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 12 Jan 2009 @ 22:33
Israel prepares to escalate its war on Gaza
By Peter Symonds
12 January 2009
As the Palestinian death toll climbed to 869 on Sunday, the Israeli military was poised to launch a major escalation of its one-sided war against Gaza. The third phase—following the aerial bombardment and the initial ground invasion—involves an all-out assault on the densely populated Gaza City, home to more than 400,000 people.
Early yesterday morning, the Israeli army advanced into Gaza City from three sides. Fierce fighting erupted in the southwestern district of Sheik al-Ajlin as Israeli troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, battled Hamas militiamen armed with rifles and mortars. Israeli forces withdrew after several hours of what appeared to be a probing operation in preparation for a full-scale attack on the city.
The fighting sent a new flood of people fleeing their homes in search of refuge. The Israeli military dropped leaflets on Saturday over Gaza City and Rafah warning that its forces would escalate operations in the Gaza Strip and to stay away from Hamas. But in Gaza, there is no safe place to go. Residential blocks, shelters and mosques have all been targetted. On January 6, Israeli shells killed at least 40 people, including women and children, sheltering in a UN-run refuge at the al-Fakhora school.
Further Israeli atrocities took place during the weekend. On Saturday, at least seven members of the Abed Rabbo clan were killed when their grocery store in a village just east of the Jabaliya refugee camp was shelled. Ambulance driver Zaid Barquouni told the Los Angeles Times that neighbours told him that the shelling had come from an Israeli tank several blocks away.
According to the Associated Press, four members of one family died when a tank shell hit their home near Gaza City. By midday yesterday, at least 20 people had been killed. As the death toll climbed over 860, health authorities in Gaza reported that the victims included 270 children, 93 women and 12 paramedics. The World Health Organisation put the casualties among medical staff even higher—at 21 killed, 30 injured—and the number of ambulances hit by Israeli fire at 11.
Fresh allegations surfaced over the weekend of the Israeli military's use of white phosphorus in breach of international humanitarian law. Palestinian medics told the BBC that phosphorus shells had been fired at Khouza, killing a woman and injuring at least 60 people. "These people were burned over their bodies in a way that can only be caused by white phosphorus," Dr Yousef Abu Rish said.
The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement on Saturday condemning the Israeli military's use of white phosphorus as illegal. "White phosphorus can burn down houses and cause horrific burns when it touches the skin," senior HRW analyst Marc Garlasco said. "Israel should not use it in Gaza's densely populated areas."
While Israeli authorities deny breaking international law, the use of white phosphorus is only permitted under international law as a smokescreen, not as a weapon of war or in civilian areas. In the crowded conditions of Gaza, death and injuries are all but inevitable. As the HRW statement pointed out, the danger has been greatly amplified by the technique of air-bursting shells that send out scores of phosphorus wafers over wide areas.
The humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip is worsening. The UN estimates that two thirds of the 1.5 million people are without electricity and half have no running water. The British-based Independent pointed out that a three-hour pause in the fighting on Saturday was insufficient to allow aid groups to distribute food, and medics to reach casualties. Salam Kanaan of Save the Children said that in previous lulls the agency had reached just 9,500 people out of the 150,000 people it served.
Conditions in hospitals are appalling. At Shifa hospital, Gaza's largest, about 70 patients in the intensive care unit only survive because of four electricity generators. The hospital itself has been without power for the past seven days because Gaza's only power plant has stopped functioning due to the lack of fuel. "How terrible it would be if our patients survive the attacks and then die because of the lack of electricity," the hospital's director, Dr Hassan Khalaf, told the Independent.
Israel bluntly rejected last Friday's UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, declaring it to be "unworkable" because it failed to meet Israeli demands to seal the border between Egypt and Gaza and prevent the firing of rockets into Israeli territory.
Prior to a cabinet meeting yesterday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that Israel was nearing its goals. What was under discussion, however, was not an end to the war, but its further escalation. The only hesitation in launching "phase three" of the operation—an assault on Gaza City—is the potential for heavy Israeli military casualties in street fighting, which could provoke opposition in Israel. The Israeli death toll since December 27 is just 13—nine soldiers and four civilians.
Any Israeli invasion of Gaza City would require the deployment of tens of thousands of reservists who were called up for active service in the first days of the war. In another indication that troops will be sent into Gaza City, the Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday that Israeli reservists began entering Gaza for the first time.
Israel's escalation is being encouraged by the support of the US as well as the complicity of the European powers and the venal Middle Eastern regimes. In a vote last Friday, the US House of Representatives passed a motion by 390 to 5 expressing "vigorous support and unwavering commitment" for Israel and repeating the lie that Israel was waging a war of "self-defence". A similar motion previously passed the Senate unanimously.
Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on countries around the world to "lay blame both for breaking the ‘calm' and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas". Israel's criminal war against the largely defenceless population of Gaza was, however, planned well in advance. Hamas's firing of rockets was the pretext for an offensive aimed at imposing Israeli control in Gaza and bolstering its strategic position throughout the Middle East.
The European powers and Middle Eastern regimes have supported talks being held in Egypt on a French-Egyptian plan for a ceasefire. Like the US, the proposal implicitly blames Hamas for the war and ensures that all of Israel's demands are met, for an end to rocket attacks and to cross-border smuggling via Egypt. Israel has called for the presence of international monitors along the border, which Egypt to date has refused.
If talks fail, Israeli officials told the New York Times that it was likely that the "third phase" of the war would begin. As well as occupying Gaza City, Israeli troops would seize a strip of land at least 500 metres wide inside Egypt—an act of war that threatens a wider conflict. Israeli war planes have been intensively bombing the border in a bid to destroy cross-border tunnels and, in doing so, frequently infringing Egyptian air space. Yesterday, Israeli air strikes near the Rafah border crossing wounded three Egyptian policemen, two seriously, as well as two children.
Sections of the political and military establishment are pressing for an even more aggressive approach to stamp Israeli control over Gaza. Retired general Avigdor BenGal told the Times: "We need to conquer the Gaza Strip and put the Hamas military and political leaders on a French ship to leave Gaza for good, just as we did with [former Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat in Beirut in 1982. We've already conquered a bigger Arab city than Gaza [namely, Beirut], our army is trained and fit for the mission. The politicians should give the order."
Ominously, unnamed Israeli officials have hinted to the media that the current military offensive potentially has a planned "phase four"—the full reoccupation of Gaza and the toppling of the Hamas regime. More >
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29 Dec 2008 @ 23:17
So many innocents are being killed in this massacre! The rockets that were targeted at Israel did not Kill even one Israeli and yet the massive attacks by Israel that are being conducted now, as we speak, is said to be in retalliation. Read on for an accurate report.......
Washington bears guilt for Gaza war crimes
29 December 2008
The Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime for which not only the government of Israel but also that of the United States bears full responsibility.
The relentless bombing campaign, which in its first 48 hours has left at least 300 dead and 1,000 wounded, is a deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians and an act of state terror. The toll of casualties, many of them women and children, is certain to rise. As Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz put it, "This is only the beginning."
The pretense that this assault is an act of retaliation for the recent scattered rocket attacks that have been carried out against Israeli territory from inside Gaza is preposterous. Israel, with the collaboration of Washington, has been preparing the current bombing campaign and threatened ground assault for months, under the cover of the supposed cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas-led administration.
"These people are nothing but thugs," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who insisted that Israel was only acting to "defend itself" against "terrorists."
This is the official story that is largely echoed by the mass media and endorsed by the leadership of the Democratic Party.
Few bother to point out that not a single Israeli was killed by the homemade rockets that supposedly justified Israel launching its Gaza bombardments and killing 300 (one Israeli died in a rocket attack afterwards.) Such a disproportionate response is hardly an aberration. During the last eight years, barely a score of Israelis have died in rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza. During the same period, Israeli forces have killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians.
Nor is there much concern over the fact that Israel chose to launch its bombing in the most crowded and desperately poor urban area on the face of the earth precisely at the hour that schoolchildren were making their way home. Under these conditions, ritualistic US statements urging Israel to "avoid civilian casualties" amount to mocking the victims.
Having maligned an entire people as "thugs," the White House has given the green light for a bloodbath. More importantly, it has provided the indispensable resources for carrying out this crime, assuring Israel more than $3 billion a year in US military aid and supplying the IDF with the deadly tools of its trade—F-16 fighter jets, Apache attack helicopters, TOW and Hellfire missiles and the fuel and spare parts needed to keep them in operation.
The dispatches from inside Gaza provide a graphic accounting of what Washington got for its arms and money.
Safa Joudeh, a freelance journalist in Gaza City, writes: "There were piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you looked at them you could see that a few of the young men were still alive, someone lifts a hand, and another raises his head. They probably died within moments because their bodies were burned, most had lost limbs, some of their guts were hanging out and they were all lying in pools of blood."
Ewa Jasiewicz reports from Gaza: "We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds."
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz carried a report from its correspondent on the scene: "Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial. A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent."
The New York Times, hardly known for its sympathy for the Palestinians, acknowledged: "Still, there was a shocking quality to Saturday's attacks, which began in broad daylight as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at the outdoor market, and children were emerging from school.
"The center of Gaza City was a scene of chaotic horror, with rubble everywhere, sirens wailing, and women shrieking as dozens of mutilated bodies were laid out on the pavement and in the lobby of Shifa Hospital so that family members could identify them. The dead included civilians, including several construction workers and at least two children in school uniforms."
This is not self-defense; it is premeditated mass murder. The aim of the "shock and awe" campaign, as the assault on Gaza is widely described in Israel, is similar to that conducted by the US against Iraq—regime change.
Neither the Zionist regime nor Washington accepted the victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian election—hailed by the Bush administration (before the results were known) as part of a flowering of democracy in the Middle East wrought by American militarism.
In response, the US and its Israeli ally did their best to provoke a Palestinian civil war and military coup and, when this proved ineffective in ousting Hamas from power in Gaza, subjected the territory's one-and-a-half million people to relentless collective punishment. They imposed a siege that choked off supplies of food, medicine, potable water and electricity, condemning masses of people to poverty, unemployment, hunger and disease. The present killing represents a qualitative escalation of this merciless policy of making life for the people of Gaza so intolerable that the Hamas regime would fall.
The New York Times Sunday gave a concise analysis of the real relationship between the Israeli blockade and the rocket attacks from Gaza. The siege, it stated, had led to "the near death of the Gazan economy," adding, "While enough food has gone in to avoid starvation, the level of suffering is very high and getting worse every week."
Hamas had entered a cease-fire with Israel in a bid to reopen trade and alleviate this suffering. While the rocket attacks, supposedly Israel's main concern, fell "dramatically in the fall to 15 to 20 a month from hundreds a month," the Times noted, "Israel said it would not permit trade to begin again because the rocket fire had not completely stopped..." It was this intransigence that led to the collapse of the Israeli-Hamas cease-fire.
From the outset, Israeli actions have been motivated not by concerns for security, but rather by political aims. In the first instance, there is the desire to oust the Hamas administration in Gaza. Also in play are the desires of the Zionist establishment and military to offset the humiliation they suffered in Lebanon in 2006.
For Washington, support for and direct complicity in Israeli war crimes is bound up with a wider strategic policy of creating a new order in the Middle East, one designed to assure undisputed US domination of the region and its oil wealth. Israel represents the junior partner in this bloody venture and is allowed to satisfy its aggressive appetites because they are seen as furthering US imperialist interests.
Regime change in Gaza is viewed by US policymakers as a steppingstone to similar changes elsewhere, particularly in Syria and Iran. Indeed, the unfolding events in Gaza foreshadow a broader intervention in the Middle East and the threat of a new war against Iran.
It is not, it must be noted, merely a question of the US and Israel. The assault on Gaza has enjoyed the direct or tacit support of the Arab bourgeois regimes, in the first instance that of Egypt, which has set up machineguns on its border with Gaza to shoot down fleeing Palestinians. The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas has likewise offered justifications for Israel's crimes.
The Bush administration has pursued its policy in the Middle East with relentless violence for the past eight years. There is no indication, however, that it will fundamentally change with the transfer of the White House to President-elect Barack Obama in less than a month.
Obama has maintained a discreet silence on Gaza, while consulting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from his vacation home in Hawaii. His aides have complacently insisted that there is "one president at a time" and it would be inappropriate for the advocate of "change we can believe in" to voice an opinion on the slaughter being carried out with US-supplied warplanes, bombs and missiles.
Elements of the Zionist establishment in Israel have voiced suspicion about Obama's policies, and there have been some suggestions that his approaching January 20 inauguration may have played a role in the timing of the Israeli assault.
It strains credulity, however, that Israel would have carried out its actions without prior consultations not only with the Bush administration, but with the Obama camp as well. Rather than trying to push through its Gaza attack out of fear of a less sympathetic environment in Washington after Obama enters the White House, it is far more likely that the Israeli government was doing Obama a favor by carrying out a crime that he supported before he had to take public responsibility for it.
The reality is that the Democratic president-elect has sworn to maintain US support for Israel and has repeatedly defended Israel's "right to self-defense," including during its criminal war against Lebanon in 2006 and in regard to its repeated attacks on Gaza. He has likewise promised to maintain the US pledge of $30 billion in arms aid to Israel over the next decade.
Those he has chosen as his top aides—the congressman and former Israeli citizen Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff and his former presidential rival Hillary Clinton as secretary of state—are known for having criticized the Bush administration for being insufficiently supportive of Israeli aggression.
During the election campaign last summer, Obama made a trip to the southern Israeli town of Sderot, which had been a target of rocket attacks from Gaza, to provide an explicit justification for the kind of assault now being waged.
"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that," Obama said during the visit. "And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." He uttered not a word of sympathy for the Palestinians and gave no indication of what actions he expected from parents in Gaza who have watched their children torn to pieces by US-supplied bombs and missiles.
Meanwhile, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issued a statement providing an explicit endorsement of the Israeli bombing campaign. "When Israel is attacked," she said, "the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally."
The response of Obama and the Democrats to the ongoing atrocity in Gaza represents a stark warning. Far from representing a last gasp of militarist aggression on the part of the lame duck Bush administration, the assault on Gaza is an indication of the shape of things to come.
The coming to office of the new Democratic administration will not spell an end to the crimes associated with US imperialism, but rather their continuation. Driven by the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, American militarism will play an ever more prominent role in Washington's desperate struggle against its rivals for the domination of dwindling markets and vital resources.
The struggle against war and the fight to hold accountable the authors of war crimes from Iraq to Gaza can be advanced only through the independent mobilization of the working class in a new mass political movement based upon a socialist program.
Bill Van Auken More >
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16 Nov 2007 @ 22:50
Subject: Salt Lake City mayor's astonishing address: "We won't take it anymore!" .
History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders - the leadership has to come from us. If we don't insist, if we don't persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy - and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration - and to candidates running for office - and to the world - that we support the status quo .
Democracy works for you if you work for democracy!
Salt Lake City Mayor says "We won't take it anymore!" October 27, 2007 City & County Building Salt Lake City, Utah
Address by Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah's entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: "You have failed us miserably and we won't take it any more."
While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss." "You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.
You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation's history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.
We are here to tell you: We won't take it any more!
You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation's treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false 'patriotism,' our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before. It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense - when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling - and disgraceful.
What part of "Thou shalt not kill" do you not understand? What part of the "Golden rule" do you not understand? What part of "be honest," "be responsible," and "be accountable" don't you understand? What part of "Blessed are the peacekeepers" do you not understand?
Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, 'We won't take it any more!' "
As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation's values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places - for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.
In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.
In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress's sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl- Lieberman amendment.
We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country - and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people - 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks - a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.
As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship -- as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths -- we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: "You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions."
But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say 'We won't take it any more.
Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what's right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part. Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction.
It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.
How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses. Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?
We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don't cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.
Let's awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: "We won't take it any more!"
I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say "No more" and mean it?
I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.
If we expect our nation's elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted - that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided,principled leadership.
The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won't let it go on one more day - that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation's reputation in the world.
Let us be unified in drawing the line - in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.
In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans - and as moral human beings - we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.
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23 Jun 2007 @ 20:33
Gov't struggles to cope with wounded Gis
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
More than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers or toes. More than 100 are blind. Dozens need tubes and machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries and mangled minds.
These are America's war wounded, a toll that has received less attention than the 3,500 troops killed in Iraq. Depending on how you count them, they number between 35,000 and 53,000.
More of them are coming home, with injuries of a scope and magnitude the government did not predict and is now struggling to treat.
"If we left Iraq tomorrow, we would have the legacy of all these people for many years to come," said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and an adviser to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. "The military simply wasn't prepared for its own success" at keeping severely wounded soldiers alive, he said.
Survival rates today are even higher than the record levels set early in the war, thanks to body armor and better care. For every American soldier or Marine killed in Iraq, 15 others have survived illness or injury there.
Unlike previous wars, few of them have been shot. The signature weapon of this war — the improvised explosive device, or IED — has left a signature wound: traumatic brain injury.
Soldiers hit in the head or knocked out by blasts — "getting your bell rung" is the military euphemism — sometimes have no visible wounds but a fog of war in their minds. They can be addled, irritable, depressed and unaware they are impaired.
Only an estimated 2,000 cases of brain injury have been treated, but doctors think many less obvious cases have gone undetected. One small study found that more than half of one group of wounded troops arriving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had brain injuries. Around the nation, a new effort is under way to check every returning man and woman for this possibility.
Some of those on active duty may have subtle brain damage that was missed when they were treated for more visible wounds. Half of those wounded in action returned to duty within 72 hours — before some brain injuries may have been apparent. The military just adopted new procedures to spot these cases, too.
Back home, concerns grow about care. The Walter Reed hospital scandal and problems with some VA nursing homes have led Republicans and Democrats to call for better care for this new crop of veterans.
A lucky few get Cadillac care at one of the VA's four polytrauma centers, where the most complex wounds are treated with state-of-the-art techniques and whiz-bang devices like "power knee" or "smart ankle" prosthetics. Others battle bureaucracy to see doctors or get basic benefits in less ideal settings.
Mental health problems loom large. More than a third of troops received psychological counseling shortly after returning from Iraq, and a third of those were diagnosed with a problem, a recent Pentagon study found. The government plans to add 200 psychologists and social workers to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues.
No one knows what the ultimate cost will be. Harvard University economist Linda Bilmes estimates the lifetime health-care tab for these troops will be $250 billion to $650 billion — a wide range but a huge sum no matter how you slice it.
Who are the wounded?
Lee Jones, 24, of Lumberton, N.C., was severely burned on the face, hands, feet and legs when his Humvee was hit with an IED two years ago. A partial amputee with speech and other problems from a severe brain injury, he now does work therapy delivering mail at a VA hospital and tries to re-establish life in a nearby apartment with a wife and baby daughter.
Marine Cpl. Joshua Pitcher, 22, from upstate New York, is a Purple Heart recipient who returned to Iraq after he was shot in 2005. Half of his skull was removed to allow his brain to swell as he now recovers from a brain injury and shrapnel wounds from a grenade blast in February.
Maj. Thomas Deierlein, 39, is a New York City marketing executive who served five years after graduating from West Point. Twelve years later, called up as a reservist, he nearly died of bullet wounds that shattered his pelvis, leaving him with a colostomy and learning to walk again.
Joseph "Jay" Briseno, 24, of Manassas Park, Va., was shot in the back of the neck by an Iraqi in the early months of the war. One of the most severely wounded, he is now a quadriplegic, on a breathing machine, blind and unable to speak, but aware of what has happened to him.
"The mistake in Vietnam was, we hid the injured away from folks so they didn't get to tell their stories. Now it's important that we let them tell their stories to the public," said Dr. Steven Scott, director of the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Tampa VA Medical Center in Florida.
Counting the wounded can be contentious. Earlier this year, the Department of Defense changed how it tallies war-related injuries and illness, dropping those not needing air transport to a military hospital from the bottom-line total.
Bilmes, the economist, thinks this is disingenuous.
"An accident that happens while they're there is a cost of war, particularly when you factor in the length of deployment" and injury-inducing conditions like very hot weather, carrying heavy packs, and more vehicle accidents because it is not safe to walk anywhere, she said.
As of June 2, 25,830 troops had been wounded in action. Of these, 7,675 needed airlifts to military hospitals and the rest were treated and remained in Iraq.
There were another 27,103 non-battle-related air transports. Of those, 7,188 had injuries. Most occurred from vehicle accidents, training or work-related accidents. Ten percent were sports injuries, said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, who tracks this information for the Defense Department.
Nearly 20,000 of these "non-hostile" airlifts were for illnesses or medical issues: general symptoms like fever or pain needing tests or evaluation; back problems; psychological problems adjusting to being in a war zone; "affective psychoses" (not able to function or care for themselves); neuroses; respiratory or chest symptoms; depression; head and neck problems (including traumatic brain injury); epilepsy; infections, and muscle pulls and strains.
"I don't want to try to say these are not war-related. Being in the military is a very physically demanding job," Kilpatrick said.
For stress-related problems, the military tries "three hots and a cot" — warm meals and a chance to sleep. Most of the time it works and troops return to their unit, Kilpatrick said.
Of the troops air evacuated to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, 20 percent return to Iraq and 80 percent go back to the United States for more care or disability discharge.
Of the half-million troops who have left active duty and are eligible for VA health care, about one-third have sought it. The most complicated cases end up at one of the four polytrauma centers, in Tampa, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; Palo Alto, Calif.; and Minneapolis.
These were formed after doctors realized they were missing problems — amputees who were confused and unable to put on their prosthetics because of undiagnosed brain injuries, and guys who could remember their therapy dog's name but not their doctor's, or who could carry on a conversation but not recall what they had for breakfast.
Troops at these hospitals have an average of six major impairments and 10 specialists treating them.
"The important thing to realize is you could have all of them at once" — trouble speaking, seeing, walking, hearing, etc., Scott said.
Most of these injuries are caused by IED blasts, which send a pressurized air wave through delicate tissues like the brain, sometimes send it smacking against the inside of the skull and shearing fragile nerve connections that control speech, vision, reasoning, memory and other functions. Lungs, eardrums, spinal cords — virtually anything — can be damaged by the pressure wave. Injuries also come from collapsing buildings, flying debris, heat, burns or inhaled gases and vapors.
"Many of these you can't see on an X-ray," such as glass shards that can cause internal bleeding, Scott said.
In prior wars, one of every five to seven troops surviving a war-related wound had a traumatic brain injury, the military estimates. It's much higher in this war.
A pilot project at Walter Reed in 2003 to screen 155 patients returning from Iraq found that 62 percent had a brain injury.
"This is a very rapidly evolving area as a disease," with no screening test, agreed-upon set of symptoms for diagnosis, or even a billing code, said Kilpatrick, the military doctor.
Much needs to be learned about how to treat these injuries, he said, but credited the military medical staff for having the chance.
"It's just amazing to me every day when I look at these numbers," he said. "The good news is that the majority of these people who become ill or injured ... are going to survive and are going to be able to return either to the military or to civilian life and be productive."
___
On the Net:
Government casualty data: [link]
State breakdowns: [link]
Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center: [link]
Harvard economist report: [link]
Department of Veterans Affairs: [link]
Department of Defense: [link]
More >
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26 Oct 2006 @ 19:34
Active-duty US troops voice opposition to the Iraq war
By Joanne Laurier
26 October 2006
More than 100 serving members of the US military have to date sent “Appeals for Redress” to members of Congress, urging “the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq.”
Under the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act, active-duty military, National Guard and reservists are allowed to file and send a protected communication to a member of Congress on any subject without reprisal.
The action represents the first time that serving military personnel are petitioning Congress to end the Iraq war. The organizations sponsoring the effort are Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace.
Until a few days ago, some 65 servicemen and servicewomen had sent appeals to Congress. The number of petitioners has now reached nearly 350, with more than 125 of them on active duty.
Under military regulations, service members can speak out only while off duty and out of uniform, making clear that they are not speaking for the military. In addition, they cannot say anything disrespectful about their commanders or the president.
Two active-duty servicemen have taken the risky step of publicly representing the campaign: Jonathan Hutto, a Navy seaman stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and Liam Madden, a Marine Corps sergeant in Quantico, Virginia. Madden spent six months in Iraq.
Hutto and Madden, as well as a female member of the military who remained anonymous, spoke at a media teleconference yesterday.
Hutto told the media that he had come up with the idea for the appeals drive in January 2006. While deployed in a ship off the coast of Iraq he read a copy of David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War.
The GI movement, explained Hutto, was comprised of “active-duty, sailors, marines and soldiers in the military during the Vietnam War who advocated and fought to end that war and bring the troops home.... By 1971, over 250,000 of these active-duty service people” had petitioned their political leaders.
Today’s appeal, said the sailor, states “that the Iraq war should come to an end and that we should end the occupation and bring the troops home.” He believes that the resources being spent on the war should be redirected to solving the economic and social problems at home.
Madden, 22, added: “I oppose the war in Iraq and I feel it is my duty not as a Marine but as an informed citizen to tell other service members that there’s a powerful tool available to them.... The real grievances are: why are we in Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are not found, if the links to Al Qaeda are not substantiated?
“If democracy is our goal, I believe we’re going about it all wrong and the occupation is perpetuating more violence. I think it’s the biggest destabilizing thing we can do in the Middle East. Furthermore, it’s costing way too many Iraqi civilian and service members’ lives.... The only people who benefit in my eyes—visibly see the benefit—are corporations, such as Halliburton....
“If people want to support the troops, then they should support our coming home.”
Commenting on the tremendous stress faced by military families over multiple redeployments, Madden asserted, “The real deal is that it’s an economic situation. People are staying [in the military] despite the hardship of getting deployed over and over and over again because it’s what’s best for their families and until there’s another viable source of income, they’re going to stay in the military.” He stated that fundamental to the appeal is that “people are getting harmed and lives are getting severely damaged because of this war.”
The servicewoman explained that “the reason I am calling anonymously is because of fear of reprisal for my involvement even though it is legal. Anyone who’s been involved in the military does know that there are informal means of punitive actions that circumvent the legal system, which are often used in different means to intimidate soldiers.”
Having recently returned from a year in Iraq, she described some of her experiences. “I’ve seen friends injured and I’ve been affected by the deaths within my brigade and unit.” Being in the crossfire of a civil war, she said, further added to the frustration that soldiers felt from risking their lives on a daily basis without really understanding the reason for the risk or possessing the ability to “question what’s going on in the [political and military] upper echelons.”
All three spoke about the pervasive opposition to the war within the ranks of the military. “I don’t think the American public realizes just how many soldiers and service members in general really do have reservations about the actions going on over there,” said the servicewoman. “Obviously fear is one of the main reasons that people are not stepping forward, but that does not preclude them from having these feelings. I start seeing momentum going forward and more and more soldiers coming out....
“Military service people are not supposed to organize groups so this [campaign] is just word of mouth. We’re not talking about mass phone calls or mass mailings. It’s one person talking to another—the snowball effect.”
Hutto revealed that of the 20 sailors he approached, all but one gave their support. This despite the fact that, as Madden asserted, “You’re told from the day you come into [the military] that you don’t have any rights. That the Constitution that you’re defending does not apply to you. It’s a culture [which stresses] that you don’t get engaged in the process, that you’re there to receive orders and get those orders done, that you don’t get engaged and don’t raise any views at all.”
He ended by stating that “what we’re doing is untraditional, unorthodox and unprecedented.”
See Also:
Brother of Pat Tillman denounces Iraq War and Bush administration
[24 October 2006]
Parents of soldier who refused deployment to Iraq speak in California
[7 October 2006]
The WSWS invites your comments.
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World Socialist Web Site
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