One of the smartest things I've ever done was the decision to serve my country in the United States Air Force. I knew this was the "right thing" from the very first time I looked through the promotional materials before I signed on the "dotted line."
With very few exceptions, I received very, very good medical care while I was on active duty. Like I just stated, there were a few exceptions, but there were indeed "some."
What troubles me greatly now is the reports coming from places like Walter Reed Medical Center, and the examples given by Bob Woodruff concerning the neglect of some troops that have suffered life-threatening injuries in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
I was riveted by report in the Washington Post last week about how poorly military veterans were treated once they left "in patient" care at the finest medical center in the country, Walter Reed Medical Center. Dana Priest, a staffer from the newspaper spent four months researching the atrocities at WRMC--and did so with little, if any, interruption.
Bob Woodruff just about died covering the conflict in Iraq--being injured, airlifted to both Landstuhl Medical Center (Kaiserslautern, Germany) and then to the Naval Military Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland. Bob, much to his everlasting credit, has done alot of follow-up with those brave men and women who have suffered traumatic brain injury...and what he has found in many cases is not good news.
Our military veterans deserve much, much, much better treatment than what has been revealed.
One question keeps swirling around my mind: " Why would it take two reporters, a near-death experience for one of them, and a four-day expose' in a national newspaper with worldwide readership for the "powers-that-be" in the nation's capitol to discover all of these things? Defense Secretary Robert Gates has promised the nation a full investigation, and that this matter would be rectified immediately. Too bad his predecessor wasn't nearly as attentive--or maybe this mess wouldn't have happened in the first place. I do not miss Donald Rumsfeld.
Secretary Nicholson from the Department of Veterans Affairs has made a nationwide promise that our brave military personnel returning from war zones will receive immediate and far superior care to what they have been receiving--on a long term basis.
We owe these men and women the very best.
It's time we deliver...
And with all due haste.
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