True Cost of War -- Staggering Number of Wounded Vets: "The Pentagon keeps two sets of books."

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Editor&Publisher/AP

Published: March 07, 2008

NEW YORK The number of wounded soldiers has become a hallmark of the nearly 5-year-old Iraq war, pointing to both the use of roadside bombs as the extremists' weapon of choice and advances in battlefield medicine to save lives. About 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality, compared with 2.6 per death in Vietnam and 2.8 in Korea. But with those saved soldiers comes a financial price — one veterans groups and others claim the government is unwilling to pay.

Those critics also say that the tens of thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq are part of a political numbers game, one they say undermines the system meant to care for them. The most frequently cited figure is the 29,320 soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of Thursday. But there have been 31,325 others treated for non-combat injuries and illness as of March 1.

"The Pentagon keeps two sets of books," said Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard and an expert on budgeting and public finance whose newly published book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, was co-authored with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. "It is important to understand the full number of casualties because the U.S. government is responsible for paying disability compensation and medical care for all our troops, regardless of how they were injured," Bilmes said.

Veterans Affairs predicts it will treat 330,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 — a 14 percent increase over the 2008 estimate of 263,000 — at a cost of nearly $1.3 billion. For the 2009 budget, the White House requested $93.7 billion for the VA, including $41.2 billion for medical care for all veterans — not just those from Iraq and Afghanistan. That's an increase of $2.3 billion over the current budget.

But critics say that is not enough for a system that has a backlog of about 400,000 pending medical claims and complaints, especially in mental health care. The VA "will not request enough resources to care for the troops — and in fact this is precisely what has happened in the past three years," said Bilmes....

Read more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003721852

[HowHasItComeToThis]

1. PRIVATIZATION IS THE MONSTER

WHEN WILL AMERICAN'S TAKE BACK THE MILITARY???????????????????

[seemslikeadream]

2. M-E-R-C-E-N-A-R-I-E-S

[fascisthunter]

4. PRIVATIZATION IS THE PROBLEM

it's a racket!!!!!

[Just-plain-Kathy]

5. The privatization of our military is another reason I fell out of love with Bill Clinton.

I know it was Cheney who first broke down our military and handed it over to Halliburton, but Bill kept it that way.

[L0oniX]

3. I hear that one set of the books is in the Cayman Islands.

:evilgrin:

[Deny and Shred]

6. And Bush and Cheney accuse others of not Supporting the Troops

The Dem candidate should shout this to the rooftops whenever McCane (intentionally misspelled)tries to play the 'Republicans are the support the troops party' motif.
You know he will, and he'll have no plausible response.

[SpiralHawk]

7. k & r

Commander AWOL & allied cabal of republicon cronies:
STOP LYING

[trusty elf]

8. makes my blood boil !

k&r

[geiger]

9. sorry, i dont even need to read any of this, even though I did

how many lives? how many families without a brother, sister, son or daaughter


it is truly disgusting.




Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) recently helped my mom (R) get her brother's purple heart and other commendations he earned getting killed on a Navy ship in WW2. It took that long....



Also, contact Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. He is also passionate aboout these issues.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

10. Private military + Public military X Economic draft =

Ethnic cleansing.

Causalities matter only
to a small circle of friends.

[mckara]

11. I Know We're Not Suppose to Hate, But...

As a service connected, permanently disabled veteran, I hold Bush, and his carpetbagging cohorts who looted the treasury for the last 7 years, in the highest, most vile form of contempt that is humanly possible. They turned their backs on the nation's veterans and funneled money that should have gone to the Department of Veterans Affairs into the coffers of their corrupt cronies. Bush has betrayed all of us with his shameful disregard of the public trust and his despicable performance as chief executive. The entire republican party has been complicit in denying funding for veterans' programs, which slowly destroyed the lives of service personnel who depended on government services that were guaranteed as a condition of service. The right's breach of faith with veterans, and all other Americans, has been cynical and deliberate. We should round up the entire right-wing, and send them to Guantanamo, where they can await trials for crimes against humanity! :patriot:

[DeepModem Mom]

13. Thank you, mckara, for this heartfelt post, and for your service --

:patriot:

[crimsonblue]

12. Umm, the wounded number would naturally be higher these days...

Keep in mind that this ratio by no means that more troops are getting injured now compared to Vietnam, but rather that there are fewer deaths and more woudns can successfully be treated nowadays. Think of it this way: Medicine and battlefield trauma treatment has advanced steadily over the past few decades. Nowadays, we have (essentially) full fledged surgery centers in Iraq that can handle most of the injuries that come their way, or atleast stabilize the patient for transport to military bases elseware (such as the one in Germany, which has a 24 on call emergency surgery hospital).. Compare that to Vietnam, which was one big clusterfuck. As we get better at treating wounds, we will save more patients, and thus death rates will go down. If you take a look at the outcome of wounds in Vietnam versus the prognosis for current soldiers that are wounded, you will see that across the board, we are better equiped at treating people now. The medical quality in Iraq is one of the few things we don't have to try and hide. it is too bad, however, that many of the soldiers could get better treatment in Iraq than they could at Walter Reed.

[fed-up]

14. sounds familiar "What you have are two sets of books," said Paul Sullivan (VCS)on DoD & injured vets

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2910973&page=1

"What you have are two sets of books," said Paul Sullivan, a spokesman for Veterans for America. (now with Veterans for Common Sense)


"The Department Of Defense saying that there's 23,000 wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Department Of Veterans Affairs is actually treating 205,000 veterans from these two wars," Sullivan said.


The VA contends that the 205,000 is for treating all veterans, including the standard care that returning soldiers are allowed to receive for life.


However, by its estimates, 73,000 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered from some kind of brain injury or mental disorder.


It is an unforeseen cost of war that has overburdened the VA system, according to recent reports in Newsweek and congressional hearings on the subject. Veterans seeking treatment face red tape, weeks of waiting, and often to have to pay for outside experts in order to have their disability claims processed.

[DeepModem Mom]

15. Thanks for this additional info, fed-up! nt