A Bronze Star and the Brush-Off
Americans don’t understand this latest failure of government. We have a hard time with stuff that doesn’t work; organizations that are constantly ‘surprised’ that dikes can fail and wars can produce wounded, ‘swamping’ the agencies designed to deal with just exactly that.
Ian Urbina and Ron Nixon are a couple of NYTimes writers who, like many, now that the public finally knows how the military is caring for its vets, are piecing together stories. They are not Walter-Reed centric, they are flooding in from all over the country. Specialist James Webb is one of them.
Unable to work because of post-traumatic stress disorder and back injuries from a bomb blast in Iraq in 2004, Specialist James Webb of the Army ran out of savings while waiting 11 months for his claim. In the fall of 2005, Mr. Webb said, he began living on the streets in Decatur, Ga., a state that has the 10th-largest backlog of claims in the country.
“I should have just gone home to be with family instead of trying to do it on…