American Dead and Wounded from the Iraq War
by paradox
If surfing a wave of truth has recently brought one to the tiny blogosphere beach of The Left Coaster or if, for whatever reason, one has not bookmarked her before, let me introduce you to one of the most eagerly watched and avidly read bloggers in the world: Riverbend.
She is a secular, educated, extremely literate Baghdad blogger who somehow has access to a networked computer and electricity in Baghdad. When she can she writes to her blog, just as she has since August 2003, electric text of truth frantically shared in a blogosphere starved for facts in a war started and stayed in for lies.
Her last post, just four days ago, is a heart wrenching search for what the actual Iraqi death count is from this disastrous war. American death has rained down a terrible toll on the Iraqi people—30,000, 200,000, 600,000 dead? Would knowing the precise number stop or somehow make up for the utter hell and mayhem we have created for the people of Iraq?
What of you, American? Do you know how many of your own have perished?
“And what about American military deaths? When will someone do a study on the actual number of those? If the Bush administration is lying so vehemently about the number of dead Iraqis, one can only imagine the extent of lying about dead Americans…”
We are no longer lied to, Riverbend, about the number of American deaths after a blogger, “elvis56,” teamed up with an amazing woman in California who meticulously counted every DOD death press release and kept a real number.
[Americans were being lied to by the corporate press in the Iraqi death count, for “accidental” deaths didn’t count. The DOD cannot lie about a death, but if no one does any real counting lying is easy, even about the death of our troops. Way to go, American “journalism” corps.]
No, the real lying about American dead is one of sick denial, initiated by our very own war felon president, who to this day has never, not once, gone to a funeral for a slain American soldier in the Iraq war. Coffins are not allowed to be seen coming home, and only rarely is a funeral shown—just a small snippet—on local TV. Faces of the dead flit briefly across some national newscasts, sickening in their pathetic, puny three second homage to a human life.
Then the corporate media instantly moves on—you want some antacid, a laugh or some sex with that, American? The dead fade in a mounting march of numerical text on remote computer screens, the searing pain of a human life lost robbed from us all, cloaked over in a saccharine blanket of commercialized denial. It’s manifestly shameful and revolting, Riverbend, but at least the denial fades a little more about the horror every day here, be assured of that.
If it’s possible to exist in a more disgusting, shameful state of willful denial then such a scenario exits with the American wounded. The ICC posts a count, but this tiny number could never begin to represent the truth of what it’s like to lose a leg or an arm, or to have one’s mind eaten alive by the horror of war.
Once in a great, great while a few images and stories of American wounded flit through the corporate press, but otherwise their story and truth is totally ignored. Worse, the war felons who run this war of course have no regard for human life, once you’re wounded in America they could care less. Veteran’s Administration budgets are cut, incredibly, and there is no planning to set up for the engulfing wave of wounded Americans who even now desperately need help.
That is the state of our lying about our deaths and wounded, Riverbend. To our great shame and horror the lies of why we needed preventive war are still spoken by Bush and Cheney, while our propaganda “journalism” corps just sits there.
We lost our way in a blizzard of lying and laziness, Riverbend, it’s the best way I know how to explain it. With the corporate media frantically lying and hiding the truth every day it’s hard for America to be honest, but at least the blogosphere is trying to change that. We won’t stop trying.