The War Comes Home: Covering the Plight of the Badly Wounded

[babylonsister]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003596812

The War Comes Home: Covering the Plight of the Badly Wounded

When a local service member dies in Iraq newspapers cover the family and community reaction. But what happens -- or should happen -- when the victim is horribly injured but survives? A former embed, editor, and father of an Iraq war veteran, reflects.

By Dennis Anderson

(June 10, 2007) -- A week ago a Lancaster mother -- one of the soldier-mothers in my hometown in Southern California -- left to tend to her wounded son at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. How much the world has changed for Stacie Tscherny in the span of that one week.

Days earlier, she learned that her son, Army Spc. Jerral Steele Hancock, was seriously wounded in the fighting around Baghdad.

It was Memorial Day. It was his 21st birthday. This birthday, this crossing of the bridge into formal adulthood with the privilege to drink a legal beer would herald the last time Spc. Hancock would have two arms. And it would be the last time he would take a normal step or experience physical comfort or ease.

snip//

These wounded soldiers and Marines, these troops hurt in this continuing war that is fought by ambush with devastating explosives are the heralds that tell us what the cost of this war ultimately will be.

They also are the "canaries in the coal mine," in that their care and their needs require all the scrutiny that an activist press can provide. God knows most of our profession was not diligent enough, probing enough, or demanding truth from power enough in the run-up to war. See Thomas Ricks in "Fiasco."

Absent a devastating attack on the American homeland, it is to be hoped national media will engage in greater diligence before another foreign war gets a push from the White House and a pass from Congress, and the American people.

more...

[madokie]

1. I lay awake at night sometimes wondering just how much of the explosives

that are being used by the Iraqi came from the 382 tonns of high explosives they marched right on by. That one act to me is or should be criminal

[genie_weenie]

4. You should have seen the satellite and atars coverage

showing multiple truck tracks converging on unguarded ammo dumps littering western Iraq.

[genie_weenie]

2. There'll be time to talk about this later. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.

No one of name is in danger...

Warmongers and supporters will never mention the wounded. The wounded themselves and their families are usually so distraught and are trying to get on with their lives, they don't have the energy to fight (nor should we expect them) against this monstrous Terrorist Regime in DC.

[babylonsister]

3. THAT is precisely why we all need to mention the soldiers' plight

as often as possible. We can't let anyone ignore or forget.