Bush admin treatment of wounded vets - even Cher knew!

[Huckleman2000]

Frank Rich is a must-read today. Read here

Excerpt below:

The administration's enforcement of a prohibition on photographs of coffins returning from Iraq was the first policy manifestation of the hide-the-carnage strategy. It was complemented by the president's decision to break with precedent, set by Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter among others, and refuse to attend military funerals, lest he lend them a media spotlight. But Mark Benjamin, who has chronicled the mistreatment of Iraq war veterans since 2003, discovered an equally concerted effort to keep injured troops off camera. Mr. Benjamin wrote in Salon in 2005 that "flights carrying the wounded arrive in the United States only at night" and that both Walter Reed and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda barred the press "from seeing or photographing incoming patients."

A particularly vivid example of the extreme measures taken by the White House to cover up the war's devastation turned up in The Washington Post's Walter Reed exposé. Sgt. David Thomas, a Tennessee National Guard gunner with a Purple Heart and an amputated leg, found himself left off the guest list for a summer presidential ceremony honoring a fellow amputee after he said he would be wearing shorts, not pants, when occupying a front-row seat in camera range. Now we can fully appreciate that bizarre incident on C-Span in October 2003, when an anguished Cher, of all unlikely callers, phoned in to ask why administration officials, from the president down, were not being photographed with patients like those she had visited at Walter Reed. "I don't understand why these guys are so hidden," she said.

And watch Gen. Eaton lay it out without a smile:
Republican Congress worst thing to happen to Army and Marines

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Frank Rich is a must-read today. Read here

Excerpt below:


And watch Gen. Eaton lay it out without a smile:
Republican Congress worst thing to happen to Army and Marines

"...the Republican dominated Congress has absolutely been the worst thing that's happened to the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps." Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Guest]

"...the Republican dominated Congress has absolutely been the worst thing that's happened to the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps." Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton

Rumple Foreskin

Amazing.

And horrifying, too.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

But of course Bush wants to cover up how many American soldiers have been maimed or killed in Iraq - it's pretty hard to make poor high school drop-outs sign up to become soldiers if they are aware of how dangerous it actually is.

And how is he going to win any popularity points if people associate his politics with amputations and coffins?

 

[rgraham666]

Shrugs. I'm not surprised.

The current administration are spin doctors extraordinaire. They promised that the invasion of Iraq was going to be quick and clean.

Coffins and maimed veterans would prove otherwise.

 

[SlickTony]

But of course Bush wants to cover up how many American soldiers have been maimed or killed in Iraq - it's pretty hard to make poor high school drop-outs sign up to become soldiers if they are aware of how dangerous it actually is.

And how is he going to win any popularity points if people associate his politics with amputations and coffins?

Hitherto, the US armed forces didn't want to include high school dropouts, but now they're coming to it, because the whole organism is stretched as thin as a cheap trashbag with 2 weeks worth of kitchen garbage in it and it's getting damned hard to get people to join. A greater number of young people join the military because, living in towns which have been eviscerated by current economic trends, it's their best hope of being able to afford college and get a job.