A Correction

I've got some loose ends to tie up at present.
I'm a bit surprised that the vise-grip and the amputation posts drew so much comment (for me).
The VG thing, I can understand. We've had these brain-dead capitalists around for a long time.
Now, the amputation thing was just as I presented it. I'd found out something interesting and referred to it.
I never thought that there might be someone who's "pro-amputation".
Well, I guess that's not so bad - as opposed to death.
What the issue seems to be is more of a matter of; "Amputations that happened after 9/11 are judged by a different standard - anything that happened before is irrelevant."
In any case, it turns out - I was wrong.

I wrote; "the casualty lists for the "Bushwars" (my new term - subscribe - collect them all!) contain a higher percentage of amputations than those of any other American conflict since the civil war..."
After being taken to task by Greg for not proving my thesis to his satisfaction - over the course of the 23 words above that are germane to the issue I was compelled to go back to the source.


Turns out we could have avoided that little exchange entirely because, when I went back and revisited the article, I found that the actual quote differs from my first interpretation on a few key points.
The actual quote is from an article referring to a recent book by Dr. Ronald J. Glasser (365 Days).
Glasser had been an Army surgeon in Japan from 1968 on. The whole concept of "war injury" sort of caught him up.
The quote:

"Glasser's life was utterly changed. He is today, more than 40 years on, still wedded to those wounded in war: he recently wrote another book, Wounded: Vietnam To Iraq. Wherein we learn that there have been more amputations in Iraq than in any American conflict since the Civil War."

Okay, to you especially, Greg, so sorry to have gotten wrong; A. that the statement only included Iraq - not Afghanistan and... B. that it was the total numbers of amputations, not a proportion.
More amputations have come about from Little George's Big Adventure in Iraq than from... Desert Storm, Viet Nam, Korea, World War Two or World War One.
Now that's a pretty impressive thing, mostly because all those folks would likely have been dead otherwise.
Or - in a different scenario - they never would have left the country and would now be living in boxes wondering why their jobs went to China but - wait for it - with four functioning limbs.
That'd be pretty cool too and the country would have a shitpot more money right now.
Also Greg, don't forget, this is a budget issue as well.
Here's another factoid - it's got a poorly thought-out conclusion too:
In the state budget of Mississippi for 1866, 20% was set aside to buy artificial limbs.
But that stuff from back then doesn't matter.
It's different now.


I threw in the illustrations of the prosperous post-war life of one Alfred Stratton, who we first saw in the earlier post.