then you have someone like eric shinseki on the greatest troops they believe what they're the backlash if someone was killed or if there was a backlash for the arrest were very much against something like that. right. >> yes, thank you for the book. thank you for your outstanding reporting that preceded the book from the balkans as well. i would say there was an informed view among some policy people, ex-government people, human rights activists in this town, and some in europe that the principal actors were given in some form immunity in the course of the dayton negotiations. and that's certainly some of those figures believed that they had received it. what, if anything, did you uncover on that front? >> karadzic and the people around the track for me to distinct claims about immunity. one that richard holbrooke promised, and the second one, chirac it. chirac promised us. how can this happen? with holbrooke, i doubt it. i can imagine a situation, if you're able to osha, i can imagine a situation in which he intimated that maybe would be less the problem, but he was never stupid enoug

these were actually developed by secretary shinseki and his team. when bob came onboard, he did a quick diagnostic, and he found that there is no better mission in government. there is no better mission in the world than caring for our veterans. and our values are fantastic. but they weren't being lived. not consistently. they were in pockets but not everywhere. they looked great, and he said, you know, my v.a. is all about fulfilling that mission. my v.a. is all about living our values. and we're going to turn around and fix it, and that's what we've been focused on doing. but we are also, have heroes that are doing amazing things every single day. so i'll just tell you one story. this was an e-mail that i got about two months ago, and it was from somebody at the, our white river junction hospital up in vermont. and it was a story about somebody going above and beyond. and we have too much of a rules-based culture, too much of a fear-based culture. people are worried about stepping out of line. people worried about, you know, i've got to follow the

i had many lengthy conversations with both secretary shinseki, before he left, and a direct conversation with secretary panetta, when he was secretary of defense, about some of those issues. it is a leadership problem and the mismanagement is rampant. let me give you one example. then i'll yield to my colleague from arkansas. went to a veterans clinic in ohio with a specific purpose in mind. i wanted to see if they had a particular veterans appointment on the books. and when i asked about that veteran they said, sure, he has an appointment next week. we're going to get him right in. i said you can cancel that appointment. he commit suicide on saturday. he waited so long to get in, he ran out of options. we can do better than this. it's not a money problem. it's a leadership problem. i yield to my colleague from arkans arkansas. >> thank you. and thank you for your service to our country. mr. moulton, thanks to you. there's not anybody on this dias more passionate about taking care of our veterans than this representative from arkansas. i've got to tell you -- as it's already bb said, thi