I'm so angry at Bush & the media - the story of amputees in Walter Reed

[Woodstock]

Why aren't we hearing more about this? The American media REEKS. Secret arrivals at the hospital. Lives of young men and their families destroyed. Suicides. Lying about the number of injuires. We aren't hearing about the severity of the injuries and we aren't hearing the truth about how many people have been injured. Bush and his Republican enablers are EVIL, that's all there is to it, end of story.

From the BRITISH media:

http://www.channel4.com/news/2004/02/week_2/10_iraq2.html

...One patient, Staff Sergeant Maurice Craft, had his leg blown off in November by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. He'd gone to liberate a land whose people turned out to be hostile. It was a nasty surprise..."The ones that are covered are the KIAs. The "Killed in Action". I'm not taking anything away from those soldiers. They deserve that coverage. But there is also us. To say we're forgotten, that would be going just a little bit too far to say we're forgotten but I'd say we are the missed soldiers of the army." Says Sgt Craft, "A lot of people are getting hit. What they are showing are the deaths. They are not showing this here. They have a death toll but they're not showing the number of people being hit and being amputated because of their injuries.

...when it comes to the wounded, an astonishing situation has arisen: the Pentagon's figures clash wildly with those of the US Army. The Pentagon lists 2,604 wounded in action and just 408 "non-hostile wounded". But the Army says many thousands more have been medically evacuated from the conflict zone. Why the discrepancy? Well, the Pentagon doesn't count as victims soldiers who come back with brain injuries or psychiatric disorders, those hit by friendly fire or those who've crashed in their military vehicles...

Heath Calhoun, 24, wasn't able to walk off the plane with his brothers from the 101st Airborne. This was how he broke the news from his hospital bed in Mosul to his 21-year-old wife Tiffany : "I called her and I told her she could have the good news or the bad news. I said I've got my legs blown off, but the good news is I'm coming home." Heath's Humvee crew was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. "I didn't know what had happened. It hit and I saw a big burst of white powder and than I saw white and went flying into the air. I could see my legs were mucked up and blood coming out of them and I screamed." He still wears the ID tag of his friend Morgan, who was blown to pieces...

...Pat Collins from New Jersey is 38. He took shrapnel though his neck in Baghdad and is in permanent pain. "I was injured on patrol in Baghdad. Couple guys ambushed us. I've got nerve damage. A lot of pain. I took a lot of morphine. Readjusting. Getting my life back on track. I'm not going to do what I did before. Time to move on and find something else to do. I'm not going to what it was I did before." His anger is, in some cases, producing political transformation. Pat: "I was a Republican ... I'm going to be incredibly active in the Democratic Party once I get out."...

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. I can't believe that the Passion of Christ is getting more press than

this real-time mutilation of our soldiers.

[Bridget Burke]

5. The poet Wilfred Owen, training new troups in England (1918):

"For 14 hours yesterday I was at work--teaching Christ to lift his cross by numbers, and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine he thirst until afer the last halt. I attended his Supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands at attention before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha."

As an experienced officer, he thought he might help more of the men survive if he returned to the Front, although he could have stayed in England. He was killed about a week before the Armistice.

[mac2]

2. Mother Jones had a good article about the returning injured, etc.

It's so sad to see a young good guy lose a limb, eye site, etc.

They aren't getting the help they need either. For the press to ignore this is just plain heartless.

[calimary]

3. GOD this is awful!!!!!

GOD DAMN BUSH!!! I'm sorry. It's not my place to damn people, but I just can't stand this anymore!!!!!

We need to send this everywhere!!!!!!!

I tell you, my brothers and sisters of DU, I live with an amputee every day. My husband lost a leg to a rattlesnake bite. At least it kept him out of Vietnam. But it costs him, every day. Not a day passes that he doesn't have at least a small bit of difficulty, and this was, by comparison, a relatively minor injury. Certainly doesn't compare to the horrors of war! And the adjustments we have had to make in our lives because of this (I married him way after this happened to him, so I knew what I was getting), are many-fold. Some are minor, hardly worth mentioning, like he can probably never share a Boy Scout campout with our son. Others are more critical, especially when he has skin flare-ups (completely crippling, if you can't put on your prosthesis, and you're thus confined to bed, waiting and hoping for it to heal)!

FUCK BUSH. FUCK BUSH. FUCK BUSH. FUCK EVERYTHING ABOUT BUSH!!! FUCK HIM IN THE HEART!!!! (No, I take that back. Can't happen. This schmuck HAS NO HEART!) FUCK HIM TO HELL!!!!! I hope he has to pay for EVERY LOST LIMB he's caused. I hope he pays for it in lower and lower levels of Hell. FUCK HIM.

These men gave at least some of the utmost. They're also, conveniently, the ones bush refuses to visit, while he totally ignores the funerals of their buddies who weren't so "lucky." They're also, conveniently enough, the ones who had their VA benefits cut, their combat pay and family separation differential threatened, and their lives permanently afflicted.

And it's not just them, either. It's their wives, their girlfriends, their loved ones, their moms who probably agonize over every lost toe and lost finger that they built within their wombs however many years ago. NEVER was the Code of Hammurabi more appropriate. I'd like to see bush pay for his greedy, arrogant, Chickenhawk lies by having to live the rest of his life with the afflictions of even one of these guys. If only I were king...

I will NEVER REST as long as this bastard is in his STOLEN office at the White House. OUR White House. The one Al Gore rightfully won. I will NEVER EVER REST.

Please note the TOLL FREE number at the bottom of my post - my sig line. PLEASE USE IT!!! It's too late, today, to call Washington. Offices are now closed. But for God's sakes, do it tomorrow! TRY TO MAKE MORE THAN ONE CALL, if you can. It's free. A bargain compared to what these guys have been forced to pay.

PLEASE DO IT.

[pansypoo53219]

4. george NEEDS to go down HARD

for lying to america to get his little oedipal war to get sadaam.
i don't this george gets to go traight to heaven either.
bastard. fucking bastard.

[Lisa]

6. that last example ...

I'd rather have an intact Republican than a suffering Democrat ... how terrible that this man's life has been ruined by a White House that treats him like another statistic.

[Woodstock]

7. kick for the soldiers

:kick: