Jeff Jacoby has penned one of his worst efforts to date in today’s Globe.
there is no end of Americans who insist they “support” US troops in Iraq but want the war those troops are fighting to end in defeat. The two positions are irreconcilable…. [The resolution passed by the House] was a disgraceful and dishonest resolution, and it must have done wonders for the insurgents’ morale. Democrats hardly bothered to disguise that when they say they “support and protect” the troops, what they really intend is to undermine and endanger their mission.
You know, Jeff, you can say that all you want. Doesn’t make it even close to true. Particularly on this day, when the Washington Post published one of the most shocking stories yet on what not supporting the troops really means.
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….
Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan’s, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed’s treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.
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….
Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands — most of them off-post — to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army’s three personnel databases cannot read each other’s files and can’t interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases. The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there, after a clerk couldn’t find a record of her service….
One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. “I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me,” he said. Finally, his wife met an aide to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who got the erroneous paperwork corrected with one phone call. When the aide called with the news, he told the soldier, “They don’t even know you exist.” “They didn’t know who I was or where I was,” the soldier said. “And I was in contact with my platoon sergeant every day.”
You should really read the whole thing, even though it’ll make you mad. But yeah, I’m kinda thinking that if “supporting the troops” means anything, it means taking good care of them when they are injured doing the job that the powers that be sent them over to Iraq to do. I’d call the situation the WaPo describes “disgraceful,” and I’d call anyone who denies or tries to minimize it “dishonest.” So Jeff, the next time you write about who really supports the troops, why not figure out who is responsible for the mess at the “Other Walter Reed,” instead of trotting out tired Fox News talking points?
There’s a pretty good fisking of Jacoby’s column here.
…you can’t support the troops if you don’t support the mission. And you can support the troops as long as they’re not injured. You can support the troops and screw the veterans. You can support the troops, until they turn into welfare scam artists who file “fake” claims for PTSD.
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It reminds me of the line Barney Frank had, whcih went something like, “conseratives are pro-life, until the life becomes a baby and tries to grow up”. Folks like Jacoby “support the troops” until the fighting stops, then could care less about them.
[Certain “pro-life” legislators] believe life begins at conception and ends at birth.
…after it became clear that he was nothing but a jackass.
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I’ll merely copy something that I posted over at Dan Kennedy’s blog”
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It must be a slow news day if we are discussing Jacoby. He is the most predictable columnist the Globe has ever had. Does he realize he gets his column get published because the Globe feels the pressure of political correctness?
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I guess they feel compelled to give a narrow minded, one note polemist an opportunity. What bothers me the most about him, I never learn anything from his reading his columns, but I keep reading thinking maybe one of these days…today was not one of those days.
Ever since he got caught stealing unsubstantiated copy from the internet, Jacoby has to think up stuff all by himself. The result is obvious: nonsensical blather with holes in logic big enough to drive a poorly armored humvee through. The most disgraceful and dishonest part of this column is the byline.
The situation at Walter Reed is more worthy of attention. It should be fixed PDQ and we should make Republicans ashamed that this happened under their “watch”.
Lost to history is Smedley Butler, the author of, “War is a Racket”, which is as true today as it was seventy-five years ago.
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http://hqinet001.hqm…
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Soldiers are always the cannon fodder of the politicians and their financial controllers. In Vietnam the Johnson family ranch (Everything’s OK on the LBJ) supplied the beef for the troops and Ladybird’s family supplied the construction with the RMK-BRJ consortium. Now the Republicans have hold of the Whitehouse and reap the profits. If the Republicans lose in two years, it can be the Democrats’ turn.
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Does anyone think that the medical care of troops and veterans has just collapsed this year? It has been neglected since the Kennedy administration. Blame the “cruel, uncaring Republicans”, but blame too the “loving, caring Democrats”.
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For the life of me, I can’t see the difference.
just this year, there are a couple of things worth noting about this war that have put an even greater stress on the system.
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1.The Pentagon predicted an easy victory with few casualties for the U.S., hence there was no planning for the casualties that we have.
2.Bush has proposed cutting funding to the VA for the coming year. Fewer resources stretched thinner.
3.Both the financial costs & duration of the war were greatly underestimated by the WH.
4.Bush & the GOP have pushed through massive tax cuts even as they widened the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. This has never been done before in the history of our country.
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Since the goal of the GOP has been to run up the deficit and cut taxes in order to “starve the beast”, cuts to “entitlements” will be necessary. Once a soldier becomes disabled, they are now a liability in the eyes of the Pentagon. Do the math.
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This war is a complete debacle. If I want a party in power to get the governments fiscal house in order, bring an end to the war, and take care of the men and women who have served, I’ll take my chances with the Democrats.
You see, the Democrats were planning to fix the problems with the facilities that care for servicemembers and veterans but got stopped by the Whitehouse. Blame the Republican devils, not the Democratic Party saviors.
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Yes, we all believe that.
but if you want to dispute the points, let’s hear it. Otherwise, I’m not interested in the “pox on both their houses’ tripe, especially when Bush/Cheney lied us into this war, and GOP apologists like Jacoby question anyones patriotism if they dare to point that fact out.
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Has the GOP cut taxes while we’re at war or not? VA funding?
I can’t hear you.
This is a pro-Democratic Party blog. You are no more than lowest of trolls. Your comment should be removed.
Um, last I checked, this was a pro-Democratic Party blog which was also willing to be critical of the Dems. In fact, last I checked, one of the strengths of this blog was that it was not an uncritical mouthpiece for such Dem “leaders” as the DLC.
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Calling someone a troll for criticizing the Dems is neither productive or in keeping with the traditions of this blog.
Allow me to explain what I mean by taking the current debate about Iraq and putting it in different contexts:
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1. In a given year, the U.S. Forest Service notes that there’s a lot of dry vegetation in parts of the Southwest. In order to reduce the risk of inadvertent fires, the USFS decides to institute a controlled burn policy. Lo and behold, the fire gets out of hand. The USFS sends in fire fighters, though this increase is not having any noticeable effect on the wildfire. In fact, the fire gets more out of control, and more and more firefighters either die or suffer serious burns. A spirited debate emerges around the country: send more fire fighters or let the fire consume what it will and then die out?
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Those in favor of sending more fire fighters accuse the other side of not supporting the fire fighters.
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2. An urban city somewhere experiences a sharp increase in the number of violent street crimes. The mayor and the police commissioner decide to send more police officers into the streets. Despite the increase in police presence, the crime sprees increase, and more police officers are injured or killed in the line of duty. A debate rages on: those on the law&order side want more police sent into the streets, while those on the other side argue the police crackdown isn’t working, and something else ought to be tried (e.g. let the gangs deplete their own ranks).
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Those in favor of sending in more police officers accuse the other side of not supporting the police officers.
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Regardless of what should be done in either situation (i.e. send in more fire fighter/police or not), does it make much sense in these contexts for one side to accuse the other side of not supporting the fire fighters/police? Does it make sense for the other side to respond on the merits?
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…when applied to war, is really heinous and pathetic.
This is the man who gave the introduction for anti-Semite Pat Robertson at a Metrowest synagogue several years ago. If you want disgraceful, i think that qualifies.
Of course, it’s not as easy as that, and Jacoby knows it, so I suppose one could argue he is weasling here too. As the Mahablogger writes, “I’m not entirely sure what Jacoby thinks the Dems could do.” I’ll make a suggestion: they could support one of the resolutions with teeth that would really put a cramp in the President’s war. Until they do that, there is some truth to the argument they are just playing politics.
As do most of the others with their knee jerk reactions, that this is sending a signal to the insurgents and terrorists. Here’s the signal- we do not accept failed strategies. What we owe our men and women is not to allow that to continue. I found an article about Republican Congressman Walter Jones, who co-sponsored the measure.
Co-sponsoring the resolution, though, was not a decision that Jones came to lightly.
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“I have listened to the professionals and talked to the generals and they say this will not work. All of them (Gen. Colin Powell, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. Joseph Hoar) are very clear — the proposed solution to surge more troops won’t work. The proposed number of 21,000 is too little, too late,” he said.
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“I hate to see our men and women refereeing a civil war and that’s what this is — a civil war.”
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He does not believe that this resolution will hurt the morale of the troops on the ground.
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In fact, he said, both Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace told the House Armed Services Committee that it would not.
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“When asked if it would hurt the morale of the troops, both men answered, ‘No,'” Jones said. “They understand Congress has a responsibility when it comes to funding the military and that we have a responsibility to discuss policy.”
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And right now, he continued, America’s policy in Iraq is not going in the right direction.
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“I support the troops, but right now we have a failed policy,” Jones said. “We don’t know where we’re going. It’s like we’re in a dark hole with no light.”
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Let’s state the painfully obvious. This surge is a ruse to buy time. It may even temporarily damper violence in Baghdad, because if I’m on the other side, right now I just lay low. There’s no hurry there, it will take nothing to flame back up again. Seriously, do people think there is anything other than a straw government tainted by corruption and inability to get anything done? The same goes for Iraqi police and armies.
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The real patriots are those that stand in dissent to this. The Bush Administration and their apologists are the last of the believers.