The two-part series in Sunday's and Monday's Washington Post was riveting.  But like the missing limbs of the soldiers so ill treated at Walter Reed Hospital, the Post's series also was missing a limb.  It explained the WHAT of the story - the bureaucracy, unfeeling paperwork and meaningless rules that kept soldiers badly wounded in the Iraq War from getting the care and respect they deserved.  But the series largely failed to get to the why of the story.  The series was still worth doing.  The day after it was published, the Army announced it was renovating the patient building on the sprawling Walter Reed campus that most needed fixing up.

And a second Post story reported that an investigation was being launched into the possible unethical conduct of a Walter Reed official who, critics charge, was so preoccupied with founding his own soldiers relief foundation, that he neglected his duties managing a system that was supposed to match up soldier families to donors wishing to help. And Walter Reed is increasing staffing to better deal with the flood of the wounded, a flood that the anticipated "surge" in Iraq will only make worse.