The two-part series in Sunday's and Monday's Washington Post was riveting. But like the missing limbs of the soldiers so ill treated at Walter Reed Hospital, the Post's series also was missing a limb. It explained the WHAT of the story - the bureaucracy, unfeeling paperwork and meaningless rules that kept soldiers badly wounded in the Iraq War from getting the care and respect they deserved. But the series largely failed to get to the why of the story. The series was still worth doing. The day after it was published, the Army announced it was renovating the patient building on the sprawling Walter Reed campus that most needed fixing up.
And a second Post story reported that an investigation was being launched into the possible unethical conduct of a Walter Reed official who, critics charge, was so preoccupied with founding his own soldiers relief foundation, that he neglected his duties managing a system that was supposed to match up soldier families to donors wishing to help. And Walter Reed is increasing staffing to better deal with the flood of the wounded, a flood that the anticipated "surge" in Iraq will only make worse.
But still the larger, systemic questions remain unanswered.
Why did the Army ever tolerate holding soldiers receiving outpatient treatment in unrenovated facilities that have mold, cockroaches and mice? Why do Army doctors so quickly deny disability payments to men and women obviously harmed by their battle experience?
Is this Administration cost-cutting? The result of some congressional decision?
Does it result from Army policies desperate to hold onto soldiers, whatever their physical or emotional conditions?
And what are the larger implications for families and for society of this cruel and dehumanizing inattention?
It breaks my heart to see the one of nation's best newspapers put together a truncated series that is big on exposing injustice, which is good, but inadequate when it comes to giving us, the readers, any context, or any idea of how to solve these problems. A short-term clean-up and fix-up for one Walter Reed building, and even increasing staffing levels of social workers, while useful and a great first step, does not get to the heart of the problem. Nor does it begin to compensate for the sufferings of families and wounded soldiers over the past several years. It runs the risk of giving us the impression that everything is going to be okay now, when it isn't.
Is this the future of American journalism? Give us gut-wrenching stories, but don't explain why things are so bad? Give us little charts and indexes and poignant pictures, but don't take the time and space to hold institutions accountable for these inexcusable policies? Oh, and on their website, they're offered videos, too. Isn't that nifty?
Let the Washington Post know you want more than emotion in your series, you want accountability.
