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Harry Hope · Guest

The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, 3/8/07:
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/16860822.htm

Walter Reed disgrace is another hidden cost of involvement in Iraq

By Carl Leubsdorf
The Dallas Morning News

(MCT)

Disclosures of substandard conditions for wounded veterans at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center represent more than another case of Bush
administration incompetence.

They show how its mishandling of the management and financing of the
Iraq war has created a series of devastating side effects that go far
beyond questions about its military and diplomatic policies in the
Middle East.

Since President Bush sent U.S. troops to Iraq, his administration has
constantly sought to minimize war costs, protect its tax cuts and
avoid the government's looming long-term fiscal problems.

The result has been to shortchange the nation's veterans, provide
insufficient equipment and training for active troops, weaken the
ability to deal with threats outside Iraq and create a ticking fiscal
time bomb that threatens to explode on its successor's watch.

It seems a political lifetime since the White House slapped down
economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey for suggesting a war with Iraq might
cost $200 billion.

Budget Director Mitch Daniels called the figure "very, very high" and
said it would cost about one-third of that, some paid by U.S. allies.

But the president's latest budget says the cost of military operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan will hit $662 billion next year - with a lot
more likely after that.

The administration has avoided projecting long-term costs.

But Linda Bilmes, who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at
Columbia, say the ultimate cost, in both direct federal spending and
the long-term economic impact, will surpass $2 trillion.

And that doesn't include increased interest costs from resulting
deficits.

They calculate the budgetary total at more than $1 trillion in
military costs, refurbishing and replacing military equipment and
indefinite health care for thousands of wounded veterans.

They add a like amount from the long-term economic impact, including
the economic and human costs for loss of life and injuries, additional
oil costs because of the war, and the budgetary impact of not making
needed domestic investments because of war costs.

Though some lawmakers have raised these issues, they have received
little scrutiny until now, in part because of the reluctance of
GOP-controlled Congresses to perform their normal oversight functions
of the Bush administration.

But that is changing.

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who has long warned of inadequate
training and equipment for troops in Iraq, now chairs the
Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

He has proposed requiring a specific amount of training before more
troops are sent there.

Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, who has repeatedly accused the
administration of providing insufficient funds to meet veterans'
needs, now heads the appropriations panel that oversees the Veterans
Administration budget.

At a hearing this week, he called on the administration to check and
report back on whether the health and safety of veterans is being
jeopardized by similar conditions at any VA facilities.

His was just one of several hearings this week that made it clear how
much changed when the Democrats won Congress.

Amid this closer congressional scrutiny, Defense Secretary Robert
Gates shook up the high command of both the Army and Walter Reed.

And the White House named a bipartisan commission to review "the
services America is providing our returning wounded warriors."

Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts, who chaired one House hearing,
made clear that the Walter Reed situation exemplified a broader
problem due to underfunding, inadequate planning, growing casualties
and the administration's drive for privatization.

"As we send more and more troops into Iraq and Afghanistan, these
problems are only going to get worse, not better," he said.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush told the American Legion that, while
the military has "never failed us," U.S. troops were being "undermined
by back-to-back deployments, by poor pay, by shortages of spare parts
and equipment and a rapidly declining readiness."

He pledged, if elected, to "replace uncertain missions with
well-defined objectives."

More than six years later, these problems persist, in large part
because of the economic and human costs of an ill-defined mission with
an ever-changing objective.

__________________________________________________

O shame, where is thy blush?

Hamlet III, iv

Harry