Synchronicity
Wounded and weary
War wounded swept under the rug.
It’s so easy to write off the wounded. After all, what’s the big deal about a graze or a bullet in the shoulder? F*ckin’ pussies. Well, what the misadministration and their lubricious whores in the media don’t want you to know are the number of troops coming in with their eyes permanently blinded, their faces shot off, or their limbs amputated. And why do you think that is?
“The wounded are too depressing a topic - and they might threaten Bush's popularity.”
“No hordes of television cameras await the planeloads of wounded soldiers being airlifted back to the states, unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base, and stuffed into wards at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other facilities. We see few photos of them undergoing painful and protracted physical rehabilitation, few visuals of worried families waiting for news of their sons or daughters.
“The men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the new disappeared.”
The numbers of soldiers wounded in action are hard to come by. The Pentagon has put the figure at 827. But Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, the man in charge of airlifting the wounded into Andrews Air Force Base, recently mentioned much higher numbers in an interview with National Public Radio.
"’Since the war has started, I can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews,’ he said. ‘And that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews, and then we send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda...’
"’The wounded are much too real; telling their stories would be too much of a bummer for television's news programmers,’ says Norman Solomon, media critic and co-author of Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. ‘Dead people don't linger like wounded people do. Dead people's names can be posted on a television honor role, but the networks and cable news channels won't clog up their air time with the names and pictures of hundreds and hundreds of wounded soldiers.’
“Former L.A.Times television critic Howard Rosenberg reflects this sentiment, and adds that giving the wounded air time could be perceived as too controversial. ‘Since 9/11, there is a general feeling among many media outlets that they need to stay away from anything that could be interpreted as disloyal to the country,’ he says.”
- - Snipped from Bill Berkowitz’s column.
Number of wounded in action on rise
U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action."
"The orthopedic surgeons are very busy, and the nursing services are very busy, both in the intensive care units and on the wards," said, Maj. Gen. Kevin Kiley, Walter Reed 's commanding general, explaining that there have been five or six instances in recent months when all of the hospital's 40 intensive care beds have been filled -- mostly with battlefield wounded.
Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg."
The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated.
- - WaPo.
Bush lied, soldiers keep dying
Two U.S. military police officers have died and another was wounded after their Humvee hit a bomb along a highway in southern Baghdad 3:19 p.m Monday.
A U.S. soldier in Iraq drowned and two others were injured near Tikrit, U.S. Central Command said Monday. The soldiers were part of the 4th Infantry Division's Task Force Ironhorse. They were on a routine patrol Friday night when their vehicle fell into a canal, a Central Command statement said.
Another U.S. soldier died early Tuesday in a “non-hostile incident” involving a UH-60 helicopter near Camp Dogwood, one hour south of Baghdad.
- - link.
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