rs
Dagobah Resident
If you did not catch "To Iraq and Back" Bob Woodruff reports, I recommend going to:
http://abcnews.go.com/?lid=ABCCOMMenu&lpos=ABCNews
and watching the video on-line.
It is infuriating, shocking, disturbing and exhilarating. Bob Woodruff is the ABC anchor who was severely injured in an IED attack while reporting from Iraq. His own personal recovery is remarkable (thanks to tens of thousands of dollars of plastic surgery) and his stark view of the costs of this war should be enough to wake up the deepest sleeper. (Well, I can only hope...) At times it is tough to watch and I have to believe that the editors toned the imagery down considerably from what they *could* have shown. He remains seriously and permanently injured (with apparently half of his visual field gone) but in spite of it all does a credible job of bringing a network anchor focus to a largely ignored issue.
For example, did you know that the Veterans Administration is actually handling 200,000 Iraq war injuries when the Pentagon official tally is something like 24,000?
For example, many brain injuries occur with no obvious external indications. The overpressure wave from a large IED explosion literally rattles the brain around inside of your skull. One soldier who returned home spent 18 months trying to get the VA to finally agree that, yes, he really was suffering from a brain injury.
Unfortunately he does not even go near the "third rail" of battlefield injury, DU.
It is a reasonable investment of time.
http://abcnews.go.com/?lid=ABCCOMMenu&lpos=ABCNews
and watching the video on-line.
It is infuriating, shocking, disturbing and exhilarating. Bob Woodruff is the ABC anchor who was severely injured in an IED attack while reporting from Iraq. His own personal recovery is remarkable (thanks to tens of thousands of dollars of plastic surgery) and his stark view of the costs of this war should be enough to wake up the deepest sleeper. (Well, I can only hope...) At times it is tough to watch and I have to believe that the editors toned the imagery down considerably from what they *could* have shown. He remains seriously and permanently injured (with apparently half of his visual field gone) but in spite of it all does a credible job of bringing a network anchor focus to a largely ignored issue.
For example, did you know that the Veterans Administration is actually handling 200,000 Iraq war injuries when the Pentagon official tally is something like 24,000?
For example, many brain injuries occur with no obvious external indications. The overpressure wave from a large IED explosion literally rattles the brain around inside of your skull. One soldier who returned home spent 18 months trying to get the VA to finally agree that, yes, he really was suffering from a brain injury.
Unfortunately he does not even go near the "third rail" of battlefield injury, DU.
It is a reasonable investment of time.
