Wounded in Iraq, Deserted at Home

[Guest guest]

> Wounded in Iraq, Deserted at Home

>

> By Bill Berkowitz, <http://www.workingforchange.com>WorkingForChange.com

> September 12, 2003

>

> More than thirty satellite trucks and nearly a hundred reporters hunkered

> down outside the Eagle County (Colorado) courthouse on Wednesday Aug. 6th

> waiting to get a glimpse of Los Angeles Laker basketball star Kobe Bryant

> entering the courtroom for a scheduled ten-minute appearance. Most of the

> major television networks and cable news and sports networks had reporters

> and camera crews at the scene.

>

> Across the country, where plane loads of wounded soldiers are airlifted

> back to the states, unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base, and sent off to

> area hospitals, there are no hordes of television cameras recording these

> tragic trips off the tarmac.

>

> In a summer marked by the media's focus on the Bryant sex case, the

> entrance of Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) into California's recall

> election, the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons and the hunt for their

> father, little attention has been paid to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq

and

> stuffed into wards at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the nation's

> biggest military hospital, and other facilities.

>

> There are no pictures of wounded soldiers undergoing painful and

protracted

> physical rehabilitation. There are no visuals of worried families waiting

> for news of their sons or daughters.

>

> What is it about the wounded that makes us uncomfortable? Why have they

> been left out of the coverage of the war by the broadcast media?

>

> " There have been no feature news stories on television focusing on the

> wounded, " Liz Swasey, director of communications at the Media Research

> Center (MRC), a conservative media watchdog group, told me in a telephone

> interview. " While there have been numerous reports of soldiers getting

> wounded, there have been no interviews from hospital bed sides, " she

> pointed out. The Alexandria, Va.-based MRC, founded in 1987 by L. Brent

> Bezel III, monitors all major nationally televised and print news

> broadcasts and maintains " the nation's largest video news archive, " Swasey

> said.

>

> " The war was televised and sold as a sanitized war with minimal US

> casualties, " said John Stauber, co-author of the recently released book,

> " The Weapons of Mass Deception, " in an email exchange. " Showing wounded

> soldiers and interviewing their families could be disastrous PR for Bush's

> war. I suspect the administration is doing all it can to prevent such

> stories unless they are stage-managed feel-good events like Saving Private

> [Jessica] Lynch. "

>

> The glow from the jubilant celebrations over the speedy march to Baghdad

> has morphed into months of guerilla resistance. In the three months since

> President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, U.S.

> casualties continue to mount: Since May 1, sixty-nine U.S. soldiers have

> been killed in combat, and deaths from other causes are more than double

> that figure.

>

> As of Sept. 4, " Casualties in Iraq: The Human Cost of Occupation " a

website

> affiliated with Antiwar.com listed the number of US combat deaths since

the

> beginning of the U.S. invasion at 284, 184 of which are considered combat

> deaths. In addition to those killed in combat, dozens of other soldiers

> have died in accidents; a few have committed suicide; two are dead from a

> still-to-be-explained cluster of pneumonia cases; and several have died

> mysteriously in their sleep.

>

> Another website, CNN.com's

> " <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/>Forces: U.S. &

> Coalition/Casualties " , provides the names of coalition casualties whose

> families have been notified and includes pictures of the victims (when

> available), the soldier's ages, units, hometowns and an explanation of how

> each was killed.

>

> While the dead are honored, the men and women injured in Iraq and/or

> Afghanistan have become the new disappeared. Once they've been swept off

> the battlefield and returned home, the broadcast media has essentially

paid

> no attention to them. " Wounded troops are kept out of the media picture

> because they are perceived as a downer, " said Norman Solomon, media

critic,

> columnist and co-author of " Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell

You. "

>

> " Dead people don't linger like wounded people do. Dead people's names can

> be posted on a television honor role, but the networks and cable news

> channels won't clog up their air time with the names and pictures of

> hundreds and hundreds of wounded soldiers. "

>

> " The wounded are much too real; telling their stories would be too much of

> a bummer for television's news programmers, " Solomon added. " It is

> important, however, to ask about the wounded. If they exist then we will

> want to hear from them, even if the networks do not really want to hear

> what they've got to say. "

>

> The numbers of wounded in action are hard to come by: Since the start of

> Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the Guardian's Julian Borger, the

> Pentagon has put the number of wounded at 827 but he writes, " unofficial

> figures are in the thousands. "

>

> Central Command in Qatar talked of 926 wounded, but " that too is

> understated, " Borger maintained. Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, the man

> in charge of the airlift of the wounded into Andrews Air Force Base,

> recently told National Public Radio that " Since the war has started, I

> can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but

I

> can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews, and that number

> doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews and then we

> send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda, which are in this

> area also. " An early September report in the Washington Post put the

number

> of U.S. wounded at more than 1,120.

>

> Military hospitals are being overwhelmed and " staff are working 70 or

> 80-hour weeks, " Borger reports. " [T]he Walter Reed army hospital in

> Washington is so full that it has taken over beds normally reserved for

> cancer patients to handle the influx, according to a report on CBS

> television. " The Washington Times recently reported that because of the

> overflow, some of the outpatient wounded are being placed at nearby

hotels.

>

> Howard Rosenberg, the former television critic or the Los Angeles Times,

> suggested that the networks might hesitate to report on the wounded

because

> they could be perceived as negative or downbeat. " Since 9/11, there is a

> general feeling among many media outlets that they need to stay away from

> anything that could be interpreted as disloyal to the country, " Rosenberg

> told me.

>

> Inside the hospitals, there's no shortage of compelling stories.

>

> The Associated Press' Stephen Manning reported in early June on the plight

> of Sgt. Robert Garrison of Ithaca, N.Y. During an accident while in

western

> Iraq, Sgt. Garrison was thrown from his Humvee. He landed on his head,

> fractured his skull and slipped into unconsciousness. Garrison " can't

speak

> at more than a faint whisper and breathes with the help of a tube jutting

> from his neck. A scar runs across the back of the head, and the left side

> of his face droops where he has lost some control over his muscles. "

>

> Sgt. Kenneth Dixon, of Cheraw, S.C., was in a Bradley fighting vehicle

when

> it plunged into a ravine. He " broke his back, leaving him unable to use

his

> legs. " These days he's at a veteran's hospital in Richmond, Va., " focusing

> on his four hours of daily physical therapy. "

>

> Marine Sgt. Phillip Rugg, 26, recently had his left leg amputated below

the

> knee, caused by a grenade " that penetrated his tank-recovery vehicle March

> 22 outside Umm Qasr, nearly shearing his foot off. "

>

> Media coverage of the first few months of the invasion of Iraq highlighted

> the boom, bang and glitz. On May 1st, President Bush landed on the USS

> Lincoln and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, but since

> that over-hyped media event, U.S. troops continue to be killed and

wounded.

>

> " The wounded represent something that we'd really not rather have to deal

> with, " Todd Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier, a GI rights advocacy

> organization, told me in a phone interview. " They leave a bad taste in our

> mouths. The fact that there's so many wounded clearly represents a failed

> policy and the media isn't all that interested in covering these stories. "

>

> " The American media is by and large controlled and dominated by

> corporations that line up politically with the Bush Administration, "

Ensign

> added. " They appear to be increasingly incapable of grappling with such a

> highly charged issue as the wounded. "

>

> On Aug. 8, MSNBC was " live " at Fort Stewart in Georgia to report on the

> homecoming from Iraq of several hundred troops from the 3rd Infantry

> Division: The 3rd I.D. has suffered more than 30 dead and over 100

wounded.

> As summer turns toward fall, most Americans are going about their

business,

> but as the AP's Manning pointed out, most of the wounded " will forever be

> affected physically and emotionally by their wounds. "

>

> The president has repeatedly visited with troops that have returned intact

> and he has issued statements honoring the dead, but he has not shown up at

> Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He has shown little inclination to pay

> much attention to the wounded whose problems will stretch on long after

> he's left the White House.

>

> Bill Berkowitz is a columnist at WorkingForChange.com.

>

> http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16767

>