Walter Reed Hospital to Close

WASHINGTON – The base closing commission voted yesterday to shut down the Army’s historic Walter Reed hospital and move about 20,000 defense workers away from the nation’s capital. The panel also began shuttering Air Force bases.The nine-member commission endorsed much of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s broader plan to streamline support services across the Army, Navy, and Air Force. In many cases, it voted to merge programs scattered around military facilities across the country to centralized locations.Late yesterday, the commission voted to approve its own proposal to close the Galena Airport Forward Operation Location in Alaska, which the Air Force uses to land jets when necessary. The Air Force had wanted to keep it open. The commercial airport there would continue operating.The panel also approved a Pentagon plan to close Onizuka Air Force Station in California.Commissioners are to vote on the Air Force’s most contentious base closings Friday.The Air Force wants to vastly reconfigure the Air National Guard, a move that states fiercely oppose. It also wants to close Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.Anticipating the high-stakes votes, the entire South Dakota congressional delegation – Senators Thune, a Republican, and Johnson, a Democrat, and Rep. Stephanie Herseth, a Democrat – attended the hearing, as did Governor Richardson of New Mexico.As the commission tackled proposals that affected all the service branches, members focused on recommendations that sometimes were complex and interconnected.“In this case, I’m pretty confident we got it right,” commissioner Harold Gehman said, while considering a plan to consolidate some research and development activities. “But I’m telling you we’re going to be faced with a bunch of these … where I honestly do not know if we got it right or not.”Commissioner James Hill said the day’s deliberations on the joint-services section were agonizing and that the lengthy debate “highlights the complexity of these issues.”The commission signed off on many recommendations to merge education, medical, administrative, and training programs, although it made adjustments in some cases. In others, the panel rejected the proposals outright. But those were in the minority. The Defense Department is trying to achieve what it calls “jointness” – the services combining their strengths, rather than working separately – to save money and promote efficiency.Part of that effort was closing Walter Reed – the crown jewel of U.S. military hospitals – and moving much of its staff and services across town to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., which will be updated and expanded. In a nod to the Army hospital’s century-old heritage, the expanded facility will be renamed Walter Reed. Some of the old hospital’s personnel and operations also will move to a community hospital at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.The commission said care at Walter Reed, which has treated presidents and foreign leaders as well as veterans and soldiers, is considered first-rate, but the facility is showing its age.“Kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, all of them in harm’s way, deserve to come back to 21st-century medical care,” the commission chairman, Anthony Principi, said. “It needs to be modernized.”[The hospital has also been targeted recently by anti-war protesters carrying signs that read “Maimed for Lies” and “Enlist here and die for Halliburton,” according to a report on Cybercast News Service, which is a division of the right wing Media Research Center.The protests, which have reportedly taken place weekly since March, include mock caskets to represent the American death toll in Iraq. They are organized in part by Code Pink Women for Peace, which has also sponsored Cindy Sheehan’s vigil near President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, cnsnews.com reported.]The base-closing panel also largely sided with the Pentagon on shifting more than 20,000 military and civilian defense jobs from leased office space in northern Virginia suburbs of Washington to military bases farther away from the capital city.Opponents had argued that such a massive job shift could create traffic nightmares. But the Pentagon said military bases will provide a more secure setting, given threats of terrorism following the September 11, 2001, attacks. On that day, one of the hijacked airplanes slammed into the Pentagon.The commission must send its final report to Mr. Bush by September 8. The president can accept it, reject it, or send it back for revisions. Congress also will have a chance to veto the plan in its entirety, but it has not taken that step in four previous rounds of base closings. If ultimately approved, the changes would occur over the next six years.In May, the Pentagon proposed closing or consolidating a record 62 major military bases and 775 smaller installations to save $48.8 billion over 20 years, streamline the services, and reposition the armed forces.In the months since, the Air Force proposals have emerged as the most controversial. The Pentagon says they are designed to make the service more effective by consolidating both weapons systems and personnel as the Air Force moves to a smaller but smarter aircraft fleet.The Air National Guard plan would shift people, equipment, and aircraft around at 54 or more sites where Guard units are stationed. Aircraft would be taken away from 25 Air National Guard units.Several states have sued to stop the shake-up, and the commission itself has voiced concern that the plan would compromise homeland security.Closing Cannon would cost Clovis, N.M., a small town on the Texas-New Mexico line, nearly 3,000 jobs on the base and as many as 2,000 more related jobs in the community.

Walter Reed Hospital to Close

Walter Reed Hospital to Close

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