Neglect at Walter Reed Hospital
Here is some good advice for our brave servicemen and servicewomen serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Keep your heads down, don’t get wounded, and if you do don’t become an outpatient at Walter Reed hospital in Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately, the warriors fighting for the empire and the poor souls who do become wounded and end up recuperating at the facility have very little, if any, control over their fate. I recently wrote an article about the Washington Post’s story about conditions at Walter Reed Now the Washington Post has published a follow up story which states that the poor conditions in the out patient facility have been known about by top officials since at least 2003 without corrective action being taken.
The implications to this issue are quite serious and shameful. The American government, under the leadership of “The Decider”, a man with a by now proven history of making bad decisions, sends American military off to distance and strange lands to fight a “preemptive war”. In Iraq, it is one that didn’t have to be fought.
Military recruiters work overtime to encourage young men and women to be patriots, to become warriors, to defend their homeland. National guardsmen, weekend warriors, are called to active duty in record numbers to supplement the manpower requirements of the American all volunteer military force. These preemptive wars do surely require a lot of sacrifices on the part of the military, don’t they?
Small town America is particularly effected by these heavy military personnel requirements. Recruiters are more easily able to persuade young men and women to sign up when there aren’t many opportunities for employment or adventure at home. So off to war they go.
Typically, these young men and women have absolute faith in what they are doing. They are prepared to make sacrifices to serve their nation. They buy into the importance of the mission and learn to unquestionably obey orders. They believe that if anything bad should happen to them that they will be taken care of. They have been seriously brainwashed.
Iraq and Afghanistan are dangerous battlegrounds. Without question a number of those who serve in the war zones will be killed or wounded. In recent years there have been great advances in emergency medical treatment for those wounded on the battlefield. Many troops who are wounded in battle who would have died in previous conflicts now survive. Some of them end up at Walter Reed.
These are men and women who have given the nation their all. Many will now face broken lives. All will have lost their youthful exuberance and joyful outlook on life. Forever.
They and their families have sacrificed. To be treated as inconvenient survivors who due to their injuries have lost their value is a national disgrace. Our wounded warriors, at the time they joined the military, made a contract with the US government. If something bad were to happen to them they were promised the best of treatment by a grateful nation. They kept their end of the bargain, following orders which placed them into harms way.
Why is it that the American government can manage to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to kill people in distance lands yet can not manage to spend by comparison an insignificant amount to take proper care of their own wounded warriors? Surely America can and must do better.
[...] Most Americans were shocked and dismayed by the story written last week by reporters for the Washington Post. As a Vietnam War veteran I was not too surprised as I and other veterans have known for years that American as a nation, not in the current environment Americans as a people, treat veterans, wounded or not, as “discarded shell casings” as one veteran recently put it. [...]