Army deployed seriously injured troops

[ProSense]

Army deployed seriously injured troops

Soldiers on crutches and canes were sent to a main desert camp used for Iraq training. Military experts say the Army was pumping up manpower statistics to show a brigade was battle ready.
By Mark Benjamin

Mar. 26, 2007 | Last November, Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, a communications specialist with a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, had surgery on an ankle he had injured during physical training. After the surgery, doctors put his leg in a cast, and he was supposed to start physical therapy when that cast came off six weeks later.

But two days after his cast was removed, Army commanders decided it was more important to send him to a training site in a remote desert rather than let him stay at Fort Benning, Ga., to rehabilitate. In January, Hernandez was shipped to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., where his unit, the 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, was conducting a month of training in anticipation of leaving for Iraq in March.

Hernandez says he was in no shape to train for war so soon after his injury. "I could not walk," he told Salon in an interview. He said he was amazed when he learned he was being sent to California. "Did they not realize that I'm hurt and I needed this physical therapy?" he remembered thinking. "I was told by my doctor and my physical therapist that this was crazy."

Hernandez had served two tours in Iraq, where he helped maintain communications gear in the unit's armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles. But he could not participate in war maneuvers conducted on a 1,000-square-mile mock battlefield located in the harsh Mojave Desert. Instead, when he got to California, he was led to a large tent where he would be housed. He was shocked by what he saw inside: There were dozens of other hurt soldiers. Some were on crutches, and others had arms in slings. Some had debilitating back injuries. And nearby was another tent, housing female soldiers with health issues ranging from injuries to pregnancy.

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[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. dkos going ballistic

This is pretty sad, frightening, and all too typical of this administration.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/26/144213/835

[Karenina]

2. Hey, why not? Kill 'em off!!

Then you needn't worry about health care costs!

[niallmac]

3. Resist the temptation to pummel the proles.

The military exists to obey the supreme commander who is assumed to act in the best
interests of the country. It is not the duty of the military to discern that the Commander
In Chief is acting in the interests of the corporate moguls at the expense of the very
families that nurtured our soldiers.

The VA administration does what it can with what it has.

Neither the military nor the VA should suffer the stones of
public scorn.

The crowd, if it ever forms, need focus upon the center of power.
Those we elected to represent this once great democracy must be
made accountable under bright lights in front of erudite informed
and socially responsible inquisitors.

This idiocracy has to save itself.