U.S. Army shaken by changes at top: report

WASHINGTON, March 5 (UPI) -- The Walter Reed Hospital scandal has left the top civilian and military leadership of the U.S. Army in disarray, the Army Times said Monday.

The newspaper noted that U.S. Army Secretary Francis Harvey resigned on March 2 over the controversy about widely-criticized standards of health care at Walter Reed Army Hospital. His resignation came after Harvey himself had fired Walter Reed's chief, Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, the day before, March 1, and replaced him with Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker.

The Army Times cited an unidentified U.S. Army official as saying Harvey's shock firing had been unexpected within the Army staff.

Harvey's resignation came while new Defense Secretary Robert Gates is still in the early learning stages of the job that he took over after President George W. Bush fired six-year Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Nov. 8. Harvey's resignation also came during another time of transition when Gen. David Petraeus had just succeeded Gen. George Casey as the top U.S. ground forces commander in Iraq. Casey, in turn, is slated to succeed his fellow four-star, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, in April as Army chief of staff.

It remains to be seen what sort of impact Harvey's resignation will have on the Army during a time of war. The Army Times noted that all these changes while the U.S. Army was simultaneously fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while it was also going through a demanding budgetary process with a new Democratic Party leadership in the U.S. Congress that was likely to be far more critical and probing about financial requests than the previous Republican-controlled Congress was.