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01/28/2005: How can this be?
A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta's Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003 left him without his right hand and shattered his legs. Mr. Acosta, 21, spent months in hospitals surrounded by other young amputees, watching news about government commissions concluding that Iraq had no unconventional weapons.I'm rendered speechless. And those of you who know me know how rare a phenomenon that is....
He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe. Last summer, his girlfriend heard Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Operation Truth, speak on the radio. Mr. Acosta contacted him. By the fall, Mr. Acosta had become the organization's public face, appearing in a provocative television advertisement.
Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern California, said he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the First Armored Division into Operation Truth as they leave the Army, because they might start to experience some of the problems he faced. For instance, he said, he once used duct tape to hold his prosthesis together because he could not get it repaired quickly at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. And people often asked about his injury.
"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?' " Mr. Acosta said. "And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be like, 'What war?' " [emphasis supplied --LRC]
It's bad enough that, as a nation, we let our government shit on the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and veterans that are doing or have done their dirty work for them. But that we forget that there's a war going on?
Time to wipe it all out and start over, maybe....
Credit: SKBubba via Jo Fish
Len on 01.28.05 @ 11:56 AM CST
