SOLDIERS’ NIGHTMARES NEVER REPORTED BY US MEDIA

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Untold Horror Story of Wounded American Soldiers by Journalist Ann Jones – new book: “How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars – The Untold Story” – Interviewed by JAISAL NOOR, The Real News Network.

JONES: Afghanistan since 2002 = I realized how clueless the military really was about Afghanistan and what the country and the culture was all about.

I was thrust into a whole battalion of soldiers. And I could see them kind of disintegrating on the spot, and many were killed and wounded while I was there. I decided to find out what happened to those that would go off in a medical evacuation helicopter and never be seen again on the base.

US papers report stories of soldiers making miraculous recoveries = skiing on prosthetic legs = Made it all sound like such a relatively small sacrifice.

Embedded with a medevac unit of the military known as Mortuary Affairs = Dead are kept hidden from both the public and other soldiers. = Very important to keep the dead hidden from the other soldiers, who get up and go through the same routines again that they were doing when their dead colleagues put a foot in the wrong place.

Every unit has a Mortuary Affairs unit attached to it = Usually very young soldiers right out of high school. = Job is to pick up the remains of the dead many from explosive devices = Many pieces or vaporized. = Responsibility of Mortuary Affairs kids = Gather up fallen soldiers or at least get the pieces into the same box to be flag-draped and shipped home to the families. + Get together the property of the dead soldier and pack that up nicely to send back to mom and dad or to the wife at home. = Very isolating job – other soldiers don’t want to have anything to do with them. = Those in Mortuary Affairs tell us they start to smell like the dead and nobody wants them around. = Aftereffects for Kids are terrible–terrible.

Tracking what happens to injured soldiers back to USA = A series of medevac flights from one hospital to the next, each to a higher level of trauma care. = Surgeries are performed on an ongoing basis = Called damage-control surgery applied to the most severely wounded soldiers = Those who lost limbs or otherwise severely damaged. = Taken from field stations to Heathe Hospital at Bagram Airbase and surgeries begin to try to clean up the wounds & prevent infection = Stabilize the wounded soldier sufficiently to be shipped on to Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany (Largest American hospital outside US) = Same processes continue = Series of operations to clean and disinfect wounds = Saving as much of the soldier as they can for doctors up the line – takes one to 3 days = Then soldier is again medevac planed with a team of doctors and nurses to Dover, Del airbase and by ambulance to Walter Reed Hospital. = Highest level of trauma care that exists, and the processes still continue for months or years while a soldier becomes well enough to begin the process of rehabilitation. = A long multi-year process involving fitting of prosthetic devices and the excruciatingly painful process of veterans trying to learn to use the prosthetic devices that will be with them for the rest of their lives. = Even longer for soldiers who have lost three or four limbs.

But these soldiers signed up for war and knew what they were getting into to protect our freedoms. When you read my book, it comes out as a case against war, because nobody can bear for very long to look at the kinds of things that I’ve seen.

Response to “But they signed up for it” = Many signed up because they come from a family history of soldiering = Family’s occupation = Feel obliged to carry it on. + Others we know come from some of the poorest families and circumstances in US. = See very little other opportunity to change their future or fulfill their ambitions in their own hometown. = Pentagon employs so many highly skilled public relations agencies to churn out the message of how wonderful and glorious it is to be a soldier and to make this heroic sacrifice for the nation. = Little Kids play with guns and see soldier stories and want to grow up to be soldiers. = They believe the public relations – It’s everywhere in US = Messages of real deceit so those enlisting never get the full story from the recruiters = Drink the recruiters’ Kool-Aid (a poisonous brew) When they get into the field, they see that, but NO way to get out of it. = We must give them credit for trying to make the best of the MESS, but many of them know it was a big mistake.

Click for Part 2 from The Real News

Defenders of the military and US war efforts try to justify US presence in countries like Afghanistan + hundreds of other countries = Is necessary to defend our freedoms.

ANN JONES: That argument is ridiculous. Nobody believes that, and certainly nobody believes that about the war in Iraq. = We have a situation that is extremely damaging not just to the interests of the US and the military = A so-called all-volunteer standing army remote from the general population of US = Less than 1% of Americans population are affected directly by these wars. = Middle Class Pays for these wars but only the few poor that sign up fight them = Suffer loses from these wars = 1% on the top profit from from these wars.

Founding fathers warned us against having a standing army, and they predicted precisely what has happened. = Those who like to dress up in military uniforms let the so-call commander-in-chief do pretty much whatever he and his pals in government choose to do with that military. = ENDLESS WARS OF CHOICE! = More and more Americans realize that the military has been severely misused.

FALSE IDEA: They’re protecting our freedoms?? = We’ve let those kids go off and fight these battles, with disastrous results for them and for their families, and for us, who are going to go on paying the costs of their care for the rest of their lives.

GOP + Democrats + Under Obama administration = Our war effort in Afghanistan was escalated for years. = Plenty of responsibility among the whole population who ignored what goes on in our wars = Easy out of waving a flag or putting a flag on their car or tying yellow ribbons around trees. = Does NOTHING for our SOLDIERS AND THE HUMAN TOLL OF THESE WARS.

We document the impact on the medical staff that treats these soldiers = Impact on nurses and doctors and others responsible for treating and training injured soldiers

Highly skilled Medical staff at field hospitals and at Bagram base = Many are members of the military = Received their medical education through the military and have practiced medicine in military hospitals in other parts of the world for years. = Every one of them said they were completely unprepared for the kinds of injuries they were called upon to treat in these wars. = Head surgeon at Bagram said the only thing that came close was the injury of a man who had passed out and been run over by a train = But even that can’t touch the kind of injuries we see here.

Doctors and Surgeons were called upon to work on these cases constantly for six-months tours of duty. = Most broke down in my interviews and then apologized for being overtired at the end of their tour. = Devastated by the work they had to do but still did it on a daily basis. My observing of their work helped me understood how difficult it was for them to continue to do this day after day after day. = A terrible responsibility. = Haunting question all of the surgeons said was when we patch and save these kids lives and they wake up in US and realize they’re missing two, three, or four of their limbs, are they really going to be glad to be alive? Privately, nurses and doctors told me if you try to imagine yourself in their situation waking up without your arms and legs, I think it’s understandable that many are not consistently glad to still be alive.

Click for Part 3 from The Real News 

Growing rampant prescription drug use among veterans and active-duty soldiers. = 33% of all active duty soldiers use prescription medication.

ANN JONES: Many are on multiple prescriptions for all kinds of things, from anxiety to sleep disorders and you name it. But the particularly dangerous ones are turning out to be the painkillers. = Soldiers in the infantry and in combat have pain all the time just from the 80 lbs of stuff they have to carry while walking in very difficult terrain – Would be better carried by a mule. = Doctors dole out painkiller courtesy of the BIG PHARMA = Corporations pushing painkillers as routine = Dispensing opioid painkillers advertised as having no side effects. = BUT highly addictive + Highly implicated in increase in soldier suicides. = The Food and Drug Administration is investigating it and wanted to put much tighter controls on these products at introduction. = BIG PHARMA has set up front organizations of doctors and psychiatrists who give evidence to Congress on the dramatic effectiveness of these harmless medications = Salaries of the testifying doctors are all being paid for by the BIG PHARMA = Ignored major scandal of soldiers and veterans suicides. = Studies done by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper on effects of these drugs on veterans from Texas. = Soldiers are usually given a cocktail for stresses of combat (PTSD) = Find it difficult when they come home to reintegrate with their family or get used to being back in civilian life. = A steady cocktail of pills to just help them calm down and sleep and get over their anxiety. = Very heavy-duty antipsychotic drug Cocktail = Absolutely dumb down the veterans + Put on 40 or 50 pounds in short time + Walk around like a zombie until their family members rescue them from this drug addiction. = Many stay trapped in it by prescribing physicians promising it will help them reintegrate. = NEVER Works and contributes to suicides in many cases. + A very important side effect is it shuts them up = Reduced to “feeling like a zombie” on these medications. = It helped some get through the day without exploding or hurting their loved ones or others. = But under the drugs they cannot connect with people or get back into life or finding a job = Cover up what they’ve experienced = Enables the whole country to proceed ignoring the TRUTH about USELESS WARS OF CHOICE! = Shut up the veterans so they can’t tell us what we do not want to know anyway.