It’s tough being a soldier in George Bush‘s army. Apparently he’s too busy listening to the generals to actually look after the troops. Or see that they are looked after.

Here’s the latest example of what Bush apparently means when he talks of supporting the troops.

Sgt. Jeff Frawley returned home this month from a 15-month deployment to Afghanistan. His father, Ed Frawley, visited him at his barracks at Fort Bragg, NC, and was appalled at what he saw.

No doubt Ed Frawley wasn’t the first parent to so visit and be so appalled. But he was the first parent to post pictures of what he saw on YouTube. From the Army’s reaction — immediate action plus a personal phone call from Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody — it appears that the Army is somewhat sensitive to being made to look really bad on YouTube. So Ed Frawley’s video was able to achive what decades of complaining by soldiers couldn’t: change.

Ed Frawley’s video showed a building that he said “should be condemned”:

“This is embarrassing. It’s disgusting. It makes me mad as hell,” Ed Frawley said of the building where his son, Sgt. Jeff Frawley, had to live upon his return this month from a 15-month deployment to Afghanistan.

Frawley said Monday that Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody called him to say he shares Frawley’s anger and that “there’s no excuse.” Cody said he would not want his own sons or any troops to return to such conditions, Frawley said.

Frawley’s 10-minute video shows still photos from throughout the building, which appears to be falling apart and filled with mold and rust.

Paint — which Frawley said is lead-based — is chipping. Ceiling tiles are missing. A broken drain pipe allows sewer gas into the building, while another one has tissues stuffed into it in an apparent effort to stop the gas from coming in.

Photos from the communal bathroom show some of the most disgusting images. In one, a soldier stands in a sink to avoid what Frawley describes as 3 inches of sewage water that filled the floor when toilets overflowed.

At times, “sewage water backs up into the sinks in the lower floors of these barracks,” Frawley said in his narration. “The soldiers have to tell one another who’s taking a shower when they turn the sinks on, or the person taking the shower gets scalded with hot water.”

Maj. Tom Earnhardt, spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, clearly wasn’t equal to the task of standing up and doing what the Army pays him to do. His best-foot-forward involved statements like: “Fundamentally, we acknowledge these conditions are not adequate by today’s standards.” Ground control to Major Tom: “And they are adequate by some standards from yesteryear?”

On Tuesday, the Army revealed what they’re doing in response to the Frawley video (as opposed to what they did in response to the living conditions in the barracks before the video hit YouTube):

Army officials said Tuesday they are inspecting every barracks building worldwide to see whether plumbing and other problems revealed at Fort Bragg, N.C., last week are widespread.

Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining barracks throughout the Army, told reporters at the Pentagon that most inspections were done last weekend but he had not seen final results.

While not providing specifics about problems discovered during the weekend inspections, Rogers indicated some deficiencies were corrected. In cases where extensive repairs are deemed necessary, the soldiers in that housing would be moved elsewhere until the fixes are completed, he added.

Strangely enough, Brig. Gen. Rogers says that the “barracks singled out by Frawley had been remodeled in April 2006″. Quite a remodeling job, if there’s still lead paint on the walls, and mold has already taken over, not to mention peeling paint.

But Rogers wasn’t done explaining:

Rogers said the Army’s standard procedure is to inspect a barracks building to verify that it meets Army standards before it is occupied by soldiers returning from an overseas deployment. For reasons he was unable to explain, that apparently did not happen in the Fort Bragg incident.

If it is such a standard practice to inspect barracks buildings before they are occupied, then why was it necessary to order a crash inspection of “every barracks building worldwide”?

A spokesman for Fort Bragg, Tom McCollum, told … reporters that the post, which is one of the Army’s largest with a population of 51,000 soldiers — including nearly 11,000 who live on the post — is saddled with 1950s-vintage housing that is not popular with soldiers.

“Are soldiers happy with living in the Korean War-era barracks? No,” McCollum said. They do not meet the expectations of today’s troops, although the Army has done what it can to improve living conditions, he said.

“Today, no matter how hard we try, we can’t put enough lipstick on this pig to make it more pretty,” the spokesman said. “So are there soldiers complaining? Yeah.” He said they’ve been complaining for decades.

Forget about putting lipstick on the pig, Tom. Just wiping off the dung will be a good start.