At today’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who oversaw Walter Reed until 2004 and remains Army surgeon general, admitted that the condition in Building 18 was “clearly unacceptable,” but again denied responsibility for it. He blamed the neglect on “a failure of leadership at the junior level in that building.” Watch it:

Kiley’s attempts to shift blame contrasts with the statements of other senior military officials:

From what I have learned, the problems at Walter Reed appear to be problems of leadership. The Walter Reed doctors, nurses and other staff are among the best and the most caring in the world. [Defense Secretary Robert Gates, 3/2/07]

The senior Army leadership takes full responsibility for the lack of quality of life at Building 18, and we’re going to fix it. [Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, 2/21/07]

We failed here, we failed in having a facility like this. Unfortunately, it’s a leadership problem. [Then-Army Secretary Francis Harvey, 2/20/07]

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Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman writes on the military’s doctor shortage: “There are women who haven’t gotten pap smears in years, who go without mammograms for years.”

Asked to name one question she would like to pose to senior officials about the Walter Reed Scandal, Washington Post reporter Dana Priest said, “The root of so much that we cover is money. And the question is, why isn’t this funded to the extent that it needs to be funded?”

Indeed, as Paul Krugman writes in today’s New York Times, the crisis in the veterans’ health system “starts with money“:

The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans’ medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.

To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services. For example, in 2005 Salon reported that some Walter Reed patients were forced to pay hundreds of dollars each month for their meals.

More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care to those who defend our nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq the V.H.A., which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system. As the agency’s Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack “special eligibilities such as a compensable service connected condition or recent combat service,” will be turned away.

The administration’s approach to funding wounded veterans should already be clear. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal noted the growing cost of veterans benefits due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s response was to complain that it would “rather use [the funds] to help troops fighting today.”

“The amounts have gotten to the point where they are hurtful. They are taking away from the nation’s ability to defend itself,” says David Chu, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

During today’s hearing, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) called Chu’s remark “offensive.” Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, whose “eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round” in Iraq and who is waiting for prosthetic eye surgery, said Chu was “absolutely” inaccurate.

A FEMA trailer park was “abruptly closed down” this weekend because of “ongoing problems with raw sewage that pours onto the grass” and consistent power outages. FEMA moved many of the families to other nearby mobile home parks. Some of the displaced residents “questioned the genuineness of the sudden concern for their health because the stink of sewage has been a nuisance for about a year.” “They know how to put me out,” Katrina victim Allsee Tobias said, “but they don’t know how to help me out.”

Last week, ThinkProgress noted that Fox News host John Gibson had accused reporters of “news-guy snobbery” for covering the Iraq war instead of Anna Nicole Smith.” “John Gibson is right,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday, praising Gibson’s “courage” for reporting on Anna Nicole and not Iraq. Watch it:

Caught live on tape, Mitt Romney hangs out back stage with Ann Coulter discussing his plan to name her his Vice Presidential nominee, Coulter’s admiration for his deft abortion flip-flopts, and Romney’s meeting with James Dobson in which he made some early efforts to smooth over the whole is Romey a Christian issue.

This comes to me via Dave Weigel who observes that “Romney apparatchiks Barbara Comstock and Jay Sekulow work to keep the camera at bay, but they fail to protect their wooden candidate from looking like an awkward fanboy.” Also check out Russell Arben Fox on Mike Huckabee.