The Democratic play on Walter Reed and the broader effect

I really can't say I'm surprised that the Dem House Caucus wants to push the Walter Reed story local and keep it in the news. It certainly accomplishes what Greg Sargeant and the Dems say, it shows the Dems are more concerned about the troops, but it also accomplishes something much more subtle, and probably more significant, within the larger debate.

For four years the Bush administration has gone to fairly extensive lengths to try to hide the war's casualties from the eyes of the public.

Whether it's barring photographers from Dover AFB (remember all the foofarah when The Memory Hole published those pictures?,) publicly lambasting Ted Koppel for reading the names of the dead on Nightline (it was just over 700 at the time,) or shipping the wounded into Walter Reed in the middle of the night to avoid photographers, this administration has done everything it could to keep the human costs of the war from the public's eye.

Now, with this shame at Walter Reed and at so many other military hospitals, tonight on every newscast there will be real wounded soldiers on my television. Real human beings wounded in the very real war, not these two dimensional cardboard cutouts used as backdrop and obscured through flags and jingoism.

Separate from Walter Reed, this is very bad news for the administration. The last thing they want is for America to begin to understand the human costs of this war, and the longer this story goes on, the more human those costs will feel.

(This is one of those cold analytical posts looking at the politics of this tragedy. I'm sorry to do it this way, but this could be a real turning point in what remains of the Bush/war support.)