Soldiers Smuggled Home Under Cover Of Darkness

The U.K. online edition of The Independent is reporting that accusations are being aimed at The Pentagon that they are smuggling wounded soldiers home to the United States under cover of darkness for the sole purpose of avoiding bad publicity around the number of troops actually wounded in the Iraq war. Of course it is also a fact that the media (or anyone for that matter) has been forbidden to photograph any deceased or wounded troops when they arrive back on U.S. soil. The Independent also claims: Records show that flights from military bases in Germany arrive in the US only at night. The response to this accusation by The Pentagon is that This is purely the result of flight-scheduling pressures and is not a deliberate tactic to minimize detrimental publicity. They also say that by leaving Europe later in the day soldiers are given a better chance to sleep well the night before. However, as The Independent is reporting, Just as the Bush administration has banned the media from taking photographs of the coffins of American troops killed in Iraq as they arrive in the US, opponents say it is now trying to cover up the number of wounded. Ellen Taylor, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, a peace group that has been protesting outside the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, where the bulk of the wounded are taken is quoted as saying "The American public has very limited information about the real impact of this war. I think that a lot of information about this war is being kept from the public. That is what we are protesting about." Thanks to the hardline policies of the Bush administration it is even difficult to estimate the actual number of soldiers injured and sent home for treatment. It is not even clear how many troops have been injured since the start of President Bush's "war on terror". The Pentagon says that around 12,000 troops have been evacuated from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, though because officials only list as casualties those soldiers directly hurt by bombs or bullets, the actual total of injured and wounded is believed to be closer to 25,000. Walter Reed says it has treated 4,000 troops injured in Iraq. MORE.....