More than 16,000 Wounded and Injured from Iraq War

PBS News Reports More than 16,000 Wounded and Injured from Iraq War
Bill Moyers
NOW with Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript325_full_print.html
Posted 6/29/2004 5:25:00 PM

The national press missed this blockbuster on June 18: the Pentagon confirms more than 16,000 U.S. service members have been wounded or injured in the Iraq War. DoD failed to report 11,000 soldiers who were wounded or injured. The TV networks and newspapers failed to follow-up on this major scoop. As Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center said, "They [the military] believe that by putting this information out, it's somehow going to affect public opion." Donald Rumsfeld must believe that good public relations is far more important than medical care for our wartime wounded.

NOW with Bill Moyers, Transcript, June 18, 2004

BRANCACCIO: Tonight on NOW... The true human cost of the war in Iraq. Are we getting the whole story from the Pentagon?

BENJAMIN: The number of casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom are exponentially higher, thousands and thousands of soldiers higher than what the Pentagon seems to say the casualty numbers for Operation Iraqi Freedom are.

BRANCACCIO: And a question of genocide. In the Sudan, close to a million people facing starvation. Whole villages wiped out.

FLINT: The countryside is empty. There's nobody there. It has been ethnically cleansed.

BRANCACCIO: And is the democratic party about to lose the next generation of black and Hispanic voters?

DYSON: These young people say, "Look, we see that there is little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. We're trying to figure out where to fit in."

BRANCACCIO: Cultural commentator Michael Eric Dyson.

BRANCACCIO: Welcome to NOW. Tonight we're going to talk about our troops wounded in Iraq. Just today President Bush visited an army base and then a military hospital in the state of Washington, trying to boost morale.

But a NOW investigation has found the Pentagon is not telling the public the whole story about how many soldiers are being injured on a daily basis.

Getting at the truth is more urgent than ever given the headlines. This week we heard one of the primary reasons the Bush administration gave us for going to war in Iraq was false.

The independent 9/11 Commission has found "no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

We know from former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke that the intelligence community never believed such a link existed. But from the beginning, the administration used that, along with sketchy intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, to justify the war.

An editorial in the NEW YORK TIMES yesterday said "President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different."

And so a week and a half before America turns Iraq back to the Iraqis, we want to look at the war and the toll it's taken on our troops. Correspondent Michele Mitchell and producer Peter Meryash prepared this report.

MITCHELL: How do you figure out the human "cost" of war?

Sometimes, it's brutally obvious when the wounded scramble out of a tank hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Two marines were injured in this attack. One lost his right eye.

The Pentagon keeps a close watch on the grim tally in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latest figures: 922 killed. 5,457 wounded in action. And the press reports those numbers.

But there's another figure neither the Pentagon nor the press are talking about ?- the more than 11,000 soldiers coming home disabled, injured, sick who aren't on the Pentagon's casualty list because the military says they weren't injured in combat.

BREWER: It's a tough story to tell because, really to coin the phrase from A FEW GOOD MEN, you can't handle the truth.

MITCHELL: The truth, as Susan Brewer sees up close and firsthand, of broken and damaged soldiers returning from the war.

BREWER: If you saw the things that we see, it's hard for the public to want to dwell on that, and really, a lot of times, to even maybe make a difference and help.

MITCHELL: Susan Brewer is not in the military but after learning about the condition of these soldiers, she moved to Washington and dedicated her life to making a difference in theirs. In April 2002, she set up the volunteer organization to help them, called America's Heroes of Freedom.

MITCHELL: How many wounded, sick, injured soldiers do you think you've seen since you started volunteering?

BREWER: Oh, thousands. Absolutely thousands.

You watch the C-17 come in on the runway and the big bellied plane latch goes down the back. And you see the intubated patients which would need a trach tubes and very severe things where you weren't sure if they were gonna make it.

And then you would see the next level. You know, a little bit better off. And then I watched two Army?- mind you they're still in their combat uniform. They maybe just have a bandage or a broken arm or a broken leg. I watched them get down and kiss the ground and get back up and then go to the hospital.

MITCHELL: One of those hospitals where returning soldiers come is the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Injured soldiers are usually evacuated out so fast, they don't have time to collect their clothes, money or other personal items.

So Brewer and her volunteers try to meet some basic needs. Everything from Gatorade to underwear, even stuffed animals.

Often, Brewer just listens.

MITCHELL: Do you think that most Americans understand the total human cost of this war?

BREWER: No, absolutely not. As a matter of fact it's concerning, it can't be out of sight out of mind. We go about our daily lives and we don't recognize and realize really what goes on every week at Andrews Air Force Base when all branches of the military come home wounded and sick. It's a day in and day out. Anybody that's working in reserves and meeting the troops at Andrews Air Force Base can tell you that it's traumatic. The cost is great.

MITCHELL: The cost is great and far higher than the approximately 5,000 wounded-in-action the public has been hearing about.

BENJAMIN: The number of casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom are exponentially higher, thousands and thousands of soldiers higher than what the Pentagon seems to say the casualty numbers for Operation Iraqi Freedom are.

MITCHELL: Mark Benjamin is the investigations editor at U.P.I. For the past year, he's traveled to American military bases to report on how the military counts casualties.

BENJAMIN: It just seemed to me from walking around on military bases that the human cost of the war was a lot higher than what I had been reading.

Essentially just the numbers didn't seem to add up.

MITCHELL: Didn't add up, says Benjamin, because the Pentagon only reports as casualties those soldiers who are wounded-in-action. Those hit, for example, by enemy fire or improvised explosive devices.

What's missing in the Pentagon's count of the wounded are all the other soldiers ?- at least 11,000 more, injured or sickened in what the Pentagon considers non-combat circumstances.

BENJAMIN: If your son rolls over in a hummer outside Baghdad tomorrow and breaks his back, he may not be a casualty according to the Pentagon. But if he's your kid, he's a casualty.

There are lots of soldiers getting hurt in accidents. Or lots of soldiers getting sick. Lots of soldiers they're getting strokes. They have heart attacks. They have heat exhaustion. They don't get enough water. They are having mental problems because of extreme duress.

The large number of people that are serving in this war, Operation Iraqi Freedom, that are coming home with serious, serious mental problem, physical problems that are going to last them the rest of their lives, are not showing up in these numbers.

MITCHELL: One of those soldiers not showing up in the Pentagon's tally of wounded is army specialist Denver Jones.

A veteran of the Panama invasion and the first Gulf War, Jones believed he had a duty to re-enlist after September 11th.

JONES: I have four military job skills, and, I thought maybe I had something to offer my country one more time.

MITCHELL: Jones was assigned to a transportation unit in Iraq. And one day, while on a mission carrying supplies, the truck he was in hit a hole in the road.

JONES: My head came up, hit the ceiling, jammed my neck down, I came down and hit on my tail in the seat, and it broke some seat brackets out from under the seat, and I pretty much was, you know, pretty hurt after that.

MITCHELL: It turned out, Jones had three ruptured discs, and two fractured vertebrae. He was eventually medivaced to the army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC where doctors operated and fused part of his spine.

Jones does physical therapy daily now, but his doctors tell him this is as good as he'll get.

JONES: I feel like a 90-year-old man trapped in a 35-year-old body. That's the way I feel physically.

I've put on 40 pounds. My arms have atrophied. I have hardly any, you know, upper muscular structure like I used to have. It's hard for me to walk, it's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to sit, stand.

MITCHELL: Denver Jones' life has been forever changed, so why doesn't the Pentagon include him in its official count? The reason? The Pentagon doesn't consider these types of wounds combat-related.

WINKENWERDER: These are, obviously, there are serious injuries that take place.

MITCHELL: Dr. William Winkenwerder is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Among his responsibilities, keeping track of non-combat sick and injured.

WINKENWERDER: Those kinds of things, unfortunate as they are, happen everyday in the military across the world. There's risk involved in performing those types of duties. Training and, as well as, as being active in the field.

MITCHELL: But in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are no front lines and every mission, every task carries with it the potential for getting hurt.

ROBINSON: It's not because you were on a safari, looking for lions.

You're in a combat zone. And these motor vehicle accidents that are occurring aren't just happening because people are forgetting how to drive their Humvee.

MITCHELL: Steve Robinson is a former army ranger who served in the first Gulf War. He now runs an advocacy group for veterans of both Gulf Wars.

ROBINSON: When you're in a combat zone, and you're delivering information, goods, services, there's a risk that you will lose your life every moment you go out to do your job. How can that not be a combat related accident?

MITCHELL: Take the case of first Lt. Jullian Goodrum, a veteran of the first Gulf War, who says when he arrived in Iraq this time, it was a lot different.

GOODRUM: In this situation, the enemy was 360 degrees. So, you was always on guard, and always aware. And running missions, not fully combat ready, was an extreme stressor. So, sure, I was definitely mentally and physically exhausted.

MITCHELL: Goodrum was medivaced out because of non-combat injuries to his hands and wrists.

But there was another injury, one that Goodrum couldn't see right away.

The stress and exhaustion of Iraq, the guilt over the death of a fellow soldier, it piled on and on.

Goodrum says it was not until he got back to the states and had trouble getting treatment for his injured hands that the real crisis hit.

GOODRUM: Uncontrollable crying, panic attacks. I could hardly breathe. Heart racing. Could not concentrate. Just a feeling of betrayal by the military. I felt useless, and helpless, you know? And you know, been in 15 years this October. You know? Been in two wars. Never questioned my orders. And I served proudly. Highly decorated.

MITCHELL: Goodrum says he suffered a nervous breakdown.

GOODRUM: It's to the point of dysfunctional. I was driving up and down the interstate, turned around. Would drive several miles, turn around, drive back, and drive back. Just driving in circles basically.

Eighteen-wheeler locked up behind me. Came inches of running over me. I looked out the speedometer. I was going five miles an hour on the interstate.

Goodrum was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

MITCHELL: Veterans' groups warn as more soldiers return from war, there will be a wave of post-traumatic stress disorder cases. And none of those soldiers will be showing up in the Pentagon's tally of wounded either.

MITCHELL: So what is the true cost of the war? The Pentagon makes it hard to find out because unless a wound is classified as 'combat related,' it isn't publicly reported.

Just look at the Pentagon Web site that tracks the casualty count. The number of wounded-in-action is listed, but the line for 'non-hostile' casualties is blank.

BREWER: I don't know why you're not hearing those numbers. I can't really tell you why you're not. But I'm telling you that they are very large.

MITCHELL: UPI's Mark Benjamin says it's very difficult to get those numbers from the Pentagon.

BENJAMIN: The Pentagon has made the numbers, and when I say the numbers, I mean the casualty numbers, into such a morass of figures, that they have made it virtually impossible for reporters and the American public to figure out what's going on.

MITCHELL: The Pentagon denies that. And in fact, Dr. Winkenwerder claims we're the first to ask about the number of non-combat injuries.

MITCHELL: It's not a readily available number to the public. Is that something the public should know so they have an idea of what the human cost is for the war?

WINKENWERDER: Yeah, well, in the past, we considered those reports as medical reports that are useful for medical personal to take care of the service members. We're certainly are willing to look at that issue if we've been never requested of such information before, to my knowledge.

MITCHELL: But Benjamin has asked the Pentagon for that information repeatedly.

BENJAMIN: I was shocked when I called the Pentagon and said 'what is the number of casualties from operation Iraqi Freedom?' And they said to me, 'We at the Pentagon do not have that number. You can call the individual services and see what they say their casualties are. But we don't know.'

MITCHELL: The Pentagon also told us to call the individual services: together, they report more than 11,000 sick and injured in Iraq, in addition to the more than 5,000 wounded in action.

That's about 5 percent of the roughly 300,000 soldiers who have served there, about one of every 20 soldiers.

Veterans' advocate Steve Robinson says it shouldn't be so hard to get the true numbers and he thinks the Pentagon is making it difficult for a simple reason.

ROBINSON: They believe that by putting this information out, it's somehow going to affect public opinion.

MITCHELL: He says it's all part of a larger pattern to keep unpleasant news and images of the war out of the public eye.

Take for example what's happened at Dover Air Force Base. Reporters and photographers have been prevented from covering the return there of flag-draped coffins arriving back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It took a Freedom of Information Act request to get these photos released.

Robinson says it's that same kind of stonewalling that's happening with the casualty count.

ROBINSON: I love my country. I served 20 years. I don't have an agenda with, you know, whether the war was right or wrong.

I do have an agenda with misrepresenting the facts. And it's not possible that they are not aware, or that this is not a purposeful attempt to skew, or prevent people from understanding the bigger picture.

MITCHELL: Dr. Winkenwerder denies the Pentagon's hiding anything.

WINKENWERDER: We certainly are not seeking to keep any information from the public that would be helpful to people to know.

MITCHELL: But, Winkenwerder says he's worried the larger casualty number might be misunderstood.

WINKENWERDER: When you release information, present information, I think it's important that there be some context for that information so that people understand what does it mean.

MITCHELL: What would that context be?

WINKENWERDER: Well, probably one of the appropriate reference points would be, well, at what rate did people get sick or injured when they're not deployed? And we'd have to dig those statistics out. I can't give that to you right off the top of my head.

MITCHELL: But despite repeated requests, the Pentagon failed to provide that information. In the end, these numbers represent lives.

BREWER: It's touched my heart forever to see what I see. To see young men and women, really our sons and daughters, that are fighting for our freedom that are over there that are paying the ultimate sacrifice.

And they come back with many issues. And I believe as an American we have an obligation to address those things.

MITCHELL: Hopefully, Denver Jones will be back to his life soon, with his family in Caldwell County, North Carolina.

But he doesn't expect he'll be able to return to his job as a mechanic.

It was a good job, earning him about 65 thousand dollars a year. Now, he'll be lucky if he gets close to half of that from his military disability pay.

JONES: I have a lot of deep-seated feelings of failure and what I'm gonna do with my life now.

MITCHELL: Feelings of failure, you said.

JONES: Yeah.

MITCHELL: What would you have possibly failed at?

JONES: Providing for my family.

MITCHELL: For now, Denver Jones has come to a sort of peace with his injuries.

JONES: But I don't have any regrets for what's happened to me. I mean, that's one of the casualties of war.

MITCHELL: But he wants his sacrifice to count and he wants the Pentagon to count it.