US 'smuggles wounded troops home' under cover of darkness

[cal04]

The Pentagon has been accused of smuggling wounded soldiers into the US under cover of darkness to avoid bad publicity about the number of troops being injured and maimed in Iraq. The media have also been prevented from photographing wounded soldiers when they arrive at hospital.

Records show that flights from military bases in Germany arrive in the US only at night. Officials say this is purely the result of flight-scheduling pressures and is not a deliberate tactic to minimise detrimental publicity. They also say that by leaving Europe later in the day soldiers are given a better chance to sleep well the night before. But many campaigners believe otherwise. Just as the Bush administration has banned the media from taking photographs of the coffins of American troops killed in Iraq as they arrive in the US, opponents say it is now trying to cover up the number of wounded.

"The American public has very limited information about the real impact of this war," said Ellen Taylor, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, a peace group that has been protesting outside the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, where the bulk of the wounded are taken. "I think that a lot of information about this war is being kept from the public. That is what we are protesting about." It is not even clear how many troops have been injured since the start of President Bush's "war on terror". The Pentagon says that around 12,000 troops have been evacuated from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, though because officials only list as casualties those soldiers directly hurt by bombs or bullets, the actual total of injured and wounded is believed to be closer to 25,000. Walter Reed says it has treated 4,000 troops injured in Iraq.

Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Operation Truth, a group set up for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, said: "(A cover-up) would fit in with everything else they have done. It would be part of an effort to keep the cost of this war away from the American public. It is not surprising, but it is depressing. It should piss people off
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=627924

[FlemingsGhost]

1. How many of them are on feeding tubes?

America cares ... deeply. No, really.

[leftchick]

5. hey do YOU have a yellow ribbon on Your SUV?

( :sarcasm: ) That is how you show support for the troops in Amerika!
And how sad is that? :(

[IronLionZion]

14. no, you show support by cutting their benefits

making them pay for their own airfare and health care then you ship their civilian jobs to China. But the biggest way to support our troops is to send them to war..... excuse me, AAAAARRRGGGHHHHH :wtf:
:sarcasm:

[meganmonkey]

2. Why isn't this in US papers?!?!?

:grr:

I googled it and got nuthin' :(

[rzemanfl]

4. I have read of this before, but unfortunately I can't remember

where, although it was definitely off of a computer monitor, not paper. Probably a buzzflash.com link. These days newspapers are good for getting baseball scores and the results from the racetrack and not much else.

[UpInArms]

12. The Permanent Scars of Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/magazine/15VETS.html?ex=1113192000&en=d988c4c4436ac427&ei=5070&pagewanted=print&position=&oref=login

(free registration or try www.bugmenot.com)

February 15, 2004

Robert Shrode can't sleep.

At night, in the fly-speck town of Guthrie, Ky., in the rented farmhouse he shares with his 20-year-old wife, Debra, he surfs the Internet, roams the house. He lies down and gets up again. He drinks a beer and stares out the window at the black fields beyond. Hours pass. He can't sleep. Before the war, he could have six beers and sleep like a baby, but now that works against him. Drinking may help get his head to the pillow, but it also ratchets up the nightmares. For a while, he sweated out his bad dreams on the living-room couch, and it drove Debra crazy. She would come down from the bedroom, touch his shoulder, ask what the problem was. Shrode would just turn his back to her and not say a word. Now she knows better than to ask, though occasionally when the silence between them gets too deep, she'll put it out there, What're you thinking about?

''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.

He pops Ambien to coax some sleep. The results are mixed. On the advice of his doctors, he is taking three different pills for pain, a pill for swelling and another pill for depression. There are days when he is unrecognizable to himself, a guy who a few years ago was a party-loving bartender at a Mississippi casino and who is now 29 and engaged in what can feel like a never-ending battle to see his own future brightly.

The only person who understands him is his buddy Brent Bricklin, a restless, dark-haired 22-year-old and fellow Army specialist in the 101st Airborne Division, who is also home after serving in Iraq. Most mornings, Shrode picks up Bricklin at Fort Campbell, the sprawling base that straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee state line where both men are stationed, and they go driving. It's always more or less the same. They drive through the buttressed gates of the base, patrolled by armed National Guardsmen, and turn onto Fort Campbell Boulevard, passing the check-cashing outfits, the strip clubs and gun-and-ammo shops that, during peacetime anyway, boom with military business.

<snip>

Shrode and Bricklin are 2 of the 2,600 United States soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of early this month, according to the Department of Defense. The basics of their stories are hauntingly familiar: just after midnight one night in June, a rocket-propelled grenade shrieked out of nowhere and hit their Humvee, which sat parked at a police station in the Baathist city of Fallujah. What was reported in the news bore the standard sterility: ''One soldier killed; five others injured.'' What wasn't said was that Branden Oberleitner, the private who died standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Shrode, was a car buff who once planned to become a firefighter or that he was killed two weeks shy of his 21st birthday. It didn't say that his blood was all over the road.

...more...

:cry:

this one has been bookmarked for a long time - doesn't even come close to telling the numbers :(

[saigon68]

15. A Classic Case of PTSD

You don't need to be a shrink to diagnose this case

Every manifest symptom.

[leftchick]

3. Note the Non ameriKan source....

Excellent article with the truth in there. Sadly the sheeples are still sleeping...

~snip~

And a spokesman for the Air Mobility Command said: There are no policies that direct anything about night arrivals or avoiding public contact. Neither public relations nor public perception play a role in flight schedules."

The flights from Germany on a C-141 Starlifter aircraft can take up to 10 hours. But, given the six-hour time difference between the US and Germany, the wounded soldiers could leave at noon from Ramstein and still arrive at Andrews Air Force base near Washington by 4pm.

Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Operation Truth, a group set up for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, said: " would fit in with everything else they have done. It would be part of an effort to keep the cost of this war away from the American public. It is not surprising, but it is depressing. It should piss people off."

~snip~


But officials have also banned the media from taking pictures of the wounded being delivered to either Walter Reed or the National Naval Medical Centre in nearby Bethesda. Ms Kurkal told The Independent on Sunday: "We no longer allow such photos for patient-privacy reasons." However, a reporter from the online journal Salon was recently able to enter Walter Reed and photograph wounded troops without revealing their identities.

[saigon68]

16. Don't wake the Sheep.

The new Pentagon chant.

[bluestateguy]

6. Pentagon bureaucrats are such cowards

A bunch of neo-conservative pussies whop wouldn't know the horrors of war it they came up and bit them in the ass.

[Desertrose]

7. makes it a damn neat & tidy war, doesn't it?

Murikans don't have to see the caskets or the wounded...

Don't hear anything about the wounded except the ones who have had limbs shot off and they WANT to return to the wars.....makes me want to :banghead:

I like to think that if the people REALLY knew..they wouldn't take it....but then again, the Kool-aid is STRONG....

lets keep this kicked :)

[Rose Siding]

8. The Army Med Dept claims 16,723 med evacs -and that's just Army

http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/medevacstats/200501/oif.htm

That includes "wounded in action", "non-battle injuries", and "disease"

16,723, as of January 31st

[wakeme2008]

9. If the article is correct in it's timing

The troops arrive stateside 4 hours later than they left. So to get in at 10:00pm or later they would have to hold them at the airport until 6:00PM.... This is more that just seeing they got a good nights sleep.

[SujiwanKenobee]

10. Why aren't we hearing from the parents/spouses of these intensely wounded

Believe me, if this undercover move was happening in my family, returning a barely recognizable war casualty to the US under the cover of darkness-- I'D be shouting loud enough to be heard--absolutely.

[rodeodance]

11. there was a story about a week ago also about all the head trauma

troops that come home -only to have the family to decide to remove life support.

[scarletlib]

21. I'm would guess for several reasons:

First, the individual's family is probably overwhelmed with a variety of emotions: relief the soldier is home and alive, distress because of the wound and its effect on the lives of the family, soldier. I think just dealing with all of that and trying to go forward in life just sort of precludes people even thinking about going to the media or getting upset about what is happening.

Finally this story happens to "one person/family" at a time at that level. The enormity of what is going on is probably not penetrating down to them at that level.

I hope you understand what I was trying to say.

[0007]

23. Many are screaming their heads off. Many are buying into

the pentagon's BS - If the media isn't reporting anything how does anyone indeed know>

[davhill]

13. How many of them are in a Vegetative State

Kept on life support to keep the death count down?

[Voltaire99]

17. Had most Democrats not crowed for war, too, the party could...

...speak out against this shameful tragedy.

But it's hard to criticize the GOP when you're in bed with it.

Thanks again, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, et al.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

18. When I was a C-141 navigator flying from Germany to the U.S.

we usually departed just before sunset. "Sun down, gear up" was the saying. Flying westbound with time zone changes we'd arrive home in Charleston, S.C. about 2 a.m. If we'd landed at Andrews it'd have been an hour and a half earlier.

Of course, this was 30 years ago. You know you're getting old when all the airplanes you flew are in museums...

The main thing is, with all the shit this * crowd pulls it wouldn't suprise anyone if they were hiding the wounded, too. I applaud the people who are working to find out the truth.

[liberalla]

19. This would be a good project for a journalist to track down...

Somebody should try to be there when they arrive at night and secretly videotape it...

60 Minutes? Sy Hersh? or some real determined independent freelance type journalist...

[dbt]

20. More sad proof of the SORRY-ASS state of the Murkin Media.

Anybody who still thinks that the "news" industry is not firmly in bed with the Regime is simply not awake. The hell of it is that this abject and slavish devotion to bu$hler is somehow bigger than money.

If just ONE of the networks decided to present the Opposing Viewpoint, there would be ratings substantial enough for it to pull away from the rest of the pack.

The fact that none of them chooses to do so tells me that the fix is truly in, that this pandering is deliberate.

[90-percent]

22. Support Our Troops

The convienience store magnet signs are getting sun bleached from over a year of use.

The bleached out ones aren't really supporting our troops good. Only the ones that get brand spanking new replacement stickers really support our troops.

-85%

[DeepModem Mom]

24. kick

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

25. One reason for the secrecy,

in my humble opinion, is because not only would it shock and enrage the average American it might awake us all to the inhumanity, futility and idiocy of war. Then what would happen?
Face it, none of this shit will EVER stop until people everywhere understand what is happening. Why do we go to war? In nearly every case, the reasons are never really crystal clear, the rationale almost always vague.
Some will say, "people have fought wars going all the way back to the dawn of history." Probably so. That still doesn't mean we should accept it. We have always had wars because there are those who always profit from war.
I think the whole 9/11 thing, most all terrorism and full blown war is related to money. Big business exploits the resources of other countries to bring us the "American way of life." When the people who live in those countries decide they want a better deal, we call in the Marines and F16's.
War is a business. The dead, maimed and wounded are the cost of doing that business. It is up to us to be vocal and voice the thoughts that war is wrong on all levels. The shame of it is, most Americans cannot even fathom the amount of death and destruction in Iraq. We only see, well not really see thanks to the Pentagon, how it affects us......

[Henny Penny]

26. You are right dyedinthewoolliberal...

One of the reasons that Europeans were so much against this war from the start, was that so many people here experienced first hand just what aerial bombardment and occupation actually means.

Those that were not alive then have been told by parents and grandparents what it was really like, and they understand that war really should be the very last resort.

When "shock and awe" happened, it was shown live on TV. The victims were never shown, and the UK was partly responsible for the bombing, but almost all British citizens empathized with the people underneath it all, because they remembered all too well what the blitz meant to Londoners.

Even the news anchors on British TV looked extremely emotional when announcing what was happening and everyone wished since they could not stop it, that it would just be over as soon as possible.

America has not been unfortunate enough to experience these things and I think a lot of people will not fully understand what war means if they do not see the wounded returning and hear their firsthand accounts, and if they do not hear the voice of ordinary Iraqis.

[AzDar]

27. From what I'm gathering...the Wee Cowboy's managed to somehow

keep the costs for the military ops in Afghanistan and Iraq OUT of the annual budget...so why wouldn't they be deceitful when it comes to the REAL COSTS (lives) of this pointless little venture? God, they sicken me.

[Moderator]

28. kick to combine

[paineinthearse]

29. Belfast Telegraph: US smuggles wounded troops home under cover of darkness

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=628489

US 'smuggles wounded troops home' under cover of darkness

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

11 April 2005

The Pentagon has been accused of smuggling wounded soldiers into the US under cover of darkness to avoid bad publicity about the number of troops being injured and maimed in Iraq. The media have also been prevented from photographing wounded soldiers when they arrive at hospital. Records show that flights from military bases in Germany arrive in the US only at night. Officials say this is purely the result of flight-scheduling pressures and is not a deliberate tactic to minimise detrimental publicity. They also say that by leaving Europe later in the day soldiers are given a better chance to sleep well the night before.

But many campaigners believe otherwise. Just as the Bush administration has banned the media from taking photographs of the coffins of American troops killed in Iraq as they arrive in the US, opponents say it is now trying to cover up the number of wounded. "The American public has very limited information about the real impact of this war," said Ellen Taylor, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, a peace group that has been protesting outside the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, where the bulk of the wounded are taken. "I think that a lot of information about this war is being kept from the public. That is what we are protesting about."

It is not even clear how many troops have been injured since the start of President Bush's "war on terror". The Pentagon says that around 12,000 troops have been evacuated from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, though because officials only list as casualties those soldiers directly hurt by bombs or bullets, the actual total of injured and wounded is believed to be closer to 25,000. Walter Reed says it has treated 4,000 troops injured in Iraq. "Night-time arrivals are beneficial to the patient as they allow for a regular night of sleep and then for doctors in Europe to make the final determination on their ability to make the long flight, move patients from Landstuhl regional medical centre to Ramstein air base and board the plane," said a hospital spokeswoman, Lyn Kurkal. "There is no attempt by Walter Reed to hide the number of patients we receive. On the contrary, since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Walter Reed public affairs has issued a weekly press release that includes the number of medically evacuated patients received that week."

And a spokesman for the Air Mobility Command said: There are no policies that direct anything about night arrivals or avoiding public contact. Neither public relations nor public perception play a role in flight schedules." The flights from Germany on a C-141 Starlifter aircraft can take up to 10 hours. But, given the six-hour time difference between the US and Germany, the wounded soldiers could leave at noon from Ramstein and still arrive at Andrews Air Force base near Washington by 4pm. Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Operation Truth, a group set up for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, said: " would fit in with everything else they have done. It would be part of an effort to keep the cost of this war away from the American public. It is not surprising, but it is depressing. It should piss people off."

much more......

[saltpoint]

30. If this report is accurate it prompts association with the --

-- overt LYING done by the Pentagon during the Vietnam War about troop casualties and woundings.

From Rumsfeld on down the rank of in-charge folks, all I'm seeing is a pack of lying assholes.

[Selteri]

31. Old News, with this administration everything else is

under the cover of darkness.

[bush_is_wacko]

32. So, if what they say is true, are they going to allow a photographer to be

on standby at the airport for the return of these injured soldiers? Seems to me that would convince people they aren't trying to hide anything.

[Bo]

33. ...oh my beautiful mind!!!!!

No...NO...Noooooooooooooooo.
I trust lucifer is patiently waiting for this administration to pass away.