Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top Medical Facility (washingtonpost.com)

The Walter Reed medical center, home to recuperating soldiers, is a miasma of bureaucratic red tape, dysfunction, and Keystone Cops incompetence. The place makes a clusterfuck look like a Japanese tea party. The WaPo article details the appalling conditions that our men and women in uniform are forced to put up with. Unless you’ve got a cold stone for a heart, this article will make you sick.

But the thing this points up is just how hollow the rhetoric from the right is. Here’s one of my favorite (sic) quotes:

Among the public, [Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.)] said, “there’s vast appreciation for soldiers, but there’s a lack of focus on what happens to them” when they return. “It’s awful.”

Lack of focus, huh? That’s putting it awfully mildly.

Look, I don’t blame the folks at Walter Reed (though a few of ‘em sound like blue ribbon jackasses). I’m sure they’re just trying to cope the best they can. It’ll take money and leadership to turn this thing around. But what kind of a country treats its veterans this way?

To me, it just goes to prove what I’ve felt all along: that “Support the Troops” isn’t a rallying cry of patriotism. Instead, just like everything else in the neo-conservative lexicon, it’s meant to be a shield from accountability or moral action.

(h/t Atrios)