Very sad and poignant - The Costs of War at Walter Reed

[springhill]

Washington, DC -- In the dining hall is a family of three. The mother’s shirt says “Thank a Soldier,” the father’s hat says “Vietnam Veteran,” and the son’s T-shirt says “Seattle Sonics.” A normal family, except the son has no legs.

The tough talking lions of the Bush Administration proclaimed “shock and awe” would destroy the Iraqi will to fight and then it would be a simple “cakewalk.” So the cocky civilians unleashed the “mother” of all air assaults on Baghdad and then our strutting commander in chief -- decked out in a fine flight suit -- proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.”

But the flight-suit President dodged the Vietnam War, hiding in the Air National Guard’s “Champagne Unit,” strongly supporting the war from Texas. The Vice-President “had other options,” although he insisted other Americans had no option but to fight the war. The Secretary of Defense enrolled in Princeton University instead of the Korean War; after the war he enrolled in the Navy. All the hawkish Neocons were too busy arguing for the Vietnam War to actually fight in that war. Shame, they missed their “noble” causes. So when it came to Iraq, none of these men had a clue about the will to fight.

I see in the halls of Walter Reed hospital soldiers with leg braces and neck supports, soldiers with faces slashed by bombs and stitched up by doctors. Soldiers with legs terribly mangled, soldiers with no legs -- amputees with short stumps, with long stumps, without any stumps since entire limbs are missing. A man walks by without an arm. I suddenly travel back in time to another war, to another hospital when I was one of those young men without a limb. But the human carnage and waste in Walter Reed is too overwhelming to escape for more than a flash of time.

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1190&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0&POSTNUKESID=33636a44788c3049b2f8042efa985de4

[Hissyspit]

1. Nominated. I will never completely understand until the day I die...

the absolutely blind American citizenry and media's flush and rush for war in 2002 and 2003 after the example of Vietnam, the U.S. Civil War, movie after movie and book after book and song after song about the devestation caused by the blind lust for the glory of running off to violent mass combat.

Read Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" and Stephen Crane's "Illusion in Red and White."

[Erika]

2. W's war and his legacy

But the oil companies have never had higher profits. You must think globalist rather than emotional about these things, per W talk. The war has been good, per W talk, for all involved. See www.icasualties.org Just about 2,000 now.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

3. We are a country of selfish and stupid people.

So many people are only interested in an issue when it affects them directly. In the case of our dead and maimed servicemen and women from this war, it does not exist for them.

[Freedomfried]

4. Amen to that

[UpInArms]

5. thank you for posting this article

it was so well written and illustrative of what everyone needs to know about those that have paid such a high price for 'murka's ignorance.

:cry:

[arewenotdemo]

6. speechless

Bottom line that I'm usually confounded by...is why any real American would vote in 2004 for the Maladministration of Chickenhawks that had already taken us into this clusterfuck war.

I suspect that the answer must be equal parts arrogance, ignorance and greed.

Still, the idea that that these chickenhawk war criminals like Wolfowitz with his doctorate can't just be tracked down and hung from the lampposts, bothers me.