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Conditions at Walter Reed Show Wounded Troops are Forgotten
The American people did a poor job of looking after the veterans of the Vietnam War, and frankly, the same can be said of the Korean Conflict. It now looks like the same is true of the Mess in Mesopotamia. “Support The Troops,” says the bumper sticker. This journal is in favor of that change in policy.
Last week, the Washington Post reported on the unacceptable conditions in which some wounded vets must live, in particular Building 18 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Post stated that they were surrounded by “mice, mold, rot and cockroaches.” Now, the paper says that the top dog at Walter Reed, Lieutenant General Kevin C. Kiley (who has since moved up the greasy pole to be the biggest medical man in the US Army) and his staff knew about these conditions as long ago as 2003. Congressman C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) and his wife, both of whom had the guts to go visit the wounded, personally reported incidents to the staff. He and his wife have stopped going to Walter Reed out of frustration. The Post wrote
Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, ‘I went flying down to Kevin Kiley’s office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else.’
Lieutenant General Kiley said at a press conference last week that the problems at Building 18 “weren’t serious and there weren’t a lot of them.” He added that the difficulties weren’t “emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families.” One would very much like to believe him, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Major General George W. Weightman was fired yesterday as the current head of Walter Reed by the Secretary of the Army. More heads deserve to roll.
The damage that combat does to the human body is clear. The damage it does to the rest of the human being is harder to determine. There is much that medical science just doesn’t understand yet. “Mice, mold, rot and cockroaches” aren’t among them, to say nothing of what Mrs. Young saw. Supporting the troops means taking responsibility for what happens to them before, during and after they fight, bleed and die for the rest of the nation. Government officials, media pundits and the average man in the street all agree that the US military is composed of people in whom they can take pride. One regrets that the reverse doesn’t seem to be true.
© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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