My Take: We Are Doing Too Little For Our Wounded Warriors.
The Army has a Wounded Warrior Program but our wounded veterans have needs that the program either does not or perhaps cannot cover.
The fatality rate in the South West Asia (Iraq and Afghanistan) war is only about 10% of what it was in the South East Asia (Vietnam) war. This may have lulled us into thinking that the number of wounded has not been significant. 11 million or more Americans feel the emotional impact of neglected needs of our wounded warriors. There have been over 1million of your fellow citizens engaged in combat in this new war. There are at least 4 million immediate family members and an additional 6 million extended family members and friends are impacted by unmet needs.
Why has National Health Care Insurance so occupied us all for the last 3 years? Because we care about our own needs? Yes, but even more because we care about providing for needs of those whom we love or know personally. That concern extends to our wounded warriors too. The best response to that concern is for all of us to act without waiting for the federal government to do so. How? Here is a citation from a congressional hearing followed by URLs four websites. After reading the citation and visiting the web sites check your gut. I think it will tell you that you and I should be doing more for our Wounded Warriors.
Take action.
Talk to your elected representatives.
Make a Christmas donation!
You will sleep better!
The Advocacy page on the WWP web site states (foot notes are clickable):
WWP’s greatest accomplishment to date was the recent enactment of a law creating Traumatic Injury Protection for all active duty service members. The law creates up to $100,000 of insurance to pay servicemen and women wounded once admitted into a stateside military hospital. WWP helped create and draft the proposed legislation. The legislation was signed into law by President George W. Bush in under two months due to the successful lobbying efforts of WWP.[10]
In Congressional testimony a beneficiary of the program explained,
Without these outside veterans organizations, such as the Wounded Warrior Project, soldiers such as myself would be very lost.
—1LT John A. Fernandez,[11] injured veteran of the Iraq War in 2005 testimony before the U.S. Congress[7]
https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org/Default.aspx?tsid=474&campaignSource=CDRO&source=B100137
https://secure.iava.org/operationhomecoming
http://wtc.army.mil/faqs/faqs.html