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Via: Daily Kos

When Wounded Vets Come Home

At that moment, Cynthia became one of a growing number of parents who are, by necessity, stepping back into the role of caregiver for their children who are returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating and often long-term injuries. According to officials from three national organizations—the Wounded Warrior Project, The Military Family Network,, and the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes— an estimated 10,000 recent veterans of these conflicts now depend on their parents for their care. Working unheralded, these parents have quit jobs, shelved retirement plans, and relocated so they can be with their injured sons and daughters. Many have become warriors themselves, fighting to make sure this new wave of injured veterans gets the medical care and rehabilitation it needs.
These parent caregivers, many of them boomers and some older, face a 21st-century challenge: their children are coming home in unprecedented numbers with injuries that would have been fatal during earlier conflicts. “This is a war of disability, not a war of deaths,” says former Army physician Ronald Glasser, M.D., author of Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq (George Braziller, 2006). “Its legacy is the orthopedics and neurology wards, not the cemetery.” Not only have better helmets and body armor saved lives, but battlefield medicine now borders on miraculous. Someone arriving at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, Iraq, has a 96 percent chance of survival. He or she can sometimes be stateside within 36 hours of the injury. As a result, there are just 6 deaths for every 100 injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared with 28 deaths per 100 in Vietnam, and 38 in World War II, according to Linda Bilmes, a researcher at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
If this survival rate is heartening, the flip side is that many of these injuries are fearsome and require extended and complicated care. Part of the reason is that the nature of warfare has changed: today’s troops face a constant threat of IEDs. When these makeshift bombs detonate, they throw off pressure waves so intense that bystanders’ brains literally bang around in their skulls. “These are enormous explosions,” says Glasser. “The physics are astonishing—they will turn over a 70-ton tank. Anyone caught in the blast wave is going to be in trouble.” Sometimes injured brain tissue swells so dramatically that part of the skull must be removed to let the brain expand.
As of April 29 the Pentagon counted 31,848 wounded service members in the current conflicts. Independent experts say that is a conservative figure. They estimate the number of brain injuries alone might total 320,000, or 20 percent of the 1.64 million who have served so far—a number that S. Ward Casscells, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, calls “plausible.” In addition to the physical injuries, there are thousands of cases of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Last year military screeners detected psychological symptoms in 31 percent of Marines, 38 percent of soldiers, and 49 percent of National Guardsmen returning from war.
For many of the newly injured, most in their late teens and 20s, the logical direction to turn for care is toward Mom and Dad. Many of the wounded are still single. Others are married to partners who can’t or don’t want to care for gravely injured spouses. As a result, across the nation, parents end up scrubbing burn wounds, suctioning tracheostomy tubes, and bathing their adult children. They assist with physical and occupational therapy. They fight for benefits. They deal with mental health crises and help children who have brain injuries to relearn skills. They drive back and forth to Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals for outpatient appointments. In short, they put their own lives on hold.

Geneva Convention Overboard!!!

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Digby has some great analysis here


And a TPM Reader provokes thought in this piece

Scott McClellan in his book, "What Happened" taught us about this President propaganda to mislead the public. The DoD emails show the President was involved with propaganda. As tools of the President, Department of Defense public affairs officers have shown themselves
incapable of removing themselves from illegal propaganda directed at
American civilians.

Today is no exception.

Foreign media report there are questions via TPMM about prisoners being held on American naval vessels. The American Department of Defense failed to adequately deny the allegations. Notice the DoD public affairs officer parsing:

There are no detention facilities on any ships

Notice they're talking about facilities, but fail to mention people. This DoD public affairs propaganda (McClellan's word) does not exclude the possibility there are prisoners on ships; or that there were and remain detention chambers inside ships.

A detention facility is not the same as a holding cell used for interrogations. By definition, a "detention facility" is used to detain prisoners; while an interrogation chamber is not a facility nor is it used primarily to detain, but to gather intelligence.

DoD must explain:...

And the Land of the Freeeeee is the HOme of the JAILED!!! totally stolen from this commenter.

So several Native Americans are participating in an initiative called the Longest Walk:

1978 - - today

this walk is a commemoration of the "Longest Walk" in 1978. A spiritual walk that went across the nation to stop some vicious anti-Indian bills which were before Congress. That walk was successful and did stop those particular bills but the underlying problems have grown worse and worse. Two or three Indian reservations vie for the ugly statistic of being America's poorest county. During the great depression the US approached 25% unemployed and it was a national disaster for a decade. It threatened american democracy and scarred a generation of Americans. The unemployment on our reservations is 75% and more and it only gets worse. 75%! This has gone on for several generations with no end in sight. How would your society look with 75% unemployed? Ours is hurting through and through and stays on the verge of collapse.

The peaceful walk to commemorate a past triumph and bring attention to "America's Shame" existing on our homelands has struggled hard to defy the odds and WALK across America.

And what, do you suppose, was the response of Ohio Police when said Native Americans came peacefully walking through their town?

COLUMBUS Ohio – Unprovoked Columbus, Ohio police, attacked Long Walkers, by first pointing a taser at the head of Michael Lane and then forcing Luv the Mezenger to the ground and handcuffing him.

The Longest Walk Northern Route was walking this prayer through Columbus on Monday, June 2, when squad cars and arrest wagons arrived. Without discussion of the purpose of the prayer walk, or even verify that the Ohio Department of Transportation had been notified of the prayer walk, police attacked the walkers.

No, I am not joking. Read the rage inducing diary here



FDR's 100 days VS a potential Obama's first 100 days in Office

Seventy-five years ago March 4, as I wrote here on the anniversary three months ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated a period of intense activity that would afterwards set the standard – never again attained – for the successful beginning of a President’s term of office. It was subsequently called the "100 Days."
Of late, when discussion is not focused on who should or should not chosen for Vice President or the new Cabinet, some people have been talking about Senator - or, rather, President - Obama’s first hundred days, offering prescriptions for what he should try to accomplish and what tone he should try to establish during that brief window of opportunity. In the case of former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson and Libertarian talk-show host Neil Boortz, the talk is about the potential for early missteps that could plague him for the rest of his Presidency.
If he wins in November, should President Obama try to discard the whole concept of the 100 Days, which originally was a mere accident? Is it now an obstacle to good governance? And if so, is it even possible to circumvent the inevitable media frenzy surrounding something so deeply entrenched in our political psyche?

Why, if you think harassment is flattering, you're stupid

Strange men do not hoot at, yell at, or leer at you because they think you’re hot. They do those things because they think you’re vulnerable and needy. If you think they want you sexually, you need some serious education on power psychology. They want to feel like they’re on top of you, but not in the way you imagine.

When you see someone attractive, it’s natural to look. But not to stare - there are rules against staring throughout the animal kingdom. And you don’t talk unless the person you’re looking at says something to you first, because when you get caught looking, it would be aggressive to follow that up with verbalization. This is something your cat understands, for pete’s sake. Stop reading Cosmopolitan and get in touch with your animal instincts. Discrete looks are flattering because they reflect only a natural aesthetic reaction. Leering - staring overtly at someone who’s watching you stare - signals aggression. Uninvited verbalizations are also aggressive - that’s why when the salesman at the kiosk leaps out to ask you if you ever get split ends, you feel pressured and cornered (until you realize you’re entitled to tell them to back off and leave you alone because they started the hostility and you’re only responding in kind).

See also this comment, which wins the internetz, hands-down, in my opinion.

Comments

[doktor-x.livejournal.com]

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu

The irony of using a ship named the Bataan in Bush’s torture effort is pretty amazing, as its name invokes memories of Japanese inhumanity and blatant war crimes during WWII…

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Same thing a commenter said on Digby. Irony is apparently not something that is recognized by Republicans.