[A-List] Neurosurgeon - TV reports far short of conveying brutality of war - -,Red Cross - Iraq Wounded Too High to Count

["Ralph Johansen" <michele@xxxxxxxx>]

3 reports that convey much. Sad that posters on left lists, except for Lou
Proyect and not many others, are full of sententious webspinning and largely
ignore the brutal savagery of this senseless, unspeakable war and the
tragic,
forgotten thousands of poor people who are killed and dismembered and
their hopeless, defenseless children, the forsaken dependents left behind.

Where is the outrage, where is the humanity? In the midst of the Vietnam
war, I remember the rage - the recruiting offices and ROTC buildings were
burned and shut down, induction centers were assailed, business centers were
blockaded and business was no longer as usual, and the bastards literally
shook. And the left was in the thick of it.
Ralph

Area surgeon aids troops
Boulder man operated on recently rescued POW in Germany
By Lisa Marshall, Camera Staff Writer
April 5, 2003

Friday morning: 57 dead; 16 missing; 7 captured.

The daily White House press briefings and fuzzy real-time TV reports fall
far short of conveying the brutality of war, says Boulder neurosurgeon Gene
Bolles.

Bolles spent Thursday hunched over an operating table at Germany's Landstuhl
Regional Medical Center, repairing the broken back of Army Pfc. Jessica
Lynch, who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital this week. The 19-year-old
soldier will require aggressive rehabilitation, Bolles said, but is expected
to recover well — one success story in a war full of tragedy.

"It really is disgustingly sanitized on television," said Bolles, who has
spent the last 16 months as chief of neurosurgery at Landstuhl, the
destination for the war's most wounded soldiers.

As of Friday, 281 patients had been brought to Landstuhl since Operation
Iraqi Freedom started, and plane-loads are arriving regularly.

"We have had a number of really horrific injuries now from the war. They
have lost arms, legs, hands, they have been burned, they have had
significant brain injuries and peripheral nerve damage. These are young kids
that are going to be, in some regards, changed for life. I don't feel that
people realize that."

Bolles, 66, had a private practice in Boulder for 32 years before taking the
job at Landstuhl. The U.S. military was short on neurosurgeons after Sept.
11, 2001 — having scaled down its medical staff in response to a shrinking
troop population in the '90s — and was looking for an experienced civilian
doctor willing to work as a contractor for a few years, said Lt. Colonel
Bill Monacci, consultant to the Army Surgeon General for neurosurgery.

Bolles, a self-described "pacifist," found his patriotic juices flowing in
the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, so he postponed his retirement and
took the job to help out with Operation Enduring Freedom, the war on
terrorism in Afghanistan.

"I was looking for any way to help out," said Bolles. "Not to fight a war
necessarily, but to help out."

He is one of only a handful of civilian doctors among the mostly military
staff at Landstuhl, the largest military hospital outside the United States.
Until this week, he was the only neurosurgeon, taking anyone with back,
neck, spine or head injuries.

While Monacci said he thinks the number of wounded has been relatively low
given the scope of the war, Bolles has handled an increasingly heavy
workload exceptionally well, he said.

"It is a tough situation. He probably thought it was going to be a bit of a
slow-down from his practice, but I imagine it is a little busier than he
planned for," Monacci said

Bolles said despite media images that may lead the public to believe
otherwise, he and the other doctors at Landstuhl have been busy for months.

Before the war began, the hospital already had treated 300 U.S. soldiers
from Kuwait and surrounding areas, wounded in car accidents, windstorms and
during training exercises. A brutal sandstorm landed five soldiers on
Bolles' operating table. The wind blew a tent pole through the skull of one
soldier and toppled heavy equipment onto another, fracturing his spine, he
said.

Still affected by the carnage he saw as a division flight surgeon during the
Vietnam War, Bolles said he is particularly troubled by the injuries he has
seen coming from Operation Iraqi Freedom, a war he doesn't necessarily
support.

"I am opposed to any war," he said. "I am doing what I am doing because I am
a doctor, not because I have a political agenda."

He spent three hours in the operating room one morning last week removing
bullet fragments, blood and brain matter from two young soldiers who each
had been shot in the head. One will recover nicely, Bolles said; the other
will have permanent neurological damage.

Another of his patients, wounded in a grenade battle, died on the operating
table.

"These are young children; 18, 19, 20 with arms and legs blown off. That is
the reality," said Bolles.

Lt. Col. John Ogle, a Longmont emergency room doctor and flight surgeon for
the National Guard, agrees that the public is not always given an accurate
count of military injuries. But he says that is because an accurate number
is often hard to come by: What exactly constitutes wounded?

"I would not call the war coverage sanitized," he said. "Everybody knows
that there are casualties over there, mostly Iraqi. What has not been
stressed enough is what it was like in the previous 12 years of Saddam's
regime."

As things heat up on the battlefield, Bolles' workload is getting heavier.

Soldiers arrive daily in C-141 transport planes after the eight-hour flight
from Iraq: 46 on Friday, 39 today, 38 on Sunday, 25 on Monday.

To brace for the flood of patients, the hospital has doubled its capacity to
322 beds and called up 600 medical reservists, including two more
neurosurgeons. Bolles admitted four new patients Friday and was preparing to
go back into the emergency room that night.

"The feeling here originally was, this is going to be over in a couple
days," Bolles said.

His work is rewarding: He recently received a letter from a soldier who
suffered a severe brain injury in a bomb blast in Afghanistan a few months
ago. He'd recovered well and is getting married.

Working on the recently rescued Pfc. Lynch, who is not much older than
Bolles' own daughter, was particularly rewarding, yet troubling.

"Nineteen years old and she's out there carrying a big gun," he said.

His assignment with Landstuhl should expire within a year or two, but Bolles
has no plans to retire. Instead, he's looking into signing up with the
relief agency Doctors without Borders.

"I could feel just as needed if I were in Iraq taking care of the people
there who needed my services," he said.

****************

Up to 3,000 Iraqi fighters dead in show of force run in Baghdad
By Associated Press, 4/6/2003 06:38

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) Between 2,000 and 3,000 Iraqi fighters were
killed as the 3rd Infantry Division moved through southwestern Baghdad, U.S.
Central Command spokesman Jim Wilkinson said.

The raid Saturday was the first incursion into the Iraqi capital, and was
designed to send a message to both the Iraqi leadership and civilians that
coalition forces could move into the city at will, said Air Force Maj. Gen.
Gene Renuart. It took troops on a 25-mile run through a corner of Baghdad.

''I know the number that Gen. Franks was briefed on and it was between 2,000
and 3,000,'' Wilkinson said.

Central Command officials declined to say how they came up with those
figures. Previously, they have refused to give Iraqi death tolls.

Wilkinson said while some Iraqi civilians welcomed the troops, other Iraqis
put up a fight, including a mixture of Republican Guard and irregular
forces.

''I don't want to overstate the heavy fighting. A lot of the time there was
no fighting. In some portion of the time, there was fighting,'' he said.

U.S. officials have said there were limited casualties on the American side.

The blitz took two task forces of the 3rd Infantry Division up from the
southern outskirts of the city, past Baghdad University and near the banks
of the Tigris River, then back out to the western outskirts of the city to
the airport, which is under coalition control.

After the raid, Iraqi Republican Guard, Fedayeen militiamen and other troops
were out in force in Baghdad for the first time.

**************

Red Cross: Iraq Wounded Too High to Count
Sunday April 6, 2003 3:20 PM

GENEVA (AP) - The number of casualties in Baghdad is so high that hospitals
have stopped counting the number of people treated, the International
Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday.

``No one is able to keep accurate statistics of the admitted and transferred
war wounded any longer as one emergency arrival follows the other in the
hospitals of Baghdad,'' the ICRC said in a statement.

``Ambulances are picking up the wounded and running them to the triage areas
and on to hospitals,'' it said. ``Some of the wounded try to reach the
nearest hospitals by foot.''

The neutral Swiss-run organization - the main aid agency left in Iraq - gave
no estimates on the number of deaths and did not confirm U.S. Central
Command estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 Iraqi fighters were killed in
Saturday's foray into Baghdad by American armored vehicles.

``All of the hospitals are under pressure and the medical staff is working
without respite,'' said the ICRC statement. ``Despite the intense and
desperate activity, hospital staff is still managing the situation.''

But it said that hospitals urgently needed more water supplies. Given the
general power outage in Baghdad, most hospitals and water installations are
now being powered by backup generators. It said it was getting many requests
for service kits, spare parts and repairs for water plants.

The ICRC said that Red Cross delegates who reached the southern city of
Basra reported that the medical situation was generally under control and
that there were no signs of epidemics. But it said it feared the worst for
other hospitals outside Baghdad and Basra.

*************
U.S. Finds No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
Sun Apr 6, 8:23 AM ET  Add Top Stories - Reuters

AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Sunday it had
not yet found any weapons of mass destruction and it believed there was a
diminishing threat that Iraq (news - web sites) might use them as U.S.-led
troops take over more territory.

"The places it's most likely to be found we haven't even gotten to them
yet," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a briefing at Central Command in Qatar.

Brooks said the farther the U.S.-led forces moved into Iraq, the less
opportunity there was for Iraq to use any weapons of mass destruction it
might have. Washington launched a war against Iraq on March 20, vowing to
disarm it of weapons of mass destruction that Baghdad denies it has.

"The closer we get ... there are fewer and fewer options on what can be used
to deliver weapons of mass destruction."

"As we continue to advance more areas are taken away. We are pleased that it
hasn't been used to date but not satisfied that the threat has gone," Brooks
said.

****************