Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Do We Care Yet?
According to a Gallup poll, 63% of americans still think Iraq was worth going to war over, but what was the threshold number for the number of injuries, we needed to suffer, before the average american starts to question our participation in the Iraq war? If it was 1000 wounded soldiers, we have passed that threshold. As of Sept 2, 2003, 1,124 soldiers have been wounded in action, and 284 died; statistically, the average american should now start caring more, right?
The U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries, only when one or more troops are killed, so the result is that many injuries go unreported. Central Command does keep a running total of the wounded, they just don't mention it very often. Probably because these figures are politically sensitive. By the way, it was Iraqi deaths they said they would not track. So don't get confused. We count our dead not their dead, we count our wounded, but we just don't mention it.
In World War II, 30.3 percent of soldiers died from their combat wounds. That percentage fell during the Korean War to 24.1 percent, and held steady through the Vietnam War (23.6 percent) and the Persian Gulf War (23.9 percent). But the number has declined sharply in Iraq, with 13.8 percent of battlefield wounds being fatal.
Giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began. More than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill. These "impaired" soldiers are not counted as "wounded", even though many of them are just as disabled as the "officially declared wounded soldiers".
The 459th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, is based at Andrews. They were called up for a year in April to run what is essentially a medical air terminal, the nation's hub, for war wounded from Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the hospital's commanding general, said there were only two days in July and four in August that the hospital did not admit soldiers injured in Iraq.
"The orthopedic surgeons are very busy, and the nursing services are very busy, both in the intensive care units and on the wards," he said, explaining that there have been five or six instances in recent months when all of the hospital's 40 intensive care beds have been filled -- mostly with battlefield wounded.
Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg." The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated, either in Iraq or at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where virtually all battlefield casualties are treated and stabilized.
High-tech body ceramic body armor, advanced radiological equipment, mobil Forward Surgical Teams, antibiotic beads that secrete highly concentrated medicine into wounds and genetically engineered bone morphogenetic proteins, which help heal bones without the need for bone grafts are keeping more seriously wounded soldiers alive than ever before. The work of highly educated, dedicated doctors, medics and nurses have made a significant difference to our wounded soldier's lives. Unfortunately, they are getting a lot of hands on experience piecing body parts together.
The survival rate can disguise the day-to-day danger level that coalition forces face in Iraq. Since most attention focuses on deaths, the higher numbers of wounded in Iraq have drawn relatively little attention The U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are now increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks, with almost 10 to 12 american troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action." Sooner or later someone is going to notice.
As of September 2, 2003, there are 1,124 wounded soldiers and 149 soldiers have died.
Does the number of wounded and dead american soldiers cause the average american to now care, or will they care when they can get past the want ad section of the paper?
Sources Cited:
Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page A01
Robert Schlesinger
Boston Globe
Mercury News
The U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries, only when one or more troops are killed, so the result is that many injuries go unreported. Central Command does keep a running total of the wounded, they just don't mention it very often. Probably because these figures are politically sensitive. By the way, it was Iraqi deaths they said they would not track. So don't get confused. We count our dead not their dead, we count our wounded, but we just don't mention it.
In World War II, 30.3 percent of soldiers died from their combat wounds. That percentage fell during the Korean War to 24.1 percent, and held steady through the Vietnam War (23.6 percent) and the Persian Gulf War (23.9 percent). But the number has declined sharply in Iraq, with 13.8 percent of battlefield wounds being fatal.
Giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began. More than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill. These "impaired" soldiers are not counted as "wounded", even though many of them are just as disabled as the "officially declared wounded soldiers".
The 459th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, is based at Andrews. They were called up for a year in April to run what is essentially a medical air terminal, the nation's hub, for war wounded from Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the hospital's commanding general, said there were only two days in July and four in August that the hospital did not admit soldiers injured in Iraq.
"The orthopedic surgeons are very busy, and the nursing services are very busy, both in the intensive care units and on the wards," he said, explaining that there have been five or six instances in recent months when all of the hospital's 40 intensive care beds have been filled -- mostly with battlefield wounded.
Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg." The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated, either in Iraq or at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where virtually all battlefield casualties are treated and stabilized.
High-tech body ceramic body armor, advanced radiological equipment, mobil Forward Surgical Teams, antibiotic beads that secrete highly concentrated medicine into wounds and genetically engineered bone morphogenetic proteins, which help heal bones without the need for bone grafts are keeping more seriously wounded soldiers alive than ever before. The work of highly educated, dedicated doctors, medics and nurses have made a significant difference to our wounded soldier's lives. Unfortunately, they are getting a lot of hands on experience piecing body parts together.
The survival rate can disguise the day-to-day danger level that coalition forces face in Iraq. Since most attention focuses on deaths, the higher numbers of wounded in Iraq have drawn relatively little attention The U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are now increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks, with almost 10 to 12 american troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action." Sooner or later someone is going to notice.
As of September 2, 2003, there are 1,124 wounded soldiers and 149 soldiers have died.
Does the number of wounded and dead american soldiers cause the average american to now care, or will they care when they can get past the want ad section of the paper?
Sources Cited:
Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page A01
Robert Schlesinger
Boston Globe
Mercury News
# posted by Thomas @ 4:11 AM 
