Heads are rolling all over the Pentagon over the conditions at Walter Reed Army hospital. Now it looks like all sorts of service people all over the country are coming forward to talk about deplorable conditions and treatment.I had a friend who worked at the VA hospital in Tucson, and she said it was bleak. The people who were being treated there were pretty much only vets who didn't have any other treatment options. If they had a choice, they'd be somewhere else.
The part that gets to me about the Walter Reed scandal is the callousness. I can understand hospitals that are underfunded and bogged down with a huge influx of of fresh war casualties needing treatment for everything from missing limbs to brain injuries to PTSD...and sometimes a combination of several problems at once. But come on...take out their garbage. Give 'em clean sheets and pajamas without holes. They're not prisoners, they're the young men and women who are putting their lives at risk for crummy pay so that George Bush can realize his imperialist vision.
The least they deserve is a safe, comfortable recuperation in return.
2 comments:
When I go to the VA w/Barry, it's incredibly sad. Last Thursday, they told us they were cutting same-day surgery lunches - maybe to help fund garbage take-out and new jammies? I don't know - seems like the only way to care for the Vets is to fuck either the new guys or the old guys. Oh wait - maybe look at our policy on war? Nah! Too expensive! Robin
As I told Ev this morning, it's obvious that when the Shrub was just a wee twig playing Army with his friends, they never played "laying in the hospital with my leg shot off" ... so when he got to be a big grown-up Shrub playing war it never occurred to him that there was anything after, "Bang! You're dead!"
Planning is not his middle name.
Kwach
Post a Comment