Ron Kovic on the Iraq Wounded

Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July, was wounded in Vietnam in 1968 and has spent the years since that time as a wheelchair-bound paraplegic.

He knows something of the horrors of war -- and of the horrors of surviving it. He has a moving and disturbing commentary on the Huffington Post website about today's wounded coming home from Iraq. Here's an excerpt:

They are alone in their rooms all over this country, right now. Just as I was alone in my room in Massapequa. I know they're there--just as I was. This is the part you never see. The part that is never reported in the news. The part that the president and vice president never mention. This is the agonizing part, the lonely part, when you have to awake to the wound each morning and suddenly realize what you've lost, what is gone forever. They're out there and they have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives and children. And they're not saying much right now. Just like me they're just trying to get through each day. Trying to be brave and not cry. They still are extremely grateful to be alive, but slowly, agonizingly they are beginning to think about what has really happened to them.