Military Amputees to Get New Rehab Center (GOAL: To Send Amputees To War)

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- A state-of-the-art rehabilitation center opening next year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center seeks to return more amputee soldiers to a place once thought impossible: the battlefield.

Besides treadmills and stationary bikes, the $10 million Military Amputee Training Center will have weapons simulators, a climbing and rappelling wall and military vehicle simulators to help soldiers adapt their prosthetics to driving tanks and trucks.

"Our guys and gals, they don't want to just walk household distances, they want to be able to return to running, they want to be able to return to duty," Lt. Col. Jeff Gambel, clinical chief of the amputee clinic, said Friday at a groundbreaking ceremony. "And if they don't return to duty, they want to be able to rock climb and do all those other things."

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-amputee-soldiers,0,796178.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[colonel odis]

reminds me of the scene in "holy grail" where the black knight

keeps getting limbs hacked off yet keeps on hobbling and fighting.

[saigon68]

26. check out this sleazy piece of shit

IT'S THE HEAD VIET-NAM DRAFT DODGER

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, left, talks with Staff Sgt. Joe Bowser of Kentucky, who was injured in Iraq (news - web sites), during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Military Amputee Training Center, Friday, Nov. 19, 2004, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. The center, a $10-million, 29,000-square-foot facility will bring together all of the services caring for Walter Reed's amputee patients, including social work, Veterans Affairs counselors, and the staff of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Service and will be able to support 300 appointments a week for patients who have lost one or more limbs. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

[colonel odis]

27. i imagine some of them want so badly to feel like they still belong

and can still contribute, they'll endure being patronized like that.

if i'd given a limb over there, i'd love for someone to make me feel like i or my service mattered. and they do matter. just not to a piece of shit like wolfowitz.

[uncertainty1999]

35. "It's just a flesh wound!"

[Vidar]

45. Losing leg, Black Knight replies: "It's only a flesh wound."

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. It's less to return them to battle than to fuck them out of disability pay

[alittlelark]

2. That is just too sick

What are they thinking?

[ilovenicepeople]

28. Neverending War?

[Lilith Velkor]

32. More like the Forever War

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380708213/002-0994573-2022445?v=glance

[tk2kewl]

3. they could be more effective than the full bodied soldier

prostetic arm/rifle cant be dropped

weigh less so they can be carried off the battlefield faster should the become injured again

[louis-t]

15. Maybe they can build the weapon right into the prosthetic!

Yes, it will be like James Bond! Wow, think of it! Now if he gets shot in that arm again, we can just replace the arm and send him out again! These people are demented.

[THUNDER HANDS]

20. anyone else picturing EVIL DEAD stuff here

Chainsaw on one hand, shotgun on the other. :evilgrin:

[burrowowl]

24. Welcome to DU, MagicRat!

Maybe they can make them into $6 Million men. Of course the maintenace for the fellow was pretty high.

[saigon68]

33. The guys from Rednck Rampage might help

Leonard and Bubba gotta get back Bessie, their prize-winnin' pig who's been abducted.

Armed with up to nine impractical and occasionally illegal weapons ranging from a crowbar, dynamite, a shotgun or a 2 X 4, blast your way with the boys through country bars and trailer parks. Just try your hand a-whompin' and a-stompin' the good ol' boys at Stanky's Bar & Grill. You'll find there's nothin' more terrifyin' than the deep chuckle of an inbred stalking you in the backwoods, with nobody to hear your teeth chattering but the fifty chickens milling around underfoot.

This was Lynndie England's favorite Play Station game.

[sandnsea]

4. And eliminate SSD

Jimmy has a job and has your exact same disability. No SSD for you. That's what we're going to get with this New Freedom Initiative. Opposite of freedom, slavery. Slave labor for the disabled. War for amputees. What a country.

[Ima]

43. oh man

I never thought of that one.

[Walt Starr]

5. Man, this is like some shit outta that hoacky fHollywood take on

Starship Troopers

[Sin]

7. I Was

Just thinking that
I swear if you just replace bugs with evil doers,insurgents,terrorists or any other name for the " Bad guys" in the movie and it sounds like fox news and or your average repkue talking about Arabs in general. Now there going to have all the robot limbs, so when is Doogie Howser the SS looking Psychic going to start reading there minds I swear every day that goes by the looking glass gets farther and farther away and Ive already stepped through.

[MisterP]

13. movie appears to mock the rightist book

two good links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
http://www.badmovies.org/othermovies/startroopers/index.html

[blackcat77]

21. Yeah, and Iraq is Klendathu... nt

[hatrack]

6. Read Bruce Catton "A Stillness At Appomattox"

He describes the "Invalid Corps" (later the Veteran Reserve Corps) made up of men who were wounded, but not so badly as to completely exclude them from service.

During the summer of 1864, the North's manpower situation was so desperate that some thousands of wounded men were put back in service, typically guarding wagon trains, POW camps and the like. Some had injuries requiring they carry their rifles over the left shoulder, others over the right. Others couldn't stand for long periods, and so were allowed to do sentry duty sitting down.

After the first column of them staggered in to report for duty somewhere south of Spotsylvania Court House, the regimental surgeon who met them announced that not only were they unfit for combat, but nearly half of them were unfit to be out of the hospital.

The more things change . . .

[geek tragedy]

8. Oh dear lord.

"Sorry you lost your leg. Now get your ass back to Fallujah!"

[samtob]

9. There really are those (soldiers) fighting to get back

to duty instead of being discharged.

This is not the story I was thinking of, that I had read a couple of weeks ago, but here are a couple examples;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62915-2004Oct25.html

<snip>
One of those stories describes a World War II pilot who lost both legs and went on to become Britain's fourth-best ace. Another tells of a U.S. soldier who returned to active duty with his mortar platoon just six months after he lost his foot in a mine blast on a Baghdad highway. Another tells of a sergeant who lost a leg in Afghanistan and went on to graduate from the Army's paratrooper school, the first to do so with a prosthetic leg.
</snip>

[geek tragedy]

10. Of course, the Pentagon will tell us that ALL soldiers want to go back.

Big Brother lives.

[Khephra]

11. Oh, I don't doubt it. And more power to them for wanting to do it.

But, with Bush using a backdoor draft and pulling people out of decade or more retirement, how long do you think it will take before it's no longer voluntary but expected for soldiers to go back to war with missing limbs?

And if not Bush, then it will end up some other Republican President. I don't have much faith in that party being able to elect ethical politicians for a long time now.

[samtob]

12. Scary thought, hopefully never n/t

[colonel odis]

17. if i'd lost a limb, i'd beg for a chance to go back and kick the crap

out of some bad guys.

however, that's really screwed up thinking. plus, in this war the good guy/bad guy thing isn't as clearly drawn as it was in ww2.

they don't need to go back. they need lots and lots of therapy.

[Lars39]

14. Follow the money...is Carlyle Group supplying prosthetics?

My bookmarks/archives aren't cooperating, but I know I read something a few yrs back about Carlyle Group having a prosthetics company.
:puke:

[louis-t]

16. Got any wood?

[HeeBGBz]

18. Remember the creepy military guy in Harold and Maude?

The one with the prosthetic arm that he would click in place to salute. This reminds me of him.

[Spinzonner]

19. Nobody should say Shrub isn't an environmentalist

Apparently he's now into recycling live bodies through the meatgrinder.

[Ilsa]

22. I think it's to be expected that they wish to be "normal" again.

Going back to the same old shit job is probably a part of denial about what has happened to them. Yeah. lots of therapy needed.

[DeadManInc]

23. return to combat

1 arm is not enough loss, they want a leg also.

[KamaAina]

25. How about ten million bucks so people with disabilities

can be trained for jobs that DON'T involve slaughtering brown people??

Oh, right. Priorities, you know. </sarcasm>

[bin.dare]

29. Compared to $4 Billion a year for recruiting ...

this is a steal. forgive the terrible pun if i say there's no need for boot camp training for re-enlisting amputees.

[geomon666]

30. I seriously doubt these amputees...

are sitting in a hospital right now and saying "You know what? I really want to go back out there man. I had such fun before my 'incident' that I just need to get back into hell."

And if they are, then damn are you messed up. But hey this may turn out to be good for military science. Imagine, instead of fitting these guys with prosthetic limbs, they can just attach machine guns to their stumps and send em out. They already treat em like f***ing robots now, might as well make them look like it.

[SammyWinstonJack]

37. They can't supply the troops with the right equipment to keep them safe

and to do their jobs the right way, but they'll supply them with prosthetic limbs so they can go back and get other body parts blown off. :eyes: These people are sick! Never got near a war and they expect amputees to just keep going back for more of the same. :grr:

[geomon666]

39. I was being sarcastic...

but yeah, you're absolutely right. They'll find any and every way to cut corners so they can save money while making more off of the war. I don't think they're sick. Sickness implies that their behavior can be cured and that's just not going to happen. They are evil. No different than Hitler only greedier, subtler, and more secretive.

[KayLaw]

31. Of all things!

Desperate much?

:wow:

[A Simple Game]

34. Does this also mean

no more deferments for disabilities?

That's what saved me during the Vietnam war.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

36. Yep

and a dead amputee soldier who was sent back into action and killed costs WAY less than giving him disability payments for the rest of his life.

Evil, just evil. My veteran husband almost couldn't believe it until he read the article himself. It's crazy.

[daleo]

38. In all my reading, the only good thing about getting wounded

Was that you would get out of the war alive. They called it a "catching a blighty" in the British Commonwealth forces in World War I - I imagine every army and every war has had its slang to describe it.

It is hard to believe that many of the latest crop of U.S. soldiers would feel any different.

[gordianot]

40. One of the best British pilots off WWII was a double amputee.

Douglas Bader lost both legs before the war, he flew brilliantly during the battle of Britain. He was shot down and captured by Germans. Bader made several attempts to escape as a POW and ended up in the infamous Colditz prison.

[daleo]

44. I have heard of him

But people like that are the exception.

[gordianot]

46. He had to fight to fight.

This was a man unbelievable skill and resolve. There have been others. If they can meet the physical requirements great.

We should not be creating robo soldiers.

[NCN007]

41. ever heard the quote

I regret that I have but one life to give for my country? There are people out there who still believe that, even if you have personally never experienced a sense of moral obligation to serve.

[Dude_CalmDown]

42. Give me a break - this center is only being built to give back to those...

...who gave an arm or a leg or both. They served their country and deserve the best rehabilitation possible. Not only that but now all those who were forced to go back home after loosing a leg can now go back to where they really want to be - Fallujah. And this time when they get an arm blown off there’s a 50 percent chance that it can be replaced in 2 minutes with a screwdriver. Add to that the fact that the next time they need to be carried off the field they will be much lighter (less spent energy by the guy carrying the body, better fuel mileage for the helicopter, fewer pallbearers needed at the funeral - etc).

[SodoffBush]

47. Have you ever heard an active duty soldier say he didn't want to go back?

Every one quoted in the press or interviewed on TV say they want to return to Iraq, even the amputees. Why not let them have their wish?

[genieroze]

48. ??????

:wtf: If this wasn't so sick it would be funny