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In February, "The Washington Post" newspaper exposed the scandalous treatment of wounded vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these wounded vets, with life-changing physical and mental impairments, were being housed in wretched apartments for more than a year at Walter Reed, the most famed military hospital in the country. These vets were having to file health claims with 5-10 different Army departments, none of which were actually on-site at Walter Reed. Kind of makes it hard to file for help, when you have no legs and are supposed to somehow get to Virginia in the snow by yourself. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and many other problems were rampant in the rat-infested, moldly apartment units.

The Army responded to these revelations in typical fashion: blame the messenger. The Army brass said that the reporters should have asked for permission to interview veterans, and should have sought official permission for every on-site visit to Walter Reed. The media attacked back, and within a week, the head of Walter Reed was fired. His replacement, who had actually presided over the mess in the first place, was fired within the next week. Then the Secretary of the Army was fired.

So now we have President Bush saying that he takes a personal interest in the matter, and he is directing his Defense Secretary to fix the problem. But here's my complaint: Why is the accountability for a military problem suddenly being directed at something that's actually irrelevant to winning the "war on terror"? If we are going to start assigning accountability, let's start where it matters the most - in the war zones, and in the offices that forgot the plan for the wars or their aftermath.

It seems to me that targeting the folks who oversee care for military vets is the White House's latest smokescreen to divert attention to the real problems. Those real problems are that the US is not winning in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and that the entire Army is falling apart. In the latest news, which surfaced while the Walter Reed scandal was at its peak, we find out that 88 percent of National Guard units are rated "not ready" to serve. This is because they have been over-used in deployments already, and they lack enough people, enough training, and enough equipment. And the situation is projected to get worse through at least 2012.

I'm all for helping the 20,000 vets who have been permanently wounded since 2001 (yes, that is the right number, folks!). And I think military brass should be taken to task for failing to help these guys. But let's not lose sight of where the real blame lies, and let the Bush Administration off the hook for simply finding better accommodations for the injured. Let's see some guys get fired for their past screwups, rather than Bush giving them National Medals of Honor.

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