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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

 

The Journey Through Trauma
(David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2006)
U.S. troops who survive the critical 'golden hour' after being seriously wounded in Iraq owe their lives to a fast-acting team of battlefield medics, pilots, nurses and surgeons. . . . The medical odyssey of this Marine [described in detail via the link above] was just beginning. Buchter was now a patient in a virtual assembly line of care. It begins with soldiers and medics on the battlefield and shifts quickly to helicopter crews who pluck the wounded from kill zones. It continues to surgeons and nurses and X-ray technicians at desert facilities, and to virtual flying hospitals that airlift the wounded from Balad to a U.S. military hospital in Germany. . . . It leaps the Atlantic to major military medical centers in Texas and Washington, D.C. It passes through military hospitals from New York to California. It culminates with months of painstaking physical and occupational therapy in hospital wards and private homes. About 17,400 wounded have been treated since the war began three years ago. . . . The fulcrum for treatment in Iraq is the U.S. Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad. In addition to the troops brought directly to the hospital, any seriously wounded American must make a stop in Balad to be flown for treatment in Germany. The facility is housed inside three dozen tents and three trailers on the packed sands of a former Iraqi air force base 50 miles north of Baghdad. Sandbags, concrete blast walls and concertina wire provide protection from insurgents, car bombs and mortars. . . . The military says no injured American is more than 30 minutes from Balad or one of three combat support hospitals operated by the Army. . . . The rapid evacuation of wounded troops begins with Black Hawk medevac crews of four — nicknamed "dust-off" teams — trained to respond rapidly to distress calls from the battlefield. . . . From their dusty tent base about a mile from the hospital, the Army air ambulance companies keep three helicopters and crews ready at all times. The copters occupy a corner of the air base, the thumping of their rotors competing with the roar of F-16s taking off and the low hum of armed reconnaissance drones. . . . The crews are called to action by "nine-lines," the emergency radio calls from the battlefield that provide nine essential bits of information: location, number of wounded, whether the landing zone is "hot," or under fire, and so on. In most cases, the crews say, their helicopters lift off within eight to 10 minutes. . . .

[NOTE: The above are cuts from the first page of an eight page article. Click the link above for the full text. Also be sure to check out the Flash presentation that accompanies this story.

posted by LoZo 1:17 PM