[lbo-talk] The Lily-Pad Strategy

[Wojtek S]

The first thing I saw last month when I walked into the belly of the
dark grey C-17 Air Force cargo plane was a void -- something missing.
A missing left arm, to be exact, severed at the shoulder, temporarily
patched and held together.  Thick, pale flesh, flecked with bright red
at the edges. It looked like meat sliced open. The face and what
remained of the rest of the man were obscured by blankets, an American
flag quilt, and a jumble of tubes and tape, wires, drip bags, and
medical monitors.

That man and two other critically wounded soldiers -- one with two
stumps where legs had been, the other missing a leg below the thigh --
were intubated, unconscious, and lying on stretchers hooked to the
walls of the plane that had just landed at Ramstein Air Base in
Germany. A tattoo on the soldier’s remaining arm read, “DEATH BEFORE
DISHONOR.”

I asked a member of the Air Force medical team about the casualties
they see like these. Many, as with this flight, were coming from
Afghanistan, he told me. “A lot from the Horn of Africa,” he added.
“You don’t really hear about that in the media.”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175568/tomgram%3A_david_vine,_u.s._empire_of_bases_grows/

[WS:] An interesting piece by my friend David Vine.

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."