A Most Dreadful Punctuation

While Dubya’s “cringe moment” this week pertains to the most inappropriate reference to a comma that anyone can imagine, I would like to focus instead on an issue that speaks volumes about the human cost of this horrible war in Iraq.

(I could prattle on about the fact that Dubya is an idiot, but what’s the use? We’re stuck with him; he should have long since been impeached, but we don’t have a shot of that unless the Democrats take control of the House, and we have to do whatever it takes to make that happen in the least.)

And by the way, as noted here from an important Matt Stoller post via Atrios about Net Neutrality (the telcos are trying to get what they want by state, so we in PA have to get on the stick and call the people listed in Matt’s post), the Green party candidate for the U.S. Senate, Carl Romanelli, was thrown off the ballot today. This is great news for Mr. Casey Jr., but I’m hearing all kinds of rumblings about Karl Rove planning an October surprise, so I’m not going to start celebrating yet.

Sorry I got “off topic” a bit, but the point of this post is to comment on this USA Today story. This issue is about as dire as you can imagine.

It turns out that there are so many cases of severe head trauma coming out of Iraq that the issue of “living wills” for our troops needs to be addressed. If a battlefield doctor is faced with a situation where one of our wounded people is brain dead, the doctor needs to know how to proceed if the patient is an organ donor. On the one hand, the family would want to see their son or daughter when they return home to try and reach some kind of closure, but on the other hand, if the organs aren’t harvested right away, they couldn’t be used; too much time would have passed by the time the body had returned to this country.

Did you ever imagine we would ever arrive at a point like this?

Do you think our “leaders” ever conceived of the toll upon our men and women in the military and their family and friends from this escapade in Iraq?

Can you imagine being sent off to Iraq, all of 19, 20, or 21 years old, and being advised that you should complete a living will (which by the way, is a good idea for someone that age and older, but not for these reasons) because of the condition you may end up in from your service?

I know many Democrats voted for the Iraq war, but this is overwhelmingly a production of the Repugs. They should be held accountable for this above everyone else. And when the entire Democratic party sees us sweep out those in charge at this moment, they will do what we want and bring our people home for real out of abject fear of suffering the same fate, if for no other reason.

Update 9/26: Leave it to Jack Cafferty to cut through the B.S. on Dubya's stupid remarks.