Society Issues Talk

Harry Hope · Guest

Members of Congress were shocked to hear descriptions of their
quarters from wounded soldiers assigned to Walter Reed as outpatients
and the run-around they and their families received from the
hospital’s bureaucrats.

They were angered by the testimony of one soldier, returned to
Washington to be treated for a head injury, who said he was handed a
map and told to find his quarters on the Walter Reed property.

Other published accounts of how the government is treating wounded
soldiers are horrifying.

A woman told Newsweek she received no pain medicine the day after her
leg was amputated.

Outpatients said they waited months to be assigned primary care
doctors who could help them get the medical and psychiatric treatment
they needed.

Many are asking today, how did this happen?

How did things get so bad?

The answers seem obvious.

But more urgent are the answers to the questions:

What are we going to do about it?

And how soon?

Physically and psychologically damaged young men and women, volunteers
all, wheeled home on hospital gurneys for their bodies to be rebuilt,
and their lives, deserve better than they are getting from the
government that put them in harm’s way.

From a News-Enterprise editorial, 3/7/06:
http://www.newsenterpriseonline.com/articles/2007/03/07/opinion/mopin06.txt

Editorial, March 6: Shame

The disclosure of living conditions and treatment of wounded soldiers
at the Army’s premier military hospital tears at the soul of this
war-weary nation.

First, an administration in Washington plunged our young men and women
into a war on a premise that turned out to be false, ignoring the
numbers generals said were needed, without adequate life-saving
protective armor and without a clear strategy for victory or exit
plan.

Three-plus years later, we learn that those heroes returning home
broken in body and spirit are being housed in absolute squalor at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, mold on the interior walls, sharing
their rooms with rodents and roaches, re-victimized by bureaucratic
indifference and SNAFUs.

That’s not all.

Some members of Congress say they are being deluged by comments from
veterans and their families complaining these conditions are not
unique to Walter Reed;

that there are other military and Department of Veterans Affairs
medical centers where the conditions are as disgusting.

Every American ought to be sickened by the stories coming out of
congressional hearings this week.

Every American ought to be outraged that this disgrace is happening a
short subway ride from the White House, the Pentagon, the seat of the
federal government.

Every one of us ought to be grateful that The Washington Post was able
to break through the barrier of secrecy around an administration that
has attempted to hide the human costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The administration refuses even to permit photographs of flag-draped
coffins returned to the U.S. for burial.

_________________________________________________

Shame on you, Bush Crime Family

Harry

DemocratsFEARtheTRUTH · Guest

Why didnt "war hero" Murtha see it?