Walter Reed

"If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can't they have Spanish-speaking translators when he's injured?" Morales asked. "It's so confusing, so disorienting." (the symbolism here cuts so incredibly deep)

All Things Considered, March 5, 2007 · Since The Washington Post ran a series detailing poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is run by the Pentagon, charges have emerged of similar situations at Veterans Affairs hospitals nationwide.

Melissa Block talks with Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson.

"Veterans of this country deserve the very best that we can provide," Nicholson says, "and whenever there's one case of them not getting it, it just pains my heart."

President Bush: Pledges to ‘Ensure That the Soldiers Recovering There Are Treated With the Dignity and Respect They Have Earned’



I just abhor empty rhetoric. There are simply thousands of cases of "them not getting it". However, an overwhelming amount do "get" prison time or "get" to become homeless.

I really just wish that those who support war, who initiate war, who financially benefit from war, were the ones on the front lines "earning" their "dignity and respect", as it were.



"We have assumed the name of peacemaker, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total, but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial.....We cry peace and cry peace and there is not peace. There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war, at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace, prison, and death in its wake" [Daniel Berrigan, No Bars to Manhood, 1970]



Blessed are the peacemakers...