(Updated) Call Their Bluff on "Supporting the Troops"

UPDATE 2/20/07: The Army Times also covers this story, based on their investigation of Walter Reed's treatment of outpatients and others. They cite understaffing and undertraining of staff as the major causes of problems. Click here.

Every time we hear or read about some Bushwar promoter saying we can only "support the troops" by continuing the Iraq occupation into infinity, and how anyone against that is jeopardizing the troops and ruining their morale, we should make sure they get a copy of this Washington Post article by Dana Priest and Anne Hull. "Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical Facility" describes in gritty detail the horrific degenerating conditions in certain "outpatient holding" areas of Walter Reed Army Hospital in DC, the place seriously wounded or suffering troops are sent when they return to the USA from Iraq and Afghanistan and are released from acute care hospital beds.

I would quote some of this distrubing report but I want to encourage you, instead, to read the entire thing, to get the true flavor of what is happening at a now over-run institution long considered to be one of our best. Imagine what's going on in other, less scrutinized and honored corners of the war time machine.

Every time we hear or read about some Republican lying and promoting the myth that Democrats against the escalation in Iraq "want to cut the funds that support our troops," we should send them this article. It is the BUSH ADMINISTRATION and the REPUBLICAN-RUN CONGRESS that has been shortchanging funding for our wounded, our services for veterans and our troops in the field, not us. It is Bush and his compliant rubberstamps in Congress who have been content to send the same members of the military into Iraq over and over and over again to act out their dreams of glory and "victory" in a winless confrontation, and who then cut corners on dealing with those struck down in the process.

I can't imagine anyone reading the WaPo article and not wanting to rush the White House and Congress to make them listen, make them wake up, make them admit responsibility and accountability for the underfunded, bureaucratic chaos of Walter Reed's outpatient facilities and the other horrors being perpetrated in our names. Then again, some of these people have been so oblivious to facts for so long that I doubt they even know what reality is anymore.

But we know. And we have to keep trying, from any angle we can devise, to go at these problems and demand solutions, force an end to the madness, clean up the mess and start the healing. There is nothing down Bush's prescribed path but a worsening nightmare of catastrophic proportions. The holding areas of Walter Reed comprise just one aspect of that horror. And if Bush gets his way, those areas will be filled with even more casualties suffering needlessly from neglect, snafus and a lack of adequate resources.

Part II of the Washington Post series on the treatment of casualties upon their release to "outpatient" areas of Walter Reed can be found here.