Part 2

In today's Washington Post, there is a second article about our treatment of some of our veterans of the current war. It's another dispiriting read profiling a half-dozen or so soldiers. Some excerpts:

• Each morning the patients rise at dawn for formation with a platoon sergeant.
• One day he's led on stage at a Toby Keith concert with dozens of other wounded Operation Iraqi Freedom troops from Mologne House, and the next he's sitting in a cluttered cubbyhole at Walter Reed, fighting the Army for every penny of his disability.
• "If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will", a veteran's wife.
• Mologne House is afloat on a river of painkillers and psychotic drugs.
• 60% of blast victims suffer from traumatic brain injury.
• While Mologne House has a full bar, there is not one counselor or psychologist assigned there to assist soldiers and families in crisis - an idea proposed by Walter Reed social workers but rejected by the military command that runs the post.
• A soldier is there because of injuries received when his head was smashed by a steel door; the door hinges were tied together with a plastic hamburger-bun bag.
• One soldier spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform.
• A father says, "He was okay to sacrifice his body, but now it's time that he needs some help, they are not here."