[Peace-discuss] wounded

[Ricky Baldwin]

Wow!  That's twice the previous estimate, published in
the Guardian.  Deserves  letter to teh editor -- who
wants to write it?

Ricky
--- Dlind49 at aol.com wrote:
> Maybe 8,000 US Wounded In Bush's Iraq War -
> Report US Troops - Wounded, Weary And Disappeared
> By Bill Berkowitz 
> Tom Paine.com
> 8-29-03
> 
> 
> The nation reached a sad milestone in late August.
> With the death of an 
> American soldier in a roadside bombing on August 29,
> the number of soldiers 
> killed 
> in Iraq after the official end of the war reached
> 139, exceeding the 
> "postwar" 
> casualty count. Nightline aired a feature; the
> Associated Press posted a 
> story on the war dead -- but most media outlets
> continue to ignore an equally 
> drea
> ry reality. 
> In a summer dominated by the Bryant sex case,
> Arnold's debut in California's 
> recall election and the killing of Saddam Hussein's
> sons, 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. 
> Liz Swasey of the conservative media watchdog Media
> Research Center (MRC) 
> confirms this perception. "There have been no
> feature news stories on 
> television 
> focusing on the wounded," she says. "While there
> have been numerous reports 
> of 
> soldiers getting wounded, there have been no
> interviews from hospital 
> bedsides." 
> The numbers of soldiers wounded in action are hard
> to come by. Since the 
> start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 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..." 
> Some journalists also dispute the Pentagon's
> official count. Julian Borger of 
> The Guardian claims "unofficial figures are in the
> thousands." Central 
> Command in Qatar talked of 926 wounded, but "that
> too is understated," Borger 
> maintains. And in fact, a mid-August report in The
> Salt Lake City Tribune 
> claims 
> that Central Command has acknowledged 1,007 U.S.
> wounded. (The Pentagon did 
> not 
> respond to inquiries.) 
> Whatever the actual numbers of wounded, military
> hospitals are being 
> overwhelmed. "Staff are working 70- or 80-hour
> weeks," Borger reports. "[T]he 
> Walter 
> Reed army hospital in Washington is so full that it
> has taken over beds 
> normally reserved for cancer patients to handle the
> influx, according to a 
> report on 
> CBS television." Some of the outpatient wounded are
> even being placed at 
> nearby hotels because of the overflow, according to
> The Washington Times. 
> Inside these hospitals, there's no shortage of
> compelling narratives for the 
> interested TV reporter. 
> For example, an accident in western Iraq threw Sgt.
> Robert Garrison of 
> Ithaca, N.Y., from his Humvee, according to a June
> story by the Associated 
> Press. He 
> landed on his head, fractured his skull and slipped
> into unconsciousness. 
> Garrison "can't speak at more than a faint whisper
> and breathes with the help 
> of 
> a tube jutting from his neck. A scar runs across the
> back of the head, and 
> the 
> left side of his face droops where he has lost some
> control over his 
> muscles." 
> Sgt. Kenneth Dixon, of Cheraw, S.C., was in a
> Bradley fighting vehicle when 
> it plunged into a ravine. He "broke his back,
> leaving him unable to use his 
> legs." These days he's at a veteran's hospital in
> Richmond, Va., "focusing on 
> his 
> four hours of daily physical therapy." 
> Marine Sgt. Phillip Rugg, 26, recently had his left
> leg amputated below the 
> knee, caused by a grenade "that penetrated his
> tank-recovery vehicle March 22 
> outside Umm Qasr, nearly shearing his foot off." 
> The stories of these injured soldiers obviously
> straddle party lines and 
> should sadden Americans from all walks. So what is
> it about the wounded that 
> makes 
> us uncomfortable? Why have they been left out of the
> coverage of the war by 
> the broadcast media? 
> The consensus seems to be that the wounded are too
> depressing a topic -- and 
> also that they might threaten Bush's popularity. 
> "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. 
> John Stauber, author of the recently released book
> The Weapons of Mass 
> Deception , says the war was sold on television as a
> sanitized war with 
> minimal U.S. 
> casualties -- which was exactly what the Bush
> administration tried to 
> engineer. "Showing wounded soldiers and interviewing
> their families could be 
> disastrous PR for Bush's war," he says. "I suspect
> the administration is 
> doing all it 
> can to prevent such stories unless they are stage
> managed feel-good events 
> like Saving Private [Jessica] Lynch." 
> Tod Ensign directs Citizen Soldier, a GI rights
> advocacy organization. He 
> thinks the failure to cover the wounded indicates an
> implicit loyalty to the 
> White House, and a reluctance to address a failed
> Iraq policy. "The American 
> media 
> is by and large controlled and dominated by
> corporations that line up 
> politically with the Bush administration," Ensign
> says. "They appear to be 
> increasingly incapable of grappling with such a
> highly charged issue as the 
> wounded." 
> President Bush landed on the U.S.S. Lincoln on May 1
> and declared an end to 
> major combat operations in Iraq. Since that
> overhyped media event, the 
> president has repeatedly visited with troops that
> have returned intact, and 
> he has 
> issued statements honoring the dead. 
> But the president has not shown up at Walter Reed
> Army Medical Center to 
> shake hands with the recovering Robert Garrisons or
> Kenneth Dixons. 
> Journalists 
> should pay these visits for him, to tell us the
> stories of these men and 
> women, 
> whose problems will stretch into the coming years.
> And they should ask the 
> president why he is so reluctant to see these troops
> he sent so confidently 
> into 
> battle. 
> <http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8736>
> http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8736
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
> 
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