01-25-2008, 09:55 PM
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معدل تقييم المستوى: 18 | America's Secret Shame [frame="7 80"] [align=center][align=center]President Bush's decision to declare war on Iraq has now cost the lives of more than 2,000 American troops and injured another 30,000. With such substantial loss of life and appalling numbers of injured, reporter Deborah Davies investigates how the Bush administration has attempted to suppress the scale of the casualties and so minimise this public relations disaster.
In Minneapolis, Deborah visits veterans of the war as they recuperate in hospital. She discovers that the defining feature of the Iraq war is that troops suffer multiple injuries, often including brain damage and amputations; combined injuries that soldiers would never have survived in the past.
Almost half the troops serving in Iraq are not full time soldiers. One National Guardsman tells Dispatches how he lost the movement in one side, one eye and a third of his skull in a roadside blast. He dreams of a return to his old life, but his injuries have been devastating – he is still wheelchair–bound and his young daughter is so terrified of his appearance that she mutilated her doll to match her father's injuries.
Another feature of the war is that many female soldiers have been injured. One who lost a leg when her convoy was blown up, is now retraining to become a prosthetics technician. She'll be in demand, with several hundred Iraq veterans needing artificial limbs
Deborah also travels to small–town Ohio and follows two families as they prepare for the emotional homecoming of the local reservist Marine unit which suffered heavy losses in Iraq. In one company of 140 men, 23 have been killed and a further 50 injured making it the unit's highest casualties since World War II. As one family prepares excitedly to welcome home their son, another family has faced the harrowing ordeal of their son's body being delivered to them in three separate boxes, as more of his body parts were recovered and identified. But even for the family of the surviving marine, their joy is tempered with concern for his emotional wellbeing – up to 80 per cent of Iraq veterans are suffering from severe post–traumatic stress symptoms and levels of drug and alcohol abuse are soaring.
But despite such pain and suffering endured by military families, Deborah discovers that the Commander–in–Chief, George Bush has not attended a single funeral or memorial for the dead . The government also tried to ban photos of flag–draped coffins being flown back into America from Iraq.
Scanning the papers during a two–week journey around America, Dispatches finds an extraordinary lack of national coverage in the American media. While local papers herald the return of their sons and mourn the heroic dead, national papers largely confine their coverage to brief updates of the latest death toll.
The latest polls in the US now put support for the war at less than 50%. President Bush's personal ratings are also at an all time low. As the casualty levels continue to rise Dispatches asks how far the true cost of the Iraq invasion is now turning public opinion against the war. FO YOU BY : Mrs. Marwa
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America's Secret Shame تسهيلاً لزوارنا الكرام يمكنكم الرد ومشاركتنا فى الموضوع بإستخدام حسابكم على موقع التواصل الإجتماعى الفيس بوك
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