Another way we're being lied to: "The wounded never die"

[Atlant]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/11/03/hsorensen.DTL

The wounded who never die

Harley Sorensen

If we were to believe our government (and who does?), our military doctors are the best in the world. Nobody ever dies in their care.

Common sense tells us we're being lied to again.

If you follow the news even loosely, you know that American soldiers and Marines are killed and wounded on a daily basis in Iraq. Just offhand, the number of wounded appears to be three times the number killed. So, roughly -- very roughly -- one can estimate about 1,000 troops wounded in Iraq. It could be twice that, or more. I think it's a lot more.

Our man in Iraq (I call him Sgt. Mike) e-mails the three steps in dealing with the wounded.

If the wounds are minor, Sgt. Mike says, the troops are patched up in Iraq and sent back to their units. Troops with major injuries are flown to Germany for treatment, and from there to the United States.

But, judging from press reports, none of these wounded ever dies. Maybe I don't know where to look, but I haven't been able to find one single report of a soldier who died later of his or her injuries.

Not one. Isn't that curious?

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[DUreader]

1. It is always nice to see something that has been on DU for months...

jump to the mainstream media

Why does it take so long?

[Spazito]

2. Excellent Article!

Thanks for the link. I, too, have been wondering about the wounded that later died and there being no stats on that.

[mmonk]

3. That's why you take numbers given on killed

with a grain of salt. Wounded die and unless percentages are given as to how many, its had to gauge.

[Atlant]

4. I'd love to know the "stats".

One of the most revealing books about the Viet Nam war was
365 Days, describing a doctor's year-long tour of
duty in 'Nam.

The point he made more than once is that big strapping
healthy soldiers were pretty hard to kill through outright
trauma; they could survive all sorts of bits of them being
blown off. What did in most of his wounded-who-later-died
was infection.

Off the top of my head, I wouldn't dare speculate on whether
or not infection now kills fewer wounded troops. Yes, we
have better technology, but we also see a lot more multiply-
resistant bugs (as evidenced by MSRA).

Someday, maybe we'll know the true number of troop deaths
from this little dust-up of Bush's.

Atlant

[Hell Hath No Fury]

5. Where are all the...

hungrey journalists out there? There are stories out there like this RIPE for someone to come along and blow the lid off of them.

[Ernesto]

6. In Vietnam

The only KIA we knew about were dead in front of us. I often wondered what happened to my friends who were medivac-ed with serios wounds. Lo & behold, this information seemed to be top secret. It was as if once medivac-ed, a Marine just did not exist anymore..... I guess the USMC didn't want to worry us too much about the life & death aspects of our patriotic mission. After all, we had a country to (try to) illegally occupy.

[Brian Sweat]

7. In all fairness, I remember seeing one story six to eight weeks ago

about a soldier who had expired from his wounds.

[bleedingheart]

8. but that is just one...and I believe there are more

with how many are killed daily and the reports of the wounded I think some of them are dying but not being counted because the didn't die instantly.