The disappearance of war-broken soldiers

By James Carroll

For reasons of national security -- namely, to shore up popular support for war policy -- the Defense Department has longed underplayed the tragic consequences of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Returning corpses (soon to number 4,000) are shrouded in secrecy. The suffering of the wounded (more than 26,000) is kept out of the nation's awareness. It is not that the medical professionals at Walter Reed are callous or uncaring. It is that the entire system is geared to making the men and women who carry visible signs of the war's cost slide back into the general population unnoticed. An inhospitable hospital serves that purpose. Mold infested walls of the Walter Reed housing units are the functional equivalent of unbarred windows at Bethesda.

Of all of the lies that the Bush administration has promoted, none is more egregious than that it "supports the troops." (emphasis added)

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I still can not believe "We The People" alow this Regime, and it's cheerleaders Coulter, Hannity and the Freepers to get away with claiming they are the ones who truly support the troops.

The way our service members have been cast aside, ignored or denegrated needs to be mentioned everytime one of these bastards opens his mouth to speak. No excuses.

paying them to say it, and who has control of our public airwaves to pollute them with these views.

And how they achieved and retain that control.

For instance, the fast-track conversion of our vote counting system to electronic voting, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls--and the mind-boggling silence of our entire Democratic Party leadership at this outrage--should be the scandal of the decade, and probably the biggest political scandal in American history.

Do you hear even one whisper about this in the war profiteering corporate news monopoly press? They know which side their bread is buttered on. Indeed, they know that it is buttered on both sides. Their "news" black holes, and fascist rants, serve to make our Democratic leaders look "progressive."

The next time you catch a malodorous whiff of Coulter or Hannity, thank Bill Clinton (Telecommunications Act).

These are our PUBLIC airwaves. We have a right to control them, to prevent monopolies, and to demand that they be operated in the public interest, as part of the price of the license we grant to private parties for their use. This is our SOVEREIGN right as a people. In the '60s through '70s, we imposed the "Fairness Doctrine" on TV/radio, requiring "equal time" for opposing political opinions. And we strictly regulated news monopolies. But now--after two decades of Reagan fascism and Clinton corporatism--aside from the internet, all news and opinion in this country is basically controlled by 5 fatcat, rightwing, billionaire CEOs, heads of mega-corporations with direct or indirect subsidiaries in the war profit business. Is it any wonder that they promote the use of US soldiers as cannon fodder, and add insult to injury, by deceitfully terming this viewpoint as "support for our troops"?

It is the classic doublespeak of all tyrants--Stalinist and Nazi, Tsarist and Bushite. It was well-illustrated by George Orwell in "1984." It is called "the Big Lie."

Whether public discourse is centralized and rigidly controlled by a Stalin or a Hitler or an out-of-control monarch, or whether it is by a Corporate Billionaire Cabal, the result is the same: the enforcement of state power in the interest of the rich and the murderous. And in EVERY CASE, this involves UNJUST WAR. Always. That is the MAIN PURPOSE of tyrannical control--to accumulate land and resources by force, and to be able to conscript serfs and peons toward that end. That is the fascist syndrome that Thomas Jefferson and Co. attempted to save this country from, by, a) creating a FREE PRESS, unfettered by the government or any tyrant, and b) by strictly limiting the power to declare war, and the purse strings of war, to the peoples' assembly, Congress.

Well, although Jefferson & Co. did give some thought to potential corporate monopoly power, they were much too entranced with the dispersed power of the states to keep commerce under public regulation, and could not have foreseen the all-powerful global corporate predators and war profiteers of today--the humongous "military-industrial complex" that was never dismantled after WW II (as it should have been), and that has grown into a hungry beast, now hijacked to the purpose of corporate resource wars on behalf of the very rich.

Our Constitution and the other controls that our Founders put in place to prevent this are reeling under the massive, coordinated, relentless assault of the Global Corporate Rulers, in every sphere of our political and economic life--and now with invasions of our private lives as well. WW II eliminated one monster and created another. It took forty years to fully mature. Now it is upon us with tooth and claw, eating our young, ripping into our communities, and smashing our government to pieces--plundering and looting everything in sight--with oinking pigs on all our airwaves cheering the fascists on, and repeating their "talking points" as if they were quotes from the Bible--and, not incidentally, as a sideline, promoting the Bible as "revealed truth," to undermine science and education and make people into stupid serfs again.

Jefferson's corpse is probably in sore difficulty by now, considering the number of times he has turned over in his grave. Everything that we ever were, or dreamt of being, has been turned on its head. "Support our troops" = kill our troops. "Freedom and liberty" = death and destruction. Free speech = 24/7 Sean Hannity, in all its forms. War is peace. Peace is war. Your vote is "counted" by rightwing Bushites, invisibly, and the Democrats think this is just fine. Welcome to BushWorld, where the Red Queen reigns.

Well stated, informative and convincing. I find myself agreeing with your points and positions.