I’m not one to nit-pick about small screw-ups, but this one brought up some bad memories.

For those of you who watched John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican Convention last night, you may have noticed that, at times, it looked like McCain was behind a bright green background. Turns out that was not a green screen.

Here’s the full photo:

So what building is that? This one.

That’s right, Walter Reed Middle School in California. In other words, some moron wanted to put a picture of Walter Reed Army Medical Center on McCain’s backdrop (McCain is a veteran, after all), but didn’t bother to double-check his Google image search. Adding a touch of funny to the fail, the principal of WRMS has issued a cheeky statement on the school’s web site acknowledging the mention.

I know this backdrop of photos was obviously put together by some intern a few days before the show, and he’s probably never heard of Walter Reed before in his life up until last week…but the irony of this gaff is just infuriating.

This is the same Walter Reed Army Medical Center that created a national scandal last year because US troops injured in Iraq were being cared for in deplorable conditions and bureaucratic morass. Here’s a quick flashback from the WashPost:

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

I still get angry whenever I think of this mess. I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must have been for our soldiers to deal with the trauma of battlefield injuries and then be ignored and neglected when they returned home. To me, this severely damaged the credibility of the Republican Party.

It wasn’t just that the troops were being kep in terrible conditions, its that they were ignored - there were seemingly no plans in place for how to deal with the with serious impairments (mental and phsycial) soldiers were bringing back from the war zones. The Walter Reed scandal was a national travesty, and someone in the Republican Party didn’t bother to care what the place looked like.

For those of you who were curious, this is Walter Reed Army Medical Center:

Thanks LA Times.