Graphic piece from WaPo about the damage being done to troops in Iraq.
The Lasting Wounds of War
At the door to the busiest hospital in Iraq, a wiry doctor bent over the worst-looking case, an Army gunner with coarse stitches holding his scalp together and a bolt protruding from the top of his head.
While attention remains riveted on the rising count of Americans killed in action -- more than 100 so far in April --
doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.
More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair.
For months the gravest wounds have been caused by roadside bombs -- improvised explosives that negate the protection of Kevlar helmets by blowing shrapnel and dirt upward into the face. In addition, firefights with guerrillas have surged recently, causing a sharp rise in gunshot wounds to the only vital area not protected by body armor.
The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy. "We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months," Poffenbarger said. "So there's been a change in the intensity level of the war."
Looks like some reality news reporting is leaking out at last. Picturing your favourite GI with a bolt sticking out of his head will stay with the chickenhawks a bit longer than "Shuck and Jive".
The point about serious injury to troops is that it steals resources from the army. The dead can be zipped into a sack, dropped into a truck by the dozen and sent home as cargo.
The barely living suck resources like fury and with the rate going up, they also will be sucking morale, and then there is the heat. Not to mention the sapping of fighting resources. Modern military medecine is hiding the numbers of actually dead soldiers by keeping their pulse going, but as far as their platoons are concerned, they might as well be dead. In any previous war the total would already be at 3,000 or so, and, as someone has pointed out, the casualties in Iraq have already exceeded the first 3 years of US involvement in Vietnam.
The Memoryhole did a great service to the US, maybe now we can see some genuine war stories coming out as the corporate press scrambles to catch up with the freelance web.
What with the Brit diplomatic corps turning on Blair in a public slanging match and US commanders using the language of defeat, talking about being vastly outnumbered in Fallujah and "fighting like lions" against huge odds, the tide has turned now.
It will take time to be noticed by everyone, but it is going out.
All we need now is the single catastrophic failure that is waiting in the wings. And it will come.