The growing controversy over substandard living conditions in an outpatient facility at Walter Reed, the Army’s flagship veterans hospital, has sparked at least five major investigations in Congress and the Defense Department.

Besides costing the center’s commander and the secretary of the Army their jobs, it is also creating concern among the U.S. troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. NBC News’ Brian Williams reported Monday from Iraq that several soldiers and a commander had sought him out in al-Anbar province to try to find out what was going on.

The problems at Building 18 at Walter Reed, where The Washington Post documented substandard conditions and bureaucratic problems affecting the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, “will be one of the easier parts to take care of,” said Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on national security, which opened hearings on the scandal Monday.

Bigger problems to be addressed

“The deeper story here is how people are treated once they’re discharged from their medical treatment into the outpatient care,” Tierney said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Hardball.”

The problems have long predated the Post’s disclosure of conditions at Walter Reed, said Tierney, whose panel heard testimony Monday describing delayed and improper medical treatment, foul sanitary conditions and lack of concern for injured veterans and their families.

“They don’t have enough advocacy, there wasn’t enough personnel there to deal with all of their intricate problems and there just really was too confusing and complex a system that really has needed for some time to be repaired,” he said. “That is a lack of leadership right up and down the line, and we didn’t get as many satisfactory answers as we wanted today.”

The anger on Capitol Hill crosses party lines. Rep. David Dreier of California, ranking Republican on the Rules Committee, said on “Hardball” that “there is bipartisan outrage over this.”

“As we try to encourage people to serve in our military, the thought of not providing them adequate care — to see something like Building 18 — is just outrageous,” Dreier said.

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Sunday that he would support appointing an independent commission to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.

“Investigations are not always the best way to go, but I think we ought to do whatever’s necessary,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Bush troop ‘surge’ could be complicated

The scandal comes at a bad time for the Bush administration, which is moving to increase the U.S. troop presence in Iraq by about 20,000 to quell continuing sectarian violence.

“We want to make sure if the president does get his surge, that there’s some foresight into what’s going to happen and the impact on them,” Tierney said.

The White House said President Bush would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed extended to other facilities. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates created an outside panel to review Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a former secretary of the Navy who was treated at Walter Reed after he was wounded during the Vietnam War, said that before blame was apportioned, it was important to distinguish between the immediate treatment wounded veterans get at Walter Reed, whose critical care is frequently cited as among the best in the world, and “what happens when we start processing them into the veterans community.”

“We’ve got huge backlogs” processing veterans’ transition after their treatment, said Webb, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will convene its own hearings Tuesday. “You’ve got soldiers over there at Walter Reed taking more than a year just to get their disability claims processed just so they can get out.

“These are leadership questions, and it goes in my view to how this administration has been dealing with people once they are leaving the military,” he told “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.

‘The wrong way to treat our troops’

Lawmakers at the hearing Monday got an apology from the temporary civilian leader of the Army, which had been pummeled for more than a week for what many — including Gates — denounced as its defensive response.

“We have let some soldiers down,” said Peter Geren, undersecretary of the Army, who will become acting Army secretary later this week.

“There’s a vow that’s part of the soldier’s creed: I will never leave a fallen comrade,” Geren said. “That’s the — on the battlefield, in a hospital, as an outpatient. That is the part of our soul of every soldier. And any time that vow is broken, I can tell you it hurts the heart of the Army.”

The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients who spoke included the medical center’s previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman who was relieved of his command late last month, shortly before Gates removed Army Secretary Francis Harvey.

“You can’t fail one of these soldiers ... not one. And we did,” Weightman said.

Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Army surgeon general and head of Walter Reed until 2004, also apologized for housing conditions that did “not meet our standards.”

Kiley said that the system for outpatient care was “complex, confusing and frustrating” and that a team had been sent to 11 other installations around the country to make sure there were no similar housing problems.

Army officials told NBC News that Kiley was expected to be reduced in rank and forced to retire.

Soldiers’ stories

Lawmakers listened closely as several patients came to the hearing with stories of lax or poor treatment at Walter Reed.

“Building 18 — honestly, I hate to say — it was like a ghetto,” said Spc. Jeremy Duncan, who helped spark the scandal after he was interviewed extensively for the Post’s articles. “It was unforgivable for anybody to live — it wasn’t fit for anybody to live in a room like that.”

Annette McLeod told the committee that her husband, Cpl. Wendell McLeod, was originally sent to the wrong hospital after he was hit in the head with a steel door in Iraq and suffered a head injury.

Once at Walter Reed, she said, he suffered delays in getting outpatient tests and treatment.

“This is how we treat our soldiers,” she said. “... They’re good enough to go and sacrifice their lives. And we give them nothing.”