http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17554602/site/newsweek/Stealth Warrior
By John Barry, Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
March 19, 2007 issue - The old, macho Bush administration took a certain delight in telling its enemies, at home and abroad, to go to hell. The president seemed to enjoy watching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld swagger and put reporters down at press conferences in the post-9/11 buildup to the invasion of Iraq. (George W. Bush teasingly called Rumsfeld "Matinee Idol.") Advice from moderates, especially if they had worked in the administration of Bush's father, was generally scorned. And any suggestion from the chattering classes, from the media elites, was likely to push the president in the opposite direction.
But that was then, before Iraq turned into a quagmire, the Democrats won control of Congress, Rumsfeld was eased out and Bush began worrying more about his legacy. When The Washington Post exposed wretched conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Bush team responded as if Texas had been invaded. The behind-the-scenes scramble to rectify the mess at the facility and to take better care of veterans is revealing of a new way of doing things in the Bush administration.
When the Post first published its stories, Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten, called Robert Gates, the new Defense secretary. Bolten, who replaced Andy Card a little more than a year ago, is a results-oriented pragmatist. So is Gates. The two men agreed that swift action was called for. A senior White House official, who requested anonymity discussing the president's private conversations, tells NEWSWEEK that Gates called President Bush and said: "I'm going to hold people accountable. I don't know how high it will get. But it will be high." Bush responded, the official says, "Do what you need to do."
Firing high-level officials for the mistakes and wrongdoings of their subordinates has not exactly been standard procedure at the White House. After the press exposed the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison in 2004, 12 service members were convicted of various crimes, but only one, Col. Thomas Pappas, was an officer. Gates, by contrast, went to the top of the administrative chain of command, getting Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey to resign when Gates thought the Army was not taking the Walter Reed allegations seriously enough.
Gates, an Eagle Scout, is quiet, not at all demonstrative and not particularly close to George W. Bush. (He is friendlier with Bush's father, who made him CIA director for the last two years of his administration.) But he has been known to wield a sharp knife when it comes to slashing through red tape. For a couple of days, Gates watched with mounting vexation as Harvey seemed to play down the horrible conditions at the Army's premier hospital for wounded soldiers—or, as Harvey blandly put it, "the shortcomings at Walter Reed." Harvey fired the head of Walter Reed, Gen. George Weightman, only to replace him with the official, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who had earlier run the military hospital and appeared just as culpable for gross inattention to moldy rooms and snarled red tape. (Kiley was removed after serving only a day as interim commander.)
more...
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
