The Forgotten Wounded

A must read, written by Ron Kovic a wounded Vietnam Veteran. His autobiography, "Born on the Fourth of July," was adapted into a motion picture you may recall by the same name.
Whatever your political views, whatever your feelings on the current war in Iraq, this transcends all that. THIS IS A MUST READ. Use it as the definitive guide to whats really going on behind the scenes.
Really, REALLY Loooooooooooong, but you DO owe it to those serving in the U.S. armed forces to read it in its entirety, and then read it again.

Here are just two excerpts, but please read it all here.

You will always go back to that day, that moment you got hit, the day you nearly died yet somehow survived. It will be a day you will never forget— when bullets were cracking all around you, when the first Marine tried to save you and was shot dead at your feet and the second, a black Marine—whom you would never see again and who would be killed later that afternoon—would carry you back under heavy fire.

I cannot help but wonder what it will be like for the young men and women wounded in Iraq. What will their homecoming be like? For us in 1968 it was the Bronx veterans hospital paraplegic ward, overcrowded, understaffed, rats on the ward, urine bags overflowing onto the floor. It seemed more like a slum than a hospital. Paralyzed men lying in their own excrement, pushing call buttons for aides who never came, wondering how our government could spend so much money (billions of dollars) on the most lethal, technologically advanced weaponry to kill and maim human beings but not be able to take care of its own wounded when they came home.