But then, see also this.
"It threw me up over my vehicle, over the HET and about 50 feet into the field on the left," says Schneider. "When I landed, the next HET in line had locked up their brakes to keep from rear ending the one that we hit. And when he came to rest, the first set of tires on his trailer were parked on my pelvis. And the second set had my lower leg wedged in it to the axle. I've been told a rough estimate of approximately 120,000 to 140,000 pounds."
Today, Schneider walks with a limp, on his artificial leg. But even though he was injured while on a mission in a war zone – and even though he’ll receive the same benefits as a soldier who’d been shot - he is not included in the Pentagon’s casualty count. Their official tally shows only deaths and wounded in action. It doesn't include "non-combat" injured, those whose injuries were not the result of enemy fire.
14 comments:
I hear there's a bill saying that if you come back still composed at least 51% of water by weight, they count you unharmed. Soon they'll only be sending back cyborgs, but at least the femborgs will be stacked.
The soldier goes on to say we should be committed to completing the task in Iraq. Did that not fit into your Bush is incompetent template?
Anonymous sequitur,
The point is how casualties are hidden from the public for political reasons, not whether this one individual wishes to return to Iraq.
Clearly that is YOUR point, Helmut. I'm not faulting your editorial considerations just pointing out what is missing as you assembly only those facts that support your more general point against this conflict.
Given the default position is to interpret different categories of casualties as a deliberate and cynical attempt at concealment rather than precision in indicating those caused directly by enemy action.
Lyndon Johnson once said something like this:
"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim."
I believe you are seeing what you want to see and relying on others to put it in a frame of reference that may not reflect reality.
You and your fellow progressives are so caught up with feelings of discontent connected to this President that you are setting aside the reality that is all around you.
No amount of pyschological jujitsu orchestrated by anti-democratic forces should shake us from our duty to protect the Iraqi people from thugs and bullies.
OK, that guy wants to return to Iraq because he believes in the mission. Fine.
Now, what do we say about the number of casualties in Iraq? Precisely what the post is about. That really has nothing to do with political persuasion. In fact, the title of the post is a number.
But you managed to turn it into a diatribe about progressives. Sounds to me like some self-reflection is in order for you.
As for what progressives think about Bush, obviously no one can speak for all progressives, although you may be able to.
I happen to truly dislike this president because of the results of ill-conceived policies for which Americans and many others in the world will pay for generations. That's not seeing what I want to see or some psychological tendency. It's based on an assessment of empirical reality you apparently wish to ignore. Psychiatrists often refer to this latter condition of ignoring empirical reality as a pathology.
I believe condition you might want to read up on is "projection". It seems the pathology here is your unreasoned hatred for the President.
I'd be happy to have conversation about reality and the shortcomings of our hapless Commander-In-Chief. I think your perceptions (and my own) are precisely the point. Given the same set of facts we come to differing conclusions. We both operate with many uninvestigated and unexamined pre-conceptions. That's why I offer truce and parley and invite discussion.
I'm genuinely interested in knowing how you can see things so differently. Without this understanding I cannot convey my concerns to you and have you process them into solutions that can go beyond our feeble understanding of the world around us.
I do not ask you to speak for anyone other than yourself. Although it might provide insight into the more general progressive mindset at some later date, I just wanted to converse with you.
Also on the subject of paying for generations, consider the butcher's bill paid for Wilson abandoning his principles at Versailles. A young Ho Chi Minh could speak volumes about it.
"Projection" is wrong - look it up. The pathology in question is, more precisely, paranoia. You have imagined a condition for someone you don't know. Accusing people you don't know (and who, by the way, do not use the term nor feel "hatred") of "__-hating" is a puerile baiting technique I have absolutely no patience for. Neither do I then have patience for the "I just want to talk and understand" once you've already laid down the flaming.
It's a truism that everyone operates under various assumptions and biases, etc. The difference is in better or worse reasoning based on better or worse observations of actual experience.
When I state something - say "25,000" casualties - and you accuse me of ignoring how one of them supports the president's war, you're saying something that is beside the point. Often this is an intentional red herring. I'm not sure it's that in your case.
When you turn a factual statement about the number of war casualties into a case of Bush-hating, you're not only passing judgment on someone you don't know, and not only applying your own wild value judgments out of someone else's confirmed claim of fact, you're also trying to start a fight.
If that's what you're after, you've picked the wrong person and the wrong place.
And then this claim... "I'm genuinely interested in knowing how you can see things so differently. Without this understanding I cannot convey my concerns to you and have you process them into solutions that can go beyond our feeble understanding of the world around us." Whew, professor! But, sorry, I'm not here to "have [me] process [your] concerns into solutions."
"duty to protect the Iraqi people from thugs and bullies." You accuse others of "setting aside reality"? Do you understand what a nationalist resistance is? Do you understand the concept of sectarian violence? Are the Mahdi Army thugs or Iraqis? Are the Sunni car bombers bullies? How would you tell them apart? Would our "task" there be done if it looked like Packistan or does it need to look (politically) like Iowa? If, through your design and implementation of strategy and tactics the (for the sake of argument we'll say people, though i believe it was oil wells) country you went to liberate ended up a failed state with all its structures and institutions collapsed, would that not demonstrate incompetence? I would have the same feeling about this "war" on thugs if only four people died and I would appreciate knowing exactly how many soldiers are killed or injured no matter the cause.
Who do you suggest we liberate next, anon, Venezuelans? Cubans? Nicarauguans? Iranians?
Helmut,
Actually I'm confident you are capable of a reasoned discussion once you set aside your emotional response. By the way, I was referring to the notion that you may be projecting your motivations on to me. But perhaps the function of this blog is to permit you to blow off steam in a supportive unreasoned environment where no one questions you. If that is the function of this blog then I DO apologize.
While you are perfectly welcome to take me to task for any slight you perceive, it might be more productive if you took the opportunity step me through your logic.
I also may be quite out of date on the criteria for flaming. I will however amend my staement from hate to "true dislike". However, other than questioning your motive for posting this what I am to believe is now "random" fact, what was the context you wanted this fact to be understood in? It wasn't overtly stated but given the content of your blog I think it is a fair assumption on my part that you feel it to be further evidence in support of your "true dislike" for our current president.
In any case, with possible exception of William Henry Harrison,each one of our presidents has left disaster in his wake. Wilson, Truman, FDR, Lincoln, Buchanan, Polk, Andrew AND Lyndon Johnson, JFK, Nixon, Reagan, Carter, Clinton to name a few.
It's a tough job that seldom presents the office holder with good alternatives.
Troutsky, (love that nick by the way very clever)
In answer to your question ideally the Mainland Chinese, the Iranians and the North Koreans will liberate themselves. I do not estimate the combat power of the U.S. to be sufficient to effect change in any of those countries.
The people of Venezeula, Nicaragua and Cuba are in no more immediate danger from their leaders than any other resident of Central and South America. Although Venezuela's oil wealth could eventually make it unresponsive to the people, I think there are better candidates for "liberation".
Syria, Palestine, Lebanon would likely benefit most from the etermination of Hamas. The shameful appropriation of land for Isreal in 1948 following on the heels of Zionist terror in the British Mandate of Palestine can hardly be erased even for Palestinians who know only refugee camps as home.
The ill-conceived UN notion of displacing another people, even for victims of the holocaust, cannot and should not be used as a license for further terror.
But the region of the world most in need of security is Africa. I know Darfur is in fashion right now so long as we take no actual action. Africa outside Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa seems to blow right by everyone. Because it has no impact on us other than some strategic minerals and a limited supply of oil, we permit massive suffering orders of magnitude worse than any other region in the world.
Were I the Planetary Emporer, the U.S. Armed Forces would be riding shotgun on a massive reconstruction effort that made each tribal region self-sustaining and removed from the shackles of political boundaries built to keep the peoples inside eternally at odds and unbalanced and open to bribery, manipulation, and genocide.
The Middle-East is a sideshow made large by our addiction to naturally occuring hydrocarbons which will at some point be insufficient for our needs, cause us to tolerate anti-democratic despots, and may even be impacting our climate in unpredictable ways.
For our national interests we should extract ourselves at the nearest opportunity that doesn't endanger the new democracy in Iraq. The Middle East in my view requires an Engineering Solution. As for the real estate they will have to discuss that issue among themsleves.
It may be worth getting a city or two of ours nuked just to be able to get up from that particular table.
The greatest concern I have is the next two critical decades in Chinese evolution to a market economy. At the moment things are proceeding as well as can be expected. As China begins to rightfully exercise its influence in the world, it would be nice to remain on good terms with them. The alternative is much more frightening than a century-long war with Islamo-fascism.
Gee, Helmut, I read your post and had no trouble understanding the point.
Perhaps I'm paying too much attention.
The minor point being made was clear enough. We are to ascribe some evil motive to keeping different categories of casualties and the it is necessarily concealment for poltical reasons though that an assumption not based on evidence such as a memo instructing only the reporting of casualties resulting from enemy action.
Does it then follow that trumpeting and bringing to light more inclusive figures might not also have political motivations as well? (In this case anti-administration motivations)
If in the first instance we can make this assumption without evidence is it not fair then to make the second assumption without benefit of evidence as well?
It goes without saying that all reasonable and well informed people consider the current White House a bunch of criminals guilty of acting in bad faith and desperately deserving of impeachment. Only a lazy or biased reader could understand helmut as having insinuated anything to the contrary. He's too good and careful a person. I hope that clarifies matters.
Murky - You need to get out more. Reasonable and well-informed people can almost certainly disagree on the relative criminality of this administration and there are quite a few who think impeachment is as much lunacy today as it was in the case of the former president.
I think it is clear that bias exists on both sides of this particular issue. There are some right-wing extremists calling for his impeachment based on the border and immigration issue just as there are on the left.
Because all the recent holders of the presidential office got there as the result of a plurality of voters rather than a majority, you have a substantial-sized, built-in opposition to anything a President wants to do for no other reason than a large number of people never wanted him there.
I think the critical issue with respect to our current president is the splintering of his base in advance of the 2008 elections. Much like the impeachment of Bill Clinton near the end of his second term, this round of impeachment talk is a supreme waste of energy.
Opponents of the president would be better-served by organizing around a candidate like Barak Obama who would have wide-spread appeal among both Democrats and Moderate Republicans.
You are correct that Helmut's pre-existing bias is evident in his selection of the casualty figure issue, just as I am pre-disposed to defend this president even when his weaknesses are manifestly obvious.
He was not "insinuating" anything contrary to the idea of impeachment, but given the context of your post it seems plain you did not mean to say that.
I have great respect for Helmut's motives. Given his beliefs it would be immoral not to speak out. Instead I question the beliefs themselves and am therefore encountering more emotion than substance. But it has been helpful to me to review the archives here for many of the press accounts that may have informed his opinions.
I'd prefer, however, to speak to Helmut in a more reasonable way, so I will refrain, for the time being from calling Bill Clinton the former rapist-in-chief. And hopefully he may respond in kind and set aside some of his own vitriol until I have a better understand of his views and their basis.
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