If you're interested in the real cost of the war in Iraq, what life's like for our soldiers on the ground, read this article in the Washington Post. It describes the challenges facing the military hospital in Baghdad, the changing nature of soldiers' injuries, and the rising toll that the spread of violence in a destabilized former Iraq is costing us. These guys go in our name - really, in our place - as volunteers in our underpaid, and underappreciated armed forces. One excerpt:
While waiting for what one senior officer wearily calls "the flippin' helicopters," the Baghdad medical staff studies photos of wounds they used to see once or twice in a military campaign but now treat every day. And they struggle with the implications of a system that can move a wounded soldier from a booby-trapped roadside to an operating room in less than an hour.
"We're saving more people than should be saved, probably," Lt. Col. Robert Carroll said. "We're saving severely injured people. Legs. Eyes. Part of the brain."
