Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs Eric Shinseki will resign after the revelation of widespread failures to treat sick and injured veterans in a timely manner, President Obama has announced.
Here is CNN’s damning report on the Phoenix veterans’ hospital’s practice of lying in official documents about which veterans had been treated to cover up long delays in treatment; other inquiries showed that similar problems were “systemic” in the VA, and in recent days, an increasing number of members of Congress had demanded Shinseki’s resignation.
Shinseki was involved in a similarly high-profile scandal in 2003, when, as Army chief of staff in the lead-up to the Iraq war, he was “vilified” and “marginalized” (in the New York Times’ words) by the Bush White House after he testified to Congress that the administration’s plans for keeping peace in the country post-invasion were inadequate.
