"No other war has created so many seriously disabled veterans,"

'Dead Men Walking:' The Dark Side of Military Medical Advances

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- "Dead Men Walking, " an investigative
feature in the March DISCOVER Magazine, reports on a little-known
consequence of the Iraq War: the growing number of American soldiers coming
home with traumatic brain injury, or TBI, only to languish inadequately
treated. The article hinges on a harrowing irony. Survival rates for
soldiers with TBI are rising to an unprecedented degree, thanks to advances
in military medicine. But those soldiers are saved only to come home to
American hospitals under funded, under staffed and generally unprepared to
handle issues related to TBI.

The soldiers are kept alive only to lead a kind of death-in-life
existence.

"No other war has created so many seriously disabled veterans," writes
Michael Mason, a brain-injury case manager at the Neurologic Rehabilitation
Institute at Brookhaven Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Author of the upcoming
book, "Damaged: The Injured Brain," Mason has counseled hundreds of
brain-damaged veterans from 40 states over the last four years, navigating
the healthcare system on their behalf.

Many states have no brain-injury rehab centers, Mason reports, and only
a few that do provide even a basic level of specialized care.
"The quality and coordination of post-acute TBI service systems remains
inadequate," the Institute of Medicine concludes. Lifetime cost of care for
brain-injured troops could reach $35 billion, according to a Harvard
University expert.


"Dead Men Walking" exposes this country's lack of support for its most
severely injured troops on their arrival home. As the article went to
press, the Veterans Administration was, rightfully, concerned about the
story and repeatedly demanded a copy (not given).

http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index.shtml

military jeeps and trucks have no value. They are just broken down junkyards.

More troops are being severely injured but Bush's new budget cuts veterans benefits and medical benefits.

The idiot is on C-Span right now, laughing and joking. He is cackling and rolling his head. Check him out. * is sickening.

This is always the case. It's "preferable" to maim an enemy rather than kill him, since it draws of far more resources for rescue, medical attention, etc. That's why so many places are littered with land mines which blow off legs but leave the victim alive.

These two things leave most alive, that otherwise would have died. Without these two things our number of dead would probably be around 10,0000 or more.

I keep thinking about "Johnny Got His Gun", where the medical tech has advanced to the point that soliders who were goners in prior wars get saved, but horribly maimed.

So, when the radical right talks about "only" three thousand deaths, i wonder just how many it would have been had we still been in 1917, or 1943, or 1968. I kind of think the number of dead would be a much more jarring figure to the general public.
The Professor

I wonder how things would swing if instead of just a daily update on how many troops were killed there was listed how many were injured.

My infantry school instructor (who's back over there now) once estimated in an email to me that with Vietnam-era trauma medicine we would have upwards of 20,000 KIA already. We just aren't getting many "slightly" wounded people, and this is the most intense fighting the Marine Corps has seen since even before Vietnam, going back to Korea ('04 was in particular); probably the Army is going through the same thing.

unfortunately, that may seem like a double-edged sword.

Looks like we may end up with something similar today but the "pukes" will just throw them away if given a chance.

Oh, to be a student in the 1970s when teachers were advocating books like that in high school literature courses. Now I see the wisdom in their choice of a story.

... to other conflicts like Vietnam, WWII, etc. too. Because in some ways many who have survived today that keep our death toll lower than the past, if given the choice, might prefer to die like they would have in the past, given the nature of their injuries. I'm not for them dying necessarily, but I think the seriousness of these injuries and the rate of their incidence has to be seen by the American public when measuring the true cost of this war!

Already we've got the highest death toll of journalists in this war than any other war in the latter half of the 20th century (including WWII). Given that most of them don't have the same high tech battle gear to protect them, that gives another clue as to how much people are being hit by this war over there, even if all of the soldiers aren't dying like they were in earlier conflicts!

I wonder how much could be said if we could persuade some of the wounded soldiers that still have their brains intact with missing limbs, etc. to "march" on Washington all together with us all helping them get there with carts, etc. how much that could tell Americans of this true cost of war. If we can talk enough of them into it, perhaps that might help us end this f'in war!

who would love them to bits, and grieve so bitterly to see their suffering.

Or wind up dying in the streets because they can't readjust to civilian life?

Will they be counted as fatalities? (No)
:cry: