Letters to the Editor
Nita Martin
Published Letters: 271 Editor's Choice: 62
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A matter of honor
[Read the article: More on Walter Reed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Honor is a word in all its meanings that is nearly synonymous with the military. Because it is a commitment that comes as an adjunct to the uniform. The pledge to serve with honor. And even to serve is an honor and a privilege. We equate valor with honor. We honor our dead.
So it is with a heightened sense of shock, disbelief, and utter disgust, that the revelations such as those in Dana Priest's Washington Post story have come to our attention. The conditions at Walter Reed facilities documented in the piece are unconscionable. Reprehensible.
For four years, we have sent our men and women in uniform off to war with a complete lack of planning and resources. With absent and insufficient equipment to protect them. The result has been a catastrophic level of horrific injuries. We have burdened them with a war of insurgency blended into the background and the foreground, armed with hidden devices which have inflicted not only death, but living human destruction.
At a time when these selfless people, who have been subjected to numbing extended tours characterized by daily brushes with death need our help, we are not there.
It's bad enough that we are bringing people home with their spirits crushed, and their minds in need of tender care. We are bringing them home armless, legless, faceless, and treating them with callousness and indignity. We are abandoning them to a system that makes them wait for treatment they desperately need, and then delivers it in conditions that no self-respecting dog lover would allow in their kennel of choice.
That this is going on shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. The stories have been reported, as you point out. Not just in Salon, but elsewhere. Everyone knows at least one. Communities have pulled together to help disabled veterans when their government, their Commander-in-Chief has failed them.
We have expected the unreasonable of our armed forces. And out of honor, they have delivered, again and again and again.
We owe them and their families an immense debt of gratitude. And care. And dignity. We have dishonored ourselves, our country, and our tradition of military service through the disgraceful treatment of our veterans. By the VA, by the administration, by the Congress, and by everyone who has looked the other way as war profiteers have found their pockets filled, while our veterans have been reduced to beggars for minimal aid and comfort.
We don't need speeches and apologies and investigations. We need remedies and oversight. And the pledge that this blight on America's honor will be rectified immediately, and for ever.
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Heckuva job, General!
[Read the article: More on Walter Reed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or whatever General Weightman's cute Bushname is.
Locutus....Thanks for keeping an eagle eye on every single Bush-loving, liberty-hating, liberal-trashing, duplicitous, moronic twisted numbnuts in every single medium. They can run...but they can't hide. Yours is usually the last straw (but alas, not) revelation that I love to hate.
Can't wait to see how Tony Snow plays "oh, look over there" with this one.
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Training? They don't need no stinkin' training...
[Read the article: Yes, and they can learn first aid by treating their own wounds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah. Just like they didn't need training going in, ripped straight from boot camp with their faces still hollow skulls from all the love and care of their drill instructors.
Just like they didn't need desert boots in 130 degree heat and came home with trench foot.
Just like they didn't need more than one ration a day.
Just like they didn't need drinking water, until their families dug into their meager family budgets and started mailing them cases of bottled water.
Just like they didn't need up-to-date helmets, uless they went online and ordered one, like my son.
Just like they didn't need armored Humvees, until they started scavenging bits of metal and wood to stick on the unprotected vehicles they were riding in.
Just like they didn't need body armor until their families and communities started taking up collections and begging for used police vests and sending them over.
Just like they haven't needed all the basics and a couple of comforts until their families spent comparative fortunes sending care packages regularly.
Just like they didn't need a thank you until the public started caring, though they are yet to get a genuine thank you (photo ops not eligible) from their commander-in-chief and his command center of draft-dodging morons.
Just like they didn't need planning to make their efforts, and their deaths worthwhile.
Just like they didn't need to be home with their families for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, births of their own children.
Just like they didn't need the income from the jobs they were jerked out of again and again to serve 24/7 for slave wages.
Just like they didn't need to be given care for the mental and spiritual wounds of brutal combat.
Just like they didn't need anything better than a rat infested convalescence that would raise eyebrows as an SRO flophouse.
Just like they didn't need to have their disabilities treated in a timely manner.
Just like they didn't need to be treated fairly, humanely, respectfully when they come home battered and maimed.
That these men and women have been treated so badly is a national shame that we will never, never erase. That this administration and its spokespeople can continually ignore or trivialize the needs of the people who have suffered so much for George W. Bush's wet dream of being a man among men without actually having to do anything...is insufferable.
Apparently we can't stop them...but for God's sake, can't we just shut them the hell up!
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Same game...different suit
[Read the article: Walter Reed chief relieved of command]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why is it that senior military only loses "trust and confidence" in one of its own when they have been publicly outed? And then, only in mass media...because this dirty secret of substandard care has been slithering around below the big radar for a long time.
If Major General Weightman was an enlisted man, he would be subjected to courts martial and sent to prison.
Being "relieved" is probably a "relief" for a VIP scapegoat.