WASHINGTON — More than 50,000 Americans have been combat-wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, a grim measure of the cost of more than a decade of war.
According to Defense Department accounting, the number of wounded reached 50,010 on Thursday.
The names of the wounded are not released. Unlike those killed in combat, whose names are released and whose remains are brought home in sober, white-glove ceremony, those who are wounded are flown home on medical evacuation aircraft and carried off on stretchers in anonymity.
Among the wounded are some 16,000 severely injured, casualties who would have died on the battlefield just a generation ago. But new medical procedures, protective gear such as body armor and faster medical evacuation are saving more than 90 percent of all those who fall in battle.
According to the U.S. Army surgeon general’s office, military surgeons have performed 1,653 major limb amputations since 2001.
The wounded also include the growing number of American troops whose genitals were damaged or destroyed by roadside bomb blasts. Since 2005, almost 1,900 have suffered genital wounds, according to Defense Department data through July 2012.
The wounded statistics describe only those with physical wounds. The unseen wounds of war — including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and other forms of combat trauma — are not included and are harder to track. Since 2002, the Defense Department has recorded 43,299 patients diagnosed with TBI, but many more may have gone undiagnosed. At present, the Department of Veterans Affairs is taking in 4,000 new cases of veterans with PTSD each month.
Because most of the wounded are young, they will need decades of help, some of it intensive care by health care professionals. Others will require regular replacement of costly, sophisticated prosthetic limbs. The VA is now training and paying family members of many of the wounded to care for them.
Even so, the overall health care costs will be significant. Harvard economist Linda Bilmes has estimated that the health care bill for the wounded could reach half a trillion dollars over the next few decades. Unlike Social Security, there is no money set aside to pay for future veterans’ health care costs. Instead, veterans are dependent on annual appropriations approved by Congress.
Another grim milestone was marked last summer when the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan passed 2,000. That number now stands at 2,135.
Although the rising toll of wounded was reported on the Pentagon website Thursday morning, neither Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nor Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took note of it during a Thursday afternoon press conference.
No mention of the 50,000 casualties has been made on the presidential campaign trail Thursday.
#1 by abdurahhamn on October 27, 2012 - 5:34 pm
I am not sure how you guys feel, but if you take part in such unjust wars you deserve everything injury you get. An injured US veteran won’t get no sympathy from me. To me they are nothing more than baby killers and oppressors of the weak.
#2 by Johnny Shiloh on October 27, 2012 - 10:11 pm
#1; I have to agree. Anyone stupid enough to join today’s military can’t bitch. I hold their parents accountable also, for raising such naive, misguided kids. Stupid parents = stupid kids. No one should let their kids join up. If no one joined, what would our treasonous govt do?
However, many of those statistics are 40+ year old National Guard people, and all of them have probably served multiple tours. Tough luck for them too; you want the xtra money and want to play soldier? Don’t bitch. You asked for it.
The reason for the unprecedented number of military suicides? Mainly because the difference between the reality and the pipe dream, as the Jew media presents it. “Be a “Hero”, help protect Amerika!. Pure, unadulterated B-S. Us ‘Nam vets know what liars the govt and media are.
At best, these kids are NAIVE, IGNORANT, and easily brain-washed. It’s really a shame, but there’s no shortage of ‘em every generation. “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”.
Mort Romneystein, the Mormon-Jew and robber-baron and our next “leader” will bring back the draft to supply more cannon fodder for Israel. That’ll be good; it’ll jolt these numb-nuts out of their stupid, clueless, I-Phone world. HA! That will be amusing. Come home with your nuts and legs blown off; you’ll be a hero….for 10 minutes, before the govt and public forgets you, and the republikans try to cut your VA benefits. I hate today’s treasonous republikans with a passion. The dumbest people on earth are blue collar and middle class republikans. Not to mention republikans who don’t have a bucket to piss in and collect food stamps!
I’ll bet MG’s kids ain’t joinin’ no goddamned military! (Unless we go to war with ISRAEL! Hell, I’ll join too, if they’ll take me!) Needing a job is no excuse either. Besides, contrary to the myth, many of the grunts in the military are the dregs of society. Criminals and punks to begin with who love being legal murderers.
Dept. of Justice Statistics:
252,000 Vets in jail or prison
490,000 on probation
94,000 on parole
34% return to civilian life with mental health problems
All you REMF flag-wavers can eat my shorts! (Rear Echelon Mother F-ers)
#3 by Isaac on October 28, 2012 - 4:29 am
I agree with #1 and #2. In reality I have no simpathy for the fallen or for those who come back disabled. Despite all this computer links and information many naive people still think that we go half way around the world to fight “FOR OUR FREEDOM” that is the biggest lie ever pushed into the American people’s mind and the trillions of dollars the government has to borrow for the military is something the country can get easily.
They do not see the skyrocketing unemployment, the millions of Americans loosing their homes and jobs, that the social services have been cut because there is no more money, that every State of the Union has a deficit of billions of dollars.And the federal government can not make payments on those so called 16.5 trillion dollars in foreign debt.
#4 by abdurahhamn on October 28, 2012 - 9:20 pm
Put it this way if some MF in a uniform, you can call him naive, dumb brain washed or whatever, kicked down your front door and threatened everything you valued including your daughter’s honor would any man pause before throwing lead at him? I will never accept the excuse ‘I was following orders’ from these fools. If they were asked to carry the crimes they commit against the poor and oppressed against their own family they would refuse.
Guys and gals it’s time to call a spade a spade and a baby killer a baby killer!
#5 by nooralhaqiqa on October 28, 2012 - 10:57 pm
It may go against the grain of the comments here but we must remember that many of those young men and women were / are as victimized by the system as their victims. They were brought up in a culture that has glorified wars and american exceptionalism was fed them in their mother’s breast milk. It is not up to you or me to judge them for their motives. Many really did buy the koolade and knew no better.
Their ignorance is due to the culture (or lack thereof) they grew up on. And THAT … the blame for that…. lies strictly on those who drain all the resources of the people they suck the life from and the total methods they use to do it. The entire change in the military and American culture has been altered over the past decades by the Jew.
Dumbing down, idiotic war video games, popular entertainment, aggressive recruiting techniques, the entire culture is based on false ideals and these kids in many cases never have a chance to clue in. Yes, lots get what they deserve for their actions but remember these kids are human too. Losing sight of that fact diminishes us all.
Not for one second do I forgive them for what they have done. But that is between them and God, and their victims. One of the first things I learned from a dear wise Muslim friend was that such things are not my business, they are between Allah and the individual concerned and them alone.
I look at groups of soldiers who “come clean” and confess to the world their crimes but take it all with a grain of salt. The actions they take upon the acknowledgement of their guilt is what makes all the difference in the world. Words are cheap. Rather than despise these broken men and women, it does us better to offer them a hand to join us in our struggle. After all, they know now just what our common enemy is capable of through experience.
#6 by Lydia on October 28, 2012 - 11:18 pm
Johnny Shiloh I think you said it. If it weren’t for the volunteer (of the brainless and brainwashed) basis we have now, the draft would be instituted. And you can bet like before, the elite bloodline families who govern us will make sure their spawn is exempted. It will come, it’ll probably be a matter of time.
One thing I really like about having you former ‘Nam vets around…not only you speak from experience and understand and recognize the LIES that this gov’t has always done to the American people (and those who fought for them)…..you still know how to shoot! *wink wink*
#7 by Adalberto Erazo Jr. on October 29, 2012 - 12:33 am
@ abdurahhamn
Amen brother. I feel the same exact way.
#8 by michael mazur on October 29, 2012 - 11:28 am
As there is no caption describing that young man’s residual injuries, may one infer that his eyes, in particular his left, suffered penetrating injuries, leaving him vision impaired in both eyes ?
Was it a Improvised Explosive Device which blew away a nearby fellow soldier also sent fine debris in his direction ?
Mention here is made of genital injuries sustained from IED blasts, and two months ago i had this ghastly experience – given the consequences, of deciding to do a search for just where these IEDs come from, as i have all along been very sceptical that some uneducated cowherd in Afghanistan cobbled these things in the back shed using unexploded projectiles or unexploded bombs or mines dug up, and with an assemblage of detonators, wires, electronic switches and metal plates to choose from, to then have a Taliban take the cumbersome and inelegant contraption to some side of the road location . .
I wasn’t expecting to readily find anything as all the data bases they control are patrolled by the Jews for anything they don’t want in the historical record.
To my surprise Wikipedia early on beckoned with an entry – meaning they wanted to throw people off the scent, and on going down the page to Afghanistan they said that IEDs were made in India, and transported to Afghanistan via Diplomatic Pouch to Indian Consulates (plural) in Afghanistan, and were distributed to the Taliban !! Really ? How many Indian Consulates in Afghanistan, surely just the one in Kabul ?
Only two weeks before – early August, two New Zealand soldiers were killed, one of whom probably by IED – the Chief of Defence Forces NZ wasn’t at that time sure, which finally was the prompt for me to check out these things, if possible.
Having found this entry i decided to email the New Zealand Defense Ministry and therein i reasoned something as follows;
**
How could it be stated as being India, as India is a innocuous (they don’t have imperial ambitions) Commonwealth country to which New Zealand also belongs, and America is an ally ?? And no reporter chooses to use that Wiki entry as a reference, but instead prefers to talk fancifully about cowherds cobbling these things out of bits and pieces ?
Of course had a braver reporter used the Wiki entry as a easily accessible source, then there would have been uproar about it by both India – which would resolutely deny it, and by the American and other countrys’ forces in Afghanistan.
I concluded that IEDs were actually Israeli made, but Wiki being Jew controlled, would hardly say that and settled on India as it also starts with an `I`.
**
To my horror two days after i sent the email, an IED blew up a light vehicle in Kabul killing three New Zealand troops – one of whom was a 22yo woman. The blast was so powerful that even a regular armoured vehicle would not have protected them.
My email had been read in transit – and not by the Taliban, of course, and the Jews decided out of pique, to act, to show the New Zealanders that now that they know the claim that India made IEDs was ludricous, they would also realise that it wasn’t cowherds who put them together either.
All that the Jews could do was blow up some more New Zealanders, as if to say, `You now know we do this, but you haven’t the guts to blow the whistle on us.`, and they were right in that supposition.
I can only infer that the occupants were on a innocuous routine admin type run using the car and were blown up to signal to the New Zealanders that my email had been read, and the reply would be in the form of a non military attack.
NZ people being killed in Afghanistan was uncommon, but to have a span of not even a fortnight before another `IED` attack is to me not co incidental, and the best the NZ govt could bleat was that they would pull out by the end of `14.
I remember once seeing on tv a display of several IEDs which had been seized from some location, and what was striking was that each was very compact, painted black, uniformly rectangular, and had electrodes protruding, and above all, each was identical in appearance to the others. Of course, that gave away that they were factory mass produced, but they still insist Improvised.
Since then i haven’t seen the like again, nor will, as they realised they gave the game away.
In support of my assertion that they are mass produced is the information that up until 07 one third of the casualties in Afghanistan have been by `IED`, but since then it is half.
That means many thousands of these things, which means they have to be mass produced in a munitions factory under govt contract, but clearly not Afghanistan.
But which govt ? Were it Iran or Russia or China or N.Korea – the remaining ogres on the USrael to do list, we wouldn’t hear the end of it, and were it some powerless country, the chant of `IEDs of mass destruction` would be incessant until the production was stopped, or else, like a drone attack on the plant.
That only leaves Israel, as to suggest Pakistan as was stated in a revision to that Wiki entry four days after i’d sent the email to NZ, raises the question of why do the drone attacks select groups of innocent people going about their daily lives, and not the alleged IED manufacturing plant. Since then when i pointed out the absurdity of now suggesting Pakistan, the whole entry has been totally re written and we are now back to IEDs without origin being discussed.
To maintain the illusion that these things are put together by cowherds there are, of course, no border controls in search of these things, and so would come in by an occasional container especially coded for Israeli operatives to take away to their own compound.
May i conclude with that Israel controls the Taliban ?
#9 by Ingrid B on October 29, 2012 - 5:23 pm
Johnny Shiloh says : “Besides, contrary to the myth, many of the grunts in the military are the dregs of society. Criminals and punks to begin with who love being legal murderers.” :
It isn`t just the US.. when my daughter was five, we lived in a village in Scotland, one boy “ruled”, corrupted other kids, until he was expelled, I was horrified when I learned, in later years, not that he was a drug addict, but that he`d joined up..
#10 by michael mazur on October 29, 2012 - 8:34 pm
Nooralhaqiqa, sadly true, and well expressed. Nothing more to add.