Astrobuff alerted us to this article last night. She initiated an effort to get the big dog blogs (DailyKos, DU etc) to focus on this story as an exclusive. I also got it last night from Alan Castle, Seattle, who sent it to a large contact list including VA people and homeless advocates. Kayakbiker posted it at Vets for Peace Yahoo Group, in its entirety. I sent it to Democracy Cell Project last night and they used it as thread header today and advocated at least a blogswarm. I sent it to smaller blogs that I respect, such as Doug Tarnopol's Free Expression and Nyc Albert's A Pen Warmed in Hell and to people with large email lists who in turn have quite a few activist contacts. Let's go!!
Here is Astrobuff's letter to the blogs, followed by excerpt from the WaPo article.
To:
The big dogs at Daily Kos, TPM, Mydd, Crooks and Liars, My Left Wing, Booman Tribune, Democratic Underground, Eschaton, AmericaBlog, FireDogLake, The Next Hurrah, Informed Comment, TruthOut (and any other lefty/activist blog we can think of)
Re: WaPo article by Dana Priest entitled, “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top Medical Facility.” February 18, 2007, A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html
Hello:
I was reading about this article on the Daily Kos, and one person made a brilliant comment. He said that Markos should remove all diaries for 24 hours and solely have one posting on the site: this article.
Imagine the impact of having this as the centerpiece and conducting a blackout on everything else. For one full day. It would start a buzz for sure. Then imagine if every blog community who is concerned about the treatment of our injured soldiers were to do the same thing, at the same time. A moment of total focus. And see where it goes. Our soldiers deserve nothing less. We each have a day to devote to them, don’t we?
Now, some boards that receive this message, may not have the traffic that would warrant a blackout on everything but this story, but a prominent call out to visit the larger boards (like dem underground and daily kos) on that day would be undeniably helpful with this action. I imagine some congress critter going to Daily Kos with his/her latest ‘posting to the people’ and finding a black out on everything BUT our wounded vets. I envision quite a buzz in the hall of Congress. Indeed.
Another person suggested getting a copyright waiver from the WaPo so we could post the entire article. That is an excellent idea. I checked pricing for for-profit internet sites to post this article. It is merely $145. That’s for a month, but maybe it would be cheaper to use it for just one day.
Please consider this idea. I am sure that you big dogs probably have email correspondences, and maybe you could talk about doing this in synch.
Personally, I believe that if we could get the nation to focus on just this one atrocious issue, then the activation of the masses on the government to fix this problem asap might just lead to a movement that could very well put the brakes on this war, and any new future wars that the neocons have in mind presently.
Please consider this.
Here is the piece published by Rick Albertson at http://www.democracycellproject.net, who went to Washington Post's website.
While the politicians are pandering, and the spinbots are shouting, and every monkey in a red-white-and-blue suit is screeching "I support the troops! We support the troops!"... the torn and tattered veterans of the neocons' illegal and immoral war for conquest in the Middle East are being warehoused in Washington in conditions that most Americans would never even dream of letting their house pets live in, let alone their wounded warriors.
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Walter Reed Army Medical Center is supposed to be this country's flagship facility for taking care of those who have almost but not quite died in the service of their country. So why in the name of all that's holy are the much-vaunted support-the-troopers leaving them to rot in conditions that the most timid ASPCA officials would scream about if they were they to learn that cats and dogs were being held in such despicable conditions in some animal shelter someplace?
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.
They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.
This is just so many kinds of wrong, in so very many ways. The Washington Post has a shock-inducing article about the WRAMC on its website today that can, and certainly should, make you mad as hell so you won't take it any more. It's way too long to quote here in detail, but please go to their website and read their Walter Reed story asap. (Fair warning: your blood pressure will go up at least 20 points by the end of the article, I guarantee.)
While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.
On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.
Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.
"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."
Then call your Congresscritters about it, fax your local media outlets about it, spam your buddy lists about it, shout on every blog and myspacebook page you can find about it, holler and raise hell and bang pots and pans on every street corner about it -- do whatever it takes to get the word out about this tragic travesty of so-called supporting the troops in every corner of the land.
"I hate it," said Romero, who stays in his room all day. "There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water. ... I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. ... My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up!' "
That's right kid. Suck it up. Tell it to the Marines. Because the politicians sure as hell ain't listening.
This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their regular visits to the hospital's spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.
"We owe them all we can give them," Bush said during his last visit, a few days before Christmas. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."
This is pure and unadulterated cowflop, people, and all the self-serving political hacks wrapping themselves in the flag and hiding behind their right-wing rhetoric and their phony support-the-troops photo ops can't possibly be allowed to get away with it any more.
It's our turn to support the troops now. So get on out there and raise hell, DCP readers. They should never have had to be there, but they were there anyway, and now they're getting treated like unwanted pets that we have to hide from the public eye.
And that is just so very wrong, in so very many ways.
UPDATE:
from Nyc Albert's "A Pen Warmed in Hell" blog:
He is advocating that blogs publish a graphic war photo each day, to wake people up.
Colorfully written and right on.
http://www.apenwarmedinhell.blogspot.com/
UPDATE: 2/19 We are making headway
from http://www.democracycellproject.net
DiAnne, thanks for the heads-up about the Washington Post article and the move to blogswarm it today. I agree with that sentiment entirely -- it's on the top page of www.culturekitchen.com now, and I've added my otter $.02 to the comments about it at http://blog.johnkerry.com and, um, I suspect there'll be a race to make sure it gets turned into a DCP threader today as well. I'll also be spending the rest of the day making sure it gets into various other corners of the blogosphere as well.
It's our turn to support the troops now. So get on out there and raise hell, people. They should never have had to be there, but they were there anyway, and now they're getting treated like abandoned pets that we have to hide from the public eye. And that is just so very many kinds of wrong, in so very many ways.
Posted by: Otter at February 18, 2007 08:09 AM
From testvet at Kos. The True Shame of a Nation.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/18/3125/18851
Posted by: sparrow at February 18, 2007 08:41 AM
Sparrow
Thanks for linnking to testvet here!
& here is part II. On the treatment of vets.
part II - The Hotel Aftermath
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021801335_
pf.html
Posted by: not my president at February 19, 2007 10:58 AM
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