You know, it occurred to me after I left the thread this morning that if the Lt.Col. was not justified, there would be a Colonel or a General that would be all over his ass. There aparently wasn't. Those Colonels and Generals tend to listen their senior NCOs (i.e. First Shirts) on topics such as this. Furthermore the Lt.Col. may not have been in the direct chain of command of most of the troops, his job was to run the camp, not command the troops using it. If he bit the big one on this, I'm sure those CO's would have let him know, especially considering that he is just a "pissant reservist". I suspect the place was a pigstye and the senior line NCOs and Officers knew it, once they really looked at it, otherwise they'd have been all over his case. The phone lines to his office would have melted from the streams on invective sent his way by the CO's of those units using "his" camp.
There's another possibility too, If the troops were getting all down in the mouth about not getting into the war, and getting lax in garrison, sometimes it's usefull to given them someone to direct their frustations towards. The L/C may have drawn the short straw for that job. I've seen that little manuever pulled a few times. It's similar to the "Good cop/bad cop" routine.