40,000

Like pretty much everyone else, I have eagerly followed the Washington Post story about the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital, the military's clearinghouse for injured Iraqi war soldiers. They aren't yet veterans, most of them, because many will be called back to serve again, so they are doing time at Walter Reed to heal their wounds. It seems to me that a nation which prides itself on providing top-flight medical care (at least for those of us lucky to have health insurance), should be able to assume that the men and women in our military receive the very best of what we have to offer, medically speaking.

Alas not.

And the thing is that we have long-known that VA medical care is often shoddy and sub-standard. I don't think it's a secret that we haven't exactly done right by our veterans. And yet the problem continues. The Washington Post story seems to have jarred some of our national complacency and a committee has been appointed to start to fix things at Walter Reed. Good, I say. But it's not enough.

And to add some fuel to that fire, it's worth noting that while we have had about 3,000 American deaths in Iraq, we have had 40,000 casualties. 40,000. I'll write it again: 40,000. That means that nearly 1 out of every 4 soldiers serving has been injured. As a nation, we may not be able to decide what to do about the war in Iraq; we may disagree about whether or not we can bring our soldiers home. But surely we can agree to provide good, effective medical care for the soldiers who have come home. In my mind it's a moral imperative.

And I bet that I can find 40,000 people who agree with me.