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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
                Imad Khadduri's blog "Free Iraq" (scroll down for English version)

Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Bush team doesn’t want people to see human cost of war
Even body bags are now sanitized as "transfer tubes"

Lt.-Col. Jon Anderson describes business at the Dover mortuary as “steady.” But, Americans have never seen any of the hundreds of bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.

In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush’s administration sweeps the messy parts of war -- the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs -- into a far corner of the nation’s attic.

No television cameras are allowed at Dover.

Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his wars. “You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda,” says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington’s American University. “Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defense has ever undertaken in this country.”

Simpson notes that photos of the dead returning to American soil have historically been part of the ceremony, part of the picture of conflict and part of the public closure for families -- until now. “This White House is the greatest user of propaganda in American history and if they had a shred of honesty, they would admit it. But they can’t.”

This the first time in history that bodies have been brought home under cover of secrecy. It feels like Vietnam when Lyndon Johnson was accused of hiding the body bags. This is a big government and a big Pentagon and they could have someone there to meet these bodies as they come back to the country.

But today’s military doesn’t even use the words “body bags” -- a term in common usage during the Vietnam War, when 58,000 Americans died. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon began calling them “human remains pouches” and it now refers to them as “transfer tubes.”

One term that has crept into the U.S. military lexicon, however, is the "Dover test,” shorthand for the American public’s tolerance for wartime fatalities.

The policy of banning cameras at Dover dates back to the 1991 Gulf War, under Bush’s father, Pentagon officials say.

On the other hand, when the propaganda goal was different: Pictures were allowed of incoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Last March a directive came down reaffirming the banning of cameras at Dover, likely in anticipation of the sheer volume of casualties being repatriated.

Television images of American soldiers in combat interrupted Americans’ dinners nightly during the Vietnam War. Clinton took his troops out of Somalia after a photo by the Toronto Star’s Paul Watson, showing crowds cheering as a dead American soldier was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, was beamed around the world on news wires. Increasing casualties in Iraq have had no such dramatic effect on Bush, but that could change if more attention is paid to the wounded coming home and the way they are being treated.

Walter Reed officials did not return calls seeking comment, but the crush of casualties in late summer was such that outpatients had to be referred to hotels in nearby Silver Spring, Md., because the hospital was full. “Rarely have we seen so many young patients at one time,” a spokesperson said.

Montana soldier Adam McLain, recovering from injuries when a military Humvee drove over his leg and head in Baghdad, told the newspaper from his hospital bed: “I didn’t realize how many people were without limbs or without eyes. It’s just depressing. I feel lucky. I have all my limbs.”

For every Jessica Lynch, the wounded soldier who returned to a hero’s welcome and a book and movie deal, there is a Shoshana Johnson, who was shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days. Johnson will receive 30 percent disability benefits, about $700 per month less than her colleague Lynch.

There is also an ongoing investigation into the condition of patients awaiting treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga., where hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers say they are languishing in dirty barracks waiting months for needed medical treatment.

They say they must hobble across sand to the use the bathroom, are housed 60 to a barracks and must pay for their own toilet paper. Only recently did the Senate successfully demand the White House stop charging wounded soldiers $8.10 per day for their hospital meals.

posted by Hal 11:37 AM