CONTACT CONGRESS IMMEDIATELY ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF OUR WOUNDED VETERANS!!!

[shireen]

This article in the Washington Post must be read. Our wounded military are being forced to recover in hellish conditions, and we must not tolerate this! Please contact your members of Congress and demand immediate action. Tell them to redirect funding for the escalation into good health care and support for our wounded troops. We are ultimately responsible for them, and it's up to us to act by flooding Congress to demand they get excellent health care!!!

http://tinyurl.com/32sfbd
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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.

.....
more at WaPo (http://tinyurl.com/32sfbd) this is a long article, and it gets more and more outrageous!

[Ian David]

1. See Also (From AmericaBlog): The real treason.

The real treason. Our maimed soldiers are living in cockroach infested ghettos back here in the states.

by John in DC 2/17/2007 07:20:00 PM
Discuss this post here: Comments (122) | digg it | fark it! |

This is what the NY Post headline would have read today if they really gave a damn about our troops.



Oh my God. While the Republicans were posturing all week about how the Democrats hate the troops, the Sunday Washington Post takes a look at how the Bush administration and the Republican congress have been treating our hurt and maimed troops back here in the US: in cockroach infested ghettos.

It is absolutely sickening. Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi should lock the Congress down until every single one of these problems is finally fixed.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is beyond sickening. We have to sit back and listen to GOP members of Congress, George Bush's White House, and that pig General Petraeus dare to tell us how WE'RE the ones turning our backs on the troops, when all three of them knew this was going on under their watch and none of them lifted a finger to fix it.

Our soldiers were lied to about this war, they were lied to about their enlistment, they were never given a plan for victory or the numbers of troops they needed, they still don't have the armor they need for their vehicles. And now, the young men and women wounded and maimed for our country are living in government-run pig-stys not fit for farm animals. The American Taliban and the detainees in Guantanamo get better conditions than this, all courtesy of the Republicans.

The Republicans want to talk about treason? They want to talk about slowly bleeding our troops to death? Fine. Forget the agenda Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid had planned. It's high time we helped our troops. And if the Republicans won't do it, then we will. Let's ensure that the American people and our troops know which party got them into this mess, and which party is getting them out of it. Let the hearings and investigation and legislation begin until we fix these problems once and for all.


More:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/02/real-treason-our-maimed-soldiers-are.html

[kstewart33]

2. I'm calling Murtha on Monday

and Dianna DeGette, my rep. What an outrage!