The Forgotten Wounded of Iraq by Ron Kovic

[LSK]

Thirty-eight years ago, on Jan. 20, 1968, I was shot and paralyzed from my mid-chest down during my second tour of duty in Vietnam. It is a date that I can never forget, a day that was to change my life forever. Each year as the anniversary of my wounding in the war approached I would become extremely restless, experiencing terrible bouts of insomnia, depression, anxiety attacks and horrifying nightmares. I dreaded that day and what it represented, always fearing that the terrible trauma of my wounding might repeat itself all over again. It was a difficult day for me for decades and it remained that way until the anxieties and nightmares finally began to subside.

As I now contemplate another January 20th I cannot help but think of the young men and women who have been wounded in the war in Iraq. They have been coming home now for almost three years, flooding Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center and veterans hospitals all across the country. Paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded and maimed, shocked and stunned, brain-damaged and psychologically stressed, over 16,000 of them, a whole new generation of severely maimed is returning from Iraq, young men and women who were not even born when I came home wounded to the Bronx veterans hospital in 1968.

I, like most other Americans, have occasionally seen them on TV or at the local veterans hospital, but for the most part they remain hidden, like the flag-draped caskets of our dead, returned to Dover Air Force Base in the darkness of night as this administration continues to pursue a policy of censorship, tightly controlling the images coming out of that war and rarely ever allowing the human cost of its policy to be seen.

snip

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/forgotten_wounded_20060117/

PS: This is Ron Kovic of Born on the 4th of July fame.

PSS: Ron will be on the Randi Rhodes show today in about an hour. http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live

[nam78_two]

1. K&R.nt

[Monkeyman]

2. K&R

[genie_weenie]

3. It's better they die gloriously on the Field of Honor...

Sadly, this is no less than I expect.

It's not that people don't care but it's a combination of many things. Fear of Government plays a big part for the average American and a rightful concern over their own lives and families or, worse, concern over trivia (Spring Training, Lindsay Lohan's crotch, Anna Nicole, American Idol).

And that's what the troops KNOW. Fear, apathy, and other priorities will consume America’s attention. Any soldier who stands up against the system knows he will stand alone. Wounded troops are to be shunted off into condemned buildings or thrown into the streets.

Unfortunately, the wounded have methods to drain money for such bullshit things as treatment for "battle fatigue" or physical therapy to relearn how to walk. Better they died, because then! Then a nice moving monument could be erected and a nicely coiffed politician could get up a deliver a somber speech about honor and duty and noble sacrifice...

the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead.

What's noble about lying in the ground and rotting. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb?
~ Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo

[LSK]

4. kick - on now with Randi