A 2007 memo:
Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan's incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing....
Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.
Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.
Shocking, willful blindness. Even if the murders had never occurred, it was wrong to allow Hasan to serve as a psychiatrist.
The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.
According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.
IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo — who is a doctor — wites:
The memo was from during his psychiatry residency (PGY = post-graduate year).
MadisonMan is quite right. [MM said: "I think this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem.] Bureaucracy alone would have kept him in gummint employ; no need to invoke PC issues.
Just imagine rolling out this sort of bureaucracy on a national scale.
We could call it the National Health Service.
Posts
69 comments:
When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.
I'm not military, but this is rank insubordination. They should've given him a dishonourable discharge YEARS ago.
However, and this is a horrible thought, but I think that American lives were spared by having him in the Army, so that his diseased hatred of our country could be violently targeted at his military coworkers.
Can you imagine the damage this man would've done, had he gone "jihadist" in a populated mall this Christmas?
Horrible thought, I know, given the 40 brave service personnel whose lives were altered by this sick terrorist. But there you are.
Cheers,
Victoria
Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks.
Woah. That's some seriously low workload!
I think this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem.
Sounds like affirmative action taken to the nth degree. It shows why one set of rules for everyone works best. No fudge factor, no gray areas.
Headline: Diversity Run Amock.
And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.
- General George Casey
Hey, if shooting dozens of people is subordinate to "diversity," what's a poor performance record?
The memo was from during his psychiatry residency (PGY = post-graduate year).
MadisonMan is quite right. Bureaucracy alone would have kept him in gummint employ; no need to invoke PC issues.
Just imagine rolling out this sort of bureaucracy on a national scale.
We could call it the National Health Service.
"I think this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem."
Exactly!!! It's done daily in the armed forces. This goes for every sad sack, shirker, latrine lawyer, dim bulb, etc. It's always easier to 'gift' them to somebody else than do the mountains of reports.
Anybody ready to drill here and drill now yet? The oil and gas factor has warped us into a denial that accepts the Mohammedan Cult as preferred citizens who can do no wrong all because we need the Saudi/Wahabbi guys cheap crude like a junkie needs his next fix. Turns out that Dumb Sarah Palin has accidentally been right again.
I think this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem.
Quite so, and thanks for making that point, Madison Man.
Of course, as we are poised to turn our health care system into a bureaucracy, the ramifications are chilling.
We can be glad he was lazy; only a tenth of the expected number of patients were exposed to his shoddy treatment.
Anybody ready to drill here and drill now yet?
Frankly, I am DYING to have some genius (I don't care who he is, Indian, Chinese, a Westerner, an American, whomever) discover how to transform hydrogen into stable fuel cells for our future modes of transportation. That region of the world who only provides petroleum to the world (other than extremist terrorists) would then be totally irrelevant.
I don't want them annihilated. I just want them made irrelevant.
Check this out:
"In 2003 President George Bush proposed the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative (HFI), which was later implemented by legislation through the 2005 Energy Policy Act and the 2006 Advanced Energy Initiative. These aimed at further developing hydrogen fuel cells and its infrastructure technologies with the ultimate goal to produce commercial fuel cell vehicles by 2020. By 2008, the U.S. had contributed 1 billion dollars to this project.
In May 2009, however, the Obama Administration announced that it will "cut off funds" for the development of fuel cell hydrogen vehicles, since other vehicle technologies will lead to quicker reduction in emissions in a shorter time. The US Secretary of Energy explained that hydrogen vehicles "will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years", and also mentioned the challenges involved in the development of the required infrastructure to distribute hydrogen fuel."
Nice going, Obama.
Cheers,
Victoria
"... only a tenth of the expected number of patients were exposed to his shoddy treatment."
Unfortunately, 41 new patients got exposed to his shoddy treatment methods when he gunned them down.
Allowing people like this guy in our military who claim they are "Muslims first, and Americans second" is ritual suicide.
Our soldiers are required to swear an oath to the Constitution. Not to fucking Allah.
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
All Muslims who cannot swear this oath (or who reject it after swearing it) should be removed from military service with prejudice and be required to repay the government for the training, education, housing and food they've been provided.
I think it's too easy to say "this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy", when this guy isn't just "some guy", but a religious terrorist. I think this is exactly what I've been warning you guys about (I've even repeatedly told you the harm is to those around the believer) and the willingness to look the other way, in the name of political correctness, is just another clear sign that NewAge culture has placed us in even more danger than any of you can imagine.
Before it was ignorance, now you're now being willingly naive.
btw, for those of you who (I know) will not get what I'm saying, I'm not calling Islam NewAge, but our culture.
It's the first two words that caught my eye: "The Faculty ...."
So what should be the focus -- the military aspect or the academic one? Can anyone imagine that a dangerous fanatic like Hasan would have been drummed out of any academic institution today? How about UW. If there were a nut like this on the law faculty, would he have been canned?
The point is not to make excuses but to figure out whether it was an academic culture or a military PC thing that was more to blame for the obvious screw-ups in failing to deal with Hasan when it became clear he was a problem waiting to happen.
And as horrific as this tragedy was, if General George Casey's career becomes a casualty, I think some good will have come of it.
There, fixed it for you.
I realize that Army Chief of Staff is not a combat command (he trains, supplies and provides the troops, others, like CentCom, use them), but this is still utter BS. Everyone from Hasan's immediate CO (not at Hood, the previous one) right up through his chain of command to Casey should be cashiered, if for no other reason than pour encourager les autres.
This is a horrible failure of the military bureaucracy AND the residency.
There's an aspect of this case that's not getting much discussion, namely, the military is not pre-disposed to let expensive assets walk out just because they're not doing their work. While there is some element of PC at play in this case, I think money was at the root of the situation. After paying for Hasan's education through college and med school, he wasn't going to be allowed to resign his commission just because he (apparently) changed his mind. The threat the bureacracy was responding to was people attempting to game the system and get a government-paid education with no apparent strings attached. Focusing on the bean-counting aspect blinded them to what was really going on with Hasan. He wasn't Cpl Klinger, cross-dressing in an attempt to be declared insane -- he really is nuts.
The Army sounds like the Catholic church with the pedophiles just being transferred on. There is apparently no other way to profile and release a bad officer, especially if they are Muslim.
Bureaucracy alone would have kept him in gummint employ; no need to invoke PC issues.
It doesn’t hurt that psychiatrists are sometimes scarce and that there has been a lot of political emphasis on Mental Health particularly for returning soldiers.
Hasan was really in some ways a victim of PC. He was obviously deeply troubled. Any one paying attention had to have known he was a threat to himself and others. But, they never bothered to intervene and try to help him because they were too afraid of being accused of anti-muslim prejudice.
Political correctness is evil, to borrow from Orwell.
Yes, by all means, Casey's worthless head should roll for this. But does anyone believe that the Army is the only branch of service that has this problem?
Our heroic SecDef has been awfully been awfully quiet about this whole thing. What happened to leadership and the idea that accountability starts at the top?
Maybe if MAJ Hasan had been in favor of continuing the F-22 program he would've been cashiered.
In private industry, when you have a potentially valuable employee who's not measuring up, you produce a corrective action plan, with milestones to meet, with discharge the consequence of failure. Does the military not follow such a procedure? Do they just let the slackers continue to slack. Consider further that a highly trained professional who acts this way needs mental health counseling. This behavior shrieks depression to me, a layman.
Hey Pogo, translate this for me:
It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.
I read this to say that amongst all those Full Colonel Shrinks at the Army's premier Hospital and the Shrink Dept at FEDMED, the only guy with the nads to put what everybody was thinking on paper was a junior Major.
Was This guy effectively the Chief Resident, 2 years ahead of CPT Hasan, or do you read that title to be a permanent member of the staff?
PS: I think the bigger story was last week when we got the leaks from the Monthly staff meetings which showed that Hasan's problem was known to the Full Colonel Shrinks, who shrunk from dealing with reality. After all, Ft Hood had some Shrinks, they could counsel Hasan and set him straight.
PPS: Gates under Bush fired the USAF Chief Staff and Secretary for lack of leadership on Nukes. Casey might have been fired by Bush on this and desrves to be, Obama? I think Casey, who I used to like, pre-diversity quotes, serves to divert attention from Obama.
Perhaps the Army was adapting a policy of watchful waiting. They were hoping that he would either get his act together or that he would do something so overtly awful that he could be excised from the Army without fear of lawsuit. It was the latter.....I suppose the Army screwed this up, but there are lots of dots and people connect them in lots of ways. When the dots are connected, the pattern looks inevitable and pre-ordained, but it really isn't. The world is filled with troubled individuals. Some of them throw themselves off the bridge, and some become mass murderers. There's just no way knowing how these people will play out their cards.
What is [word?] is that nothing will be done here. No heads will roll, nothing will be done to expedite further cases. This will just cause more paperwork, bureaucracy, and bureaucrats.
What a wonderful place the U.S. used to be. Now it's being rotted by our PC betters.
FLS said...Does the military not follow such a procedure? Do they just let the slackers continue to slack.
I think this is somewhat of an outlier, though you get classic avoidance methods in all large organizations.
a couple of stories.
1. My wife is a full Colonel JAG, National Guard. I used to give her crap about not being a real officer (e.g. like the Docs). Until she took steps to "board" (admin discharge) a LT who was clearly a sub performing flakey risk. My wife's HQ, wanted to pass the LT on to another unsuspecting unit, rather than take the statistical hit with with board action.
2. Twenty years ago, we lived in a town house in DC next to 2 young Annapolis Grads, She was attending FEDMED, he was at the nuke sub school. Apparently she was having an affair, cause she came running over one night saying her husband was threatening suicide with a knife. My wife caled 911, and I went and talked the kid out of the knife, getting more than I wanted to know about his personal life in the process. Cops, came, I turned it over to them...
Unfortunately for the 2 your Navy folks, previously, I ran what the Army calls a "Personnel Reliability Program". The Army watches the folks who are near Nukes carefully for medical, security, and Shrink issues. Next day, I called the Defense Security Service and reported the incident.
Navy sub guys have a high suicide rate to start with, maybe 30/100k. family separation, work stress etc. The Navy didnt need an accident waiting to happen near nukes. I expect I destroyed his career and perhaps the medical student wife. Adultery isn't career enhancing. Dont regret my decisions in the least.
Getting someone kicked out of the military (or even out of a unit or off a course) is hard, and you have to be willing to play the paperwork game, unfortunately. That means properly documenting every screwup, documenting that the numpty got the required "verbal counselling", etc. If you care about your country and your regiment or corps, you jump through the hoops, no matter how much it sucks (and with the help of a good clerk, it can suck less). Sometimes you even play the stupid diversity/quota game (i.e. making sure that the female instructor takes the lead on having the female numpty kicked out). Usually that's quite easy to arrange, since the proficient female, black, Jewish, whatever instructor really HATES seeing a screwup from their own sub-group making them look bad.
Hasan's colleagues and commanders appear to have been about 50/50 lazy and chickensh*t. I hope they are happy with the results of their collective dereliction of duty.
"In private industry, when you have a potentially valuable employee who's not measuring up, you produce a corrective action plan, with milestones to meet, with discharge the consequence of failure. Does the military not follow such a procedure? Do they just let the slackers continue to slack. Consider further that a highly trained professional who acts this way needs mental health counseling. This behavior shrieks depression to me, a layman."
Sure they do. But they didn't apply it here. You have to remember that a single EO complaint pretty much ends your career in the Army. If any of his superiors had stepped up and said that Hassan had problems and those problems related to his radical religous views, they would have been committing poltical suicide. So they just looked the other way, promoted him, and shipped him off to Fort Hood as soon as they could. It is called passing the trash.
The Army completely failed here. And don't think it is because they are desparate for people. They pass over officers all the time who get on the wrong political side of things or piss off the wrong person. I have known several good officers who were run out of the Army for the sin of speaking their mind and being competant. But, they won't touch a protected group.
Just imagine rolling out this sort of bureaucracy on a national scale.
We could call it the National Health Service.
The fix is already in with medical licenses. Just as long as you keep up with your CMEs and fees.
Well, I think it's both--PC combined with the bureaucratic inability to get rid of incompetents.
The most lethal part of the combination must have been the fear for their own careers that people would have felt if they tried to cashier a Muslim. General Casey's interview early in the aftermath of the killings leads to the belief that the fear was justified.
A policy of "watchful waiting?" Well, they got the waiting part right.
The fix is already in with medical licenses. Just as long as you keep up with your CMEs and fees.
The really good thing (well, in the State of Florida anyway) is that now you can do your CMEs online. My dad, who isn't at all computer-savvy, did it with me next to him, clicking "Next Page" and completed all his requirements that way.
Incredibly, there are even various iPhone apps (free) which show you all the available CME courses in your area, or online.
I mean, it's a different world to the one I remember in my childhood, with my parents going to all-day CME conferences at some Hilton or Radisson, for almost 1000 bucks registration fee.
Cheers,
Victoria
So much for the speculation that he "snapped" under the pressure from dealing with so many soldiers coming back from service overseas.
They were just waiting until he had dinner with Osama bin Laden, and then they could capture both of them.
@Drill SGT:
NPR posted the memo which identifies Dr. Scott Moran as "Program Director, NCC Psychiatry Residency Training".
That generally means he is a staff MD, not a resident or fellow (i.e. post-residency level trainee). And the Director role usually falls only to someone with a decade of practice or more.
Outside of the military, residency program directors are a kind of bigwig, in education circles anyway. Prestigious, so it's usually a competitive position.
So much for the speculation that he "snapped" under the pressure from dealing with so many soldiers coming back from service overseas.
He could still have snapped. But it would have been a very low threshold.
Again, it's not clear that the Army has a procedure to try to salvage someone who is performing that poorly. He must have measured up at one time, because the Army forked out for him, an enlisted man, to go to medical school. That would have been the point to say, Thanks, but no thanks.
And if he was beyond salvation, the ideas that either following the documented procedure for discharge is too arduous, or that shitcanning slackers would reflect poorly on you, are both monstrous.
Who was it said, "PC gets you killed"?
vbspurs said...
When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.
I'm not military, but this is rank insubordination.
More like arrogance. He knew the Demos like Teddy Kennedy and Kerry would leap to his defense and so did the people in his chain of command.
Frankly, I am DYING to have some genius (I don't care who he is, Indian, Chinese, a Westerner, an American, whomever) discover how to transform hydrogen into stable fuel cells for our future modes of transportation.
The US Navy announced a breakthrough in this field a few months. It was mentioned by Fox, but I'm surprised we haven't heard more about it
Just imagine rolling out this sort of bureaucracy on a national scale.
This is the face of those 'death panels'.
In this case, the bureaucracy allowed a homicidal doctor to carry on in his increasing mental problems. Deaths were the actual result.
No one is specifically to blame, because everyone's main goal was not to cause deaths, but merely to make their own lives easier by not engaging the problem.
Most people will not die because of a mass murderer. Most people who need not die will die because of the same exact small non-acceptance of responsibility. Each person involved rationalizes it, and moves along in whatever they were doing.
The death panel idea isn't the image of the Nazis. It's the image of the crowd ignoring the screams of the girl being raped, or the neighbors shutting their windows when someone is being mugged right outside.
It's an SEP field.
Rabbit trail on CMEs -- you still pay, but not as much as onsite stuff.
PC may have cracked open the door but path of least resistence bureaucractic mentality ensured he was going to move on, not out.
"Going Postal" is a phrase well earned.
"I suppose the Army screwed this up, but there are lots of dots and people connect them in lots of ways. When the dots are connected, the pattern looks inevitable and pre-ordained, but it really isn't."
I call bullshit on this (not on you):
By connecting the dots, I figured out that my ex and her quack had killed her mother in a matter of hours. I was also the only person not surprised when it was discovered, two years later, they had killed two more people. Then, all of a sudden, the "crazy" and "too macho" man was the guy they needed for help to sort out what had happened - and I knew what happened by studying NewAge.
I don't know about people and this "spiritual" and religious shit. It's like race: you all know the "content of our character" riff, but you still allow the Al Sharpton view to exist, when it deserves to get a blowtorch-to-the-face in return - but you don't, because you're scared to be called a racist.
With "spiritual" stuff, you've been conditioned so much to see it as a vital human "need" that you ignore the existence of people like me - who don't need it - allowing all manner of mayhem to transpire in it's name. It's crazy (and crazy-making) behavior to anyone not enthralled by it.
Getting someone kicked out of the military (or even out of a unit or off a course) is hard, and you have to be willing to play the paperwork game, unfortunately. That means properly documenting every screwup, documenting that the numpty got the required "verbal counselling", etc. If you care about your country and your regiment or corps, you jump through the hoops, no matter how much it sucks (and with the help of a good clerk, it can suck less).
I used to work pretty closely with civil service guys attached to the Navy. What tended to happen with conscientious managers was they'd start the paper trail, and after many hours of work and frustration the bad apple would transfer to another division.
So the paperwork had to start all over again. After a few rounds of this even the most selfless managers decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Is the military any different?
What tended to happen with conscientious managers was they'd start the paper trail, and after many hours of work and frustration the bad apple would transfer to another division.
How? Is the new boss forbidden to talk to the old boss? Are the performance reviews unavailable to the new guy? Why cannot the paper trail be transferred along with the person? This just sounds fishy -- or stupid.
MM is correct, but let's not downplay the role of political correctness here. There looks to be incompetence in bucketfuls regarding the handling of this guy.
My guess is that, whether sincere or not, everyone involved will cloak themselves in a protective layer of "we were afraid to do anything for fear of our own careers" re racism, etc. Once the meme is established, it will lock in hard.
The problem with that is that it may be 100% true, but those standing accused of incompetence will make it start to take on the face of a 24-hour news cycle farce, the societal ill de jour, and PC will not get the attention it deserves as an actual societal ill.
traditionalguy:
Turns out that Dumb Sarah Palin has accidentally been right again.
For the record, not exactly accidentally. Not only was she right, she knew she was right and she knew WHY she was right.
And yet the bozo Dems claim she doesn't understand national security.
Joan:
There's an aspect of this case that's not getting much discussion, namely, the military is not pre-disposed to let expensive assets walk out just because they're not doing their work.
I only know about the Navy. A midshipman who resigns or is expelled from the Naval Academy after a certain point in his education (I believe it's the second year) is made an enlisted sailor and required to serve out his time.
I believe that's a good way to deal with slackers, but it wouldn't have helped with Hasan. The only thing to do with Hasans is discharge them. That's not good, it's just the least bad of alternatives.
holdfast:
Hasan's colleagues and commanders appear to have been about 50/50 lazy and chickensh*t. I hope they are happy with the results of their collective dereliction of duty.
Thank you for that.
Hmmm. Here's an idea: court-martial for dereliction of duty those who knew and did nothing.
(Sigh. I'm such a starry-eyed idealist...)
"Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers."
Althouse - Shocking, willful blindness. Even if the murders had never occurred, it was wrong to allow Hasan to serve as a psychiatrist.
Strongly agree with Althouse. Particularly on hearing Hasan sought to violate the doctor-patient relationship and report soldiers assigned to him for various "war crimes against Muslims".
Its flat-out medical malpractice, condoned by his superiors. Who were cowed by PC.
Imagine! You are a seriously troubled young guy who saw buddies blown up by IEDs and you yourself may have killed Iraqi civilians in a firefight with Iraqi militia hiding in a house or crowd full of non-combatants.
You come home stateside and the Army in it's wisdom tells you to spill your guts to a radical Islamist doctor who:
1. Tells you you will roast in hell for killing brother Muslims.
2. You committed war crimes.
3. That as the oppressor against brother Muslims you richly deserved seeing buddies blown apart, and should praise Allah for sparing you.
4. And take two pills of an anti-psychotic medication a day, read the following Koranic tracts to spiritually guide you...and if any problems develop...try calling me by phone. And keep trying....
My Air Force son told me that a friend was discharged for having a 39 inch waste. The kid was considered overweight. EOD tech. Big dollars training this kid and 4 years in and 2 Iraq tours and he was out.
A thought. I understand the Army and Marines are tapped on shortages of shrinks.
But part of this failure in military leadership is perhaps a manifestation of the failure of the military and civilian leadership to support vital military elements "away from the action!" Meaning Bush and the generals had no problem spending billions to build R&R facilities for "The Heroes" replete with Burger King restaurants and 300-machine video arcades at Baghram and FOBBIT enclaves.....thats where politicians visited. And "the heroes" got billions for dubious body armor manufacturers just by asking..
Meanwhile, out of view, the backrooms where "wounded warriors" actually were recuperating away from the VIP tour areas at Walter Reed were rat-infested, moldy, squalid quarters.
And people were told since BRAC was shutting down Walter Reed, no money existed to fix it up. And money galore existed to give "hero battlefield surgeons" all the people, resources they wanted....but VA facilities and homeland army bases were blasted with staffing cuts.
Remember...Walter Reed...the place where political and military leadership let abysmal living conditions persist because they had no support for "non-frontline" luxuries like adequate cleaning staff or funds for repair work...was the place that gave us Maj. Nidal Hasan. And it seems he is the same manifestation of the same structural failure - inadequate resources - and immediate leadership forced to make do with what they have - and a culture that strongly suppresses "making waves" about an intolerable situation local leadership is them expected to tolerate and make do as best as they can.
And now, just like when the care facilities of Walter Reed became a major scandal...all sorts of money and solutions will be magically found.
And "hero-Fobbits" may have to do without funding for free burgers that cost 32 dollars to actually make when you consider the lettuce truck driver makes 90K because of the IED danger and the lettuce is flown in from Romania..to Turkey.
And we will hear of magical solutions to address the shrink shortage. Like pulling shrinks in from light load Navy and AF bases. And finding funds for using private practice shrinks qualified in areas the Army can use.
And unless serious change happens in ability of senior military leadership and Congressional oversight and the Executive Branch to ensure the chain of command is not suppressed by PC or by career-fearful lower rank officers & enlisted and action can be taken at MAJOR military deficiencies - this will happen again.
Consider Maj Hasan as part of the same failure sequence as the Walter Reed wounded warrior scandal.
Cedarford, where did you get that additional information? It didn't come from the NPR article.
This situation is sad enough, and volatile enough that we really don't need to "massage" any currently available facts.
To be clear, I was asking about this, Cedarford.
"Particularly on hearing Hasan sought to violate the doctor-patient relationship and report soldiers assigned to him for various "war crimes against Muslims"."
Pogo made a point that ought not be ignored.
I've had good and bad experiences with health care in the active duty military. I've related them here before. Mostly good, but the bad was pretty bad.
What I think that many people don't understand, don't *want* to understand, and actively avoid understanding... is that the scandal at Walter Reed a couple of years ago would not have been solved by having GOOD people working there.
They were good people. And not only were they good people they were *loving* and *concerned* people.
That doesn't excuse their failures any more than they can be excused for passing on Hasan to Ft. Hood. But it's inexcusable of US not to take our responsibility to understand the dynamic that allowed those events seriously.
Anyone who is deluded enough to think that it was the result of *bad* people or that "reforming" health care by having the government involved will mean it's all controlled by *good* people or that, as I've seen seriously suggested quite a few times, that removing the profit motivation will result in better care provided by better people is only going to perpetuate the actual dynamic responsible for these particular failures.
But there is this notion that problems will go away if only we CARE enough.
Altruism and love will save us.
I want to say again how proud I was of my high school when they fired the principal who was blackmailing a secretary to stay in an affair.
He volunteered to leave quietly if the board wrote him a recommendation. They refused.
Then they found out he'd left his last two schools in the *exact* same circumstances... except with the recommendation.
My school refused to send him on to unsuspecting others. And I really hope the board went back to the previous schools and denounced and shamed them. Sending them a bill for legal fees would be a good plan, too.
Stunning level of incompetence by the military.
Will heads roll?
Frankly, I am DYING to have some genius (I don't care who he is, Indian, Chinese, a Westerner, an American, whomever) discover how to transform hydrogen into stable fuel cells for our future modes of transportation.
NH2 (anhydrous ammonia) is considered an fast alternative energy form.
A Fast Way Out of Using Gasoline
Penny - That came from a doctor at Walter Reed, speaking to DC media (Wash Times) with his name not for attribution. (For obvious reasons of avoiding retaliation by his superiors for disclosing this).
Apparantly Hasan approached fellow residents about the possibility of turning some of his patients in for Army Criminal Investigative Dept investigators "war crimes against innocent Muslims".
Hasan was reminded that most, but not all of his work was under a doctor-patient relationship....and while he did have obligation under UCMJ to report war atrocities...he should be sure, and use the chain of command at Walter Reed. To the physician's knowledge, Hasan never did report his complaints against whatever patients he was screaming war crimes about...to higher ups.
Mariner,
'Here's an idea: court-martial for dereliction of duty those who knew and did nothing."
I served as well, and that's what should be happening.
Clean house.
wv - "reddie": what we should be for anything
How? Is the new boss forbidden to talk to the old boss? Are the performance reviews unavailable to the new guy?
As a civil service manager you don't dare say something bad about someone who works for you. That's just asking for a formal complaint, even if it's true.
I don't know if the performance reviews are available or not.
The Crack Emcee said...
Mariner,
'Here's an idea: court-martial for dereliction of duty those who knew and did nothing."
I served as well, and that's what should be happening.
If you served, you should know that the idea of a court martial is laughable. The UCMJ has specific criteria on what is dereliction of duty. It is likely none of Hasan's superiors and co-doctors would meet any of those criteria for charges to be filed.
You can address it with leadership changes, outside the military criminal justice system. Despite the shakeup at Walter Reed with the "wounded warrior scandal" Trying to criminalize lower-ranking individuals for systemic structural problems and regs and expectations imposed at the highest military and civilian leadership levels is a stupid approach. And doesn't do a thing by attempting to use military criminal courts to "make an example of subordinates" for fixing deficiencies in the culture and PC imposed on the organization by senior American leadership in and outside the military.
Again, "court martial them!!" is a legally prohibited, futile path that shows more bloviating than knowledge of how the military works.
Cedarford:
Are you a JAG officer?
... pushed "Publish" too quickly.
I know my idea of courts-martial is laughable, but not for the reason you asserted.
Accountability ... what a concept!
Actually I don't think it would have been hard at all to have gotten Hasan kicked out of the military. If three or four people had said Hasan admitted he was gay he would have been out of there lickity-split. You know how the military is; crazy Muslims with terrile job performance are fine, as long as they aren't homosexual.
Cedarford, thanks for the update. Actually, the names of the people who spoke are out there now.
Speaking of "waders", as we are in the link up above, this just keeps getting more complicated. The federal investigators better be wearing their waders, not to mention citizen journalists.
I surely don't know all the ins and outs of doctor - patient confidentiality, but now that Hasan's accusation has hit a few news sources by way of other military personnel speaking to federal investigators, I would assume these charges would need to be investigated even if no prosecutions could occur because of the break in doctor - patient priviledge?
I would also assume that someone will dig deeper as to why information given, to an unnamed federal investigator, by Colonel Febbo and Captain Surman would leak its way to the press? Aren't there rules prohibiting that too?
Or are the "normal rules" only for "thee" and not for "me" when we live in this new age of "transparency"?
...this shows how hard it is to get rid of someone in a bureaucracy. Much easier to move them somewhere else so they are someone else's problem.
My sister works in state government involved in state run health care. She once told me this exact thing. She would recommend problem employees for promotion to another department because it was too difficult to fire them. Government is one of the few places where incompetence rises to the top.
"Government is one of the few places where incompetence rises to the top."
NBC is another.
There are more of these places than there should be.
I know a Chief Mate who was promoted to Captain because both his captains despised him but couldn't get rid of him any other way.
Government is one of the few places where incompetence rises to the top.
This is why we need term limits for bureaucrats as well as for Congress. Such a setup would allow skilled people from the productive class to lend their talents to true public service for a short period of time (I say ten years, max), and it would have the added bonus of getting rid of the truly incompetent ones before they could do too much damage.
Government is one of the few places where incompetence rises to the top.
This is why we need term limits for bureaucrats as well as for Congress.
Yeeeesssssssssssss!!!!!!!!
End career politicians. Send them back into the private sector to earn a living and to experience directly the effects of the legislation that they pass.
RT a fb friend who is a prosecutor in DC:
[friend's name] questions why the media has not been all over the fact that the Ft. Hood shooter was on Combivine which is a drug for HIV/AIDS patients. It thins your blood so was he using it to thin his blood so he would bleed out when shot or was he trying to fail a physical so that he could no deploy. Or did he have HIV and no one is mentioning that.
Amazing how that kinda looks and sounds like Columbine.
Kev:
This is why we need term limits for bureaucrats as well as for Congress.
Well, sorta.
The Civil Service seemed like a good idea in the 1800s. The unintended consequence was to make most of the Federal bureaucracy completely immune to reform.
The "spoils" system seemed corrupt. But as long as the President could hire and fire at will, government could actually be changed after an election.
We should either dismantle the Civil Service system or drastically limit its scope.
Post a Comment