Iraq, Bloody Iraq

05 April 2006 |permalink | email article

The Los Angeles Times, in a feat of award-winning journalism, published a three-part series this week that addressed the hush-hush issue of the more than 17,000 American troops that have been seriously wounded since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I say hush-hush because it appears that the Bush administration has gone to far greater lengths to discourage media coverage of this carnage than previous administrations during Vietnam. The ìMission Accomplishedî slogan after the fall of Baghdad turned out to be cruel hoax.  

The Times series told the stories over 13 pages of five men injured last November as a reporter and photographer followed them through a system of military medical care described as more advanced than in any previous conflict. 

But it is the bloody front-page pictures and inside each day that show how most of the wounded have been victims of explosive devices similar to mines in earlier wars which sensitizes one about the reckless rush to war without ample pause or preparation - factors which have turned the nation strongly against it.

For a generation of Americans who will do almost anything to avoid suffering, these pictures are sobering confirmation that it exists, in battle, as in life.

Retired Maine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command and a special envoy to the Middle East who endorsed Bush in 2000, soon compared Iraq war strategy to a ìbrain fartî emitted from a Bush ìpolicy wonk.î Addressing the Naval Institute in the fall of 2003 he summed it up:

ìOur feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies. And we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And youíre going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are. And remember, every one of those young men and women that come back [a casualty] is not a personal tragedy, itís a national tragedy.î

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