WASHINGTON — Top Army officials faced angry lawmakers during an emotional hearing Monday on shoddy medical treatment and living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, acknowledging that they had failed in the care of wounded veterans.
Calling the scandal at Walter Reed "the tip of the iceberg of what is going on all around the country," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said veterans and their families were "flooding us with complaints" about bad medical care.
Waxman, citing news stories and congressional reports that revealed the hospital's problems over the last two years, cast doubt on Army officials' assertions that they were surprised by disclosures that injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan had been treated shabbily.
"We get officials who say they just didn't know things were happening," Waxman said. "I have a long list, a stack of reports and articles that sounded the alarm bells about what was going on here and around the country."
Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, fired as commander of the hospital complex last week, took responsibility for the problems.
"I failed," he said at the hearing. "We can't fail one of these soldiers or their families, not one. And we did."
Turning from the congressional panel to face a veteran and his family, Weightman expressed regret for a bureaucratic maze that forced the soldier's wife to battle the Army to get her husband proper medical treatment.
"I'd just like to apologize for not meeting their expectations," he said.
Several lawmakers accused Army brass of making Weightman, the medical center's commander for six months, the scapegoat for the problems at Walter Reed. Veterans groups think he had made progress in reducing the ratio of case managers to patients and in spotlighting post-traumatic stress disorder.
Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey was forced to resign last week over the scandal.
Weightman's predecessors -- retired Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr., who had commanded the hospital complex from 2004 until August, and Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who was in charge from 2002 to 2004 -- have not been disciplined.
After Weightman was fired, Kiley was named interim commander of Walter Reed but was removed a day later. Kiley remains the Army's surgeon general.
