The Hotel Aftermath (WaPo Jihad on Walter Reed; Monday's Target: Mologne House)

The Washington Post ^ | Monday, February 19, 2007 | Anne Hull and Dana Priest

[kristinn]

The guests of Mologne House have been blown up, shot, crushed and shaken, and now their convalescence takes place among the chandeliers and wingback chairs of the 200-room hotel on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Oil paintings hang in the lobby of this strange outpost in the war on terrorism, where combat's urgency has been replaced by a trickling fountain in the garden courtyard. The maimed and the newly legless sit in wheelchairs next to a pond, watching goldfish turn lazily through the water.

But the wounded of Mologne House are still soldiers -- Hooah! -- so their lives are ruled by platoon sergeants. Each morning they must rise at dawn for formation, though many are half-snowed on pain meds and sleeping pills.

SNIP

Mostly what the soldiers do together is wait: for appointments, evaluations, signatures and lost paperwork to be found. It's like another wife told Annette McLeod: "If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will."

SNIP

Two Washington Post reporters spent hundreds of hours in Mologne House documenting the intimate struggles of the wounded who live there. The reporting was done without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials, but all those directly quoted in this article agreed to be interviewed.

SNIP

After a while, the bizarre becomes routine. On Friday nights, antiwar protesters stand outside the gates of Walter Reed holding signs that say "Love Troops, Hate War, Bring them Home Now." Inside the gates, doctors in white coats wait at the hospital entrance for the incoming bus full of newly wounded soldiers who've just landed at Andrews Air Force Base.

And set back from the gate, up on a hill, Mologne House, with a bowl of red apples on the front desk.

[Wuli]

"he point was that the left claims the domino effect was false- that country after country would never have fallen- but only have the ability to make such a claim after the fact that we stood and opposed them from falling."

The point is you finally stated your point, instead of the unintelligible gibberish where you expected people to read the thoughts in your head when you haven't communicated them.

[batvette]

“They deny the domino effect yet forget we were grabbing swaths of dominoes from around the planet to stop their fall. The effect of Vietnam on the cold war therefore wasn’t just symbolic, or idealism, it was vital and tangible.”

I don’t think it was so cryptic to warrant the response given nor the interpretation its author was leftist.