“We owe them all we can give them. Not only for when they’re in harm’s way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds or help them adjust after their time in service.” – President George W. Bush

Every Fourth of July, I burn 50 American Flags. Whenever I hear the word Constitution, I go on a rant about how the government staged Sept. 11. When soldiers return from war, I welcome them back with a parade of spit.

If I were to really carry out any of those actions, it would make sense to call me un-American.

But if a premier American military hospital failed to provide injured American soldiers with the care they desperately needed, what would you say?

Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. houses injured soldiers who have returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army’s top medical facility has been under fire for subpar conditions, unsatisfactory management and outpatient neglect.

Complaints have been reported since 2004, but it was only after the Washington Post ran an investigative series in February that the hospital came under public and media scrutiny.

It’s amazing how clear a story can get after appearing in a nationally read newspaper.

In the aftermath of the Post’s investigation, the Pentagon was blamed for failing to cut costs and improve efficiency at its top-notch military hospital in the midst of war.

One month after the story was published, the secretary of the army and two other top-ranking military officials including the commanding officer of the center were removed.

Since it opened in 1909, Walter Reed has treated wounded soldiers from every war. Grotesquely described in the investigative report as a “holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients,” the hospital’s admitted soldiers outnumber regular patients 17 to one.

Outpatients at Walter Reed are sent to one of five residences after treatment.

If there is an overflow, some are sent to nearby hotels and apartments. They spend 10 months on average there, but many stay for far longer. In the summer of 2005, outpatients peaked at 900.

The Washington Post journalists spent four months interviewing frusterated soldiers, family members, veteran aid groups and current and former staff members at Walter Reed.

Shocking stories of wounded soldiers managing other injured soldiers, memory-loss patients missing appointments and navigating quarters on their own, janitors serving as bilingual translators, drug dealers lingering near hospital entrances, and an incredibly complex paperwork process to even be admitted to and discharged from the hospital were thrust into the public sphere.

The most decrepit resident hall at Walter Reed, Building 18, was reported to be mold-laden and rotten, and a haven for mice, cockroaches and bureaucratic indifference.

Less than a week after the article was published, the White House said that President Bush “first learned of the troubling allegations regarding Walter Reed from the stories this weekend in The Washington Post.”

Apparently, what was oblivious to the President on his many visits to the facility, fell prey to his sharp reading skills. Now that I think about it, when did the president start reading newspapers anyway?

Sadly, this may be the first time you’ve heard about Walter Reed.

Why aren’t we upset that our soldiers aren’t getting the respect they deserve for risking their lives on the front lines? Isn’t what’s happening at Walter Reed un-American?

Instead, we’d rather roast Dick Durbin after he read a memo about prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay and said that “you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime … that had no concern for human beings.” Durbin’s analogy was harsh, but not out of line.

An emotional Durbin later apologized, saying, “Occasionally words fail us, occasionally we will fail words.”

Durbin was right. Sometimes we will fail words.

The Pentagon and President Bush should read over the last line of the United States Army “Warrior Ethos,” a set of principles by which every soldier lives: I will never leave a fallen comrade.