to continue to make this a political scandal. you saw a hint of that with boehner last week saying i don t want to know about shinseki, i want to know what the president was doing. you had a mild swipe at fox news. you wrote in your column that unlike some other stories which we could debate, this is not a phony, republican hyped scandal. right. does it become a question of who destroyed papers or didn t reply to this subpoena. i fear that s probably what s going to happen. is that boring? in the house of representatives. that s exciting because that s a political scandal. i think if we re being honest, we have to say this is a longstanding problem, obama said in 2007-2008, he was going to do something about it. he didn t. it s not a political scandal in that sense, it s a failure of government. he shoved a hell of a lot more money in it. if you think that s the answer to these problems, great. there are more veterans who need to be treated. sure. you have a bufr oxythat
people are reeling from the resignation of the secretary of the va and what they see as the mistreatment of this nation s veterans. and at grandson s where folks flock to chow down and chat, they are steaming. i think it s just a message that we don t care. you know, we understand you went over there, you served our country, you done your job, but, you know, now that you re back home, we don t care. reporter: richelle james husband was deployed a year in iraq. she says the va is overwhelmed, understaffed, and that the departure of general shinseki solves little. i think he s just a figurehead. i don t think he s the actual problem. reporter: and as the longest wars in our nation s history slowly wind down, they ask, isn t that when soldiers need the va most? jane bell s son is in the navy. if they understood what military families go through since iraq and afghanistan and
i don t think any implications rescuing him had to do with getting into the taliban to begin with. he is an american in captivity and he is a pow and we would try to get him out of there. in terms of the va story, howard, is there any updates? it has been in the works for a time and forcing general shinseki out i can the white house got the bad press from the va medical problems. but i do wonder whether or not bowe bergdahl s health was a factor. i am glad he is home but i am troubled by the fact five bad guys were let loose and
himself by up until a week ago saying, if things are found to be wrong, guys, this wasn t a question of if. it was very clear. so i think they dragged it out and made themselves look like weak leaders on this. you know, i think there was needless blood letting there and they could have taken care of this a while ago. somehow the white house set the standard, as long as these were isolated incidents, shinseki had his job. when now it s systemic, now he loses his job. i think it was embarrassing about how the beltway press made this about shinseki. now, will the media essentially declare mission accomplished and move on from this scandal? i don t think all media will. but without the personification. we have the head of shinseki gone. without the political flash point, you know, this is really a bipartisan issue. i think that it will fade into the background. the narrative is easy. is the secretary going to be
were so they have some kind of feeling about what it means to be a veteran and how important it is to take care of them. and i think that the bottom line to all that is we got to look at the leadership that exists in the va, and i know general shinseki is gone now but that s not it s not about him. it s about the leadership from there all the way down in every hospital. needs to be leaders that are making sure the right things are being done by those people that are going to take care of our veterans. j.r. you know and talk to a lot of your buddies in fellow service members. how do they feel about all of this and do they feel they re appreciated? make them think twice about how committed their country is to them? to look after them? they feel completely unappreciated. they feel their service what was it for? a lot of of them were proud of the service we have done for this country and for the freedom we enjoy every day, whether for ourselves or our families or strangers around t