While the current Walter Reed mess is at the feet of this current administration, I think it would be unwise to forget the larger, bigger picture, and that is that this is nothing new. In today’s WaPo, Dana Priest 9who should win a Pultizer for this series) notes that it is not just Walter Reed:
Ray Oliva went into the spare bedroom in his home in Kelseyville, Calif., to wrestle with his feelings. He didn’t know a single soldier at Walter Reed, but he felt he knew them all. He worried about the wounded who were entering the world of military health care, which he knew all too well. His own VA hospital in Livermore was a mess. The gown he wore was torn. The wheelchairs were old and broken.
“It is just not Walter Reed,” Oliva slowly tapped out on his keyboard at 4:23 in the afternoon on Friday. “The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard. It brings tears to my eyes when I see my brothers and sisters having to deal with these conditions. I am 70 years old, some say older than dirt but when I am with my brothers and sisters we become one and are made whole again.”
Oliva is but one quaking voice in a vast outpouring of accounts filled with emotion and anger about the mistreatment of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Stories of neglect and substandard care have flooded in from soldiers, their family members, veterans, doctors and nurses working inside the system. They describe depressing living conditions for outpatients at other military bases around the country, from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Fort Dix in New Jersey. They tell stories — their own versions, not verified — of callous responses to combat stress and a system ill equipped to handle another generation of psychologically scarred vets.
I am not defending this administration’s doings in the current scandal, but the real scandal is that this has been going on for far too long. I have a friend whose brother was just discharged from the Marine Corps after developing debilitating diabetes over the years while he was in service(he dropped from 180 lbs to a little over 100). He can not function, will not be able to hold down a job due to his illness, yet the military has classified him as partially disabled so they do not have to pay full disability to him.
That is one among what I am sure are thousands of similar stories that you will hear over the next few weeks/months. it needs to be addressed, and e need to stop using up these soldiers, pretending we are taking care of them, and then turning a blind eye as they are treated like second class citizens.
We owe them more than a yellow ribbon on the car window.
*** Update ***
I missed this. Don’t read it if you have high blood pressure.