Army Times; Army denies patients face daily inspections

[caligirl]

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 1, 2007 8:57:01 EST

Army officials are denying that soldiers in the Medical Hold Unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington will have daily early-morning wakeup calls and room inspections.

But one Building 18 soldier said he woke up Tuesday morning to the sounds of sergeants pounding on doors and yelling, “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

“I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, I’m back in basic training,’” the soldier said.

The soldier said the outpatient soldiers at Building 18 were issued garbage cans and cleaning supplies and told to keep their rooms clean and organized because of all the officials who would be making their way through the building during the investigation next week.>snip<

>The order not to “engage the media” sparked discussion on Capitol Hill.<

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/02/TNSreedinspectfolo070228/


Note that there is a hearing slated for March 5th at WR by house Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on the Treatment of Wounded Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Monday, March 5, 2007, time to be announced, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
They are trying to see if they can do a live web cast from off site. they still don't know if that will happen according to the subcommittee office person this morning.



EDIT: try this once:http://www.armytimes.com/news/


Now that Weightman's news is posted on the front page this story is now much lower on the page, you have to scroll down to Kelly Kennedy's name and her story. But there is a huge picture of Gen Weightman on the front page just now.

[pennylane100]

1. The Link no longer worked when I tried it.

I am sure it must be a technical problem :sarcasm:

[Trillo]

4. It was a technical problem

The OPs URL needs a trailing slash. When DU's automatic URL encoder doesn't work, placing them within a link works better: instructions are in the "HTML lookup table".

[peacetalksforall]

2. Wasn't the source of the drill and media rules The Army Times?

[caligirl]

6. Yes Kelly Kennedy is watching and reporting this in the army Times.

Looks like the press can do somethings well, its not like its easy to get a general fired.

[Eugene]

3. You'll need to embed the story link to make it work.

Like so: Army Times link

The Army Times web server is strange that way.

[caligirl]

5. that skill is one I don't have yet.

[Rose Siding]

7. Soldiers can speak to media, but not in gov't buildings-

...which has a certain nitpicky military "logic" to it.

snip>
Boyce said the soldiers may speak to the media, but only with permission if the interview takes place in a government building, such as Building 18. However, he said, if soldiers at Walter Reed want to talk with reporters down the street at a coffee shop, “that would be fine.”

Boyce also responded to a gag order issued to military spokespeople after extensive media reports on the problems facing troops in the Medical Hold Unit with both the medical evaluation bureaucracy and their living conditions.

In a message Tuesday, the Pentagon clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending queries for interviews and filming by CNN, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople titled “Media inquiries related to Walter Reed”: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.
....
On Wednesday, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., issued a press release in which she said “any attempt to silence the very soldiers who brought their own mistreatment to light, or to hide ongoing abuses from the public eye — if such attempts are occurring — would be morally reprehensible. It would be an abdication of one of the most fundamental responsibilities of our government: the protection of those who have fought to protect us.”

At a Senate defense appropriations subcommittee hearing, Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, asked for an explanation about the order not to speak to the media after reading reports on the problems at Walter Reed in the Military Times newspapers.