NYT Editorial Questions U.S. Army’s Efforts To Care for Wounded Soldiers

Although Army generals "keep apologizing and insisting that things are getting better" regarding the Army's treatment of its wounded soldiers, "they are not," according to a New York Times editorial. According to the editorial, the Army Medical Action Plan was intended to "prevent the kind of systematic neglect and mistreatment exposed by the Washington Post last year at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center."

However, even after "a flurry of apologies, firings, investigations and reports;" subsequent pledges to "streamline and improve case management for wounded soldiers;" and the implementation of "warrior transition units," designed to "swiftly deliver excellent care to troops so they could return to duty or be discharged into the [Department of Veterans Affairs] medical system," reform of the system "has not worked out so well," the editorial adds.

"Among other things, the Army failed to anticipate a flood of wounded soldiers," and some "transition units have been overwhelmed and are thus severely understaffed," the Times writes. The editorial continues, "The nation's responsibility to care for the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan will extend for decades." The editorial notes that Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, testified at a Tuesday hearing of the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee that the Army is "entirely staffed to the point we need to be staffed" and that it "never leave[s] a soldier behind on the battlefield -- or lost in a bureaucracy."

However, after the hearing, questions posed at the outset by Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) remained: "Why did the Army fail to adequately staff its warrior transition units? Why did it fail to predict the surge in demand? And why did it take visits from a Congressional subcommittee to prod the Army into recognizing and promising -- yet again -- to fix the problem?" (New York Times, 7/25).