Jello wrote:
] janelane wrote:
] ] Jello wrote:
] ] ] 10,706 total U.S. casualties. Why don't we hear THIS
] ] ] number more?
] ]
] ] ...because you made it up?
] ]
] ] 1380 (coalition deaths) + 9236 (wounded US troups) = 10706
] ] [unit error]
] ]
] ] In the same vein as your comment, however, I have noticed a
] ] major increase in the number of human interest-related war
] ] stories in the news (e.g. this soldier died the same day his
]
] ] son was born, etc.).
] ]
] ] -janelane
]
] Okay, okay. Woops. But I didn't "make it up." A casualty
] includes a serious injury that takes a soldier out of combat.
] Dead + Injured = Casualties. It should have read 1,234 + 9236
] = 10,470 total U.S. casualties. That number is huge.
] Seems like it would be quoted.
]
] If a guy loses a leg, or takes schrapenel in the ass, or is
] blinded... isn't that as significant as a death? 10K lives
] seriously and horrendously altered is pretty damned
] significant. But its like only the dead count.

Again, you're a little off-target with your argument. Blindness (or any handicap) doesn't equate to DEATH. My great uncle was blind from birth and lived one of the most interesting lives of anyone I've ever known. He worked in a broom factory when he was a kid (in the 20's), he learned almost every popular dance from the 20's through the 60's, and he lived to be a blissful 86. Acidus can attest to the fact that I'm no buddy of blue-hairs, but you gotta give the guy some credit.

] I think its fucked up. Its like noone cares about the
] injured. They're just forgotten and left to the VA.

It is fucked up. It's fucked up that "Our Leader" uses those wounded individuals for photo-ops. It takes awhile for the way we conduct ourselves _during_ a war to catch up to the way we conduct ourselves _after_ a war. How many benefits were passed just to encourage the enlistment numbers? How many do you think will arise if Bush starts another 2 wars? I hope that, in the next administration, the horrors of war will be better dealt even while they are simultaneously being further obscured.

-janelane

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.
--Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus p151

RE: Casualties List at CNN.com