Competent Government

Steve Benen has a good report about FEMA working diligently on the ground in Georgia to manage a once in 500 years flood that's ravaged the area. Even Georgia's conservative Senators are praising the emergency management effort. And then there's this nice story from the Veterans Affairs Department:

WASHINGTON - Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has authorized checks for up to $3,000 to be given to students who have applied for educational benefits and who have not yet received their government payment. The checks will be distributed to eligible students at VA regional benefits offices across the country starting Oct. 2, 2009.

"Students should be focusing on their studies, not worrying about financial difficulties," Secretary Shinseki said. "Education creates life-expanding opportunities for our Veterans."

Starting Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, students can go to one of VA's 57 regional benefit offices with a photo ID, a course schedule and an eligibility certificate to request advance payment of their housing and book allowance. Because not all these offices are located near students, VA expects to send representatives to schools with large Veteran-student bodies and work with Veteran Service Organizations to help students with transportation needs.

A list of those VA regional offices is available at www.vba.va.gov/VBA/benefits/offices.asp.

We're unused to this kind of government, which manages emergencies effectively and cleans up mistakes with efficiency and speed. This stuff only makes headlines when there's a screw-up, and not when government does its job. But we shouldn't take it for granted, as we saw in the Bush era.

Quick Work

Approximately nobody liked the plan floated by the Obama Administration to send wounded veterans out onto the private insurance market to pay for treatment of injuries obtained during their service. It sounded positively Bush-like, and the meager cost savings were more than outweighed by the immorality, not to mention undermining the VA medical system, which actually does a fine job keeping down costs. I believe the White House learned their lesson:

This afternoon, Speaker Pelosi met with leaders of veterans’ service organizations and announced that the Administration is no longer considering the plan:

I’m pleased to announce that we have some good news of the past several days, President Obama has listened to the genuine concerns expressed by veteran’s leaders and veterans service organizations regarding the option of billing service connected veterans insurance companies. Based on the respect that President Obama has for our nation’s veterans and the principled concerns expressed by veterans’ leaders, the President has made the decision that the combat-wounded veterans should not be billed through their insurance policies.

Veteran's Committee Chair Bob Filner had already announced he would not take up the proposal in his committee, so it was already DOA, making the Administration's decision somewhat easier. I just cannot understand why you would even start down this path, causing cracks in the shaky trust built up over the years between Democrats and veterans. But at least there will be no larger scuffle.

The Last Laugh

This is a kick in the teeth.

Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has selected retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary.

The officials said Obama will announce his selection Sunday. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the official announcement.

Shinseki is the former Army chief of staff who upset his civilian bosses in 2003 when he testified to Congress that it might take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the U.S. invasion. He was forced out of his job within months for being "wildly off the mark." But his words proved prophetic after President George W. Bush in early 2007 announced a "surge" of additional troops to Iraq after miscalculating.

No incident has been used by Democratic politicians as a stick to beat the Bush Administration the way the Gen. Shinseki incident has. They didn't appreciate Shinseki's dose of reality, didn't like that he was offering a glimpse of the sacrifice Americans would suffer for an unnecessary invasion, so they fired him, basically. His reinstatement is probably a good choice - I'm making a healthy assumption that a decorated general would have the safety and good treatment of veterans in mind, but what I do know of him gives me the sense that he's honorable and competent - but more than that, it's a SYMBOL. A symbol that the age of cronyism is over. That the age of silencing dissent is over. That George Bush is over.

Nice one, Barack.

(At Least) 22,000 Suicide Calls

Actually the number is probably higher - 22,000 identified themselves explicitly as vets. Over 55,000 called the special line set up through the VA in its first year of operation. Some are friends and family of vets, which makes sense, as watching someone close struggle with PTSD or worse must be unbearable. These statistics are gruesome.

Calls to the VA’s hotline more than doubled this calendar year going from a total of about 21,000 in January to more than 55,000 by the end of June, averaging about 250 calls a day.

Out of 55,469 calls that the VA’s suicide hotline has received in the last year, 22,044 callers identify themselves as veterans. Callers can remain anonymous if they choose. About 3,000 (2,966) identified themselves as a family member or friend of a vet. Six hundred (621) said they were on active-duty. The VA rescued 1,221 callers with emergency responders while 2,911 received help in what the VA calls a “warm transfer.” More than 4,500 (4,592) callers were referred to a VA suicide prevention coordinator in their local area. The VA says they don’t know of any individuals who committed suicide after using the 1-800-number. A spokesperson for the VA told CBS News that “there are none that we are aware of that have occurred when they called the hotline.”

We simply don't know that answer, and I would gather that it's probably too hopeful.

This hotline was set up in 2007, after Democrats like Harry Mitchell urged its implementation after seeing the sorrowful statistics on veteran suicides.

A recent RAND Corporation study found that nearly 20 percent, or about 300,000 veterans out of the approximately 1.64 million who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently suffer from major depression or post traumatic stress disorder. A news report last November by CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian discovered that in 2005 more than 6,200 veterans had committed suicide at a rate twice that of non-veterans. A series of internal VA emails, which were exposed earlier this year, confirmed CBS’ findings as well as revealed that about 1,000 vets seeking care from the VA attempt suicide every month for a total of about 12,000 a year.

(CBS and NPR have been very good at tracking the story of veteran suicides)

So now we have 20%, at a minimum, of our soldiers coming home with PTSD or some mental health issue, and around 2% driven to thoughts of suicide, 1% driven to actually attempt it, and about half that succeeding in the attempt. That is an epidemic.

The VA's efforts to offer help to troubled veterans is fine, but if they diagnosed these cases during soldier's tours and on discharge rather than hiding the scope of the problem, they wouldn't have to hire hundreds of mental health professionals as call screeners to inadequately address the problem on a suicide hotline. This is a textbook example of how early detection in health treatment saves lives and money. But the VA's modus operandi is to avoid diagnoses at the outset, because then we would have to factor the human toll into the real cost of war.

It's really heartbreaking but there is a better way which requires minimal competence at the VA.

Military Declares War On Obama, VoteVets

The close relationship between top officials in various branches of the military and Veterans Administration has been disturbing for some time now. If two unrelated events today are any indication, they're about to reach the breaking point.

First off, the Army's public affairs unit is broadcasting pathetic Obama smears from milbloggers, contravening direct orders from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stay out of partisan politics:

The Army's public affairs office publishes a daily roundup of Army-related news called "Stand To" -- named for the set of procedures combat units do just prior to dawn, when they go to full alert for a possible enemy attack. The daily wrapup contains links to mainstream media articles, Army press releases, foreign media stories and blogs. It's similar to the Defense Department's Early Bird -- but much briefer, and obviously more focused on the Army.

Tuesday's edition contained an entry under "WHAT'S BEING SAID IN BLOGS" that struck me as unusual -- both for its headline and its patent political bias:

Obama: World peace thru surrender (KDIHH)

This is coming from a military address, and they're broadcasting partisan political statements. It's the digital equivalent of showing up to a partisan event in full uniform, as far as I'm concerned.

This appears like yet another example of the unusually cozy relationship which has developed over the last generation or so between the military and the right wing of American politics -- an unhealthy development, to say the least.

Last time I checked, soldiers and civilian officials didn't swear an oath to either political party or to their current president. Rather, they swear their fidelity to the Constitution, and the ideals it embodies, including the subordination of the military to civil authority. Adm. Mullen is right: As we enter a contentious election year, where issues of national security are likely to dominate the debate, the military needs to stay on the sidelines.

But they are not staying on the sidelines, and the next example shows that their partisanship is having real-life consequences, more concerned with making a political point than saving a veteran's life.

The VA rejected an Afghanistan veteran's disability claim for PTSD last month, citing his membership in VoteVets.org as a reason for the denial.

Staff Sergeant Will King retired from the Army in late 2003, after serving in both the first Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. As one of the first troops into the Afghan theater after 9/11, Will had been awarded a Bronze Star after participating in fierce fighting in the Shah-e-Kot Valley in March 2002 [...]

As the months turned to years after his retirement, however, Will started having problems as the Iraq War dragged on. Depressed and unable to sleep, he thought it might be PTSD. Because, as those who study PTSD know, this is perfectly normal: The symptoms of PTSD frequently have a delayed onset that can take months or years to fully materialize. That's why, in April 2007, Will filed a claim with the VA for combat-related PTSD. The VA eventually agreed with Will and diagnosed him with mild PTSD. But Will felt like his condition was worse than that. And to boot, he thought it was getting worse. So Will appealed, and filed another disability claim with the VA in November 2007: He felt his symptoms were serious enough to warrant an increase in his disability rating from "mild" to "moderate."*

Unfortunately for Will, the VA denied his claim six months later, in May 2008. And while I won't challenge the VA's ultimate decision (I'm not a doctor), I find it repulsive that they cited Will's membership in VoteVets.org as a reason to deny his claim [...]

Faced with the fact that Will was unemployed, occasionally suicidal, and failing out of school, the VA had to come up with a reason to deny Will's claim that his PTSD was worthy of a higher disability rating. To do that, they minimized (his) "troubles." Then, they brought up his membership in VoteVets.org:

"you are currently involved with VoteVets.org"

"you are currently involved with a veteran's advocacy group and have traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with and lobby members of Congress on behalf of this organization"

The VA then used his membership with VoteVets.org to tell Will:

"you are actively involved and able to control and manage your symptoms sufficiently to engage in activities required by your involvement."

This soldier is not even a high-profile member of VoteVets, just someone who spent 2 days with them in Washington several months ago. I don't know what's more troubling - that the VA KNOWS who shows up to political rallies (must be that new panopticon they've been testing), or that they're willing to use participation in an organization as the reason for denying care to the sick. We send these soldiers off to war to supposedly defend Constitutional freedoms, and then when the soldier upon returning home tries to exercise one, namely the freedom of speech, he is denied treatment.

The mission creep of multiple branches of the military from a nonpartisan force which carries out orders to a partisan arm of the Republican National Committee endangers democracy. It has no place in the culture or organization of the military, and it must be denounced whenever it rouses itself. This is completely outrageous.

Support the Troops

I finally got around to seeing The Ground Truth last night, part of my mini-Iraq documentary film festival I've put together on Netflix (become my movie friend!). Because much of the film is devoted to how these soldiers tried to put their lives together once they returned home, through bouts of depression and PTSD, through divorce and anger and arrests for disorderly conduct, it was fitting that this study was released today.

Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on. At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday [...]

"We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute — mainly the longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that's very, very busy right now," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

"And so all of those together we think are part of what may contribute, especially if somebody's having difficulties already," she told a Pentagon news conference.

The tricks that the military uses to get out of treating these soldiers are recounted in The Ground Truth. They'd offer treatment but only if you stayed on the base away from your family after returning home from a year in Iraq. They'd ask you if you had PTSD, and if you said no, you'd end your rotation, but if you said yes, you'd stay in Iraq. These were the allegations, and considering that the VA Secretary related PTSD to football injuries the other day, and that VA officials were pressuring their colleagues not to diagnose the disorder to save money on veterans health care, I believe every word of it.

I guess that veterans aren't treated particularly well after any war; go all the way back to the Bonus Marchers if you don't think so. They're broken down in basic training, taught to be dehumanized and desensitized to killing, used on the battlefield and then expected to be stowed away like any other munition. But they're people, changed by war, and without some care and treatment those without the strongest constitutions find it hard to adapt. This is a residual cost of war and these suicides should be treated as casualties. Furthermore, any future war should include this blight as a part of the calculus for making the decision.

And if anyone starts to make the argument that these men and women would have committed suicide anyway, as some make to the soldiers in the film, they can kiss my ass.

Put A Band-Aid On Your Brain And Get Back Out There!

This is really an unforgivable statement by VA Secretary James Peake.

On the topic of [post-traumatic stress disorder], Peake questioned if the condition is being overdiagnosed, considering the mental health services available to those in the armed forces.

"I worry about labeling all these kids coming back," he said. "Just because someone might need a little counseling when they get back, doesn't mean they need the PTSD label their whole lives." [...]

VA secretary Peake suggested some of the concern about post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury has been overblown.

Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered, Peake told Guinn.

I played football as a kid. Even played in Veterans Stadium in Philly one time. Interestingly, I never woke up in a cold sweat screaming that the enemy was on my tail, nor have I ever put a gun in my mouth while crying because I couldn't take the signals my brain was sending me.

This is disgraceful. Concussions at the high school level of football and above are pretty serious, but TBI is on a whole other level. It's a severe medical condition that requires constant treatment, otherwise you get another generation of veterans living on the streets. Dismissing TBI and PTSD is symptomatic of a belief that troops are sausage, merely existing to be ground up. And that's the message from the Bush Administration since their series of wars began, and that's how McCain would "lead," too.

This guy Peake should resign.

What Happened To "We're All In This Together"?

Barack Obama's latest aping of the "Harry and Louise" ads is extremely troubling. The right has decried "government-run health care" and "socialized medicine" for years, and an ad featuring ordinary people saying that the government is going to "force them to buy health care" is not only deliberately obtuse, it plays right into the hands of those who want to demagogue the health care issue, and will make it nearly impossible to have a legitimate debate about more progressive health care proposals.

Every health care system that is intellectually honest has mandates. OBAMA's plan has mandates for children, and when he first released it his advisors claimed he would be open to a full individual mandate down the road if his cost-control idea didn't work. Phrased simply, his plan puts a lot of trust in people who haven't necessarily earned it (those who would stay out of the insurance system so risk is not pooled). And this parallels his seeming trust in his own abilities to bring the country together in a post-partisan way, which doesn't honor the bitter partisanship Republicans have shown for the last few decades.

It turns out that the best system in America for delivering health care is the government-run VA system, which includes a mandate of sorts for all veterans and a mandate for Americans to pay into the system through taxation.

In general, VA’s experience underscores the potential for improving performance in a large and relatively integrated system through a sustained and comprehensive effort that involves indicators of quality, financial incentives that are aligned with those objectives, and the use of health information technology. It is important to note, though, that the combination of these factors — a large, relatively integrated system; well-designed incentives; performance measurement; and health information technology — likely creates much more substantial opportunities for improvement than any of the pieces taken by themselves. The applicability of VA’s experience to other parts of the health system, which often have a much different structure than the VA system, is therefore unclear and will be explored in CBO’s final report (which will be published next year).

I think that last line is why Obama's having such a problem with this mandate thing. The VA system is actually a socialized, government-run health care system. And it works great. When you try to place the fundamentals of that on top of the for-profit system we have today, it's unclear whether the effects will be salutary. As Obama himself often says, reasonable people can disagree. Really the answer to this is to go for a socialized system, but nobody outside of Kucinich has the cajones to go there.

And you'd think that Obama actually would, as he understands how to make this argument:

His gorgeous rhetoric fit neatly with the concept of universal mandates, as when he told the Take Back America conference that "Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in the free market. But it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, of mutual responsibility. The idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together." That struck me as the exact template with which you could sell universal health care, and Obama, that day, looked like the candidate best able to do it. But not-so-many months later, he's assailing that principle, not just worrying about what Mitt or Rudy might say about him, but actually channeling their words long in advance.

That's pretty shameful and low, but it's also what happens when you get in the fight of your political life. It's why this nomination fight has been more dispiriting to progressives than they would have expected.

Happy Veteran's Day

25% of all homeless people are veterans, according to a new study, and many of them are younger veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The extent to which the government discards our fighting men and women after they serve their narrow political interests is disgraceful. One of the great untold stories of this Democratic Congress (of which I am critical) is that they put together the largest expansion of veteran's services in history this year. The blog of the AFL-CIO has more on what has be done, the obstacles put up in front of veterans, this stain on the Republic.

The homelessness crisis among veterans is fueled by the lack of family-supporting jobs and affordable housing. The alliance estimates that nearly half a million (467,877) veterans are paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent. More than half (55 percent) of veterans with severe housing costs fall below the poverty level, and 43 percent are receiving foods stamps.

Now, it also seems the same Bush administration has abandoned veterans when they come home looking for a job. Last week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions heard that the agencies responsible for protecting veterans from job discrimination are not doing the their job.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), committee chairman, said veterans who seek help "face a Walter Reed-like nightmare of having to negotiate a maze of bureaucracy."

He says those who seek help must wait for months, even years, just to get a simple answer about whether the government will take their case to court.

A new Defense Department report shows significant numbers of veterans have difficulty finding a job after they return home, even though the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) requires employers to reinstate returning veterans and give them full benefits.

A Pentagon survey of military reserve members showed that 44 percent were dissatisfied in 2006 with the Labor Department’s handling of their employment-discrimination complaints, a huge increase from the 26 percent in 2004.

The Democrats have done much to highlight this inequity, but we all have a stake in making sure that those who fight are treated with adequate respect upon returning home.

A Mad Final Dash

It's been like cutting ice, but on a couple fronts, the Democratic Congress has finally broken through the Republican roadblock on a couple major issues, and I hope they can now break the media filter and explain this to the American people.

The bill incorporating most of the 9/11 Commission recommendations have been sent to the President with veto-proof majorities. The bill includes some border security measures to get Republican votes, meaning that this will be the end of illegal immigration!... or at least the continuation of immigrants overstaying tourist visas, which is how most of them arrive in this country anyway.

This bill actually fulfills a Kerry campaign promise, mandating screening of all cargo at the ports, which the White House is of course resisting, because they're not interested in passing security. But they got Congress to remove language allowing TSA personnel to collectively bargain, so I guess they figured they screwed the working man enough to allow them to sign it. And overall, the bill does represent progress.

Also, the House passed a raft of bills aimed at helping veterans returning from Iraq. The Senate passed a veterans health care bill last week, so this may see passage. Of course, many of the recommendations of the Dole-Shalala Commission need to be implemented by the executive branch, meaning that they won't.

There should be some other initiatives passed this week before the August recess (the Iraqi Parliament is just practicing American-style democracy!), so we'll see how it shakes out.

The Sausage Factory

There seems to be a lot of legislation being spitballed in Congress right now, let's do a rundown:

• The House voted to ban all permanent bases in Iraq. There's enough funding, of course, to already build these installations, but it's somewhat significant to the next Administration coming in that the House is on record for this, and that talk of Iraq being the new Korea is being fully rejected. Hopefully the Senate will join them.

• After a farm bill that retained multibillion dollar subsidies to farmers, but lowered the ceiling for payment eligibility and also tried to tighten offshore tax haven loopholes, suddenly faces a veto threat from the President and Republicans who don't want anything bad to happen to those persecuted rich people.

Democrats said the tax proposal would merely close a loophole that the Bush administration itself has decried in the past. "Who is surprised that the administration takes the side of CEOs who hold beachside board meetings at the expense of programs to feed the least fortunate here at home?" asked Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has defended the legislation as an important step toward reform. In addition to paying for traditional farm programs, the bill would provide billions of dollars over the next decade for conservation, biofuel research and nutrition programs such as food stamps. There is new money for organic farmers, rural development and fruit-and-vegetable snacks for schoolchildren.

The farm bill is one of those pieces of Congressional sausage that doesn't get a lot of attention, but really sets the priorities for who we are as a society. The Republicans have set theirs, certainly. But this is always a compromise bill where the interests of farm-state lawmakers are foregrounded and a lot of pork is maintained. Democrats probably did the best they could do on this one, and still Republicans can't allow rich people to have to pay their taxes.

• After the report from a Presidential panel on veteran's care, reforms to the system are being recommended. Maybe we won't see the kind of shocking situation that leads Iraq veterans to sue the VA. What's so depressing is that this plan is cheap:

The commission said fully carrying out its recommendations would cost $500 million a year for the time being, and $1 billion annually years from now as the current crop of fresh veterans and active military members ages and new personnel is in place.

Many of the recommendations of the commission were included in a bill that passed the Senate yesterday.

• Looks like the homeland security bill is finally moving forward.

House and Senate negotiators reached accord yesterday on legislation to implement most of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that studied the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The deal could be enacted as early as this week. Agreement on a package of lobbying and ethics rules changes should be done by early next week. And congressional leaders hope to pass a significant expansion of the 10-year-old program to provide health insurance for children of the working poor.

They're finally starting to break the deadlocks on some of this stuff, as Republicans may have understood that low disapproval ratings for Congress means EVERY incumbent is threatened, not just Democrats. And with far more Republicans up in the Senate, I'm sure they are getting nervous. And the Democrats are starting to put moderates in a vice in a smart way. To wit:

But against such philosophical stands, there is a stark political problem: How many Republicans are really going to oppose legislation expanding insurance coverage for children, tightening ethics rules and bolstering homeland security?

"They've had a pretty strong quarter," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who praised the insurance bill as "creative" and suggested the homeland security bill would pass overwhelmingly. "The first quarter was not so good, and that's why they're not looking so good in the polls, but this quarter is looking very good for them. They can send their members home crowing about their accomplishments, and they've done it in a bipartisan way, which is exactly what they promised to do," LaHood said.

I don't know if people are paying enough attention; really only Iraq matters in the big picture. But Democrats are starting to expose the obstructionists and break through the media filter.

Things That Make Me Scream

• Iraq war veterans have to take the step of suing the Veterans Administration and its recently-resigned Administrator Jim Nicholson over them being denied disability pay and proper mental health treatment. These bastards are actually trying to classify PTSD symptoms as "pre-existing" conditions. Right, from that other war they fought at home in Arkansas.

• Executives from Purdue Frederick, the company that marketed OxyContin as a cure-all for pain years after they recognized it was horribly addictive and ruining the lives of thousands of Americans, got a slap on the wrist from a federal judge, with no prison time and a fine that sounds hefty ($634 million) until you realize that the bulk of it will be absorbed by a company that raked in tens of billions selling OxyContin over the years. The worst part is that the judge clearly was sympathetic to the idea of putting these bastards (I seem to be fixated on that word today) behind bars, but...

In announcing the unorthodox sentence, Judge James P. Jones of United States District Court indicated that he was troubled by his inability to send the executives to prison. But he noted that federal prosecutors had not produced evidence as part of recent plea deals to show that the officials were aware of wrongdoing at the drug’s maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn.

That evidence is pretty available and supported in Barry Meier's book on the subject, so I'm guessing the prosecution just dropped the ball... or, given that this is the Bush Justice Department we're talking about...

• An NBC correspondent received $30,000 for a speech in which he proceeded to attack John Edwards on personal grounds. Not only is it unethical to accept speaking fees, how can this correspondent ever go back and report on Edwards again, knowing what we know?

• On a related front, this is three years old but I never knew this story, and it fits in with the idea of the press choosing sides in political fights:

An edgy moment of own-expense laughter is the best that reporters and an about-to-drop-out presidential hopeful can hope for, as a campaign enters what everyone knows is its final hours.

Hence, candidate -- and media critic -- Howard Dean reacted with humor Tuesday in Milwaukee as journalists presented him with a long-sleeve white T-shirt. It carried the motto "Establishment Media" in front, and a slogan swiped from Dean in the back: "We Have the Power, Dean Press Corps 2004."

Losers.

• Here's another story that this media which is so concerned about picking winners and losers is missing: the US government is poisoning Americans by providing FEMA trailers to the citizens of the Gulf Coast which have unacceptable levels of formaldehyde inside. The real outrage here is that TWO YEARS after Hurricane Katrina, people are still living in FEMA trailers.

That's about all I can stand right now...

Walter Reed and the Continuing Contempt for the Men and Women of the Military

Kevin Kiley resigned as Surgeon General of the Army today, the latest to be forced out of office in the continuing scandal over outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Maybe Kiley will get a lavish farewell ceremony like Francis Harvey, the Secretary of the Army who resigned earlier. Or maybe he'll get a demotion in rank in retirement, as MSNBC is reporting.

But whatever the case, he will not feel the sting of the conditions at Walter Reed the way that the troops already have, and not just in the medical care department. At every step along the way of this Administration and the wars they have fought, these soldiers and Marines and airmen and midshipman have been abused, subjeced to substandard training and equipment, given no clear sense of mission, put in danger by a lack of body armor and uparmored Humvees, given cuts to their hazard pay and medical benefits, sent back into the field over and over with extended deployments and extra tours of duty, and in the latest outrage, are sent back even when injured in combat.

"This is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective gear. "This whole thing is about taking care of soldiers," he said angrily. "If you are fit to fight you are fit to fight. If you are not fit to fight, then you are not fit to fight."

As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier's "physical profile," an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier's physical limitations because of medical problems -- from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny.

About the only advances for soldiers is the medical technology that is now able to keep them alive instead of dead on the battlefield. But as Lindsay Beyerstein notes, even those advances end up screwing the soldier, as multiple surgeries and long outpatient stays are needed to sustain them and the military only pays for families to come out for the first week. And we know how the outpatient facilities are kept. There's a psychological strain on these men and women and their families that is repugnant. And the bureaucratic red tape they must negotiate, all of which could have been removed for a pittance, is even more repugnant.

A proposal to keep seriously wounded vets from falling through the cracks of the bureaucracy was shelved in 2005 when Jim Nicholson took over as the secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, according to the former VA employee who was responsible for tracking war casualties.

As a result, seriously wounded veterans continued to face long delays for health care and benefit payments after being discharged from the military, says former VA project manager Paul Sullivan.

The program, called the Contingency Tracking System, had been approved by Nicholson's predecessor but died once Nicholson took over the VA, Sullivan told ABC News.

Sullivan said he was told the cost of the system -- less than $1 million to build and requiring a handful of staff to maintain -- was prohibitive.

The soldier is pretty much disrespected at every level of his involvement, as Jon Soltz of VoteVets explains to Holy Joe Lieberman:

Senator Lieberman, I have a challenge for you. Let's call it the American Troops Challenge. Here's how it goes.

First, your office needs to give up the basic tools that it uses everyday to make it function and allows people to do their jobs. Let's say you'll only have one pen in your office, for starters.

Of course, you'll have computers, but only two of them. Then let's look at your staff. Your legislative assistants will be replaced by highly qualified gym teachers. Even though they're not trained properly to work the legislative process, they are excellent at what they do. They'll adapt the best they can, and work incredibly hard, but be patient. Remember, they were never trained for the job. Be sure to wear your sweatpants, though, because you won't be allowed to wear a nice suit. Hmm.. sweats might be too comfortable, but nevermind. Oh, pack your deodorant too, because we're going to place portable heaters in the office, and also bring a few dumptrucks of sand for the floor.

Your office staff, and you, will have to stay in the Capitol for eight months, without the chance to rest or go home. At the eight-month mark, we'll have a little surprise. You and your staff will be involuntarily extended for another few months. You know, just until you pass a couple of more pieces of legislation and complete your job.

I know that the White House is scrambling to put together blue-ribbon panels and show that they belatedly care about the troops they so blithely put in harm's way. But it's clear that they knew about how bad things were at Walter Reed for years, as surely as they know how poorly they treat the troops on every other level. The real truth here is that they don't care. They care about rewarding rich defense contractors through privatization, even to the extent of getting kickbacks from the contractors in exchange for making sure they get the work at Walter Reed, for example. And after all of that, after the contractors suck the American taxpayer dry by taking every last piece of work from the government they can get, they up and move to Dubai. There's patriotism in the 21st century corporatocracy for you. Pat Leahy is right, but then again everything this Administration has ever done has been an insult to the soldiers:

Senator Patrick Leahy called the company’s move corporate greed at its worst. “This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers. At the same time they’ll be avoiding U.S. taxes, I’m sure they won’t stop insisting on taking their profits in cold, hard, U.S. cash.”

This is all about profit and the soldiers are nothing more than instruments. The White House does not see them as human beings but as pieces on a chess board they can use to reach their goals. And as long as that's the mindset, we'll have a hundred Walter Reeds.

Walter Reed and the Larger Implications

Today is Walter Reed day in the Congress, with two field hearings taking place. And the weekend was pretty much all about this disaster as well. This morning Anne Hull and Dana Priest have a story suggesting that more VA hospitals than Walter Reed have been suffering from disrepair, which only makes sense, as Walter Reed is supposed to be the crown jewel of the system. Priest and Hull document the scores of letters and emails they received from around the country detailing the substandard care at various medical facilities for veterans. It's the lack of concern for these returning vets but also the lack of preparedness which induces the most anger. Our prowess in field hospitals in Baghdad is saving more lives than ever before, and yet the medical centers stateside are not being properly funded to handle these returning wounded. As Rep. Tierney mentioned this morning at the hearing, "Cockroaches and mold don't happen overnight." This has been an unfolding disaster in slow motion that could have been stopped at any time over the past four years. For some reason it wasn't.

And one major explanation for that is that the feds don't even control these hospitals anymore, preferring to contract out and privatize the service like they do everything else.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by the unstoppable Henry Waxman, uncovered the background to the scandalous living conditions of some vets housed at Walter Reed. It turns out that last September Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi wrote a memorandum (PDF) to the then head of Walter Reed, Maj. Gen. George Weightman, and sent on to the Army Medical Command (italicized words added for clarification), describing how the imposition of a privatization plan upon Walter Reed was rapidly undermining the Center's ability to serve its patients. The Army Times has the story:

The memorandum “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel,’” the committee’s letter [to Weightman] states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”...

During the year between awarding the contract to IAP and when the company started, “skilled government workers apparently began leaving Walter Reed in droves,” the letter states. “The memorandum also indicates that officials at the highest levels of Walter Reed and the U.S. Army Medical Command were informed about the dangers of privatization, but appeared to do little to prevent them.”

The memo signed by Garibaldi requests more federal employees because the hospital mission had grown “significantly” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It states that medical command did not concur with their request for more people.

“Without favorable consideration of these requests,” Garibaldi wrote, “[Walter Reed Army Medical Center] Base Operations and patient care services are at risk of mission failure.”

There was a $120 million dollar contract with a private contractor run by a former Halliburton official. All of the employees managing the facility at Walter Reed are now private workers answering to their corporate bosses instead of the government. So cost-cutting became the priority instead of caring for veterans. The support personnel dropped dramatically, budgets were slashed, and money was put toward studying how to privatize VA jobs rather than patient care. The whole sordid story is here.

And the lesson is that private, for-profit involvement in the health care of any citizen, veteran or civilian, man, woman or child, will inevitably produce a value placed higher on money than the well-being of the individual. This is maybe the most shocking example of that you'll ever hear.

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.

Children are really cheap and easy to cover with full medical care, including dental, but in our society they are neglected because for-profit insurance companies feel no compunction to cover the poor, who can't really afford insurance and who have a greater percentage of maladies. The pay-to-play system is practically immoral, and for those who say that the emergency room is a de-facto universal care system, they're wrong:

According to a new report, among hospitalized children, the uninsured are twice as likely to die from their injuries as children with insurance. And this isn't some unrelated effect: The data in the report was adjusted to account for age, health, severity of injury, etc. The difference is that the uninsured get worse care, for less time, and wait longer to be treated.

None of this, of course, is a surprise. But sometimes it's worth remembering that the uninsured aren't simply a fascinating policy problem. They are people, many of them are children, and because they are unlucky enough to lack parents with health coverage, they die from conditions that insured kids survive.

We hear a lot from those who have a vested interest in sustaining the for-profit insurance system that single-payer universal coverage means long lines and substandard care. That's exactly what we have today in America. And the situation in all other Western industrialized nations gets slandered a lot, but in fact it's quite civilized compared to vermin crawling up the walls at Walter Reed. We know that we pay more than any country on Earth for health care and receive care that is less effective than that in other nations. It is rank demonization to describe this situation in the inverted way conservatives normally do, and the American people aren't buying it anymore. They live with this system every day of their lives, they want it to change and they're willing to pay for it.

Buried in the big New York Times poll released late yesterday is a number showing that a solid majority would be willing to pay higher taxes in exchange for government-guaranteed health care for all.

Respondents were asked the following question: "Would you be willing or not willing to pay higher taxes so that all Americans have health insurance that they can't lose no matter what?" Sixty percent said they were willing, while only 34% said the were not.

People are demanding a totally different health care system, one that is not employer-based, one that does not preserve the for-profit insurance industry, one that recognizes that health care is a right and not a privilege. That's why the California debate is so important. The choice is between fig leaf changes on the margins and a real revolution in how health care is distributed:

Senate Bill 840 by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, would scrap the status quo and replace it with a government-run, single-payer system providing comprehensive health care benefits for all, financed by taxes and free to patients at the point of service.

"California needs a system of truly universal health care now more than ever," Kuehl said this week as she reintroduced her bill, which Schwarzenegger vetoed last year. "This is not the time to wait patiently for universal health care. It's time to move forward." [...]

What would all this cost? One detailed economic study, by the Lewin Group, concluded that the plan could be financed simply by redirecting all of the money Californians and the federal government already spend on health care in the state. Care for those not covered now would be paid for with savings in administrative costs and the elimination of insurance company advertising and profits.

We have everything we need to institute real change on health care except political will. As revelations like those at Walter Reed continue to emerge, perhaps that will get stronger.

The Crackup At Walter Reed

So the Secretary of the Army resigned, and a new permanent commander at Walter Reed will be named later today (READ: Kiley is out). This is a tremendous black eye for the military, and it comes directly out of the fact that we have an Administration that doesn't care about governing. As such, they don't plan for the consequences of their actions, whether it's breaking the National Guard with these repeated foreign deployments, so that they can't respond to homeland emergency needs, or undercounting the troops needed for the escalation by 7,000, because nobody recognizes (or wants to admit) the need for suport personnel, or destroying the veterans' hospital system because no planning was made for the thousands of wounded coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. It shows a tragic short-sightedness, an inability to look past one's own hellish fantasies for how the world should work, and a lack of caring for what happens to the men and women they send into the meat grinder. This is a bigger story about carelessness and obliviousness, more than anything. It's all about the war; they don't care about the aftermath. And that's how George Bush has lived his entire life; somebody else has always cleaned up his messes.

Meet The New Boss

Worse than the old boss.

Yesterday’s management shake-up at Walter Reed looks increasingly suspect. The Washington Post reports today that the hospital chief who was relieved of duty, Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, is “well respected in the military medical community and well liked among the staff at Walter Reed.” He had been at the hospital for just half a year, and “instituted some changes to improve outpatient care.”

Weightman is being replaced for now by Army surgeon general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley. As ThinkProgress documented yesterday, Kiley has known for years about the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed. Kiley was personally told about injured veterans who were “languishing and lost on the grounds,” sharing drugs and “drinking themselves to death,” and reportedly did nothing to address the problems. In one stunning case, Kiley took no action when personally informed that a soldier was sleeping in his own urine.

This had the feel of a whitewash, with Weightman being the fall guy. The staff at the medical center, meanwhile, can't stand Kiley, who let the outpatient facilities slip into this disrepair.

Waxman's going to haul both these guys into his committee for field hearings on this at Walter Reed. Those should be revealing. In the meantime, there's no way that Kevin Kiley should be running this facility.

UPDATE: Rules Committee Chair Rep. Louise Slaughter wants Kiley out today:

“The Department of Defense needs to make a choice: does it care about our wounded veterans, or does it care about public relations?” Rep. Slaughter said today. “While I was glad to see that initial steps had been taken to change the leadership at Walter Reed, yesterday’s news of Mr. Kiley’s appointment was simply baffling. How can a man who stood by for years while American soldiers suffered needlessly be expected to enact real reforms?”

“The outrage of the American public over the conditions at Walter Reed will not be pacified by simply shuffling the deck,” Rep. Slaughter said. “Secretary Gates must immediately remove from command anyone who allowed its facilities to fall into such a state of disrepair.”

“Our wounded soldiers deserve nothing less than the best health care this country can provide and the best leadership to ensure they receive that care.”

The Fall Guy

Maj. Gen. George Weightman, the top general overseeing operations at Walter Reed Medical Center, has lost his command, and I couldn't think of someone more deserving of a sacking, just based on his statements in the aftermath of the continuing relevations. But it shouldn't stop there.

It turns out that the horrifying conditions at Walter Reed's outpatient facilities have been well known for years to top officials, including the Army's surgeon general. And Weightman was only in command of the hospital for 6 months. So he may be the fall guy, but he's not the sole person responsible. For instance, how about Kevin Kiley?

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need."

"I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer.

A recent Washington Post series detailed conditions at Walter Reed, including those at Building 18, a dingy former hotel on Georgia Avenue where the wounded were housed among mice, mold, rot and cockroaches.

Kiley lives across the street from Building 18. From his quarters, he can see the scrappy building and busy traffic the soldiers must cross to get to the 113-acre post. At a news conference last week, Kiley, who declined several requests for interviews for this article, said that the problems of Building 18 "weren't serious and there weren't a lot of them." He also said they were not "emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families."

How about stripping Maj. Gen. Kenneth Farmer of his rank?

Retired Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr., who commanded Walter Reed for two years until last August, said that he was aware of outpatient problems and that there were "ongoing reviews and discussions" about how to fix them when he left. He said he shared many of those issues with Kiley, his immediate commander. Last summer when he turned over command to Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, Farmer said, "there were a variety of things we identified as opportunities for continued improvement."

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

And how about firing whoever decided to blame the soldiers for the harsh conditions they face (h/t Nitpicker):

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.

So we're not at the end of the investigation into Walter Reed. We're at the beginning. And nobody should be satisfied with Gen. Weightman being relieved of command. This is a shocking indictment of an Administration who doesn't support the troops, and the VA Secretary as well as every branch of the military should be made accountable for it.

You Messed With The Wrong Marine

All hell is breaking loose over the incredible and harrowing story of how we treat disabled Iraq War veterans at Walter Reed medical hospital, which appeared not just in The Washington Post, but was corroborated by The Army Times.

Yet when it was time for the Army to take care of him, one of its wounded warriors, Van Antwerp gave up before he even began. Rather than fight for a higher disability rating, he quietly signed for 20 percent — and no medical benefits — saying he knew he couldn’t do better. He inherited his father’s stubbornness, he said, and refused to ask anyone to pull strings based on his dad’s rank. Then his first medical board counselor, the person who would help him make his way through the medical evaluation board system, left. The second, he said, “wasn’t on the ball.”

“The Army is trying to give you the lowest amount of money possible,” he said. “A lot of people are appealing, but I’ll be going to [the Department of Veterans Affairs]. I want to go home.”

Van Antwerp is one of thousands of wounded troops rushed from the war zone for health care and then stranded in administrative limbo. They are at the mercy of a medical evaluation system that’s agonizingly slow, grossly understaffed and saddled with a growing backlog of cases. The wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are stuck in holding companies awaiting hearings and decisions on whether they will continue their military service or be discharged, and if so, at what level of benefits — if any.

The least we could do is to take care of those who fight this war. But Republican ideology of drowning government in the bathtub ensures that we don't even do that. It's disgraceful.

And Democrats are rightfully angry.

Following two votes last week in which Democrats rejected President Bush's surge plan and faced questioning from Republicans regarding their commitment to the troops, Democrats quickly seized on a story published by the Washington Post describing the conditions some soldiers encounter at Walter Reed.

"Caring for our returning heroes is one of the things we can still get right about this war, and that's why the deterioration of the conditions at Walter Reed is both appalling and unacceptable," presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said.

Obama and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said they would introduce legislation to improve the ratio of caseworkers to recovering soldiers, ensure caseworkers are better trained, cut back on the red tape recovering soldiers confront and set a timeline for repairs to "substandard facilities."

"I felt sick when I read these articles about how our injured American military men and women are being treated at Walter Reed," McCaskill said. "They sacrificed and fought bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. They shouldn't have to fight a whole new war at home to receive the service and compensation they deserve."

In the House, Louise Slaughter (D-NY), chairwoman of the Rules Committee, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

I urge you to explain why the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, once the crown-jewel of military medicine, has become a bleak and frustrating place for our wounded soldiers to recover, and what the Army intends to do to restore the integrity of its medical system.

This weekend's Washington Post series revealing the "other Walter Reed" was stunning. It painted a picture of abhorrent living conditions and a bureaucratic nightmare for our wounded soldiers in outpatient care. In striking detail, the series described how one of the outpatient facilities, Building 18, is marked by rodent infestation, mold problems, and crumbling ceilings. As if the facilities were not bad enough, wounded soldiers and their families must wrestle daily with an Army bureaucracy ill-equipped to provide them with the attention and care they need. Wounded soldiers are often left on their own to make and keep appointments, and fill out the 22 documents needed to enter and exit the Army's medical system.

The commander at Walter Reed moved quickly into damage control mode, saying that repairs on the infamous Building 18, infested with cockroaches and bad plumbing and a broken elevator, have begun. But Slaughter was correct to point out that, without the WaPo expose in the first place, nothing would have been done. It takes 9-1-1, crisis, emergency mode to get this Administration off of their ass to do anything.

In a tense White House press briefing, Tony Snow claimed Bush never knew about the appalling conditions at Walter Reed (although I think he got suckered into saying that, and Snow corrected the record as an addendum to a later transcript), and then actually said that everyone should go ask the Pentagon about it:

Q Were you aware?

MR. SNOW: We are aware now, yes. And I would refer you to the Department of Defense, which I know is taking a very close look at it, too.

Look, the men and women who have gone and fought for our country over there, they deserve the best care.

Q So why has that not been guaranteed, then?

MR. SNOW: I'm not sure that -- you know, when you find a problem, you deal with it.

Q So you're saying the President learned about this from The Washington Post?

MR. SNOW: I don't know exactly where he learned it, but I can tell you that we believe that they deserve better. And, again, Ed, this is something where I'd suggest you give DoD a call, because I know they've taken a good, hard look at it.

Right, because the President apparently has no say over the rogue, out-of-control Department of Defense under his executive command.

This story's going to have legs, and it dovetails with Rep. Murtha's call for readiness in the Armed Forces. Readiness on the battlefield extends to the hospitals and the outpatient facilities as well. You cannot keep a war going when you can't even decently house the wounded.

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.