I'm going to put up some more bits from March 2003, and talk about them, but meantime here's
Outsourcing Walter Reed by Philip Mattera in Tom Paine.The first hit off that is, you know, when he says "...converting the once legendary Walter Reed into a symbol of the shameful treatment of people ...", that there were staff involved in the "once legendary" part who were still there as it began to erode and dissolve from the corrupt and amoral pathogenic takeover Mattera documents.
Anyone who's ever been around organizational activism knows the burdens that get carried silently and invisibly by the heroes in the trenches, and you can bet there were plenty of lower echelon folks at Walter Reed who were and are still dedicated and committed, who came up against the top-down cannibalism that changed it and left it the way it is now, anonymous regulars who fought that, trying to balance career and commitment, and getting tougher or getting ground up and beat by it.
Libby's gone down behind his minor role in the Plame scandal, itself a side act, though his complicity and especially his utility as symbol for much else is far greater, and most American public don't really understand who he is or what he did beyond lie to a court or two, but they know his name and they know what his wife looks like, and this is so far down the media concern list it didn't even show up until it was spotlighted by concerted efforts on the part of many.
So let's think about those unknown soldiers there, in that invisible battle between capitalist swine and what passes for humanitarian sacrifice among us now - charge nurses beat down for their complaints about supplies and procedures by bottom-line men and women from the world of who cares, middle-weight bureaucrats with consciences who made as much noise as they felt they could and just got pushed further out and away each time they did, orderlies soaking up the vibe as things got less and less cohesive and more and more dismal and unhygienic. As Walter Reed devolved from sterling example to shameful evidence.
I have no documentation on this, but I know it happened, and so do you.
