A National Disgrace

These two blockbusters stories from the Washington Post on conditions at the Water Reed Medical Center (here and here) by Anne Hull and Dana Priest will win a Pulitzer Prize next year. But that's not important. They're enough to make you want to cry, and you want to paste them on top of any "support the troops" yellow sticker you see on an SUV.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.

Most of the first story is about the horrifying nightmare of "Building 18," an outpatient facility that sounds like a gulag.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

It's really story after story like this, each one equally heartbreaking. And none of this should come as a surprise. Just like how we forget about prisoners and leave them to rot in this country once they are pushed through the legal system, we forget about soldiers once they are pulled off the battlefield. The rooms have cockroaches all over them. Their data is lost and takes weeks to be recovered. It's bad enough that we cannot provide proper equipment or a defined mission for these guys in the field; we can't even provide for their care at home. Because there's no money in treating the wounded the way there is in an elaborate defense contract like a new missile. And it's in this horrific environment that the President wants to cut funding for VA health care.

The Administration has nothing but contempt for the men and women in uniform who fight their battles for them. They make a mockery of words like "support the troops." Jack Murtha is the only guy out there with an actual concern for the troops in harm's way, wanting to ensure they are provided with top training and equipment before they are sent off, and he should add post-operational health care and treatment. Throw in a new GI bill while you're at it. These soldiers have been lied to, had their lives discounted, and now continue to suffer. There is no planning at any level of this government worth a damn. I don't know that I've ever been so angry about one thing these people have done. They don't deserve an ounce of respect.

UPDATE: John Aravosis has a compendium of other veterans' health stories from the past week. This is not an unknown situation, it's pervasive and shameful.