Channel 4 Dispatches - The Real War on Terror - America's Secret Shame (2/3)

Channel 4: Dispatches The Real War on Terror ---------------------- http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/R/real_war_on_terror/index.html The Invasion of Iraq began on the 20th March 2003. The United States and Great Britain and led a grouping of nations in what was dubbed the "coalition of the willing". The stated justification for going to war was Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction, the need to depose the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and to curtail his support of terrorist organisations. On 1st May 2003 George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in a military jet. He gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq war. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished." Two years later the body count of Iraqi civilians is at least 27,000, and rising with the daily occurrence of violent bombings. In The Real War on Terror season, Dispatches exposes both the human and political costs of the invasion of Iraq. =============================================================================== Part 2 of 3 - America's Secret Shame First transmitted Channel 4 November 22nd 2005 President Bush's decision to declare war on Iraq has now cost the lives of more than 2,000 American troops and injured another 30,000. With such substantial loss of life and appalling numbers of injured, reporter Deborah Davies investigates how the Bush administration has attempted to suppress the scale of the casualties and so minimise this public relations disaster. In Minneapolis, Deborah visits veterans of the war as they recuperate in hospital. She discovers that the defining feature of the Iraq war is that troops suffer multiple injuries, often including brain damage and amputations; combined injuries that soldiers would never have survived in the past. Almost half the troops serving in Iraq are not full time soldiers. One National Guardsman tells Dispatches how he lost the movement in one side, one eye and a third of his skull in a roadside blast. He dreams of a return to his old life, but his injuries have been devastating he is still wheelchairbound and his young daughter is so terrified of his appearance that she mutilated her doll to match her father's injuries. Another feature of the war is that many female soldiers have been injured. One who lost a leg when her convoy was blown up, is now retraining to become a prosthetics technician. She'll be in demand, with several hundred Iraq veterans needing artificial limbs Deborah also travels to smalltown Ohio and follows two families as they prepare for the emotional homecoming of the local reservist Marine unit which suffered heavy losses in Iraq. In one company of 140 men, 23 have been killed and a further 50 injured making it the unit's highest casualties since World War II. As one family prepares excitedly to welcome home their son, another family has faced the harrowing ordeal of their son's body being delivered to them in three separate boxes, as more of his body parts were recovered and identified. But even for the family of the surviving marine, their joy is tempered with concern for his emotional wellbeing up to 80 per cent of Iraq veterans are suffering from severe posttraumatic stress symptoms and levels of drug and alcohol abuse are soaring. But despite such pain and suffering endured by military families, Deborah discovers that the CommanderinChief, George Bush has not attended a single funeral or memorial for the dead . The government also tried to ban photos of flagdraped coffins being flown back into America from Iraq. Scanning the papers during a twoweek journey around America, Dispatches finds an extraordinary lack of national coverage in the American media. While local papers herald the return of their sons and mourn the heroic dead, national papers largely confine their coverage to brief updates of the latest death toll. The latest polls in the US now put support for the war at less than 50%. President Bush's personal ratings are also at an all time low. As the casualty levels continue to rise Dispatches asks how far the true cost of the Iraq invasion is now turning public opinion against the war.