The Wounded Come Home (Time Article)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031110-536257,00.html

For every soldier who dies in Iraq, many more are injured. TIME takes an up-close look at the battle they face after the shooting is over
By MARK THOMPSON

For several seconds after the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) drilled through the back of their armored M113 "battle taxi," the soldiers inside, mainlining adrenaline, continued firing. Then they started screaming. "It blew my leg clean off," says Private First Class Tristan Wyatt, who was standing at the rear of the armored personnel carrier (APC), unloading an M-240 machine gun at a dozen or more Iraqis who had ambushed them minutes before. He was the first to be hit. The RPG then passed through Sergeant Erick Castro's hip, spinning him violently to the floor. His left leg was still attached — but barely. "I picked up my leg and put it on the bench," he says, "and lay down next to it." Finally, the RPG shredded Sergeant Mike Meinen's right leg. "It was pretty much torn off," he says. "There was just some meat and tendons holding it on."

There is horror and there is luck, and in war they sometimes come together. The RPG that severed three legs in a fire fight late last August near Fallujah didn't explode, which probably saved the lives of Wyatt, Castro and Meinen. But even a dud traveling at nearly 1,000 ft. per sec. can slice through limbs like a meat cleaver. The three men were alive, but there

<snip>

October was the bloodiest month yet for the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and the number of wounded is plainly on the rise. Daily attacks against U.S. troops have tripled. The number of U.S. troops who have died in hostilities in Iraq from May 1, when President Bush declared "major combat operations over," through last week has topped the 114 who died in the invasion and its immediate wake. By week's end 122 U.S. troops had been killed in action in Iraq, for a total of 236. But the number of U.S. wounded since May 1 is 1,242, more than double the 551 injured during the war.

From the Nov. 10, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
<snip>

[HighlyAcidic]

1. You must have forgotten to quote this part

The three wounded soldiers are united not only in their good humor but also their unequivocal support for the war. Wyatt doesn't much care for those who think Bush fudged the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. "That makes you feel like you fought for nothing or you fought for a liar," he says. "They're telling me I went out there and I got my leg blown off for a liar, and I know that's just not true."

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. No, I didn't. I think Bush is a greedy, lying and cowardly bastard

and I was against the illegal invasion and our continued occupation.

That's why I chose the quotes that I did. I make no apologies for it.

You'll find a lot of that here. If you are looking for a proBush site, I'm sure you can find one elsewhere.

[bvar22]

5. Classic Denial

Mechanisms kick in when the grief is too much to bear. One day this young soldier will confront the truth.....that he lost his leg for nothing, that bush* is indeed a liar, and that the only people who benefited from the bush* invasion of Iraq were the stockholders and CEOs of Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown & Root, and a few other bush* cronies.

[burrowowl]

3. Oooh!

The costs:

snip
In addition to the physical and emotional toll they suffer, the wounded in Iraq face other challenges — rehabilitation, retraining, postcombat counseling and long-term medical care, to name a few. All of these will drive up spending at the Department of Veterans Affairs for decades to come. There are also the wounds you cannot see. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a legacy of any war, especially those — unlike the 100-hour first Gulf War — that demand months, if not years, of U.S. occupation. "We have become much better at keeping people with severe injuries alive," says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank in Arlington, Va. "But the range of treatments provided — including counseling, assisted living, disability benefits and so on — can be quite extensive."

They had better not cut VA monies!

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. You can almost bet they will (again) if they get another four years.