Thank you, former presidential candidate and former senator from North Carolina John Edwards for a great letter called “Broken Soldiers, and a Broken System” in the New York Times today.
In it, Edwards notes that the frequently reported number of the wounded in action (29,320 in March 1) does not include everyone who’s been hurt.
“The complete number of nonfatal casualties in Iraq is 60,645. Most assume the wounded number includes all, but it does not. It leaves out another 8,273 injured and 23,052 who became ill and required medical air transport from the war zone,” writes Edwards, who contends that this under reporting explains why “both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs are unprepared to care for the service members who have been hurt in the Iraq war.”
Noting that 154,000 war vets already sleep on grates and under bridges every night, Edwards observes, “we have tens of thousands set to come hom, and we aren’t prepared. Every day we should honor the more than 4,000 lives lost: every suicide, bullet or serious accident.”
“And every day we should honor those who have been hurt. That number is 60,645 and rising.