Female amputees make clear that all troops are on front lines

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050428/1a_cover20.art.htm

On June 19, Lt. Dawn Halfaker and soldiers from her military police platoon were on a reconnaissance patrol in Baqouba, Iraq, when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded inside their armored Humvee, grievously wounding two of the soldiers inside.

Dazed and covered in blood, Halfaker mustered the energy to give an order to her driver. “Get out of the kill zone!” she shouted. Halfaker's right arm was loosely connected to her torso.

<snip>

The most severely injured of the amputees is Maj. Ladda “Tammy” Duckworth, an Illinois Army National Guard pilot who lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into her Black Hawk helicopter near Balad on Nov. 12.

Duckworth says doctors told her she survived because the heat from the explosion cauterized her leg wounds. That prevented her from bleeding to death after her co-pilot landed the aircraft.

Will that be enough?

and immediately found myself getting pissed off.

There is a Repub co-worker and supporter of Bush's nation building wars who myself and another liberal co-worker used to get into pretty heated arguments with before the election, but we've become more friendly since then due to us avoiding politics and finding we can relate on many other levels. Add to that, he has even admitted to "buyer's regret" on some things the NeoCons are now doing, yet still feels the Iraqi war was a good thing.

Anyway, since we have become somewhat friends, I was grateful I did not see him yesterday, since I felt I would have thrown all that progress we made away and went off on him after I saw that article so tired I am of this war and supporters justifying it.

Not to diminish any of the other soldiers who lost life or limb in this war, but there was something extra unsettling about seeing this fairly attractive young woman holding this prosthetic arm and again realizing how needless all this has been and how many lives were forever destroyed over lies and self-interest.

I just don't know when most of America is going to wake up and demand we pull out of there now.