Senior Republicans knew about Walter Reed soldier abuse, but didn't speak up

They knew, but didn't want to embarrass the Army. Yeah, what's 600,000 disability claims not yet responded to, soldiers sleeping in their own urine, mold, cockroaches and asbestos compared to embarrassing the Army.

From Congressional Quarterly:

Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.

But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital’s problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Young and Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., the former chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, both acknowledged in interviews that they were aware of patient care problems at Walter Reed long before The Washington Post exposed them two weeks ago.

And get this: The Republican in charge of all military funding in the House didn't want to weild his influence to fix the problems at Walter Reed and across the entire military hospital system because he discovered the problems during his time off, and he didn't want to mix business with pleasure. I'm not kidding.

“What else do you want me to do? I am not going to go into a hospital and push my way into a medical situation,” Young said after the hearing.

Young said he “separates my life as a member of Congress and the work I do on a volunteer basis,” visiting military hospitals with his wife almost every week.

Young said he used his role as an appropriator to push to fund a new lab at Walter Reed and a new phone system at Fort Carson so patients could more easily make appointments.

But he said he purposely opted to bring concerns about individual patients’ care privately to the attention of Walter Reed commanders, rather than wield his clout as an Appropriations subcommittee chairman.

Wow, a new lab and a new phone system. I'm sure that really helped the guys sleeping in their own urine while you and your wife did practically nothing to stop it.