[Peace-discuss] Bush is hiding the human cost of the war

[patton paul]

Bush is continuing his campaign of misinformation about the war.  He has
ordered that the coffins of returning dead not be photographed by the
media.  Planes carrying the wounded are flown in at midnight, to avoid
tipping off the press to their arrival.  Here's an article from the
British newspaper, the Independent.
-Paul P.


The hidden cost of Bush's war
Concern about fatalities among Western forces in Iraq tends to overlook
another ghastly statistic: the spectacularly mounting toll of the severely
wounded. Andrew Buncombe reports on America's invisible army of maimed and
crippled servicemen


It has been three months since Sergeant Mike Meinen lost his right leg in
Iraq and just two weeks since he received a new one. He is still getting
used to the prosthetic, still adjusting to its feel, the way it looks, the
way in which his injury has changed his life for ever. Remarkably, he
refuses to be bitter  either about the Iraqi guerrillas who maimed him or
about the people in Washington who sent him to war.

"I can't be upset for what has happened. We went to Iraq for a reason,
there were obviously going to be casualties," said 24-year-old Sgt Meinen,
father of a five-month-old daughter, Abigail, who was born when he was in
Iraq. "I can't be upset that I was among them... I am proud of what I have
done."

Sgt Meinen, of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company, 3rd Armoured Cavalry
Regiment, is among thousands of wounded soldiers who have returned from
Iraq to uncertain futures, months of difficult and often painful treatment
and an American public largely unaware that so many troops are being
injured every day. The reality is that, just as Iraqi hospitals struggled
to deal with the number of wounded civilians during the invasion of the
country, so military hospitals in the US are now overflowing with wounded
Americans.

Advances in body armour and battlefield medicine mean that an increasing
number of soldiers such as Sgt Meinen are surviving injuries that even
just a decade ago would have killed them. As a result, while the Bush
administration is able to point to a relatively modest number of US
fatalities in Iraq  yesterday the total stood at 396  there is a huge
number of severely wounded soldiers whose injuries and fate go largely
unreported. Mr Bush has ordered that the media should not be allowed to
photograph coffins containing the bodies of those killed in Iraq, and the
return of injured US troops also goes largely unpublicised. This is no
coincidence. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont told the Senate last month:
"The wounded are brought back after midnight, making sure the press does
not see the planes coming in with the wounded."

But for visitors to the Walter Reed Medical Centre in Washington  where
Sgt Meinen and two comrades who were injured in the same rocket-propelled
grenade attack were treated  the wounded are very much on display. Indeed,
at this hospital, which deals with injured soldiers (as opposed to sailors
or marines), there is barely room for non-war casualty patients.

Last week all but 20 of the hospital's 250 beds were reportedly taken up
with soldiers injured in Iraq, where there are now some 35 attacks on US
forces every day. Fifty soldiers had lost limbs  often more than one
while dozens of others were being treated for burns or shrapnel wounds.
Others require psychiatric help. Officials say that 20 per cent of the
wounded have suffered "severe brain injuries" while 70 per cent had wounds
with the "potential for resulting in brain injury". About 600 have been
dispatched to a specialist burns unit in San Antonio, Texas.

On the fifth floor of Walter Reed, where soldiers such as Sgt Meinen and
his comrades Pte Trystan Wyatt and Sgt Erick Castro receive physical
therapy, staff have reportedly put up a bulletin board with their
patients' photographs. It is crammed full of pictures of young men. "We
didn't start the board when the war began," Mary Hannah, a therapist, told
the Los Angeles Times. "Even the most experienced people here  it's beyond
their imagining. These are our babies and they just keep coming, coming,
coming."

The facilities at Walter Reed, the army's main hospital in the US, are so
crowded that the 600 or so rooms set aside for families of the injured are
apparently insufficient and people are doubling up. The Pentagon is paying
to put up hundreds more at local hotels.

"I don't think this is going to go away," said the hospital's director,
Major-General Kevin Kiley. "Our people are pedalling as hard and fast as
they can. We can do this for a long time but at some point  if there is no
let-up  the casualty demand will have to start affecting what Walter Reed
is. The whole hospital is on a war footing and emotionally involved. The
broader challenge is how do you keep up the battle tempo for a long period
of time?"

The first stopping-off point for almost all injured soldiers evacuated
from Iraq is the US Regional Medical Centre in Landstuhl, Germany, about
100 miles south-west of Frankfurt. To date they have treated a total of
7,714 ill and injured troops. Of these, the Pentagon says 937 had suffered
so-called combat injuries, as opposed to non-hostile injuries, though
these numbers are disputed by independent experts. "One is going to get
you a Purple Heart [a medal for troops injured in battle] and one is not,"
said a Pentagon spokesman, explaining the difference. "One's for wounds
inflicted by the enemy. It could be any type of injury inflicted by
someone who wishes to cause you harm."

There are no comparable figures for British combatants. We know that 52
British servicemen have died in Iraq, 19 of them since "major operations"
officially ended on 1 May. But the Ministry of Defence says that it cannot
give any figure for the number of wounded, and none of the defence
think-tanks feels able to venture an estimate. One reason is believed to
be the extensive involvement in the war of British special forces  the MoD
is extremely secretive about the SAS and SBS.

The sick and wounded from Iraq arrive at Ramstein Air Base near Landstuhl
on huge transport planes. Around 30 new patients arrive every day,
straining the resources of the hospital, which has had to request
additional doctors to boost the medical staff of 1,800. Apparently the
hospital had not been expecting the number of less seriously wounded
soldiers it has had to treat  for road traffic injuries and ailments such
as kidney stones (which were commonplace during a summer in which many
troops became dehydrated).

In a recent interview with The New York Times, the hospital's senior
officer, Colonel Rhonda Cornum, said the situation in Iraq meant that the
demands being placed on the staff and resources at Landstuhl would not go
away any time soon. "You can't work people 60 hours a week for ever," she
said. "People have to take leaves. They've got to go to school. You can't
run it as a contingency when it has obviously become a steady state."

She added: "This is never going to be a quiet medical centre again. Our
people are proud and privileged to be doing it. But we don't have any
illusion that it's going away."

In addition to the advances in medical treatment, more soldiers are
surviving as a result of better equipment. Most troops in Iraq are
equipped with $1,600 (950) Kevlar vests and $325 helmets. The vests, the
thickly woven material of which is designed to "catch" projectiles, are
fitted with ceramic plates that cover the most vulnerable areas. As a
result, most injuries  two out of three  involve the arms or legs. Around
100 troops have lost arms, legs, hands or feet in the operation to oust
Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq.

While the body armour cannot stop all injuries, the result is that many
more troops are surviving than in previous conflicts. Estimates suggest
that during the current war in Iraq the ratio of wounded to dead stands at
eight to one. In the Second World War the ratio was three to one, while
even in the 1991 Gulf War the ratio was four to one. Most deaths occur
within half an hour of a soldier being injured, usually as a result of
massive blood loss. Survival rates soar if he or she can be airlifted to a
medical centre within an hour of being wounded.

Most of those seriously hurt receive excellent treatment. Sgt Meinen and
his comrades have been fitted with titanium and graphite prosthetics.
Speaking by telephone from his home in Colorado, close to his base at Fort
Carson, Sgt Meinen was upbeat. "It's really nice," he said of the false
limb. "It's better than I thought. I am doing physical therapy now  I say
I am on vacation."

Mr Wyatt, who also lost a leg in the same incident in the city of Fallujah
on 25 August, has been fitted with a $100,000 prosthetic that attaches to
the stump of what was his upper thigh. The so-called C-leg "understands"
when to bend as a result of built-in microprocessors that detect stresses
50 times per second.

"When we first got here I felt I was screwed and thought I would never
walk again," said the 21-year-old. "The rocket went through my leg like a
knife through butter. It was a terrible scene with the three of us...
there was just blood and muscle everywhere. It's hard to see your comrades
hurt, but there are a lot of people here farther down the line with the
same injuries. It definitely gives you hope."

Many of the wounded appear optimistic, hopeful that with retraining and
treatment they may be able to return to the armed forces and continue
their careers in some sort of capacity. They hope their sacrifice has not
been entirely in vain. But there are increasing numbers of veterans from
former wars and relatives of soldiers who fought in Iraq speaking out
against the ongoing operation and demanding that the troops be brought
home. They say it suits the Bush administration not to draw attention to
the number of wounded and to ignore the effect on the recruitment and
retention of troops as well as public opinion.

"The general sense is that it's politically damaging to the Bush
administration. It makes it more difficult for them to continue their
policies in Iraq,"said Wilson Powell, director of Veterans for Peace. "It
may be that those policies are changing. There is a sense that they are
trying to accelerate their withdrawal of troops."

Mr Wilson, 71, a veteran of the Korean War, said that for a family, the
effect of a relative being wounded could be worse than that of them being
killed. "Post-traumatic stress disorder goes on for decades. It can affect
marriages, relationships with children," he said. "With a death people can
move on, people get on with things. If they are wounded, you might have
someone who is 50 per cent disabled, who has a sense of shame, who is
angry or bitter."

Sgt Meinen is not in that position, at least not yet. For the time being
he is focusing on getting better, on learning to use his new limb and
enjoying his daughter. "I love being a father. She learns so much every
day," he said.

Of what happened in Iraq he says he is glad that he and his comrades came
home alive. "I always told them I would take them to the worst places in
the world, but that I would always bring them out," he said. "They
believed in me. All three of us wanted to be there."