VA Hospital In Georgia Illustrates The Shame Of A Nation: So Dirty The Very Air Is Making People Sick
One of most shameful episodes in the history of a nation reliant on its military for so much has come out of the poorly-thought out, poorly executed Iraq invasion bungled in world-class fashion by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the neocon clown car that told us we’d be greeted as liberators.
But despite the epic, unprecedented loss of blood and treasure that continues as a result of that ongoing debacle, and is if it weren’t bad enough that these greedy, short-sighted men sent other people’s sons to die and be maimed attacking a nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, what is perhaps even more shameful is the way we treat our veterans once they are returned to us.
One Veteran’s Administration hospital in Georgia is feeling the heat over the maltreatment of the men and women in its care in a particularly gruesome fashion according to a news report.
We’ve heard for years about shoddy record-keeping by the VA, shoddy patient care, and filthy conditions including massive mold problems, foul, backed-up drains in showers and toilets, and off-the-charts rates of secondary infections being contracted by patients while under VA care.
And now WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta has reported that that air quality is so bad at one veteran’s hospital that it is making not only patients but also workers there sick.
According to the VA’s written statement–Channel 2 reports that thus far the VA has refused to answer questions on camera–there was an “…environmental issue in the operating suite between June 27 and July 6,” and that steps have been taken to fix the problem.
However investigative reporter Aaron Diamant says that more than 50 workers have gotten sick thus far from the ventilation problem, and that it is not restricted to the aforementioned operating room.
And what is perhaps most frustrating is that this agency, tasked with caring for those who have done their duty to serve the nation and the rest of us, has adopted a defensive posture when it comes to dealing with the problem. Indeed they won’t even identify the source of the contaminant, leaving workers and patients in the dark about what it even is that is making them ill.
“They have a bunker mentality,” said Dan Caldwell with Concerned Veterans for America. “When they get hard questions they immediately treat it as a hostile attack on them.”
It’s high time that there is a major overhaul of the Veteran’s Administration. Also, politicians who like to praise the bravery of soldiers and beat their chests about sending others to war while cutting funding for veteran’s programs need to be taken to task.
Sticking a flag pin on your lapel and boasting about attacking people in far-away lands while you are safely ensconced in D.C. being wined and dined by defense industry lobbyists may make for good television optics, but we need to tell these chickenhawks that supporting the troops means supporting them after they’ve returned home too.
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http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/dekalb-county/sources-air-quality-problem-growing-at-atlanta-va-hospital/409655846