who are totally blind. talk to your doctor about your symptoms, and learn about the link between non-24 and blindness by calling 844-824-2424. that s 844-824-2424 or visit your24info.com today. don t let non-24 get in the way of your pursuit of happiness. jack ba when jim jones, mike rogers and thing burns. i want to play you a quick sound bite from susan rice earlier in this show. the question was why did why didn t you go to congress? there s something you brought up. why didn t you go to members of congress and tell them that this
diplomatic bureaucracy, the congressional bureaucracy. do you feel in the end the resignation of general shinseki was a political necessity or was it absolutely something that had to be done for policy purposes? it seemed to be political, so many members of congress calling for his ouster. here is a very capable, effective, honorable gentleman who served his country all the way back to being wounded in vietnam. i think what happened at the va over the last decade or so, you have a tremendous infusion of people from the iraq and afghan wars. the va is simply stretched. i don t know if it has the budget it needs or the personnel it needs, i was sorry to see secretary shinseki go. he was there for five years. his service to his country is unparalleled, and no one should question that. but the management of the va in the last five years has not been good. 8% increase in veterans, 34% increase in funding. someone has to be held accountable. i didn t call for his resignation. i thought h
in these issues. and it happens frequently on some very sensitive issues, everything from the osama bin laden raid months and months in advance and followed up to the day of the raid. some notion that this is so secretive and so sensitive that it couldn t happen, it s wrong. she said they were notified. i m mystified by that. they didn t notify congress appropriately. here s why. other places that we have let the gitmo prisoners go to these particular countries, by the way, which we paid them to take them, has been a disaster. it hasn t worked, which is one of the things that last year we brought up to them. it s not working. so, if we re ever going to continue this, you need to change it. well, they didn t like the advice and counsel they got from congress, i always think that s dangerous, just like the secret
certainly, after five years in captivity, our concerns were increasing with every passing day. we also had indications that indeed his health was growing more fragile. he had lost a good bit of weight. and we were very concerned that time was not something we could play with, that we needed to act when we had the opportunity. and that s what we did. why didn t you notify congress? for that very reason which, under the law, it says you should. this opportunity is one that has been briefed to congress when we had past potential to have this kind of arrangement. it wasn t unknown to congress. the department of defense consulted with the department of justice. and given the acute urgency of the health condition of sergeant bergdahl, and given the president s constitutional responsibilities, it was determined that it was necessary and appropriate not to adhere to the 30-day notification requirement because it would have potentially meant that the opportunity to get sergeant berg
congress and lay out a plan to fix it. that never really happened and he becomes a distraction. this is as serious a problem as i have ever seen and the culture is rotten to the core that would allow double lists and veterans to actually die sitting on those lists. something is rotten at the va, and we need to get to the bottom of it. i would bring somebody from the outside to get a handle on this thing. and it should be quick. it should be severe. this notion that nobody gets fired in this town and everybody is a wonderful human being in the way they manage is just simply not the way the world works. if we want to get to the bottom of it, people, i think, need to be held accountable yesterday and at the same time, a plan of implementation to get it fixed. general jones, you probably knew general shinseki and know him well. do you think this was about politics or about his service at the va?