Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey resigned today, one day after relieving Maj. Gen. George Weightman of his command at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC). General Weightman was relieved, in part, because of the conditions of the guest accommodations at the facility. I realize that the commander is ultimately responsible for what happens and if the conditions were his fault then he deserved to be relieved. I question whether the facility was in this state because of him or because of the Department of Defense.
WRAMC is on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list and is scheduled to be shut down. Operations will be moved to Bethesda and that facility will be renamed Walter Reed. Since WRAMC was on the BRAC list it is possible that command was told not to make any unnecessary repairs and not to spend money on a facility that was shutting down. If the guest house was not used, it seems to me that it would fall under such a mandate. The casualties of the war necessitated using the facilities and they were in disrepair.
I do not know the entire story but I think a little digging is required. If Weightman is being made a scapegoat because of reports about disrepair and those conditions are a result of BRAC then people need to know that. Like I said, if he was responsible for this then he needed to go but if not, I would hate to see his career end like this to appease people who are up in arms about a situation that might have been caused by DOD decisions.
Amazingly, when the BRAC list came out I know of more than a few liberals who applauded the closings and said that the property could be used for better things than the military. Now those same people complain because a facility that was being closed was not in tip-top shape. There are reasons they decided to close it and perhaps the cost benefit ratio of the repairs is one of them.
We need this story to be looked into just a little bit deeper than the surface strike and knee-jerk reactions we have seen.