Thousands of US Troops Will Return With Head Injuries

[Jcrowley]

The hidden wounds of the Iraq war
By Ronald Glasser
Article Launched: 04/15/2007 01:45:18 AM PDT

"We can save you. But you might not be what you were." - Neurosurgeon, Combat support hospital, Balad, Iraq

This is the new physics of war. Three 155mm shells linked together and combined with 100 pounds of Semtex plastic explosive, then covered by canisters of butane or barrels of gasoline, can up-end a 70-ton tank, destroy a Humvee or blow an engine block through the hood of a truck. Those deadly ingredients form the signature weapon of the war in Iraq: improvised explosive devices, known by anybody who watches the news as IEDs.

Some of the impact of these roadside bombs is brutally clear. Troops are maimed by projectiles, poisoned by clouds of bacteria-laced debris and burned by post-blast flames. But the IEDs have added a new dimension to battlefield injuries: injuries and even deaths among troops who have no external signs of trauma but whose brains have been severely damaged. Iraq has brought back one of the worst afflictions of World War I trench warfare: shell shock. The brain of a soldier exposed to a roadside bomb is shocked, truly.

About 1,800 U.S. service members, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries caused by penetrating wounds. But neurologists worry that hundreds of thousands more - at least 30 percent of the troops who have engaged in active combat for four months or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan - are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and mortars, without suffering a scratch.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_5672694

[silverojo]

1. Thanks to you, George W. Bush

You evil bastard! :mad: