Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

[nam78_two]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; Page A01

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.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.
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More at the link.

[w8liftinglady]

1. K and R...it is a travesty what we are doing to these brave soldiers.

[Cabcere]

2. That's awful.

:cry: K&R...people need to be aware of this stuff. Thanks for posting it.

[Edweird]

3. All compliments of AWOL chickenshit and his merry band of scumbags.

With a heapin' helpin' of smarmy platitudes from the chimperor. But no real help.
These war criminals in the white house are the worst kind of despicable.

[nam78_two]

4. My thoughts exactly.nt

[globalvillage]

5. We send them to a war they shouldn't be fighting,

we don't give them the equipment they need to protect themselves,

http://blog.johnkerry.com/2007/02/wheres_the_armor_wheres_the_mo.html

and this is the level of care they receive when they come home?

How can this be allowed to happen?

[CAG]

6. This is just that military-hating librul WP and NBC news beatin up on

our fine administration using disgruntled veterans as PAWNS, PAWNS I tell you!!!

Signed,
Bill O'Leilly

:sarcasm:

[PA Democrat]

7. That is disgraceful.

Bush expects so much from these troops that he has over-deployed, under-equipped and misused to support his messianic wet dream of geopolitical domination of the Middle East. And this is their thanks.

[Miss Chybil]

8. If we could just find a few million of that 10 billion dollars that we lost in Iraq...

Of course, it would be better to find our dead living again and our broken whole. Being as that's impossible, why can't we pay to take care of these soldiers right?

Everytime I think it can't be worse, it's worse.

[1620rock]

9. Why don't the reporters at the shrub's news conferences' ask..

..about this and other such matters?

[Reterr]

10. KR.eom

[Edweird]

11. Kick

[nam78_two]

12. ...

:kick:

[Rosemary2205]

13. Military housing in general is is AWFUL shape.

And putting injured and recouperating soldiers in a HOTEL? They should be in nursing/assisted facilities.

GOP version of "support the troops".

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