High and Low

THe most common refrain I hear myself asking when I hear about appearences of impropriety in the Bush administration is one echoed in this article that appeared in Salon News a few weeks ago:

"You have to ask where else this might be happening and who is dictating it," one female soldier told me. "How high does it go?"

The issue this time are reports that wounded veterans are being re-deployed to Iraq after having their medical conditions "reviewed" by administrators who seem willing to write off serious conditions without any kind of thorough examination of the soldier's condition. To top it all off, soldiers being redeployed in the fashion are apparently feeling that their ability to speak publicly about their issues is at risk:

Another soldier contacted Salon by telephone last week expressed considerable anxiety, in a frightened tone, about deploying to Iraq in her current condition. (She also wanted to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.) An incident during training several years ago injured her back, forcing doctors to remove part of her fractured coccyx. She suffers from degenerative disk disease and has two ruptured disks and a bulging disk in her back. While she said she loves the Army and would like to deploy after back surgery, her current injuries would limit her ability to wear her full protective gear. She deployed to Iraq last week, the day after calling Salon.

Her husband, who has served three combat tours in the infantry in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he is worried sick because his wife's protective vest alone exceeds the maximum amount she is allowed to lift. "I have been over there three times. I know what it is like," he told me during lunch at a restaurant here. He predicted that by deploying people like his wife, the brigade leaders are "going to get somebody killed over there." He said there is "no way" Grigsby is going to keep all of the injured soldiers in safe jobs. "All of these people that deploy with these profiles, they are scared," he said. He railed at the command: "They are saying they don't care about your health. This is pathetic. It is bad." [Emphasis Eliel's--Ed.]

These are our nations wounded warriors. People who have taken the step of not just saying they stand for America, but actually putting their boots on and going to stand for America fighting a war that never should have been fought. If our nation is defined by how we treat our most vulnerable, perhaps I (along with the soldier I quote from the article) am asking the wrong question. Perhaps the question is not "how high does it go", but instead "how low can it go"?

Between this and the debacle at Walter Reed (which Veteran's groups will tell you is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to how wounded veterans are treated) including a shortage of critical mental health services that could have been life saving for some who came home from the war and took their own lives, it is clear that we as a nation are not doing enough to care for the men and women returning from Afghanistan and Iraq in bad shape.

The good news is that groups like IAVA are making strides in getting congress to fill their role of oversight of the executive branch and mandating better rules for treatment of veterans. Click here if you want to help urge your Senator to do their job.

This nation needs lots of healing. Supporting our veterans is a non-partisan issue: Let's start with making sure that those who got hurt wearing our flag on their arms get the help they need. To do anything less would be to sink even lower than we already are now.

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