So says Mark Cordell, a contractor sent in to coordinate repairs at Walter Reed.
He reports that, after the problems in Building 18 were exposed, the soldiers were just moved to a building that had the same problems.
Cordell was so frustrated that, last week, he quit and went to WUSA, Channel 9 in the D.C. area, with 81 pictures he had taken throughout the facility.
Cordell said that he took care of 250 to 300 work orders in two weeks after the problems were exposed in the Washington Post but was unable to get any action from the managers to bring in a qualified high-voltage electrician into yet more buildings, buildings where people work.
Cordell points to a picture showing the terrible decay inside the building and says, "The water is actually on the ground floor here. There is water halfway across the ground floor. And there's electricity too. There's high voltage that goes to this building. Two thirteen thousand volt transformers. Through the basement filled with water."
Cordell took more pictures in Building 1, the old hospital, that's now the main administration building. Water damage in the walls; holes in the ceilings next to electric cables and computer servers; hazardous waste stored between occupied floors; and leaking pipes that are rotting floor joists.
He says he went to the Garrison Commander and was essentially told to
"... 'just be quiet and let it go.' Well you know what, I can't let that go. Look at this, this is corrosion, stuff just wasted away. When they fix one steam leak, it just bursts somewhere else."
Now, does this sound like what General Kiley was telling the media tour they led through building 18 shortly after the original story broke? Umm, no. According to Dana Milbank, after the press had been taken through newly painted rooms (where the drywall was dry enough that they could paint), and after being told by Kiley that "They [the problems] weren't serious, and there weren't a lot of them," and after viewing workers "wearing Tyvek hazmat suits and gas masks,"
He [Kiley] then attacked the "one-sided representation" of the Post reporting. "I do not think that Building 8" -- he apparently meant 18 -- "is emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families," Kiley said. "I want to reset the thinking that while we have some issues here, this is not a horrific, catastrophic failure at Walter Reed."
My guess, and it's a fairly educated one after studying the way this administration operates the past six years, is that Bush and company thought they could, literally, smear a little paint over the situation and the public would lose interest shortly.
And, don't forget Donald Rumsfeld's wife, Joyce, after visiting Walter Reed,
According to three people who attended the gathering, Rumsfeld listened quietly. Some of the women did not know who she was. At the end of the meeting, Rumsfeld asked one of the staff members whether she thought that the soldiers her husband was meeting on his visits had been handpicked to paint a rosy picture of their time there. The answer was yes.
The neglect and dishonesty of this administration is stunning.
Let's help Mark Cordell keep this story in front of the public.