Bob Woodruff's report, Back from Iraq

Mr. Woodruff was named co-anchor of “World News Tonight” less than a month before he went to Iraq. His injury was a huge story and a milestone in the public’s perception of the war; it was already all too obvious that soldiers, American and Iraqi, were wounded and killed by roadside bombs and ambushes every day. But the explosion that injured Mr. Woodruff and, to a lesser extent, Doug Vogt, a cameraman, dramatically brought home how vulnerable all Americans, even visiting anchors, are over there.

Like celebrities who battle cancer, H.I.V. or Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Woodruff decided to put his fame and experience to public use. And like so many people fueled by a sense of mission, he seeks government accountability.

The film notes that the Department of Defense puts the number of men and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan at about 23,000, while the Department of Veterans Affairs has recorded treating more than 200,000 veterans of those two wars. Paul Sullivan, the director of programs at the advocacy group Veterans for America, says, “What you have are two sets of books.”

Mr. Woodruff politely asks the secretary of veterans affairs, R. James Nicholson, to explain the discrepancy. Citing department reports that list 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system and others, Mr. Woodruff says, “These are huge numbers beyond the 23,000.”

Mr. Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, replies, “A lot of them come in for, for dental problems.”

Mr. Woodruff illustrates quite graphically that some veterans are sent home to recuperate in smaller cities that do not have veterans’ hospitals equipped to handle the growing number of those returning with severe traumatic injuries. He interviews a young soldier who is slowly but steadily recovering at a state-of-the-art veterans’ polytrauma rehabilitation center in Tampa, Fla., then checks in on him weeks later in his hometown in Texas, where he has noticeably regressed.