heartbreaking, infuriating, devastating, the Ultimate Betrayal

[G_j]

Howard Zinn The Ultimate Betrayal

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/022204D.shtml

The Progressive
    April 2004 Issue

     I cannot get out of my mind the photo that appeared on the front page of The New York Times on December 30, alongside a story by Jeffrey Gettleman. It showed a young man sitting on a chair facing a class of sixth graders in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. Next to him was a woman. Not the teacher of the class, but the young fellow's mother. She was there to help him because he is blind.

     That was Jeremy Feldbusch, twenty-four years old, a sergeant in the Army Rangers, who was guarding a dam along the Euphrates River on April 3 when a shell exploded 100 feet away, and shrapnel tore into his face. When he came out of a coma in an Army Medical Center five weeks later, he could not see. Two weeks later, he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, but he still could not see. His father, sitting at his bedside, said: "Maybe God thought you had seen enough killing."

 The newspapers on December 30 reported that 477 American GIs had died in the war. But what is not usually reported is that for every death there are four or five men and women seriously wounded.
     
The term "seriously wounded" does not begin to convey the horror. Sergeant Feldbusch's mother, Charlene Feldbusch, who, along with his father, virtually lived at his bedside for two months, one day saw a young woman soldier crawling past her in the corridor. She had no legs, and her three-year-old son was trailing behind.
...more..

[mhr]

1. Don't Forget The Innocent Iraqi's And Their Horror Inflicted By

The Cement Head In Chief, AKA GW Bush.

[G_j]

2. yes

and we almost never include the thousands of Iraqi soldiers. How different were many of them really from our own? They received the terrible focus of our modern bombs, including napalm. The human devastation
of this entire "war" can not be comprehended.

[maggrwaggr]

7. many of those "soldiers" were just boys of 13 and 14

told to take a position with a gun in their hands.

We blew them to bits, napalamed them, maimed them.

Disgusting.

[blondeatlast]

3. I was in my early teens at the closing of the Vietnam war.

The press weren't a puppet of the administration and would show the wounded as they came home (and with surprising dignity--the faces were nore imprtant than the gore).

We talk about the INITIAL cost of the invasion but we, the taxpayers, will also be covering the cost of those maimed in Iraq for years to come. And at current VA funding levels, even that may not be enough.

How do we get the media to cover this? Why do they let the Admin call the shots?

The media played a HUGE role in ending Vietnam; why don't they even try to offer the ILLUSION of a spine anymore?

How sick is this nation?

[G_j]

4. I wish I knew n/t

[maggrwaggr]

8. watch your TV any night to see how sick this nation is

We've got midgets marrying for money on Fox while the nation crumbles and yes, Rome burns.

[G_j]

5. kick

[sangha]

6. See BUsh* record of compassion toward vets

at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1128869

[proud patriot]

9. Chilling

:-(