The Walter Reed focus group report
Read the full report on what soldiers were telling the Bush administration about conditions at Walter Reed -- in 2004.
Editor's note: The Department of Veterans Affairs conducted focus group interviews with seriously wounded soldiers recuperating at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center in August 2004, years before the hospital's problems caring for injured troops attracted public attention. The Bush administration has claimed it was unaware of any issues at Walter Reed prior to recent reports in the media. However, the government's own report on those patient interviews, obtained by Salon, showed that three years ago many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had already become "frustrated, confused [and] sometimes angry" while battling the hospital's outpatient bureaucracy.
Reproduced here is one page of the summary of the focus group findings -- the full report is available for download here.
April 11, 2007 | 
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