People in high places pay lip service to troop support

[razors edge]

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070309/COLUMNIST13/703090315

FOR the five years the nation has been sending young men and women to die in Afghanistan and Iraq, the mainstay mantra of the comfortably safe in America has been, "We Support Our Troops." You see it everywhere. Political leaders can't stress it enough in their speeches and sound bites.

Countless citizens display the sentiment in symbols and messages slapped on the back of vehicles. Store owners hang signs in their windows. No question that "We Support Our Troops," even when the ground forces battling bombings and other insidious attacks in Baghdad complained that troop support was sorely lacking, from sufficiently armored vehicles and protective gear to adequate training and manpower.

OK, so we could have backed up the troops in the field better. But in every other way We Support Our Troops. Except when they come home badly broken. Then the physically and mentally mangled souls, who managed to live through brutal urban warfare, are on their own. Their government patches them up and leaves them to fend for themselves. Traumatic brain injuries - fast becoming the signature wound of the Bush war - leave some returning soldiers more dependent on a support system that doesn't support.

When the Washington Post broke the story recently about the shocking decay and mismanagement at the renowned Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., a political maelstrom erupted in the nation's capital. It got worse as the story of substandard living conditions and poor medical treatment for injured troops grew beyond the Army's flagship veterans hospital. Distressing accounts from veterans across the country about systemwide neglect and mistreatment flooded the media.


"Bush war", thats right Marilou, way to go, again!