WP: Iraq Injury Count Rose in August

[Halliburton]

BAGHDAD, Sept. 4 -- About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.

U.S. medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two Army and one Marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, U.S. units frequently faced combat in a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad and in the Sunni cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, all of which remain under the control of insurgents two months after the transfer of political authority.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62425-2004Sep4.html

[RamboLiberal]

1. Shit - and the F'in Media aren't covering this - SBVL more important

August was the 5th highest month for casualties - and from article now the kids are lobbing grenades. Our troops are in a world of shit.

I saw a great billboard up in the Red Bush counties of PA today - huge. It said.

American soldiers should never have to kill or die except in defense of our country. Bring Our Troops Home Now!

From the posted article:

There were also indications that troops might have suffered more severe wounds in August than in previous months.

At the Baghdad hospital, staff members are accustomed to seeing the most severely injured soldiers and Marines. The hospital, the only one in Iraq where the military's brain and eye surgeons work, handles the worst head wounds. Normally, perhaps half the patients who come to the emergency room qualify as "acute" cases, a term that indicates severity and urgency.

"A soldier who comes in and is almost bleeding to death will require more care than someone who is just shot with a bullet," Beitz explained.

In August, however, the rate of acute cases jumped to three of four ER patients.

<snip>

More and more often, children are lobbing the grenades, Ford said. Insurgents offer boys of 10 or 12 years old $150 to toss a grenade at a U.S. patrol, the captain said.

[Seabiscuit]

11. Exactly

And at 1,100 per month, our troops won't last there for another year. They'll all be dead or wounded.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. kick

[Flagg]

3. Bring'em on, cried the AWOL chimp.

[leftchick]

4. This important item was tucked waaaaayyyy inside my paper...

in a teeny tiny condensed little article. Librul media indeed...

:grr:

[ezekiel333]

5. RNC Convention is over, DOD is reporting losses again

<http://icasualties.org/oif/>

Of course they still are not reporting accurate wounded numbers and CENTCOM which used to give a few details has been silent since 8/30. I'll excuse CENTCOM for the silence the last two days as they are in storm avoidance mode. But where were they during the convention?

I'd also like to see the DOD numbers for the troops that have died from wounds received after being transfered back to the US for treatment. In all of the DOD releases I've seen I can only recall 3 mentioned as dying from wounds received. Yes, I understand we have modern medical triage and "state of the art" care, but it is not that good.

And above all else I want to see the names & numbers, both coalition and Iraq civilian, of this atrocity in every news channel and newspaper in the US.

Of course none of my questions or wants will be answered and there will be no truth until we put an elected President back in the White House.

[Dzimbowicz]

6. My personal experience

with the war in Iraq comes from a former student of mine. I am a high school teacher and several of my former students have joined the Marine Corps. One student in particular joined to learn the skill of aircraft mechanic. We keep in touch via e-mail and the last time I heard from him he was in that mess in Fallujah. The thing he told me that caused concern on my part was that he was being sent out on infantry patrols. As a veteran, I can state that this represents to me just how short-handed our forces in Iraq must be. Why else would the Marines use "expensive" aircraft mechanics to go out on infantry patrols? FYI: It takes over a year to train people for this occupational specialty (not to mention the financial investment), while infantry training lasts only eight weeks (at least it did when I was a jarhead). I fully believe that if this situation continues and that oil baron is reinstated as president; and, he no longer has to worry about another election, the draft is inevitable. Every day I look at the young people in my school and fear what may be in their future.
On many occasions I have asked my students how many of them support this war and what bu$h is doing, almost every hand in my class is raised. Then I ask them who would volunteer to go to Iraq and maybe one or two hands are raised. In case you are wondering, I teach public high school in South Carolina; and, as many of you know, SC is ignorantly, sanctimoniously and obnoxiously repuglican.
Thank you DU for all that you do!

Until I can get my avatar up, I'll make my own: VETERANS FOR PEACE

[Snellius]

8. Welcome, Dzimbowicz. Everyone here should READ THIS POST

Kick

[Rose Siding]

9. Great avatar, D

Welcome to DU. My dad's a Marine vet from WV.

Your post reminded me of this article. Maybe you'll find it interesting.

Marines slash final combat training in half
August 24, 2004

Under growing pressure to ship Marines to Iraq, the Marine Corps is cutting in half the rigorous field combat training it gives units preparing to deploy, senior officers say.

The Marines hope to make up the time by intensifying this final, pre-deployment training and focusing it on skills needed to survive and prevail in Iraq's brutal combat conditions. This means practicing more nighttime operations, ambushes, city fighting and guarding of convoys.

The exercise, called a CAX in Marine lingo, has been shortened from 23 to 11 days, Col. Blake Crowe, operations officer for the Marine Corps Training Command at Quantico, Va., said in an interview.

This was done, Crowe said, to "get more battalions through" in a shorter period of time. Until now, the Marine Corps trained 10 battalions in CAX every six months. Under the accelerated schedule, it will train eight battalions in two months.

The intense course, to begin this fall at the Marine desert training base at Twentynine Palms, Calif., will for the first time include thousands of Marines who hold traditionally noncombat jobs such as truck driver, intelligence analyst and jet aircraft technician.

http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-17/1093325900144970.xml

[Ernesto]

10. Welcome aboard Dzimbowicz

& Semper Fi amigo!

[UpInArms]

7. also from your link

"They were doing battlefield urban operations in four places at one time," said Lt. Col. Albert Maas, operations officer for the 2nd Medical Brigade, which oversees U.S. combat hospitals in Iraq. "It's like working in downtown Detroit. You're going literally building to building."

more progress every day /sarcasm

[Dzimbowicz]

12. Wow! I did not expect such a response

Thanks for the welcome. I forgot to add a link to the Veterans for Peace web site, just in case you might like to see what we are about. They have an on-line store (VFP Products) where you can purchase buttons and bumper stickers which state: "Peace is Patriotic".

VETERANS FOR PEACE

www.veteransforpeace.org

[OKNancy]

13. Kick