by Chris Bodenner
One would think that if your country was being occupied by the greatest military in the world, with all the perils and uncertainty that entails, it would at least bring decent hospital conditions to your capital city. Not so, as a disturbing report from Buzzfeed reveals:
Top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan waged a sophisticated public relations campaign to obscure horrific conditions at the Afghan National Military Hospital… . The revelation is just one of the new details uncovered in a probe that has already triggered two Department of Defense investigations and one hearing by the House's Government Oversight Committee.
Michael Hastings, who co-authored the report, elaborated in a recent interview:
I mean, it’s tragic. We have, like we said, $180 million going to this hospital system right in Kabul. It’s the sort of jewel—it was one of the stops along the parade of when, you know, congressmen or generals would come in and tour the country. This is the hospital we’d show off to them. And it turns out that what was going on here are the sort of abuses that—I have never seen this kind of abuse, these sort of horrific pictures, in my time covering these wars. …
You go down the list. Selling drugs? Patients having surgery on them without anesthesia, though we had provided anesthesia? … If you wanted surgery, you had to pay a certain price. You know, you had medical instruments sort of left within wounds. You had—I mean, this is disgusting stuff—I know it’s early in the morning—but maggots crawling out of bandages. Stuff that, you know, just totally unacceptable. And we’re spending $11.2 billion, and we can’t manage the one, you know, high-profile hospital in the city. And it’s just—it’s pretty upsetting.
The patient in the above photo – one of the tamest in a series of graphic photos uncovered by Buzzfeed – "suffered from malnutrition, lost 50 pounds while at the hospital, and had an untreated decubitis ulcer on the back of his head."
The Dish 