The Walter Reed scandal spread from the Pentagon to VA this week after senators confirmed VA failed to tackle their end of the bureaucratic nightmare at the military’s premier hospital. 

The VA’s Michael Kussman bears personal responsibility for failing to act for nearly three years, causing untold thousands of veterans around the country to wait months and sometimes years without benefits.

Here’s a chronology behind the Walter Reed fiasco.

• October 2001: The first casualties from the Afghanistan War begin arriving at Walter Reed.

• July 2002: VA stops outreach programs to advise veterans about VA healthcare and disability benefits, thus opening up hospital beds for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq the next Spring.  Instead of increasing capacity to assist veterans, VA seeks ways to limit access to care.

• March 2003: Additional casualties from the Iraq War begin pouring intoo Walter Reed.

• August 12, 2003: The Wall Street Journal breaks the Walter Reed scandal, reporting on the terrible treatment Jason Stiffler received.  “Mr. Stiffler's story shows the human toll when critical benefits judgments are delayed, and the confusion veterans and their families often feel when they're forced to confront bureaucracy. It also illustrates some of the flaws in the $60.4 billion veterans agency, and how those problems could prove overwhelming as veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq start to enter the VA's rolls.”

• August 2003: VA Secretary Anthony Principi acts immediately, forms a “Seamless Transition Task Force” and places VA social workers and claims counselors at Walter Reed and Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.

• August 2004: Complaints surface from patients at Walter Reed, and VA Task Force co-chair Michael Kussman orders a Focus Group study of problems at the hospital.  The report said wounded, injured, and ill service members were "frustrated, confused, sometimes angry" about the bureaucratic nightmare.

• January 27, 2005: Salon reporter Mark Benjamin writes the first of more than a dozen investigative journalism articles about Walter Reed, “Whether it is the lack of protective armor for troops in the field or, now, wounded troops paying for food, complaints from soldiers have shed an unflattering light on how the military bureaucracy takes care of its troops. And they have prompted accusations that the Pentagon is fighting the Iraq war on the cheap, no matter what the cost to soldiers.  Salon works with veterans’ advocate Steve Robinson on a series about Walter Reed.

• May 13, 2005: While fighting two wars, the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission recommended that Walter Reed be shut down, demoralizing staff and effectively ending base maintenance.

• March 29, 2006, VA’s Frances Murphy states that, some VA clinics do not provide mental health or substance abuse care, or if they do, “waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible.”

• From 2001 through 2007: Medical personnel and staff who assist with service members transitioning from the military to civilian status as veterans are slowly removed from Walter Reed and deployed to war.

• January 16, 2007: Iraq War veteran Jonathan Shulze kills himself after family says he sought VA medical care three times, even going so far as to say he was suicidal.  VA places him as number 26 on a waiting list.

• February 19, 2007: The Washington Post reports on the Walter Reed scandal, repeating many of the shocking problems first outlined by Salon’s Mark Benjamin.

• April 4, 2007: George W. Bush nominates VA’s Kussman to be in charge of more than 200,000 VA employees and all 1,400 VA medical facilities.

• April 12, 2007: VA’s Kussman states under oath that he knew about the Walter Reed Focus Group study in 2004.  VA Secretary Jim Nicholson testifies that he learned of the study the day before. Nicholson tells senators under oath that he has not yet told the White House that  Kussman was fully aware of the scope and depth of the problem in 2004.
Kussman said Department of Defense officials participated in the Task Force.  However, Kussman failed tell senators who he gave the report to, when he gave it to them, and what he did to reduce the bureaucratic nightmare at Walter Reed.

• By April 2007, nearly 40,000 wounded, injured, and ill are evacuated from the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.

• Of the 1.5 million Americans sent to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, about half are expected seek VA medical care and file VA disability claims.  Since the first press report in August 2003, the Administration has failed to clear the paperwork jungle faced by hundreds of thousands of new war veterans.

Do you think Kussman should be promoted after he admitted he knew about the Walter Reed fiasco?  Should he and VA be investigated because VA still doesn’t have enough mental healthcare professionals to screen and treat the hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans returning home with traumatic brain injury and mental health problems?