Medical personnel at Landstuhl dealing with stress of job

[lebkuchen]

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=26992


LANDSTUHL, Germany — After almost 20 years helping the wounded as a reservist, Capt. Rogelio Alonzo has developed a tolerance for seeing gruesome injuries.

But even his defenses break down sometimes, and he’s overcome with sympathy.

“I hate seeing the amputees,” said Alonzo, a nurse practitioner from Fullerton, Calif. “I sometimes have to turn away.”

[Warpy]

1. The injuries are even more horriffic than those from Vietnam

because trauma medicine has progressed enough to give us a survival rate of 6/7 instead of the 3/4 we saw in Vietnam. That means kids will be coming home with massive injuries and multiple amputations that would have killed them 35 years ago.

If we are going to send our healthy young adults off to face this, plus the emotional scarring, we should make damned sure there is no alternative.

My hope for the Bush junta is that each one of them is reincarnated as these maimed kids, one right after another.

My wish for this country is that Congress gets off it's fat, overfed, pampered collective arse and redefines the mission of our military as one of defense and ends these imperial wars of executive discretion forever.

[lebkuchen]

2. I can't understand this weird "love fest" the US public has w/ its troops

Americans say they "support the troops," but give little thought to sending them off to fight a bait 'n switch illegal war against another country that had done nothing to the US, resulting in nary a single WH promise of success realized, two soldiers killed every day on average, ten times that number injured...

This is the definition of "insanity."