Soldiers' shameful care

[Guest guest]

Soldiers' shameful care

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Pittsburgh,PA

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/rei

land/s_497031.html

By Ralph R. Reiland

Monday, March 12, 2007

Is this what we've become, a wounded soldier in a rat-infested room

at Walter , too paralyzed to knock a cockroach off what's left

of his body?

A case in point: Staff Sgt. , suffering from the

loss of an eye and brain injuries from a rifle wound, told a recent

congressional hearing of being released from Walter Army

Medical Center less than a week after he was shot in the head.

said hospital staffers simply gave him a map of the

expansive medical complex and told him to find his way to the

building where he'd be staying to receive outpatient services.

" I was extremely disoriented, " he explained, " and wandered around

while looking for someone to direct me. "

Then, waiting for plastic surgery that would allow him to wear a

prosthetic eye, said he " sat in my room for a couple of

weeks wondering when someone would contact " him.

Overall treatment, he testified, seemed to be " designed specifically

to reduce the government's cost of veteran care. "

He's probably right. In his January 2005 article, " Balancing Act: As

Benefits for Veterans Climb, Military Spending Feels Squeeze, " Wall

Street Journal reporter Greg Jaffe quoted Chu, the Pentagon's

undersecretary for personnel and readiness, as saying that increases

in spending for veterans benefits pull money away from other

military priorities such as recruiting and big-ticket weapons

systems.

" The amounts have gotten to the point where they are hurtful, " said

Chu, referring to the cost of veterans benefits. " They are taking

away from the nation's ability to defend itself. "

In order to boost recruiting, for example, Jaffe reported that the

Defense Department " raised the amount of money that deployed troops

get for serving away from their family in a war zone to $475 a month

from $125 a month. " For dodging bullets in an Iraqi hellhole, the

$475 works out to $15 a day -- 63 cents per hour over a 24-hour day.

By way of comparison, $475 per month is $175 less than the $650 per

month that our lawmakers in burg have voted for themselves to

cover car-lease expenses.

" Another witness at the congressional hearing, Annette L. McLeod,

spoke of how the Army tried to deny benefits to her husband,

Wendell, for a brain injury he suffered by suggesting that he had

always been a slow learner, " reported The New York Times.

McLeod, a specialist in the South Carolina National Guard, was

injured in Kuwait near the border with Iraq. " They stated that

Wendell appeared to be intellectually slow and that this was the

cause of the problem, " testified Mrs. McLeod. " They also said he

overexaggerated his injuries so that he could get attention. "

Spc. Duncan, who lost his left ear and had his neck broken in

a roadside bombing in Iraq, testified that the walls of his room in

Building 18 at Walter had holes in them and black mold growing

on them.

After the aforementioned conditions were exposed, Gen. Cody,

Army vice chief of staff, explained to CNN's Judy Woodruff that a

name change was coming: " I will personally oversee the plan to

upgrade Building 18, and we'll soon change the name. Referring to a

place where our soldiers stay as Building 18 is not appropriate. "

Regarding the rodents and cockroaches, Gen. Cody blamed the

wounded. " The mice and cockroach issue was something that, in fact,

the command did address last year, and that was due to soldiers

leaving food in their rooms, " he explained. " We policed that up, and

the rodent problem and cockroach problem has been corrected. "

In fact, it wasn't corrected. It's sort of like " mission

accomplished, " writ small.

Regarding the mold, Gen. Cody appeared to put that in the same

category as insurgencies, something the Army just might never be

able to get rid of. " I think mold recurs, " he told Ms. Woodruff.

And Congress? They've been too busy allocating money for bridges to

nowhere, like the $315 million bridge between Ketchikan and Alaska's

Gravina Island (population, 48), while simultaneously cutting funds

for traumatic brain juries.

" Unbelievably, in its appropriations bill for 2007, " says retired

Army Maj. Gen. D. Eaton, " Congress cut in half the financing

for the Army's main research and treatment program on brain injury,

the signature malady of this war, which, no surprise, is at Walter

. "

Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at

University and a local restaurateur. E-mail him at

rrreiland@....

[Guest guest]

Every dollar spent on care for wounded soldiers is a dollar that they can't

spend on other, more 'profitable' thievery.. uh.. things..

Maybe we just don't get it...

We're still trapped in that old fashioned quaint mid 20th century viewpoint

where the government is for the people and not the other way around..