Walter Reed has been a rat hole for years. This is nothing new. It was a rat hole when I was stationed in DC in 1970; it was a rat hole when I visited it in the 80's; and it's a rat hole now.
That it why the base closing commission voted to close the damn thing. It was ancient, obsolete, out-of-date, etc. It was cramped, had no area for expansion.
The Walter Reed story was an article that the WaPo could have run any time in the last 30 years and didn't.
They were just head hunting.
Someone fired a General who had absolutely nothing to do with allowing conditions there to become what they were.
Rummie would've told the media that they were slow. That the place had already been targeted for closure.
Because it's the armpit of hospitals.
What I really want to know is this: who were the dolts who were trying to keep the base closure committee from closing Walter Reed?
And because it was targeted for closure, maintenance of major repair items was consider not cost effective, and that though kept flowing down hill to minor repairs. And it has been 3-4 years since the closure was announced, thus the problems begining, or growing faster these past 3-4 years.