Who is taking care of our soldiers?

Today's Washington Post has an extremely disturbing story concerning the conditions our wounded troops are facing upon their return home:

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.

Would you care to venture a guess as to the location of Mr.Duncan's room? Some tenement slum apartment in a bad neighborhood? Possibly tucked away in the forgotten destruction of the New Orleans? You are not going to beleive the answer. It will make you angry. It will make you sick to your stomach:

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.

When you mention the name Walter Reed an image comes to mind of a top surgical institution that shines as crisp and clean as a freshly-pressed uniform. And indeed the hospital itself is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles. Yet the outpatients in the rest of the 113 acre complex, as well as dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army, endure a completely different scenario:

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."

The two Washington Post reporters who broke the story spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances, while the true conditions there remain hidden from the public eye. Bush, 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."

Apparently, suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which are commonplace, are the best we have to give these soldiers who have given so very much for us. Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon's story is sadly representative of the lack of managed care, to say the very least. . .

Shannon arrived as many do in November of 2004. A white-painted bus with blackened windows carried him from Andrews Air Force Base to the Walter Reed complex where, still groggy from his pain-meds for his eye injuries and shattered skull,someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.

A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn't even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions.

Shannon had led the 2nd Infantry Division's Ghost Recon Platoon until he was felled in a gun battle in Ramadi. He liked the solitary work of a sniper; "Lone Wolf" was his call name. But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.

"I thought, 'Shouldn't they contact me?' " he said. "I didn't understand the paperwork. I'd start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: 'I'm your case manager. Where have you been?'

"Well, I've been here! Jeez Louise, people, I'm your hospital patient!"

There are more personal stories from this report available over at the Post's website if you still have a taste for more. I do not. This, on top of Bush's plans to cut VA spending just as he plans to send more of our boys into the meat grinder of Iraq, are more than I can stomach right now. . .