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The invisible wounded
(Mark Benjamin, Salon.com, March 8, 2005)

In January 2000, then Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Henry Shelton told an audience at Harvard that before committing troops, politicians should make sure a war can pass what he called the "Dover test," so named for the Air Force base in Delaware where fallen soldiers' coffins return. Shelton said politicians must weigh military actions against whether the public is "prepared for the sight of our most precious resource coming home in flag-draped caskets." It's widely known that on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Bush administration moved to defy the math and enforced a ban on photographs of the caskets arriving at Dover, or at any other military bases. But few realize that it seems to be pursuing the same strategy with the wounded, who are far more numerous. Since 9/11, the Pentagon's Transportation Command has medevaced 24,772 patients from battlefields, mostly from Iraq. But two years after the invasion of Iraq, images of wounded troops arriving in the United States are almost as hard to find as pictures of caskets from Dover. That's because all the transport is done literally in the dark, and in most cases, photos are banned. Ralph Begleiter, a journalism professor at the University of Delaware and a former CNN world affairs correspondent who has filed a suit to force the Pentagon to release photographs and video of the caskets arriving at Dover, said news images of wounded American soldiers have been "extremely scarce." Wounded soldiers, like caskets, mostly show up in the news only after they arrive back in their hometowns. Begleiter said the Pentagon has tried to minimize public access to images and information that might drain Americans' tolerance for the war. "I think the Pentagon is taking steps to minimize the exposure of the costs of war," said Begleiter. "Of course they are." John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense information Web site, has spent a great deal of time trying to tease out the difference between facts and Pentagon spin. He said it is odd that the Pentagon hasn't done a good job of explaining the late-night flights. "It is puzzling because there are perfectly sensible explanations for this, but those are not the explanations being offered," Pike said. "And the explanation being offered makes no sense. It makes no sense."

COMMENT******Perhaps the military, as opposed to the Pentagon, would prefer that the numbers NOT be obfuscated and spun. Maybe those who have not yet sacrificed their honor would want the American people to see (and be aware of) the sacrifices they make as American weapons...Perhaps they would want the truth of the dark side of war known - the death and maiming, the life shattering and life affirming, the innocent and the guilty, the wanton waste. For what? Perhaps the ones the politicians sent to kill for them are as tired of this as we are. There is no good that will come of this insanity. But, that's just this old Curmudgeon's opinion*******

posted by An Old Curmudgeon 6:48 PM