talk to a single detainee.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving asshole.
Of course, what he really deserves is a few months in in Gitmo, complete with sensory deprivation and waterboarding, followed by R&R in the worst room in Walter Reed’s Building 18. Strapped to the bed, no access to the bathroom, and no one answering his call light as the rats and roaches skitter across his face. Of course, he’d have broken completely long before that; bullies are always the weakest psychologically. But it would still be gratifying.
