The real treason. Our maimed soldiers are living in cockroach infested ghettos back here in the sta

[133724]

Oh my God. While the Republicans were posturing all week about how the Democrats hate the troops, the Sunday Washington Post takes a look at how the Bush administration and the Republican congress have been treating our hurt and maimed troops back here in the US: in cockroach infested ghettos.

It is absolutely sickening. Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi should lock the Congress down until every single one of these problems is finally fixed.

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.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/02/real-treason-our-maimed-soldiers-are.html

I agree: Lock down congress until this is resolved....

[pnwmom]

1. K & R. This is reprehensible.

[pnwmom]

2. Here's the Washington Post link to the full article:

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

[MADem]

3. Our military is broken. Even with the drawdown, the medical slots were not cut

nearly as much, because they figured it would be harder to plus-up the medical side in a hurry. So for the longest time, military medicine lived the high life. But now, it's just...egregious:

He quickly discovered that some outpatients had left the post months earlier and would check in by phone. "We called them 'call-in patients,' " said Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley, whose dormant PTSD from Vietnam was triggered by what he saw on the job: so many young and wounded, and three bodies being carried from the hospital.


Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands -- most of them off-post -- to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases.

The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there, after a clerk couldn't find a record of her service.

Shannon, who wears an eye patch and a visible skull implant, said he had to prove he had served in Iraq when he tried to get a free uniform to replace the bloody one left behind on a medic's stretcher. When he finally tracked down the supply clerk, he discovered the problem: His name was mistakenly left off the "GWOT list" -- the list of "Global War on Terrorism" patients with priority funding from the Defense Department.....

[pnwmom]

4. I gave up on trying to choose an excerpt. Everybody should read

the whole damn thing.

[MADem]

5. I agree. Each page is more horrifying than the last. It's unbelievable. NT

[shireen]

15. tinyurl

http://tinyurl.com/32sfbd

[ribrepin]

6. Don't forget to view the slideshow

K&R

[LostinVA]

20. Where is the slideshow?

[ribrepin]

32. On the right side underneath the picture of the black man

where it says "Photos The Wounded and Walter Reed". It's a slide show with a verbal narrative. It's more affecting than the article. The article alone made my blood boil.

[NMMNG]

7. Don't you know? "Support our Troops" only covers them while they're killing brown people.

Once they're done doing that they're on their own.

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. Not even then, as evidenced by the lack of necessary equipment too do their job

effectively and keep them relatively safe. Add in the crappy food and tainted water supplied by Halliburton for even more proof of the lack of support.

[NMMNG]

40. That's true

I guess it could be said that the Republican party's support for the troops boils down to a slogan and a yellow ribbon magnet.

[SoCalDem]

8. Once injured, they are a liability..not an asset

they are expected to "suck it up", "be a man", "work through the pain"..get rehabbed, get out, go home and STFU.

These injured soldiers will be cared for (mostly) by Mothers who will quit jobs to stay home and care for their lucky-to-be-alive children..or wives who will juggle child care with "injured-husband care". Eventually many young wives throw in the towel, and the Mom ends up with the permanent care in the end.

Their local communties will "rah-rah-rah" for them for a while, but after a time, they will just be the guy with no legs or the blind, scarred man in the wheelchair.

They will fight with the VA to get their care (in many cases), they will not have meaningful jobs, and for many this will be their life forever.

If a soldier was poor and living in a small, isolated community before he/she went into the service, the same pre-war "opportunities" are waiting for them when they return...only now they are even LESS able to support themselves..and are often many miles away from a treatment center..

Our military uses them, and then often just discards them..

[Raster]

31. In a war-based economy, the injured indeed are a liability. The merchants of death would prefer

a "kill" anytime. No responsibility and a lot less negative public relations. No muss. No fuss.

[Vinca]

9. Meanwhile, the Republicans have been accusing Democrats

of not supporting the troops. Right. Conditions as bad as that didn't just happen since the new Congress opened. This is shameful.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

10. Dumbya has no use for broken soldiers when he's playing war

Hide them, discard them, get the help to clean up the mess, and get him new shiny ones he can play with.

This is sickening.

[shireen]

11. WRITE YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND DEMAND ACTION NOW!

The guys and gals deserve better! Lease out a good 4-star DC hotel and move them there!

[malaise]

12. Get photos and spread them n/t

[mloutre]

13. Yes. This is just so very wrong, in so very many ways.

I read this article last night, and I was totally outraged. There's a movement afoot to blogswarm it into every corner of the online universe, and I wholeheartedly concur. I've written threaders about it this morning in a few of the blogs I've got top-page access to, this being one example: http://culturekitchen.com/m_loutre/blog/this_is_so_wrong_in_so_many_ways and this being another: http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2007/02/so_very_wrong_i.html

I'm also K&R'ing every thread I can find about it, too. Why? Because it's really important, and the situation at WRAMC totally sucks. Here's the gist of what I'm saying on the subject:

While the politicians are pandering, and the spinbots are shouting, and every monkey in a red-white-and-blue suit is screeching "I support the troops! We support the troops!"... the torn and tattered veterans of the neocons' illegal and immoral war for conquest in the Middle East are being warehoused in Washington in conditions that most Americans would never even dream of letting their house pets live in, let alone their wounded warriors.

Walter Reed Army Medical Center is supposed to be this country's flagship facility for taking care of those who have almost but not quite died in the service of their country. So why in the name of all that's holy are the much-vaunted support-the-troopers leaving them to rot in conditions that the most timid ASPCA officials would scream about if they were they to learn that cats and dogs were being held in such despicable conditions in some animal shelter someplace?

So call your Congresscritters about it, fax your local media outlets about it, spam your buddy lists about it, shout on every blog and myspacebook page you can find about it, holler and raise hell and bang pots and pans on every street corner about it -- do whatever it takes to get the word out about this tragic travesty of so-called supporting the troops in every corner of the land.

This is pure and unadulterated bullshit, people, and all the self-serving political-hack bastards wrapping themselves in the flag and hiding behind their right-wing rhetoric and their phony support-the-troops photo ops can't possibly be allowed to get away with it any more.

It's our turn to support the troops now. So get on out there and raise hell for those who can't raise it for themselves. They should never have had to be there, but they were there anyway, and now they're getting treated like unwanted pets that we have to hide from the public eye.

And that is just so very wrong, in so very many ways.

[JTFrog]

14. I read about this

this morning on msnbc:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17160574/

And King Bush's castle less than five miles away.

:wtf:

[Hubert Flottz]

16. So the Ghost Employees in Iraq can live high on the hog and the

Halliburton/Exxon shareholders can enjoy being mega-capitalists to the fullest extent of the law!

[opusprime]

17. This story alone is reason to impeach.

[Why Syzygy]

18. Damn Straight - Lock 'em down.

See how they like it. Words fail me.

[Elwood P Dowd]

19. Can you believe this part?

Next came 7 a.m. formation, one way Walter Reed tries to keep track of hundreds of wounded. Formation is also held to maintain some discipline. Soldiers limp to the old Red Cross building in rain, ice and snow. Army regulations say they can't use umbrellas, even here. A triple amputee has mastered the art of putting on his uniform by himself and rolling in just in time. Others are so gorked out on pills that they seem on the verge of nodding off.

"Fall in!" a platoon sergeant shouted at Friday formation. The noisy room of soldiers turned silent.

An Army chaplain opened with a verse from the Bible. "Why are we here?" she asked. She talked about heroes and service to country. "We were injured in many ways."

Someone announced free tickets to hockey games, a Ravens game, a movie screening, a dinner at McCormick and Schmick's, all compliments of local businesses.

Every formation includes a safety briefing. Usually it is a warning about mixing alcohol with meds, or driving too fast, or domestic abuse. "Do not beat your spouse or children. Do not let your spouse or children beat you," a sergeant said, to laughter. This morning's briefing included a warning about black ice, a particular menace to the amputees.

Dress warm, the sergeant said. "I see some guys rolling around in their wheelchairs in 30 degrees in T-shirts."

Soldiers hate formation for its petty condescension. They gutted out a year in the desert, and now they are being treated like children.

[TahitiNut]

22. "Fall in!" ... the very echo of that brings a sour taste to my mouth.

Necessary in garrison for "good order and discipline," it becomes a hollow, obscene joke when dealing with injured and recovering combat personnel. "Or what?" is the retort that comes to mind. "You gonna tell me I'm out of uniform in my hospital gown and cast??" The mindless Mickey Mouse martinets who blindly preen and posture demanding subservient compliance to inapplicable protocols betray the worst of the military.
:puke:

[Elwood P Dowd]

23. "First squad all present and accounted for platoon Sergeant. Well, all except for corporal

Smith, who lost his artificial legs but is slowly crawling our way."

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. I wasn't surprsied,

one neery bit

[KoKo]

21. Why doesn't Congress already know about this? Don't they say they

visit the troops? Why did it take Dana Priest to bring this out....:shrug:

[mloutre]

25. Still as wrong as it gets. And hope you don't mind the echo.

I'm normally pretty cautious, even cynical, about saying "let's all go there and do this!" online. But, quite frankly, this is something that should not be allowed to be buried by the MSM or swallowed by the notoriously-low signal-to-noise ratio of the poliblogosphere. The word must get out. And, as Willy Loman's wife pointed out, "Attention must be paid."

So I hope you won't think it too annoying that I went ahead and posted my own thread to DU:GD on this topic at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x240203 too.

I was already going to write about this anyway before I read your OP on the same subject, but I figured that the story about this friggin nightmare at WRAMC is sufficiently important that it can use all the reinforcement we can collectively give it.

Or, in other words -- I'll K&R yours if you'll K&R mine. {bigottergrin}

[renate]

26. ditto that

I was about to post a link to your thread here on this one--the article you found really is amazing and horrifying.

I'm glad it was in the Navy Times--I wouldn't have known that they were allowed to publish morale-squashing articles like that one.

[133724]

29. Post away...the object is to change behavior not take credit...

Although I don't mind a little recognition...

[DainBramaged]

27. Fucking chickenhawk assholes, ooohh they are the real patriots.

And their flag pin patriotism. They can blow goats.

[suston96]

28. Why not......

....look into all those military bases that have been closed. Some of them, perhaps many of them, have large base hospitals that can be activated as VA and military centers to treat the growing numbers of afflicted soldiers and veterans.

Or would that make too much sense?

[mloutre]

30. This is not a digression, it's an adjunct.

I just re-stumbled across a video montage that our friend GlobalVillage posted a few weeks ago on YouTube, and it's not only still wrenchingly effective but it's also entirely apropos to the subject of this thread as well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgjW7o3mb1A

[proud patriot]

33. Disgraceful

:grr: k and r

[TahitiNut]

34. It's criminal that they don't get the same (or better) health care than Cheney.

It's an abomination that the cost of the medical care given to Cheney would probably be enough to renovate that entire fucking building.

Both Smirk and Sneer should be relegated to no better care than the least given to military personnel injured in their corrupt, imperialistic, military profiteering.

:grr: :grr: :grr:

[Seldona]

35. My brother is in Iraq. So I could tell some stories.

I am sending this along to every right winger I know, along with a note letting them know that I do not EVER want to hear them talk about supporting the troops again. Supporting the policy makers responsible for this tragedy, amoung others, removes them of the right to even speak at all as far as I am concerned.

BASTARDS!!

[Anywho6]

36. Congress, shut down the government NOW!! Stop the madness!!!! n/t

[Hawkowl]

37. Don't join the military...

I think this will be the lesson the general public will take away from this war. If you do, you'll be used like toilet paper and then flushed away out of site. Very sad and disgusting. We need fewer 6 billion dollar aircraft carriers and B2 bombers and we need to take care of OUR PEOPLE!

[truedelphi]

38. Unfortuantely every forty years this lesson has to be re-learned

Vietnam's lessons were swept aside inside of thirty-five to forty years.