The Toll - 5/6/07

Last week, the Department of defense released the obituaries of 28 military personnel killed in Iraq, ranging in age from 18 to 30, and four soldiers killed in Afghanistan, ranging in age from 19 to 34.

Improvised explosive devices, such as roadside bombs, accounted for 75% of the fatalities reported in Iraq last week. Typically, IED’s also result in numerous casualties involving serious wounds such as traumatic brain injuries, some of which are not immediately diagnosed, and stubborn infections.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the high frequency of drug-resistant infections among wounded soldiers. There are basically four of these resilient bugs involved, according to doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The principal one, however is called Acinetobacter.

Such infections were also present during the Vietnam War. However, the numbers of cases resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are much higher. All types of wounds are vulnerable to the infections, but most are occurring among the soldiers who have had an arm or leg amputated.

Bomb blasts cause a large amount of tissue damage which, in turn, makes infections more likely to occur and harder to treat. In describing the problem, a doctor was quoted as saying: “If there’s no blood flow to the dead tissue, the antibiotics can’t get to the infection.”

According to the website www.icasualties.org, U.S. deaths now total 3,368 in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, 320 soldiers have been killed as of April 28th , according to the Pentagon.

Among the fallen heroes was Army Cpl. Michael M. Rojas, 21, of Fresno, California, who had enlisted immediately after graduating from high school. His parents suspected a problem recently, when they didn’t receive the telephone call he regularly placed to them.

Instead, it was a sad homecoming, followed by a funeral attended by over 1,000 people.

Rojas was a standout defensive back for four years on his high school football team. It was his plan to return to Fresno and work in law enforcement.

Noel Cavazos, a fellow team member, said that when Rojas wasn’t cracking jokes, he enjoyed playing pickup football or basketball games and playing video games. “He was a funny guy,” Cavazos said. “He just lit up a room when he was around. He never wanted to see anyone sad.”

Rojas was a machine gunner assigned to the 2^nd Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Washington. He was one of two soldiers killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee in Taji, north of Baghdad.

His saddened friends and relatives include his wife, Katrina, and four sisters.

Meanwhile, conditions in Iraq remain chaotic. This morning, a car bomb destroyed a wholesale food market in western Baghdad. Thirty bodies have been uncovered so far.

Other attacks have accounted for at least 20 fatalities today.

A doctor in Mosul was also kidnapped and killed as he left the hospital this weekend, according to Reuters. The Washington Post said that so many doctors have been leaving Iraq that the government has recently ordered medical schools to stop issuing diplomas and transcripts for new graduates. Incidentally, this was the same solution to the problem that was previously employed by Saddam Hussein.

Yesterday, according to the BBC, 10 people were killed and 13 wounded when a suicide bomber wearing a vest of explosives blew himself up at an Iraqi army recruiting station west of Baghdad.

KRISTV.com, out of Corpus Christi, Texas, has reported that an unidentified senior U.S. commander was also wounded yesterday while inspecting one of the controversial walls being built around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad.

The Associated press said that at least five U.S. soldiers were killed on Friday. Roadside bombs were responsible for three of the deaths.

The AP article said: “Overall attacks using roadside bombs doubled in Iraq from 2006 to 2007 and number about 1,200 a month. They cause roughly 70 percent of the casualties suffered by U.S. troops,” according to the report.

According to the AP, the roadside bomb technique that is being increasingly used by the insurgents employs what is known as an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, which hurls a fist-sized lump of molten copper. The charge can pierce even U.S. armored vehicles that have been newly designed to deflect roadside bombs.

Press reports carried the announcement, this weekend, by Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who oversees day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, that projectile attacks numbered 65 in April, the highest monthly total in the war, so far.

The U.S. government also reported this weekend that coalition raids in Sadr City netted 16 suspected members of a militant cell that brought in weapons manufactured in Iran, such as EFP’s. Ten insurgents were also killed in the raids and a torture room was destroyed.

An article in today’s LA Times said that recent comments by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates seem to be out of step with the administration’s message. During his recent trip to the Middle East, he told the Iraqi government that time was running out, and he praised Democratic efforts to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Last week’s “Toll” article reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was prepared to talk with her Iranian counterpart at the Summit that took place this past week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, a luxury resort on the shores of the Red Sea.

The summit, which was supposed to address ways to suppress the violence in Iraq, instead, seemed to expose the widespread rifts that exist between the Shiite and Sunni factions among the various Middle East countries involved.

The meetings started out rather poorly on Thursday when the Iranian foreign minister told the delegates, including Rice, that the continuing civil war in Iraq was the result of the “flawed policies of the occupying powers.”

The next day Rice was quoted as saying in press reports that there would be no talks planned with the Iranians.

And then, as if to add insult to Injury, she actually met with representatives of Syria, following in the footsteps, so to speak, of a number of GOP lawmakers and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The meeting seemed to contradict the previous stance of the Bush administration and came at a time when political freedom in Syria is being suppressed, according to today’s LA Times.

But then, perhaps as an afterthought, she later allowed her underlings to meet briefly with the underlings from Iran. Reportedly, that meeting lasted “three minutes.”

The LA Times said that by meeting with Syria but not Iran, Rice was, in fact, placating America’s Arab allies. In particular, the Sunni nation of Saudi Arabia must have been pleased, said the Times, inasmuch as it has a “growing economic stake in Syria and an interest in driving a wedge between Syria and Iran.”

The fact that America would do this for the Saudi hierarchy, given the king’s two recent severe criticisms of Bush and his insulting refusal to meet with Maliki, seems rather strange.

But maybe we’re just supposed to take comfort in how happy the king and emirs must be, given not only America’s pro-Arab shenanigans, but also the flood of oil monies that are pouring into their personal coffers. The average cost of gasoline in California is now approaching $3.50.

Unfortunately for our troops, however, nothing of any substance, concerning the war, was accomplished at the summit.