Inexcusable Poor Care for US Military Wounded

After all the devastating screw-ups by the current administration, such as a "no WMD's war" that shouldn't have happened, poor responses to Hurricane Katrina and Rita, the lack of implementation of the 9/11 recommendations on Ports & Borders, taking away various American freedoms, no armor initially for the troops or their vehicles, ignoring Afghanistan & Bin Ladin and now a war surge that no one wants, one would think that there weren't that many things left for them to mess up. However, this time it took President Bush to first learn about the horrible conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Campus for out-patient soldiers by reading about it in the Washington Post. Even though the conditions have been bad for a very long time, they were apparently never brought to anyone's attention that could have improved the situation.

Photo Ops

If you watch the news, you are probably aware of the pictures of the various Senators, congressional members and other politicians that continually take their "photo ops" with the wounded at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center located near the Capitol in Washington DC. This is where you will see the videos of wounded US troops receiving the absolute best medical care that our tax dollars can buy. This is the true personification of the millions of magnetic, yellow "We support Our Troops" ribbons that can be found on cars, SUV's, trucks and soccer-mom vans from coast-to-coast. And that's the way it should be. Even though it's an illegal, unjust war that never should have started, these young men and women did put themselves in harms way doing their duty for God and country. Unfortunately, this wonderful, visible support for our wounded has only been available at the state-of-the-art, in-patient Walter Reed Medical Facility. For those wounded out-patients that have graduated and are sent to the near-by Building 18 at the Walter Reed Medical Campus, the options have been very far from "the very best" out-patient care. Many of these out-patients must stay at these "less than desirable" facilities for up to 12 months.

Building 18

After the president read the article and issued his order to "Find out what the problem is and fix it!", workers miraculously appeared on the site in protective masks, stripping black mold and rot from the walls, tearing out worn and soiled carpets, replacing broken mattresses, fixing water leaks and sagging ceilings and applying new paint. There were also infestations of rats and cockroaches to trap and deal with as well. Building 18, with the decrepit hotel type rooms, some with broken windows, is home for 700 military outpatients and had only one single ramp in the back for wheelchair patients. One of the two elevators did not work and the sidewalks were covered with snow and ice. (The sidewalks are regularly cleared around the main in-patient medical facility for their visitors.) All of these problems have made it very difficult for those wounded individuals, some missing limbs and most using crutches, walkers, canes and wheelchairs.

Bureaucratic Indifference

It has also been made public that bureaucratic indifference has impeded many of the out-patient's recovery. This indifference includes overloaded Caseworkers at Walter Reed that have to handle caseloads of up to 125 out-patients per worker. Patients are having to fill-out multiple levels of the same paperwork and then make their way to different buildings on the campus (which covers 113 acres) to deliver the completed forms. This is achieved with great difficulty on snow and ice covered and some times broken sidewalks. Walter Reed is currently scheduled to close in 2011 and the Naval facility at Bethesda is being expanded to handle the additional patients. However, it appears that someone decided to stop any maintenance at the Walter Reed Campus about 5 years early.

Results to Date

The commander of the facility, Major General George W. Weightman and the Secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey have been the "heads-to-roll" for these problems at Walter Reed. Secretary Harvey had earlier said; "We had some NCO's (non-commissioned officers) who weren't doing their jobs, period." This issue was his overall responsibility and it was a major cop-out to throw the blame at the sergeants and non-com teams. Where were the officers that were supposed to be over-seeing whether the non-coms were or were not "doing their jobs"? Were they being given the proper instructions and supervision? It appears possibly not. Just as with the current administration in the Whitehouse, here is another "lack of oversight" on a critical issue that has once again gone into the dumpster. Since this issue was brought to light, there have been a number of additional reports coming to the surface that these problems are also occurring at a number of the Veteran's Hospitals around the country. This story is far from over. How many more of these injustices are our soldiers, and the public going to have to endure.