HONOR: WALTER REED???

So the United States Army is now scrambling to clean up Walter Reed Hospital and hide the blemish to its marred honor-- Bush is angry, so too is Gates and the entire US Congress professes momentary political outrage but it all seems to stem more from the besmirched public relations aspect of the sordid mess than the acute moral and mission failure of this wrenching ....... and tenured!!........disorder--

Make no mistake, this medical miscarriage belongs to both the White House and the US Congress-- The entire Government reeks of ignoble dereliction-- The decay of this institution(The Hospital) and its downward spiral into decrepitude happened on everybody's watch-- The majority of demies voted in favor of this Iraq War travesty now playing out at the once hallowed Army Hospital in shadows proximate Capital Hill and the White House-- Not once have the demies okay-ed Bush's huge requests for more war dough with specific prerequisites to pump up medical benefits for the wounded and the maimed-- Why???-- Too busy fundraising??-- Ubiquitous photo-op hopping politicians visiting the hospital to attend to 'the wounded', thereby buffing their bona fides and polishing campaign images, came and went for years without so much as a whimper of protest about the cock-roach infestations or the vermin running roughshod in the urine scented halls--

Tales of sordid conditions at the nation's Veteran Hospitals have circulated for an agony of years as benefits to the Hospitals and the Veterans themselves have been continuously scissored with nary any effective protest-- Money($2mil) was appropriated and set aside for a fictional victory parade should some miraculous intercession alter the course of the faltering war while veteran benefits, victim to fecund ingratitude, lost their political loyalty and urgency-- The magisterial New York Times who once fawningly lionized the gallant and gleaming Def Sec Rumsfeld at his deadly lectern now venomously excoriates him and a wider shade of blameworthy de-functionaries-- Excepting, of course, their own complicity in cheerleading the run-up to this mega-failed war and the Times ignores the fact that its own intrepid reporters and stalwart editors failed to ferret out the shameful multi-year run of the Walter Reed story and other beggared veteran hospitals on their own-- The Times also gives a pass to the pathetic ineptitude of the MIA-demies sidelined by paralytic fear, minority status and their unwillingness to endure the taunts of Bully Rove-- Rove's accusations that the demies didn't support the troops sent shudders and tremors through demie aspirations for re-election and cowed them into........well,..... not speaking up in favor of the volunteer troops-- Extremely few if any of the anti-Iraq War demies made this an issue in their campaigns-- The information was open-source and available--

The mere fact of volunteering for the most dangerous thankless job there is, for some disreputably insensitive reason, severs them from the benefits and concern accorded regular American citizens by both congressional stipulation and cultural ethos-- Nearly nobody went to bat for these young men and women from the inception of this hideously stupid and criminally naive attempt to........ 'rule the world'-- Ordered into battle under-armored, under-manned, under-missioned and under-trained for the tasks they inherited after the occupation cost Rumsfeld and his neocon architects some political status in the media but our volunteer soldiers bore the brunt of the real carnage and continue to do so-- For the most part, the only people in the corner of these kids has been the larger non-commissioned military family of those who have gone before and their immediate families whom the media treats for the most part as invisible non-entities from some vagabond culture not suburban-rooted enough to be real Americans--

The flag draped caskets of their voluntary sacrifices met with the abject disdain of media censorship on their return homeward--The television media caved in completely to the DoD Rumsfeld request/order not to televise returning coffins--The American volunteer soldiers wasted on the battlefront were never honored by the nightly news-- Many courageous and gutsy reporters volunteered for the most dangerous of front line duty and some met the ultimate fate but their deaths received meritorious obituaries across the full gamut of mediasphere-- Those wounded or maimed did not get shuffled out to Building 18 in mold riddled squalor--

No wonder Neocon youth made a pointed effort NOT to put any of their skin in this game, 'The most decisive Ideological Struggle of Our Century'-- The greatest Conflict in the History of Civilization, the grandiose canard of Neocon hubris, merited little if any real patriotism from the privileged sector in our society-- Yeah sure, they might have pricked themselves on occasion sticking the flag pins into their lapels-- Not exactly the terrain on which purple hearts multiply but it is highly doubtful they received their tetanus shots at Walter Reed-- The US Government failed to live up to its promises in reconstructing Iraq and now its failure to live up to its promises made to the all-volunteer Army reverberates across the political spectrum-- As usual everyone is looking for someone else to blame-- A day late and a three dollar bill shy, are the indulgent congressional investigations looking for real solutions or just more limelight???--