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ASHINGTON -- Top Army officials faced an angry Congress during an emotional hearing about shoddy medical treatment and living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, acknowledging Monday that they have failed in the care of wounded veterans.

Calling the scandal "the tip of the iceberg of what is going on all around the country," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said veterans and their families are "flooding us with complaints" about the scandal.

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Citing a list of news stories and congressional reports that exposed the problems over the past two years, Waxman cast doubt on claims by Army higher-ups that they were surprised by recent disclosures about soldiers who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and were treated shabbily.

"We get officials who say they just didn't know things were happening," Waxman said. "I have a long list, a stack of reports and articles that sounded the alarm bells about what was going on here and around the country."

Peter Geren, the undersecretary of the Army and its No. 2 civilian conceded, "We have let some soldiers down."

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, fired as commander of the hospital complex last week, took responsibility for a failure of leadership. "I failed," he said. "We can't fail one of these soldiers or their families, not one. And we did." Turning away from the congressional panel to face one veteran and his family, Weightman expressed regret for a bureaucratic maze that forced the soldier's wife to do battle with the Army to get her husband medical treatment. "I'd just like to apologize for not meeting their expectations," he said.

Several lawmakers accused Army brass of making Weightman, who was Walter Reed's commander for only six months, the scapegoat.

Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey was forced to resign over the scandal last week. Weightman's predecessors -- retired Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr., who commanded the hospital complex for two years until August, and Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who ran the complex from 2002 to 2004 -- have not been disciplined.

The subcommittee made the unusual decision of moving the hearing away from Capitol Hill to an auditorium at Walter Reed. As soldiers roamed the scrubbed hallways outside, lawmakers listened intently to the impassioned testimony of two injured soldiers and the wife of a third. All recounted problems and hurdles they faced at the hospital.

Spc. Jeremy Duncan, injured in a roadside bomb in Iraq, lost sight in one eye, suffered a fractured neck and almost lost his left arm. He was housed in now-infamous Building 18.

"It wasn't fit for anybody to live in a room like that," he said, describing holes in the wall and black mold.

Duncan said that, despite repeated reports and complaints, nothing was fixed. "That's when I contacted the Washington Post," he said. After the newspaper reported the conditions, "I was immediately moved from that room, and the next day they were renovating the room."