Here’s my problem with the whole Walter Reed thing. Everyone knows about the famous Army bureaucracy. One would figure, if you’re going to start a war, that you might want to fix something like this. Five years later… FIVE years later! This isn’t fixed. As a matter of fact, there appears to be evidence to show that there is no attempt at fixing it.
The one thing that I think is very interesting is that Secretary of Defense Gates really focused on the fixing the bureaucracy. If he is able to do this, it will be a huge boost to the soldiers.
Daily Kos has a nice post on Walter Reed.
Over 600,000 vets are waiting for hear back from the VA regarding their disability claims – incredible – its no wonder over 1,000 Iraq war veterans are now HOMELESS – if you havent seen it – you should check out this trailer for a doc called WHEN I CAME HOME – its all about Iraq vets who end up homeless in NY City:
http://www.whenicamehome.com
What a disgrace! We need to march on Washington –
Of course the situation with health care for troops has fallen apart, it only coincides with an entire army that had knowledge of deployment almost a year before hand and still left without body armor, equipment, tools, ammo, battle plans, or any sustaining strategy beyond “in a few months it will be over.” There is no apparent disagreement with providing corporate contracts to to pay civilians enormous sums of money tax free so they can do little to nothing, but the deterioration of hospitals and equipment is hardly even discussed, since we will “get new stuff anyway.” This is will not change, for my beloved army is now an organization that is built from lethargy to its core, and the quick fixes and coverups cannot hide the rot and decay seeping through the walls and destroying the foundation. The system consumes itself. Walter Reed, like Boy George and his regime, is only an example, a symptom, of this violent entropy that holds a nation in denial.
Just to be clear, my first sentence or so in the last post wasn’t suggesting idiocy on the part of the army(though some battalions were probably pretty guilty), but merely stating the overall fact that with all the time to prepare, we left under manned and under equipped. Even in ignoring the heavy moral arguments in the invasion, one cannot deny that our deployment and plans were criminally undeveloped.
Iraq Veteran against the War.
William –
Outstanding thoughts!!! Thanks for your posts!
[…] Remember that General Kiley was in charge of Walter Reed until 2004. He was the General who downplayed the seriousness of the situation. I have spliced his comments to the end of this clip. Original clips are here and here. […]
[…] As I said (Here and here) that the VA system is not set up to care for trauma patients. The VA system is set up to care for older patients with chronic diseases. This isn’t a surprise since most vets are older and suffer from chronic diseases – heart disease, prostate cancer, lung disease, etc. […]