GOVERNMENT IS UTTERLY INCOMPETENT! EXCEPT WHEN IT DOES STUFF WE DON'T LIKE!

Also going viral on the right is this, from FoxNews.com:

Al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo treated better than our vets

... Here's another secret the White House doesn’t want you to know about the VA. Al Qaeda detainees get better medical treatment than our veterans.

Say what?

Yes, it’s true. I know because I served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005-2009 and visited Guantanamo Bay Naval Base over 30 times during those years.

Despite the fact that Al Qaeda terrorists carried out the Sept. 11 terror attacks, killing 3,000 people in America, the admitted co-conspirators and their roughly 150 fellow jihadists at Gitmo have approximately 100 doctors, nurses and health care personnel assigned to them.

Doctors and medical personnel are at their beck and call. Got a cold, a fever, a toothache, a tumor, chest or back pain, mental health issues, PTSD? No problem, come right on in. Military doctors are waiting to see you.

The VA and Gitmo eligible patient-to-health care provider ratios speak volumes.

While the Gitmo ratio is 1.5 to 1, for America's 9 million veterans receiving VA health care and 267,930 VA employees, the ratio is 35 to 1...

The author is this is J.D. Gordon, a former Navy commander who now "serves as senior adviser to several Washington-based think tanks."

Gordon goes on to say:

The VA is a classic example of big government gone wild.

You know what I would refer to as "a classic example of big government gone wild"? Guantanamo. And, for that matter, the Bush/Cheney foreign policy that created it -- a foreign policy that was in place when Gordon worked for the Department of Defense, which, last time I looked, was part of "big government."

Now, some would argue that health care at Gitmo is first-rate only if you overlook, y'know, the force-feedings, or the reports of doctors participating in torture, or the whole indefinite-detention-without-trial thing, which can't be good for the prisoners' mental health. But it has been said that the medical care at Gitmo is excellent apart from all that -- in fact, the White House boasted that detainees get better health care than U.S. servicemembers:

In every case, enemy combatants held here receive medical care that is "as good as or better than anything we would offer our own soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines," the general in charge of the U.S. detention facility here said.

Typical of the Obama years! This general is proud of that!

... Oh, wait -- that wasn't from the Obama years. The date on that Defense Department news release was February 18, 2005.

But if Gordon is a typical conservative who thinks government screws up everything it touches, and he thinks Gitmo prisoners have excellent medical care, I'd like to ask him: Who does he think is providing the medical care at Gitmo? The private sector? Clearly not! The Gitmo prisoners can't choose their own doctors! If they need medical care, they have to appeal to a government bureaucrat! Right-wingers complain that Obamacare is a government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy -- but the government controls 100% of the economy at Gitmo!

My belief is that the Bush administration put a decent health care regime in place at Gitmo, as part of a failed effort to paper over the obvious moral bankruptcy of Gitmo's existence. It's quit possible that, within the obvious constraints, the system works. If there's good health care at Gitmo apart from the obvious abuses, that would just prove that government doesn't screw up everything it touches, and doing a good job is just a matter of having the will to do it.

Well, we see this sort of illogic all the time. The people who say government is always incompetent also believe that government is brutally efficient at destroying capitalism and making people dependent on social programs so they'll always vote for the party that provides those programs. If government is so incompetent, why isn't it screwing that effort up? Why isn't the effort to create a nation of lazy takers instead creating a society of hyperambitious Republicans? Why is government only incompetent sometimes?