Back to another of my favorite subjects: The way that the Bush administration is caring for soldiers and veterans.

There are two excellent pieces out right now about how the care that our soldiers and veterans are receiving.

The Washington Post has an excellent article on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the increasing number of solders who are suffering from TBI after being near the explosion of an IED–even if they walk away from the explosion.

Here’s why IEDS carry such hidden danger. The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point of explosion and travels hundreds of yards. The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain against the skull. The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by the “secondary wind”: a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again under high pressure. No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.

It is these sudden and extreme differences in pressures — routinely 1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure — that lead to significant neurological injury. Blast waves cause severe concussions, resulting in loss of consciousness and obvious neurological deficits such as blindness, deafness and mental retardation.

The article uses a term that I had not heard in a long time in describing what is happening to these soldiers: Shell Shock.

There is also a discussion of the fatality-casualty rates in this war as compared to the Vietnam War.

It’s a very interesting piece.

The second piece is in US News and World Report, and looks at the rates at which veterans are being denied disability benefits.

…the U.S. military appears to have dispensed low disability ratings to wounded service members with serious injuries and thus avoided paying them full military disabled retirement benefits. While most recent attention has been paid to substandard conditions and outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the first stop for many wounded soldiers stateside, veterans’ advocates say that a more grievous problem is an arbitrary and dysfunctional disability ratings process that is short-changing the nation’s newest crop of veterans. The trouble has existed for years, but now that the country is at war, tens of thousands of Americans are being caught up in it.

Before we went to war with Iraq, there were complaints about the veterans’ administration, especially regarding the underfunding of programs. Things are not getting better.

What I’d really like to see is all those jackasses with “Support Our Troops” magnets on their cars actually do something to support the troops–like paying higher taxes so we can afford better care and benefits.