Details here:
"Col. Earl Hecker, a critical care doctor at Landstuhl [a millitary hospital], says that the casualty situation for U.S. troops is far worse than most people in the U.S. can imagine. '[The public has] no idea what's going on here, none whatsoever,' he told New York Newsday. Then he blurted out, 'Bush is an idiot.'
"Hecker has every right to feel angry. On an average day, he sees 35 young men and women transported to Landstuhl, mainly from Iraq. Doctors and nurses at the hospital say it is like something out of a nightmare--where 'the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives,' wrote Toronto Star reporter Sandro Contenta.
"Since September 2001, more than 18,000 military personnel have come to the hospital from Iraq and Afghanistan--roughly 20 percent because of combat injuries, the rest due to accidents or illness. While the Pentagon has reported approximately 7,300 soldiers injured in combat in Iraq, that number doesn't reflect soldiers evacuated for illnesses, like diarrhea or persistent fever, which are often related to living conditions.
"And it doesn't count the thousands of soldiers sent home because they are suffering from mental health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder. At Landstuhl alone, more than 1,400 soldiers have been admitted for mental health problems.
"Back at home, the Pentagon says that some 28,000 troops out of the 168,000 who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought medical care from the Veterans Administration. Nearly 20 percent of those--well over 5,000--have done so for mental health reasons.
"It's no wonder why. According to a New England Journal of Medicine study released in July, during the six weeks that the Iraq war lasted officially, 95 percent of Marines and Army soldiers surveyed said that they had been shot at, 56 percent had killed an enemy combatant, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains. 'It's probably the biggest challenge to mental health [in the military] since Vietnam,' Col. Gary Southwell, chief of psychology services at Landstuhl, told Newsday.
"For these soldiers, help may not be available, even if they manage to make it home alive. The Veterans Administration (VA) has been overloaded for decades--and has a current backlog of more than 300,000 claims.
"Of the claims for benefits filed by soldiers returned from Afghanistan or Iraq, fewer than two-thirds have been processed--leaving more than 9,750 recent veterans waiting for help, according to the Washington Post. And a September 20 Government Accountability Office report concluded that the VA isn't able to determine if it can handle a rush of post-traumatic stress disorder cases.
"Meanwhile, soldiers who are injured in Iraq and sent home are in for a rude awakening--a 50 percent pay cut. When Marine Lance Cpl. James Crosby left Iraq, he was unconscious, his legs paralyzed, his guts pierced by shrapnel.
"According to the Boston Globe, that's when the military cut his pay. 'Before you leave the combat zone, they swipe your ID card through a computer, and you go back to your base pay,' said Crosby. 'You need that pay more than ever, to move your life around.' In a wheelchair and attached to a colostomy bag, Crosby told the Globe: 'I still have to fight the consequences of what happened. I struggle every day.''
"That struggle is leading more troops and their families to question the war. 'The army is not going to like what I have to say, but I think we have no business being there,' Larry Daniels' wife, Cheryl, told Newsday.
"She says that she voted for Bush in 2000, but has changed her mind this year. 'I will definitely vote for Kerry, not because I prefer Kerry over Bush, but because I don't want Bush back in office,' she says. 'I'm hoping that if Kerry takes office, we'll be pulling out' of Iraq.
"Unfortunately, as Kerry has made all too clear, he won't answer the hopes of people like Cheryl. During the first presidential debate, when asked if U.S. soldiers were 'dying for a mistake,' Kerry answered 'No, and they don't have to...I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that.' That means more U.S. troops killed and maimed for oil profits."
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That last remark reminds me of something: after months and months of mindless blather about whether we were "misled" in to war, it occurs to me that there are still adults who have graduated from college, and who are otherwise functionally literate, who believe that the U.S. is in Iraq for any reason other than strategic political and economic advantages (and having nothing to do, needless to say, with the fake "war [sic] on terror"). I find it hard to believe, but perhaps it is true.
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