625,000 American casualties in Iraq

Folks say "well, sure, the Iraq war has been hard on Iraqis, but at least there aren't hundreds of thousands of American dead." Well, true enough. Modern body armor will keep our soldiers from dying. But 620,000 soldiers and Marines -- or roughly 1/3rd of those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan -- come back and end up either disabled or suffering PTSD. To quote a report on the topic:

According to an April 2008 study by the Rand Corporation, 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans currently suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Another 320,000 suffer from traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage. A majority are not receiving help from the Pentagon and VA system which are more concerned with concealing unpleasant facts than they are with providing care.

And from the Bush Administration, all you hear is that adequate VA care for these disabled is "pork", thus why they're fighting the latest war funding act which calls for full funding for the VA as well as full funding of the GI Bill to pay for college for veterans. They call this "pork". And say we can't afford this -- the minimum that we owe to veterans for sending them into harm's way in a useless war. For shame, George W. Bush and Republicans. For shame. Why do you hate our veterans so much? Is it because they're heros, and you're just a draft dodging dry drunk whose daddy's friends bought you the Presidency but you will always, forever and ever, be a failure? Or is it just that you're an evil mean-spirited dry drunk? I suppose we'll never know...

-- Badtux the Unsnarky Penguin