No matter who is doing the maintenance the commanding officer of the installation is still responsible for the conditions of the facilities on the post. If the conditions were that way when he arrived he should have noted the problems to his superiors and fought to correct the problems.
"I know that the maintenance replaced government employees last year and there wasn't enough time for Walter Reed to go from a pristine state to the state it is in today."
Not according to the article I just posted.
They were only scheduled to begin to replace government maintenance people with contractors at the start of this year. And then, as I said, only 200 out of 1,100 when they were finally done.
"Walter Reed Army Medical Center plans to cut at least 200 jobs early next year in its drawn-out, bitterly contested effort to outsource more work to a private contractor."
And that is from November 2006.