The Shame of The Military.
By sideways | Related entries in NewsHow in hell do we allow this to happen?
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely — a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them — the majority soldiers, with some Marines — have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.
How can this be? How can American soldiers lose arms, legs, chunks of their brain, eyes and half the flesh on their face and not be welcomed home with a solid gold wheelchair and service to shame a Four Seasons?
More at Sidewaysmencken.blogspot.com
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February 18th, 2007 at 2:11 am
It shouldn’t happen but figuring out how it came to this is easy. Remember how rudely those people who forecast a minimum cost of this war as $200 billion were dismissed? Given the fact that the administration and the only people in the Pentagon they listened to gave unrealistically rosy scenarios of how this war was going to turn out of course every aspect of care for our veterans was underfunded. It will only continue since the real costs of the war must be hidden no matter what to help claim that all of Bush’s tax cuts can be made permanent.
February 18th, 2007 at 2:14 am
My grandfather is a WWII vet, and he consistently complains about the treatment he gets at the local VA hospital. Plus, if your income is over a certain amount, you have to pay a portion for the treatment you get at those hospitals. Kind of a bum deal for potentially dying for your country, eh?
Yep, the VA is hurting, and you have to go back to see who has cut funding for veterans to lay blame. My grandfather insists it was Reagan, but I can’t find any evidence having searched on Google for about 20 minutes.
Do you know of any cuts in funding for VA benefits to veterans? Or cuts to VA hospitals themselves?
February 18th, 2007 at 3:42 am
[...] Other Voices Speaking Out: MemeOrandum; AMERICAblog; Obsidian Wings; Donkelphant; THE NEWS BLOG; INTEL DUMP Technorati Tags: 22nd Amendment, AOR, Borders, Bush, Current Events, Headline News, Headlines, Immigration, Iraq, Milblogs, Military, News, News and Politics, Plamegate, Politics, Rants, Term Limits, The Decider, UCMJ, VA, Valerie Plame, Veterans, Walter Reed [...]
February 18th, 2007 at 8:16 am
[...] One simple question. WHY? I first read about this on Donklephant and followed the links back to the original article in WaPo. Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses. [...]
February 18th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Well, Justin, perhaps you are looking at budget cuts in the wrong way. The most obvious: When the budget of the Office of Vet. Affairs remains stagnant, that is a cut simply due to inflation. And have you taken into account the growth of the military over the years, & especially, the increased need of the increased number of the sick & wounded from Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, & Iraq? My guess is the numbers of veterans who need VA help has doubled or trip[led, since before Reagan took office. THAT is the real picture of the VA budget cuts.
And why should we be surprised? Looking at just Bush’s record, there is a pattern of neglect for the troops on the ground who lack equipment & even more so for those no longer able to fight. Don’t forget the thousands who are dying from breathing the “safe air” immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Bottom line: If it doesn’t make money for the Elite who support Bush, Cheney, & the rest of the chicken hawks, it isn’t important.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:03 am
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