I was at Walter Reed Medical Center for a few hours in late December. I wasn’t visiting wounded veterans; I went there because they have a fascinating medical museum I had wanted to see.
Afterwards, waiting for a cab on Walter Reed’s well-manicured grounds, I spent some time talking to a soldier who was there for outpatient treatment. His back had been badly injured in the 1991 Iraq War, and the teeth on one side of his mouth had all been knocked out. I said my understanding was that Walter Reed provided really first-class medical care. I recalled that President Eisenhower spent a lot of time there, and Senator Strom Thurmond virtually lived there his last year or so in office. The veteran looked at me. “It is what it is,” he said.
I have thought about that a lot since then. I don’t know what the commission will conclude about who is responsible for the mistreatment and neglect some of our wounded veterans have had to suffer.
But I do know this. We are all responsible. Both the media and the general public. As a society, we are very good at refusing to face certain unpleasant parts of reality, especially if they have no easy resolution.
While the media constantly updates us on the number of soldiers killed in Iraq – now about 3,200 – they seldom mention the number of wounded. That figure, by the way, is more than 23,000. Many of those have suffered amputations or closed-head injuries or other wounds that will alter their lives forever. But until the scandal at Walter Reed, they have by and large been invisible. And that I think is the real scandal, far deeper than moldy walls at a building on the grounds of Walter Reed.
A military funeral is an emotionally moving thing, but when it is over, it is over. For men and women who have lost arms or legs or, worse yet, have suffered major closed head injuries, it is never over. Nor will it ever be over for their loved ones.
And it is disturbing and upsetting to think about these veterans and to see pictures of them. Until the scandal at Walter Reed, the media mainly avoided the injured of Iraq.
Nor did we get very much coverage of the way in which the Bush Administration was cutting Veterans’ Administrations’ benefits right when it was creating a new group of wounded veterans.
That may be changing now. Few veterans have suffered as terribly as Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who spent years in military hospitals after World War II, most of it in the former Percy Jones hospital in Battle Creek. Now, he is co-chairing a separate panel to look into conditions in military and Veterans Administrations hospitals.
If this nation’s media give both commissions’ findings half as much attention as they did the dead body of Anna Nicole Smith, there just might be hope for us. But don’t hold your breath.
If you ask me the real shame to this story is how it will serve as the issue that our congressmen will use as simply a podeum, they will soak up the spot light, make a few cosmetic changes and leave it relatively unimproved.
I encourage us everyone to write their senator now and in a couple months to follow up on this story. Just as we wish for our leaders not to have a short term memory, it is up to us to not have one equally as short.
Thanks for adressing the fundamentals of this story Jack.
Posted by: Ryan Wozniak | March 15, 2007 at 09:25 PM
I was stationed in Fort Sill Oklahoma then shipped off to Walter Reed Army Medical Center myself for 2 months. They sent me home without any benefits. I wonder can Bob Dole and Donna Shalala help me.
Posted by: Gabriel | May 17, 2007 at 03:14 AM
I was stationed in Fort Sill, Oklahoma then sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for 2 months. I was sent home without any benefits after I was discharged. Can you please help me Mr. Bob Dole and Mrs. Donna Shalala
Posted by: Gabriel | May 17, 2007 at 03:19 AM