It is as if he were in a time machine that keeps taking him back to the start of his ordeal. "I'm hearing the same things about the process that I heard when I first began two years ago," he said.

He now believes the government runs the system for its own benefit, not for the patient's benefit. "We have almost no advocacy that is not working for the government," he said. "My physical evaluation councilor and the MEB/PEB process both worked for the government and have its interest, not our interest, in mind, in my opinion."

Shannon's case, and others like it, points to a dereliction of duty by the elected leaders at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. How could they not have discovered, and fixed, what was happening just down the road on Georgia Avenue?

But the scandal at Walter Reed should also send a warning to private citizens whose security and freedom Staff Sgt. Shannon sacrificed so much to defend: Never let government control your health care. Already, the three leading Democratic presidential candidates -- Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and former Sen. John Edwards -- have vowed that they will enact a "universal" health insurance program. Such a program, of course, cannot be created without government mandates and subsidies, which mean government control.

Head that way, and eventually we will all find ourselves waiting in line for treatment that never comes in the civilian version of the Walter Reed outpatient program. Unlike Shannon, and the other heroes at Walter Reed, however, we will not have purchased the bureaucrats' indifference with blood shed on a battlefield.

Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor of Human Events. To find out more about him, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.