I just noticed that the AP changed the headline to a story I posted about earlier that had Army officials saying that they’d overreacted to criticism about substandard medical care for soldiers and now were providing unnecessary levels of service.  This is the new headline the AP went with:

That’s terribly misleading.  Here’s an excerpt from the article:

According to interviews and data provided to the AP, the number of patients admitted to the 36 Warrior Transition Units and nine other community-based units jumped from about 5,000 in June 2007, when they began, to a peak of nearly 12,500 in June 2008.

The units provide coordinated medical and mental health care, track soldiers’ recovery and provide broader legal, financial and other family counseling. They serve Army active duty and reserve soldiers.

Just 12 percent of the soldiers in the units had battlefield injuries while thousands of others had minor problems that did not require the complex new network of case managers, nurses and doctors, according to Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, the director of the Army’s warrior care office.

The overcrowding was a “self-inflicted wound,” said Cheek, who also is an assistant surgeon general. “We’re dedicating this kind of oversight and management where, truthfully, only half of those soldiers really needed this.”

The problem here is that the Army is being inefficient, not that military hospitals are being flooded with too many soldiers.  The latter gives the impression that war veterans are overrunning our military hospitals.  That’s just not the case, though with things going so well in Iraq (we’ve won, they’re just not telling you) it’s not hard to imagine that liberal media types are scrambling for any negative spin they can find.