Party Needs to Feel the Discomfort

Excerpt:When he steps up to the speaker's dais, let President Bush survey an audience of the powerful sharing an evening, however uncomfortably, with the powerless, the soldiers badly wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let him see amputees in wheelchairs, and let him look at the faces of the physically disfigured and psychologically damaged, victims of snipers and roadside bombs in Iraq.
Make room on the program for some of the soldiers to speak about the disgraceful treatment they have endured as outpatients on the Walter Reed compound where some of them live in physical squalor - in rooms with leaky pipes, holes in the ceiling, mold in the carpets, a broken elevator and cockroaches and rats. Let them tell how they are warehoused for as long as 18 months while the military tries to decide whether to discharge them or return them to active duty.

Let them speak about how amputees and patients on heavy drug regimens are expected to report for 7 a.m. formation, even in the snow. And let someone mention the soldier who had to show his Purple Heart in order to get a new uniform (his was ripped off by medics trying to save his life) as an outpatient.


I wanted to post the picture of Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon who Mr. Gailey included in his piece in the Sunday St. Pete Times but was unable to find it online. (probably according to 'the plan'.) They like to cover that up. Some of these photos are pretty graphic but ... you get the idea.