The lily-pad strategy

[Judi Lynn]

Jul 19, 2012
Page 1 of 2
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
The lily-pad strategy
By David Vine

The first thing I saw last month when I walked into the belly of the dark grey C-17 Air Force cargo plane was a void - something was missing. A missing left arm, to be exact, severed at the shoulder, temporarily patched and held together. Thick, pale flesh, flecked with bright red at the edges. It looked like meat sliced open. The face and what remained of the rest of the man were obscured by blankets, an American flag quilt, and a jumble of tubes and tape, wires, drip bags, and medical monitors.

That man and two other critically wounded soldiers - one with two stumps where legs had been, the other missing a leg below the thigh - were intubated, unconscious, and lying on stretchers hooked to the walls of the plane that had just landed at Ramstein
Air Base in Germany. A tattoo on the soldier's remaining arm read, "DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR."

I asked a member of the Air Force medical team about the casualties they see like these. Many, as with this flight, were coming from Afghanistan, he told me. "A lot from the Horn of Africa," he added. "You don't really hear about that in the media."

"Where in Africa?" I asked. He said he didn't know exactly, but generally from the Horn, often with critical injuries. "A lot out of Djibouti," he added, referring to Camp Lemonnier, the main US military base in Africa, but from "elsewhere" in the region, too.

More:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NG19Dj03.html

[newfie11]

1. This is insane

All the anguish, pain, killing, not to mention the billions spent so the war machine can make money. 40 years from now (IF we ever stop this shit) these people will still be dead or maimed but the wars will have accomplished little else.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. American wounded coming back from Djibouti?

That's very strange.

[bemildred]

3. A recipe for disaster, disaster after disaster.

Dispersal of forces is what weaker powers do, not what empires do.