Thanks for serving. Sorry that you lost your limbs. Have a nice day.

Who’s Responsible?
A new rehab center for injured U.S. soldiers sparks a controversy over health care for veterans

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jessica Bennett
Newsweek
Updated: 11:40 a.m. ET Jan. 19, 2006


Jan. 13, 2006 - Former Army major Tammy Duckworth lost both her legs in Iraq. The helicopter pilot—a major in the Illinois Army National Guard—was flying a Black Hawk over hostile territory when a rocket-propelled grenade hit her aircraft. Duckworth spent the next 13 months in hospitals and rehab centers, in a wheelchair or on prosthetic limbs, trying to relearn the skills she'd once taken for granted. “It’s the very little things,” that can be the hardest, she says. “It’s something as mundane as trying to do your laundry. For me, it was changing the sheets on my bed. How do you do that if you have no legs?” ... The debate is being fueled by syndicated radio host Don Imus, who has donated $250,000 and has made raising money for the fund a regular feature on his morning show. On Friday he told listeners he doesn't know why "the government wouldn't just simply pay for [the center], considering the extraordinary amount of money they spend on ... this idiotic war." And later said "We have a tradition in this country, well, going back to the Civil War, in which we send off young people to fight these wars. Stuff happens to them. They lose their arms and legs. And we just discard them. You know, like they are iPods of old telephones or something."

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