| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
21 Feb 2007 06:31:33 PM |
| Object: |
Rotten Homecoming. This is no way to treat a veteran. |
From a Washington Post editorial, 2/21/07:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001490.html?nav=rss_opinion
Rotten Homecoming
This is no way to treat a veteran.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007; Page A14
IF YOU LISTEN to the PR operation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center,
the U.S. military's gleaming flagship hospital offers veterans the
best treatment available.
What doesn't get mentioned is the bureaucratic contempt and physical
squalor that too often await badly injured outpatient soldiers on the
Walter Reed campus, the subject of a four-month Post investigation
detailed in articles published Sunday and Monday.
Reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull and researcher Julie Tate spent
hundreds of hours inspecting conditions and interviewing injured
troops and their loved ones at the Walter Reed outpatient facilities.
Their findings:
Veterans' rooms are rank;
bureaucratic hassles and paper-pushing make the process of repairing
buildings, redressing patient grievances and providing veterans with
basic goods depressingly inept;
administrators' neglect of patients' mental and physical health
borders on the criminal;
and, most distressing, many veterans leave Walter Reed without the
compensation they clearly deserve for their sacrifices.
The walls of one soldier's room were covered with black mold, and the
ceiling of his shower had a large hole.
Soldiers who lost their uniforms while undergoing emergency treatment
on the battlefield have had to present their purple hearts to get
replacement clothes.
Amputees and patients on taxing drug regimens are required to report
for formation early in the morning, even if it means trudging over
accumulated ice and snow.
Lost paperwork, which in one case resulted in an obviously impaired
veteran getting an order to report to Germany, is a constant problem,
sometimes forcing soldiers and their relatives to live at Walter Reed
for 18 months or longer as their cases are processed.
Most infuriating are reports of official efforts to deny disability
benefits to discharged fighters.
The Army tried to deny disability compensation to Cpl. Dell McLeod,
who suffered a head injury that left him aimless and unable even to
count change at the cafeteria.
Army officials' argument:
Because he had done poorly in high school, his current mental state
might not have been caused by the steel door that smashed his skull in
Iraq.
If the Army determined that he was mentally fit to serve in the first
place, it cannot now abscond from its responsibility for the
consequences of his service overseas.
Cpl. McLeod ended up getting a settlement from the command at Walter
Reed -- despite base staffers' best efforts -- only after his wife got
a congressional staffer involved.
Walter Reed's commander, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, says that
conditions on the post will improve rapidly.
His response is commendable, and it should not be forgotten that
thousands of professionals and volunteers, civilian and military, are
working hard to help veterans heal and adjust.
But it also should not have taken newspaper articles to bring change
to outpatient conditions at Walter Reed.
And while filthy conditions at Building 18 are a temporary problem for
these veterans, lowball settlements may leave soldiers and their
families impoverished for life.
___________________________________________________
"Outrage" from the American Legion's kinda wimpy.
http://www.legion.org/?section=pub_relations&subsection=pr_listreleases&content=pr_press_release&id=431
Harry
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
