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Recent
Stories
August
1, 2003
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
Hot Stories
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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August
1, 2003
The
Missing Wounded
Injury
and Decorum in Iraq
By STAN GOFF
There are no longer any American troops being
wounded in Iraq.
Now they are "injured." Listen
closely to the news and you will be hard pressed to hear the
word "wounded." "Wounded" conjures up a different
image than "injured," and here we see yet again the
invertebrate nature of the American press. Yesterday, while preparing
some onions and butternut squash, I got carried away with the
knife and injured myself. That injury was treated with cold running
water and a band aid that I'm not even using today.
On the other hand, if I had been hit
in the same hand in my kitchen with a 7.62 X 39mm bullet traveling
in excess of 700 meters per second, I would have lost several
fingers and possibly my whole hand. That's the difference between
being injured and wounded. Contrary to what Hollywood would have
us believe, being hit by bullets and shrapnel and secondary missiles
from high explosives seldom causes something that might be dismissed
as a "flesh wound." Tearing and cavitation  of tissue, the shattering of bone, the
severance of vessels and tendons, not to mention the absolute
septic filth of these insults to the human body are anything
but "just" a flesh wound. This is not the image the
Department of Defense and the US press want us to carry around
inside our heads. We might lose our stomach for war, just as
most of these "injured" troops do the very moment they
are confronted with bleeding deformities, disfiguring burns,
amputations, shock and pain, and often permanent disabilities.
Now you have your leg. Now you don't.
Get your head around that, and you've got your head around war.
We all know the count of the dead, even
though the DoD and the press wants to somehow separate the combat
deaths from the non-combat deaths (as if suicides and fatal vehicle
accidents are no more common among GIs in Iraq right now than
they are in Hinesville, Georgia or Fayetteville, North Carolina).
But well over 1,000 of our sons, husbands, fathers, and even
a few daughters, wives, and moms... have been wounded.
They likely would be alright if they
had not been there in the first place. This is an embarrassing
fact. Almost as embarrassing as the fact that all this maiming
and killing - which by the way includes thousands of Iraqis -
was started for no nobler purpose than plunder and power.
I'm not even going to go into the questions
of Gulf War Syndrome, depleted uranium, or the more insidious
post traumatic stress disorder that is transformed into a pathogen
that attacks loved ones and society. I won't even belabor that
every single one of us, at the end of the road, is a casualty
in this war. For now, I'm just talking about wounds, because
the very word has become anathema to the Ken & Barbie media.
A human being is a collection of trillions
of cells organized in a way that makes a tiny part of nature
conscious and purposive. The mere act of reading this is a phenomenon
of such immense and miraculous complexity that it will never
be fully understood. We can, however, at least appreciate it
and show it due reverence. We can respect our own existence and
this gift that nature has bestowed on each and all of us.
War technology is science in the service
of obscene anatomical vandalism. There is a reason we never see
images of the wounded that are the day-to-day reality of this
war by those we jokingly refer to as journalists. If we did,
public acquiescence to this regime's little adventure would evaporate.
What is now unimaginable to many would be placed before us un-sanitized,
and we would recoil from it like a roomful of spiders.
Perhaps the first casualty we need to
inflict on the Bush junta is to wound decorum. No one will like
what they see when we pull the curtain back off the charnel house,
and we will be castigated and resented for bringing the broken
bodies into the room. But once the shattered flesh is there in
front of it, America will lose its stomach for this war and for
these home-grown Mussolinis of our de facto government.
Stan Goff
is the author of "Hideous
Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti"
(Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full
Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member
of the BRING THEM
HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces
master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier. Email
for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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