The Walter Reed Scandal

I'm way behind on this, but if you haven't been following The Washington Post's series on the travesty of patient care for vets at Walter Reed hospital, you should catch up. It started here, but when I ran a search of "walter reed" a couple of minutes ago, more than two dozen hits came up since Sunday. This will give you a taste:

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.

It's amazing how nobody had any kind of clue about this. Tony Snow pointed his finger at the Pentagon, apparently forgetting that the boys over there answer to the President. For its part, the Pentagon was on the case making quick fixes almost immediately, and apparently with nowhere else to pass the buck, they vaguely took responsibility:

[Army vice chief of staff Gen. Richard A.] Cody blamed "a breakdown in leadership" for the troubling conditions but said no one has been fired or relieved of command. He did point to lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers lacking "the right experience and the authority to be able to execute some of the missions."

Nobody looks good in this. The Bushies are responsible because it's their job to oversee operations and guarantee proper, dignified care for those we've asked to sacrifice themselves for the nation. But nobody on Capital Hill deserves to be let off the hook, either. They visit the wounded and the recovering troops at Walter Reed and other hospitals--how could they have missed this? The best answer is that they just weren't interested enough to pay attention to what was in front of them. As unappealing as that possibility is, it's an awful lot better than they were aware of it but callous and uncaring to the point where they ignored it.

Now that everybody's watching, of course improvements are being put into place. But what are we going to do to make sure that those improvements don't slack off as soon as we shift our gaze? Will we have a similar series in another couple of years?

Well, until then, don't forget to Support the Troops.