I haven’t figured out “how� just yet, but this insanity must stop.

SSG Gregory Wilson ENLISTED in the Army in 1970. Selecting the 82nd Airborne (at the age of 17) he attended Basic training at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, subsequently attending Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and serving honorably at Fort Bragg, Fort Bliss, with Special Forces (14 years) in Jackson, Mississippi, at Fort Irwin, California and Camp Darby Italy.

He would go on to serve in Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Desert Fix. He served with Task Force 105 in the Honduras, Tour Retro-Europe in Germany, in Bosnia with the 345th RAOC, winding down his career with Company B 2nd Battalion 142nd Infantry, 56th Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 36 Infantry Division as part of the Texas Army National Guard stationed at Tallil Air Force base (AFB), Iraq, and landing back home on medical hold, at Fort Hood, TX.

After roughly two years in medical and service limbo at Hood, “Wilson� would find himself getting bounced back to his Guard Unit in North Texas, and ultimately forced out of the Military all together. Wilson’s medical treatment is incomplete, you see, and he is routinely having to defend himself to his case managers and the medical “system� we taxpayers have funded and allowed to fall into such bureaucracy, disarray, and decay.

Wilson has NO BENEFITS, no income, no retirement, a long painful medical support need he is currently not eligible for, and a disability borne of a 36 year distinguished Military career that leaves him sufficiently disabled for meaningful employment “on the outside.� Read Wilson’s own words, in one of his endless petitions for support and assistance. He does this on behalf of ALL service members…not JUST for himself:

These personnel have to defend themselves in front of a host of case managers and a medical board for injuries sustained in the line of duty for their country. I have been in the system for about 30 years now – Active, Guard and Reserves – and I have been in all kinds of units with numerous Military Specialties doing the physical labor that comes with those jobs, from digging fighting positions, to loading equipment on vehicles, in military storage vans, on and off vehicles, on aircraft and then unloading this same equipment with or without load bearing equipment such as lift trucks, hand trucks or dolly.

In time performing these tasks the body can only take so much wear and tear. The system has now started telling us that these injuries are everything from hereditary to “its all in your mind� or “you are faking the system and there is nothing wrong with you.�

Wilson continues, as you read this, TRYING to keep from losing his home and winding up on the streets with his wife and children; petitioning his local Congressman, his Senator, the Department of the Army, and the Veteran’s Administration continues to offer him no relief.

Why do I bring you Wilson’s story?

There are FAR too many stories just like his, caused by FAR too many zealous and ambitious Officers playing the numbers to speed up their climb through the ranks, and FAR too many politicians worried more about potential voting blocs and settling political scores.

This HAS to stop.

In a piece I did here recently, I re-introduced the story of Bob Woodruff who had suffered horrific injuries in an explosion in Northern Baghdad in January 2006. He was given international notoriety, all the care our medical system could muster, and the love and prayers of an entire nation. For his suffering I am deeply sorry. For his apparent full recovery and ability to come fully back to his family, friends, and loved ones, and for his resiliency to be able to return to work, I can only thank God for yet another miracle.

But.

For every Bob Woodruff, there are countless Wilson’s fighting and struggling to recover from all manner of injury and ailment in the aftermath of doing a job they loved and believed in.

While there are activists and political opportunists out there railing against the circumstances under which these Military Heroes sustained their injuries, they nonetheless deserve better from us upon their return. Why does our Nation allow such abandonment of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines? I have racked my brain and can find no reasonable answer to that question.

Last night, ABC aired Woodruff’s story: “To Iraq and Back”, and did a fairly decent job of getting HIS story out, and sharing with us HIS newfound appreciation for both TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and the many Soldiers who suffer from TBI, while simultaneously giving us the sense that we are not sufficiently capable inside the Military Medical care machine to diagnose and treat this type of trauma.

In fact, I would offer that he (intentionally or otherwise) made Jim Nicholson look pretty pathetic. For those that don’t know, Nicholson is our Cabinet level Bureaucrat aka Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and from what I gathered in Woodruff’s piece, one sorry excuse for a bureaucrat in charge of caring for these men and women.

While it may be easy to pick one guy and blame him alone, this mess is by no means the result of a single one-man Herculean effort; Nicholson had LOTS of help. As Jack Jacobs rightly points out in the title to his MSNBC piece:

Congress shares blame for Walter Reed mess. Lawmakers should complain less and work more on oversight

And he goes on to suggest, quite articulately I might add:

But lost in all the invective is the fact that there is plenty of blame to go around, and among those who shoulder responsibility in this mess is Congress.

Although Rep. Nancy Pelosi has promised an investigation, and other elected officials have expressed their share of concern, there is, relatively speaking, a deafening paucity of vituperation from Capitol Hill. A clue lies in the congressional responsibility for oversight of the Defense Department’s activities.

While many senators and members of the House have visited Walter Reed, it took a reporter to bring the problem to light. There have been lots of highly publicized congressional visits to hospitals like Landstuhl in Germany, to which most wounded troops are first brought, and plenty of hand-wringing about the war when the legislators have been in front of cameras. But not a word about conditions at Walter Reed.

He is, of course, referring to the Dana Priest story in the Washington Post about the horrible conditions some of our recovering and recuperating wounded Soldiers are being forced to endure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. This, of course, being the hospital our Political Heroes routinely visit, gathering photo-op fodder for their campaign websites, and for furthering political hack agendas such as the now infamous “slow bleed” of our Service Men and Women.

As much as the anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-(fill in your party du jour) crowd want to BLAME a party or a person, it is really “we the people that own this…perhaps not for causing it, but most assuredly for putting a stop to it and righting this ship of fools.

I don’t have all the answers here, but I am looking for some. With all the entitlements we lavish on our “less privileged than others” members of this society, frankly, I place a higher value and priority on seeing to it that we take care of our Vets.

I am old enough to remember when our Viet Nam heroes came home. I remember seeing them spat upon. I grew up with those guys. I watched some of them drink or drug themselves to death. I knew or heard of others.

I remember how they felt about the way they were treated; the lack of respect, the lack of appreciation, and the total lack of understanding for what they suffered and endured in defense of our Country only to come home to that? Many moved on. Many couldn’t hold on long enough to get the help they desperately needed. Many gave up waiting. Others still wait.

We can not do this again. Being against an American Government policy is our Democratic right. Killing and mentally maiming and destroying those involved with that with which some disagree must stop. And it must stop now.

Our Veterans deserve better than this. Our nation deserves better than this.