Shinseki picked for Secretary of Veteran Affairs

People are central to everything we do in the Army. Institutions don't transform, people do. Platforms and organizations don't defend the nation, people do. . . . Without people in the equation, readiness and transformation are little more than academic exercises. - General Eric K. Shinseki, in a June 2003 letter to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld shortly before he stepped down as Army chief of staff.

Pretty spot-on quote by a guy that will now be leading the VA department, huh?. Shinseki has two purple hearts from wounds received in Vietnam. So he knows firsthand what it's like to be a wounded veteran going through the VA system for healthcare. He also has the distinguishment of superior judgment as he was the most preeminant military person to voice the need for "on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" to maintain a peaceful occupation of post-war Iraq. He did this a month before the Iraq invasion took place. Rumsfeld told reporters that Shinseki's estimate would be proven to be too high and it's not a coincidence that after this difference in opinion, an early retirement for Shinseki followed a few months later. Shinseki, a Japanese-American, will also be the third Asian-American appointed to a Presidential cabinet, the second Asian-American not married to GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, and the first not to serve in George W. Bush's cabinet.

I think this is a great pick.

I also think the last quote in the article about the VA healthcare system is a little off: "It's an antiquated system that has been underfunded for years, really needs to get into the 21st century". From what I understand, the VA system has one of the largest computerized health records systems in the world, and has been talked about as a model for computerizing records for a national health care system. Seems pretty 21st century to me (and when I have to fill out the same damn form every time I visit a new doctor, that seems like the 19th century.)