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Back From Iraq: Bob Woodruff Reports

Just saw this report on ABC. As you may know, Bob Woodruff, former nightly co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, was injured in January of last year when, reporting from Iraq, an IED went off near the tank he was a passenger in. He suffered a major brain injury and went through months of rehabilitation. He was able to regain his powers of speech, cognition, motion, and generally is back to a place near to where he was before the incident.

He's one lucky man.

Woodruff's ordeal was updated during the first part of the show, but a tad more than half of the production was devoted to the extent and degree of severe brain injuries suffered by American soldiers in Iraq. One of the contentions in the documentary is that a lot of the information regarding the number of brain injuries and injuries in general of Iraq War veterans has not been released due to the possible reaction of the American public. There is also a dispute over the number of brain injuries as the Veterans Administration does not list them under their own category. (Click here and scroll down for a Powerpoint on injuries of American soldiers in Iraq.) National security may also play a part in the media's silence about the number of overall injuries from the war. This does begin to address the issue of whether the Bush Administration purposefully obscures or fudges these numbers for their own benefit.

Woodruff spoke with or met some of those who suffered the same type of severe injury to the brain as he did, most of whom have not made the healing leap that Woodruff has over the last year and two months.

Paul Reickhoff was inviewed for the production. I cried for 45 minutes. I hope this program helps bring to light the medical care and attention being paid to American soldiers. Woodruff's report and comes pretty close in timing to the devastating story from the Washington Post on conditions at Walter Reed Hospital (though reports on the hospital and general V.A. conditions and lack of readiness to prepare for soldier/patient homecomings from Salon.com (subscription or view ad) appeared as early as 2005). I also hope it brings to light that there is a war actually going on. Sometimes, I don't know if we are aware of the war except for the 'sis-boom-rah' and "go team USA" quality of it all or if we hear about it over the back and forth verbal slinging Americans are doing in regards to it.

The Woodruff Family has established the "Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury." The website has information regarding the Fund. ABC also has a website with collections of clips entitled, "The Home Front" which "takes an in-depth look at the war's wounded and the challenges they face once they leave the battlefield and return home."

News to America: It's a Civil War

If this is not a civil war, Wolf, I don't want to see one when it comes.
-- CNN Correspondent Michael Ware in Baghdad to the Situation Room's Wolf Blitzer.
Today's news has several stories on whether what's happening in Iraq can now be called a Civil War. News Flash, Newsmedia: This question of "Is Iraq a civil war," was predicted for Iraq in 2004. I guess now that the violence has reached a point today were NBC can declare 'officially' that "Civil War" is the correct term for what's happening in Iraq, we can all freaking agree that it's a Civil War! Whooboy, thanks for that clarification, you news reporting, vanilla ice cream brain frozen media numbnuts, because I thought for the past few years that I was just going out of my fucking mind, cause to me, it looked like a Civil War a while ago. Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster in the beer mountain firmament, who in their right mind COULD NOT THINK A CIVIL WAR WAS A'COMING NOT TO MENTION, ALREADY HERE?!?

Jiminy freaking cricket!
Jumping jehosophat!

Ack.

I guess now we can 'safely' discuss the facts of this war.

The facts as I personally see them are:
Fact #1: We started this Civil War.
Fact #2: We started this fucking Civil War because our leaders are incompetent boobs who lied to us and adeptly went about this war to help their bottom line.
Fact #3: It's a Civil War. End of story. Move on.
Fact #4: We Americans, as a unified nation (some fucking how) have got to get off of our asses and really tackle the problem of Iraq. Together.
Fact #5: Unfortunately, we have no fucking clue what to do to fix the problem.
Fact #6: We're all fucked.

OK, there are some things we can do to fix Fact #5:
1. Get out of Iraq. I don't know what's going to happen to the people of Iraq. I do care about what happens to the people of Iraq. I care about what happens to our men and women there as well. I know that us staying there is not the solution and is only making the problem worse.
2. Go back to the drawing board. Go back to the place where we dropped the ball first: Afghanistan. Shore that up now.
3. Start talking to not only the Israelis, but the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Russians (and shall I add, tell them to stop killing journalists and ex-spies), the Saudis, the Koreans, the wooly space monsters. Talk to anyone about anything. Talk about the weather, for all I care, just start talking.
4. Start using diplomacy. God, I wish Colin Powell were at least still Secretary of State. Condi is too contaminated to be affective anymore. Powell still has some modicum of respect in the world, if only an iota.
5. Smack the American people up side the head to get them involved in this war thing. How do you do that? The draft legislation that Rep. Charles Rangel, of New York, talks about might be one thing to do, but another way is to actually have an administration that will stop using bullheaded rhetoric laced with Christian eschatology. Lou Dobbs tonight asked three former military leaders what they thought our biggest mistakes have been in Iraq. Retired General Bernard Trainor said, "We have failed to mobilize the Nation." To do what, I don't know, but it's better than not even knowing we are at war.

Here's some more coherent things we can do, as suggested by this 'gold-leafed' er, "blue ribbon" (whatever) panel, the Iraq Study Group.

Other that, I got nothing. I'm willing to put my head together with the rest of the Nation to figure this crap out. Fact #6, though, is that we're still all fucked. It's mindboggling. But at least we now know it's a freaking Civil War.


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