Related: Obama Abandoned Veterans
UPDATE: Obama transition team was told about 3 audits showing VA misreported wait times
"VA scandal puts agency’s secretary in line of fire" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael D. Shear | New York Times May 22, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama stopped short of dressing down his veterans affairs secretary, Eric Shinseki, during a blunt hourlong talk in the Oval Office on Wednesday. But the commander in chief made clear that a growing health care scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs had put the future of Shinseki — a retired four-star general and no stranger to Washington political uproars — once again on the line.
He's got two of those, the IRS, Benghazi, a nuclear scandal, and whole bunch more alphabet jobs that are impeachable.
I'm not saying that is what I want. He's out, Biden in, no change, maybe worse. The political show would be nice, and the legal underpinnings for it should be adhered to; however, it would also beg the question what other important things are we not seeing due to the diversion.
This scandal proves as much as anything the $y$tem is shattered beyond repair. That is not to excuse these "leaders" of their responsibilities, far from it. But there will be no change.
“I said it to him today: I want to see what the results of these reports are, and there is going to be accountability,” Obama told reporters in the White House briefing room immediately afterward, referring to internal inquiries, as Shinseki quietly left the West Wing through a side door.
I watched 5 minutes of Wolf last night and the CNN reporter Drew Griffin, I think, was blasting Obama on the pathetic press statement. Maybe the ma$$ media is finally getting a clue, although there is nothing special about piling on a legitimate scandal.
The president called Shinseki a “good soldier” who had put his “heart and soul” into the care of veterans, and said that “we’re going to work with him to solve the problem.” But, he repeated, “I am going to make sure there is accountability.”
Aye-aye, sir. Keep trotting out the tired old retreads of excuses after six years.
It was a grim moment for the 71-year-old Shinseki, whose own disability — he lost part of his right foot after tripping on a land mine when he was a young soldier in Vietnam — makes him a client of the sprawling agency he oversees. A former Army chief of staff who famously fought with the George W. Bush White House over the war in Iraq, he is facing another dramatic turn in a career that has been filled with them.
That seems like so long ago, and so what? How many millions have died in the interim? How many more wars started? How many more drone strikes?
Allegations that veterans hospitals manipulated waiting lists to hide long delays that many patients faced to see doctors have created a political storm for the Obama White House and prompted condemnations on Capitol Hill, where many Republicans — and as of Wednesday, two House Democrats, both from Georgia — are calling for Shinseki to resign.
Don't drag the politics into it -- they never do when propagandizing we must destroy the next nation of the PNAC target list!!
“I respect his sacrifice, I respect what he did, but it’s under his watch that we are in this situation,” one of those Democrats, Representative David Scott, said Wednesday in an impassioned speech on the House floor. “Mr. President, we need urgency!”
Self-contained and introverted, Shinseki is regarded by friends and detractors alike as “dignified,” the word most often used to describe him.
But the health care scandal has become fodder for late-night television — never a good development for survival in Washington — and even some admirers wonder how long he will last.
In Senate testimony last week, Shinseki proclaimed himself “mad as hell,” which prompted Jon Stewart, the host of the “Daily Show,” to pillory him on Monday night.
“Your ‘mad as hell’ face looks like your ‘Uh-oh, we’re out of orange juice’ face,” Stewart said.
To Peter Feaver, a Duke University specialist on military affairs who called Shinseki “a good man without a finely attuned political sense,” that is a bad sign. “When you are the whipping boy of the Republicans and Jon Stewart, you’ve got a problem,” said Feaver, who advised President George W. Bush.
Known by the nickname Ric and in his sixth year running the veterans agency, Shinseki was until now best known in Washington for infuriating Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary at the time, by predicting that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed in postwar Iraq.
Another war criminal who should be in a jail cell.
The assertion left Shinseki ostracized by the White House, but when he stepped down in 2003, Michael O’Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, predicted that history would vindicate him.
And it did: In 2007, Bush, confronting growing chaos in Iraq, built up American troops there to more than 160,000.
I remember, the surge! Funny thing is, I worked so hard to make sure the 2006 election was not stolen from Democrats, they won the Congress, and then voted for escalation and surge in Iraq! What?
That was the beginning of a painful political epiphany for me, and here i am.
“General Shinseki was right,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said at the time.
Now Republicans — perhaps sensing an opportunity to go after Obama in this midterm election year — are hardly coming to Shinseki’s defense.
On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Republican senators convened a news conference, with one after another using the case to lash out at Obama.
“Somebody needs to be in charge at the White House, and somebody needs to start taking responsibility,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
That's lashing out? Stating a fact?
Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, an orthopedic surgeon, said that Obama’s remarks at the White House were simply a “restatement of exactly what Secretary Shinseki said.”
On Wednesday evening, the House voted 390 to 33 to pass a bill giving Shinseki more authority to fire or demote career employees who may have been involved in misconduct.
The Senate may take up hearings on the legislation soon.
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Back to wars that create them....
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"VA chief says he will remain in office; Shinseki pledges to continue work to fix his agency" by Ed O’Keefe | Washington Post May 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s declaration came as Democratic Senate candidates began calling for his ouster and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, signaled increased concern about the unfolding scandal. All week Shinseki has faced growing calls for his resignation from Democrats and Republicans as his own office, the VA’s inspector general, and congressional committees continue to investigate whether staffers at some VA facilities had doctored records to cover up lengthy wait times and that some patients had died while waiting for care.
All so their bonuses could stay on schedule.
VA officials launched a nationwide audit of facilities this week to review allegations of doctored schedules and delayed medical care for veterans. Shinseki said the review is ‘‘about halfway through’’ and he expects to deliver initial findings to Obama next week. A full review by his office will be completed in June, he said. A separate investigation by the VA’s inspector general isn’t expected to be completed until August....
Boehner said he’s getting ‘‘a little closer’’ to calling for Shinseki’s resignation amid new reports of problems at VA facilities in Ohio.
‘‘This isn’t about the secretary. It’s about the entire system underneath him,’’ Boehner said. ‘‘And you know, the general can leave and we can wait around for months to go through a nomination process and we get a new person. But the disaster continues.’’
Meanwhile, the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee threatened to issue subpoenas to three senior VA officials if they fail to appear before the panel by May 30 to answer questions. The officials did not show up Thursday for a hearing in which the panel called them to testify about the department’s efforts to comply with the information requests.
‘‘My patience is wearing very thin,’’ said committee chairman Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican. ‘‘I don’t want to break and make this a partisan issue, because it is not a partisan issue.’’
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Related: Sacking Eric Shinseki won’t fix what ails VA health care
Also see: Common flag garden honors military heroes
Get 'em while they are young.
