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  • Pentagon now says 50 service members suffered brain injuries from Iran attack

    The Pentagon now says 50 American military service members suffered traumatic brain injuries following Iran’s Jan. 8 missile attack on a base in western Iraq that was housing the U.S. military personnel.

    Initially the Pentagon said there were no injuries in the missile attack, but as more symptoms were diagnosed, the number was updated to 11, then 34 and now 50.

    Officials have acknowledged that it can take time for the concussion-like symptoms to present themselves.

    "Of these 50, 31 total service members were treated in Iraq and returned to duty, including 15 of the additional service members who have been diagnosed since the previous report," said Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell, a Pentagon spokesperson. "Eighteen service members have been transported to Germany for further evaluation and treatment."

    "This is an increase of one service member from the previous report, who had been transported to Germany for other health reasons and has since been diagnosed with a TBI," Campbell added.

    There was no update on the eight other service members who had been transported to the United States last week for evaluation and treatment.

    The increasing numbers of service members who suffered from traumatic brain injuries in the attack earlier this month has become a political controversy because of President Donald Trump's recent comments that the injuries were "headaches" and "not serious."

    This past weekend, the head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars requested that the president apologize for "his misguided remarks."

    "We ask that he and the White House join with us in our efforts to educate Americans of the dangers TBI has on these heroes as they protect our great nation in these trying times, said William "Doc" Schmits, the VFW's national commander. "Our warriors require our full support more than ever in this challenging environment."

    Traumatic brain injuries are considered to be the signature wound and the invisible epidemic from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because service members who suffered explosive blasts of roadside bombs later suffered concussion-like effects.

    The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that 408,000 military service members worldwide have suffered from some form of traumatic brain injuries over the last 20 years.
    _________

    Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), or as Cadet Bonespurs likes to call them "headaches"
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • Originally posted by surfgun View Post
      I never want to hear a peep out of Iran about the Vincennes incident ever again.
      Just remembered this in a pm I once got when talking back and forth privately with desertswo. I was re-reading some last night. This concerns the Vincennes and you may want to adjust your opinion some after reading. Desertswo and I were discussing Admirals. Who were deserving and who weren't.

      Are there people wearing stars who ought not to be? Yeah, there were a couple who really shouldn't have gotten that far. You want names, I can give them. One was my CO in Constellation. He got shitcanned as Commander Mid-East Force (now US Fifth Fleet) when Vincennes shot down the Iranian Airbus. His staff had no idea where Vincennes was, or what they were doing there (be you didn't know they were out of their assigned box, did you? ). The CO of Vincennes, Will Rogers, was a rogue operator out of the Marcus Arnheider school of glory seeking, and RADM Dennis M. Brooks, was clueless about what he was up to. So, away he went, and Rogers was taken off the cousins list, where everyone knew him to be.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
        Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), or as Cadet Bonespurs likes to call them "headaches"
        Extremely hard call. These men were by no means combat-ineffective. That serious medical conditions still needed to be addressed but men had fought through worst. WWI trench lines showed how shell concussioned men could still be lethal even in hand to hand combat against men who were not shelled.

        I am not disputing the medical needs but I would have expected those men to put up a fierce fight if the need was there.
        Chimo

        Comment


        • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
          Extremely hard call. These men were by no means combat-ineffective. That serious medical conditions still needed to be addressed but men had fought through worst. WWI trench lines showed how shell concussioned men could still be lethal even in hand to hand combat against men who were not shelled.

          I am not disputing the medical needs but I would have expected those men to put up a fierce fight if the need was there.
          Sir, no doubt you're right. I'm sure those personnel would've fought like absolute wildcats in the finest traditions of their service.

          It's the draft-dodging pile of shit that happens to be their Commander in Chief dismissing their medical condition as mere "headaches", so that his assassination of Soleimani can be shown to be consequence-free that pisses me off.

          It's just yet another indication of someone who is unfit to command.
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies. Old timers still take it as a point of pride that we worked through medical conditions with nothing more than ibuprofen ... and coffee.
            Chimo

            Comment


            • China detained Huawei employees over Iran deal: NYT
              Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

              Comment


              • Iranians had a bit of a mishap.
                https://www.breitbart.com/middle-eas...ident-in-gulf/

                Comment


                • Any time live missiles fly this is a possibility.

                  We aren't immune to them. Fortunately no one killed on the C-ville. But if a live warhead like the Iranian case casualties could have been enormous.

                  https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-...-drone-strike/
                  “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                  Mark Twain

                  Comment


                  • Indo-Iran Chabahar port deal was supposed to be US sanctions free. The below articles states why it never really took off.

                    For India, costs of neglecting new Arabian business are far higher than a lost railway contract in Iran

                    Chahbahar-Zahedan rail link: Iran's insistence on roping in a specific entity put deal off track

                    Keeping solid diplomatic ties with the Sunni world is more important than Chabahar or Iran as a whole. This can wait, until the pandemic gets over and Iran mends its ways and develops ties with the US.

                    China And Iran Approach Massive $400 Billion Deal

                    China's Giant $400 Billion Iran Investment Complicates U.S. Options

                    Selling sovereignty to China? Goodluck with that. Didn't turn out too good for the SriLankans, or China's new colony, Pakistan. How China gets around US sanctions will be a test case for mullah and authoritarian regimes the world over.
                    Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                    Comment


                    • Threat to evacuate U.S. diplomats from Iraq raises fear of war
                      September 28, 2020
                      https://in.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN26J1Z6

                      BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Washington has made preparations to withdraw diplomats from Iraq after warning Baghdad it could shut its embassy, two Iraqi officials and two Western diplomats said, a step Iraqis fear could turn their country into a battle zone.

                      Any move by the United States to reduce its diplomatic presence in a country where it has up to 5,000 troops would be widely seen in the region as an escalation of its confrontation with Iran, which Washington blames for missile and bomb attacks.

                      That in turn would open the possibility of military action, with just weeks to go before an election in which President Donald Trump has campaigned on a hard line towards Tehran and its proxies.

                      Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to close the embassy in a phone call a week ago to President Barham Salih, two Iraqi government sources said. The conversation was initially reported by an Iraqi news website.

                      By Sunday, Washington had begun preparations to withdraw diplomatic staff if such a decision is taken, those sources and the two Western diplomats said.

                      The concern among the Iraqis is that withdrawing diplomats would be followed quickly by military action against forces Washington blamed for attacks.
                      ...

                      Comment


                      • Live Updates: Iran’s Top Nuclear Scientist Killed in Ambush, State Media Say

                        Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                        Comment


                        • Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                          Comment


                          • Trump White House tried to play down US injuries in attack by Iran, says ex-official

                            Donald Trump’s White House asked the Pentagon to play down and delay reports of brain injuries suffered by US troops from an Iranian missile attack on Iraq last year, according to a former defense spokeswoman.

                            Alyssa Farah said she fended off the pressure from the White House, which came after Trump had first claimed there had been no casualties and then dismissed the injuries as “headaches” and “not very serious”.

                            More than 100 US troops were ultimately diagnosed as having suffered traumatic brain injuries in the missile attack on two bases in Iraq housing US troops on 8 January 2020, launched by Tehran in retaliation for the US drone killing of Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Suleimani five days earlier.

                            Roughly 80% of the American casualties from the missile attack were able to return to duty within days, but dozens had to be evacuated to Germany and then the US for treatment.


                            Farah described the attack as the “heaviest several hours of my life” in an interview with a new podcast, One Decision, hosted by former CNN journalist Michelle Kosinski and the former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, Sir Richard Dearlove.

                            Farah, who went on to work in the White House, said that when Trump claimed there had been no casualties in the wake of the attack it was “true at the time that we gave those facts to the president”.

                            But she added: “I think where things got shaky was there was an effort from the White House to want to say, this was not successful – the Iranians were not successful in harming our targets in response. And I think that went too far.

                            “And I think that it ended up glossing over what ended up being very significant injuries on US troops after the fact,”
                            Farah told the podcast, due to air on Thursday.

                            She said it was Pentagon policy to release the facts as they arrived and were verified, and as a result the total reported number of casualties climbed throughout January 2020, irritating the White House.

                            “We did get pushback from the White House of, ‘Can you guys report this differently? Can it be every 10 days or two weeks, or we do a wrap-up after the fact?’” Farah said. “The White House would prefer if we did not give regular updates on it. It was this drip, drip of quote unquote bad news.”

                            Farah said she did not give in to the pressure, saying: “My feeling was, if my experience had taught me anything, transparency is always going to be your best friend in that field.”

                            The killing of Suleimani, as his car was leaving Baghdad airport on his arrival in Iraq on 3 January 2020, was highly controversial. The UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings at the time, Agnes Callamard, deemed it an “unlawful killing” because Washington had not provided sufficient evidence of an imminent threat from Suleimani.

                            Four days before the air strike a mob of Shia militiamen and their supporters breached the compound of the US embassy in Baghdad before being persuaded to withdraw. After Suleimani was killed the then US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed there was evidence Suleimani was planning an “imminent” attack against US embassies and bases, and Trump said later there was a plot “to blow up our embassy”. But members of Congress said there was no such claim in their intelligence briefing on the drone strike. Pompeo later said the strike was aimed at “deterrence”.

                            Farah insisted there was “extremely credible, thoroughly planned potential to harm US and coalition partners”.

                            “The ‘imminence’ is really the word that I think folks would get hung up on how immediate it was,” she added. Farah said she advised the top officials at the Pentagon not to base the justification solely on the claim of imminent attacks but because “we had a terrorist on the battlefield in Iraq and an extremely bold thing for this leader to be doing, watching the Green Zone be attacked from the ground in Iraq”.

                            US legal opinion is divided on the Suleimani strike. Some scholars said it was justified by the Iranian general’s role across the region of orchestrating attacks on the US and its allies. Others argue that does not provide sufficient cause under international law, because there was no declared state of war between the US and Iran.

                            “I believe that it was in violation of international law because we were not at war with Iran,” said Gary Solis, a retired marine, former adjunct professor at West Point military academy, and author of 2006 book the Law of Armed Conflict. “Not only were we not at war with Iran, but where we killed him was in a state with which we are not at war. So what authority did we have to kill him?”
                            ____________
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • US Left has been playing down how many Americans Sullimani killed and how Trump taking him out in trade may be the only truly good thing to come out of our involvement In Iraq post 1992.

                              Comment


                              • That Sullimani is off the board is not a bad thing. He deserved what he got. What some find problematic was he was an invited guest of the Iraqi government, supposedly our ally, and we killed him on their ground. Wish we had done it in Iran and not Iraq...of course that brings its own possible issues with it.
                                “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                                Mark Twain

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