Wounded deserted at Home. Hospitals crowded understaffed, no news media

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15577

Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
09.05.03

Wounded in Iraq, deserted at home

U.S. wounded are airlifted to overcrowded and understaffed hospitals and left out of media's war coverage



More than thirty satellite trucks and nearly a hundred reporters hunkered down outside the Eagle County (Colorado) courthouse on Wednesday August 6th waiting to get a glimpse of Los Angeles Laker basketball star Kobe Bryant entering the courtroom for a scheduled ten-minute appearance. Most of the major television networks and cable news and sports networks had reporters and camera crews at the scene. Across the country, where plane loads of wounded soldiers are airlifted back to the states, unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base, and sent off to area hospitals, there are no hordes of television cameras recording these tragic trips off the tarmac.
In a summer marked by the media's focus on the Bryant sex case, the entrance of Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) into California's recall election, the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons and the hunt for their father, little attention has been paid to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and stuffed into wards at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the nation's biggest military hospital, and other facilities.

There are no pictures of wounded soldiers undergoing painful and protracted physical rehabilitation. There are no visuals of worried families waiting for news of their sons or daughters.
What is it about the wounded that makes us uncomfortable? Why have they been left out of the coverage of the war by the broadcast media?

...skip....

"There have been no feature news stories on television focusing on the wounded," Liz Swasey, director of communications at the Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative media watchdog group, told me in a telephone interview. "While there have been numerous reports of soldiers getting wounded, there have been no interviews from hospital bed sides," she pointed out. The Alexandria, Va.-based MRC, founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bezel III, monitors all major nationally televised and print news broadcasts and maintains "the nation's largest video news archive," Swasey said.

"The war was televised and sold as a sanitized war with minimal US casualties," said John Stauber, co-author of the recently released book, "The Weapons of Mass Deception," in an email exchange. "Showing wounded soldiers and interviewing their families could be disastrous PR for Bush's war.

more............

[LittleApple81]

1. But..but...Bush* is visiting the hospital next week?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=98331#98347
see reply #3

I wonder what will be allowed to be filmed when he does that.

[ginantonic40]

4. I'm sure the psych profiles are being studied as we speak

in order to avoid any embarrassing exchanges. I'm sure there's a few of the wounded that would just love to have opportunity to give Bush a salute of a certain kind.

[Serial Mom]

2. how sad

the tears that flow for these young people are almost filled with as much sadness as for those who don't come home.

I really can't believe what has happened to our country in the past 34 months! How can so much change occur without notice!! How can people not inform themselves as to what kind of basta#ds run this country now. The media is almost at fault as much to for focusing on what the misadministration wants them to - and for not having any journalistic fortitude to do INVESTIGATIVE reporting.

I am :mad:

[DuctapeFatwa]

3. Journalists who displease the regime are subject to seizure

and imprisonment. In another year or so, it'll be the new Pullitzer Prize.

[gratuitous]

5. Why do those people hate America so much?

But no, lying in hospital beds, recovering from noble wounds sustained in Operating Enduring Poll Numbers, some of these, these, malcontents and ingrates, insist on trying to tarnish our great and glorious leader, George W. Bush, annointed by God and appointed by the Supreme Court.

Why don't they just shut up and support the unwounded troops? They're back in the U.S., all safe and secure in their air-conditioned hospital rooms, while their comrades in arms swelter in the desert heat, protecting them and giving them their freedom, which they use to bad mouth the Commander in Chief. Sickening. These traitors should be quick-marched (or quick-wheeled) out to the hospital courtyard, lined up against the wall, given one chance to plead for their lives, then summarily executed! And even that's too good for them!

{Golly, I'd like to think I'm joking, but you can just about bet you're going to see this or something similar in about two weeks, can't you? Any bets on who will say it first? "Chickenhawk" Charlie Daniels? Rush? Seanie? Tucker?}

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

6. bump, for the unreported wounded soldiers

.

[veracity]

7. Here's why....

http://tvnewslies.org/html/court_jesters.html

Read and rebel....