Randi is saying they sent pregnant soldiers to Iraq!?!

[LSK]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/26/fort_irwin

Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, a communications specialist with a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, had surgery on an ankle he had injured during physical training. After the surgery, doctors put his leg in a cast, and he was supposed to start physical therapy when that cast came off six weeks later.

Hernandez says he was in no shape to train for war so soon after his injury. "I could not walk," he told Salon in an interview. He said he was amazed when he learned he was being sent to California. "Did they not realize that I'm hurt and I needed this physical therapy?" he remembered thinking. "I was told by my doctor and my physical therapist that this was crazy."

Hernandez had served two tours in Iraq, where he helped maintain communications gear in the unit's armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles. But he could not participate in war maneuvers conducted on a 1,000-square-mile mock battlefield located in the harsh Mojave Desert. Instead, when he got to California, he was led to a large tent where he would be housed. He was shocked by what he saw inside: There were dozens of other hurt soldiers. Some were on crutches, and others had arms in slings. Some had debilitating back injuries. And nearby was another tent, housing female soldiers with health issues ranging from injuries to pregnancy.

snip

The soldiers who were at Fort Irwin described a pitiful scene. "You had people out there with crutches and canes," said an Army captain who was being considered for medical retirement himself because of serious back injuries sustained in a Humvee accident during a previous combat tour in Iraq. "Soldiers that apparently had no business being there were there," another soldier wrote to Salon in an e-mail. "Pregnant females were sent to the National Training Center rotation" with the knowledge of Army leaders, she said.

:wtf:

[Aviation Pro]

1. Does she have the documentation to back that up?

If she does, then Bush and Cheney should come out in support of abortion rights and murder.

[Tom Joad]

2. Not to Iraq, but to training at Ft Irwin

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/26/fort_irwin

[LSK]

4. from page 2

Pike says he suspects the injured soldiers were camped out at Fort Irwin so that on paper, at least, "the unit would have a sufficient head count to be mission-capable."

Lawrence Korb, who was an assistant secretary of defense for manpower during the Reagan administration and is now with the liberal Center for American Progress, says that the 3rd Brigade can show statistically that more troops trained in California simply because they were there. "Basically, they could say 90 percent went through Fort Irwin," Korb said about the brigade.

But injured soldiers from the brigade were not just shuttled to California; some were sent on to Iraq. Earlier this month Salon reported that on Feb. 15, shortly after returning from Fort Irwin to Fort Benning, 75 injured soldiers from the 3rd Brigade lined up for screenings at the troop medical clinic. Some of the soldiers there that day described cursory meetings with a division surgeon -- meetings designed to downgrade their health problems, the soldiers said, so that they could be deployed to the war zone. Records for some of those soldiers show doctors had previously concluded that those soldiers could not wear body armor because of serious skeletal and other injuries.

[youngdem]

3. If photos of this exist, it could lead to howls of impeachment from all corners

deploying injured soldiers into a theater where you must be mobile to have even a chance of survival is unreal.

And pregnant soldiers? Again, if any of this is true and can be verified, this is gonna be BIG, BAD news.

Kick.

[Fridays Child]

6. self-delete

[HereSince1628]

5. Is that like being kept on a DL and not being sent to the minors?

Trying to keep a slot on this season's roster?

To grasp this I think we have to devolve our conceptualizations into something W thinks he knows about.

[Fridays Child]

7. Frame: Right-to-life president sends pregnant women into battle readiness training.

[rurallib]

8. Isn't Fort Irwin where W spoke yesterday?

Christ no wonder no one applauded.

[MessiahRp]

9. Well if we could get some of the pregnant soldiers to step up

This war and likely this Presidency would be over in a heartbeat.

Rp

[MsUnderstood]

10. our we could bring the anti-feminst Repugs out

you know the ones who say 'those girls have no business in the military' and 'they knew what they were getting into when they signed up'

Nothing like a returning soldier to make someone forget about the SUPPORT THE TROOPS sticker on their car!

[MessiahRp]

11. Support the Troops! Unless they're pregnant, then give them a gun and make them fight!

Crazy world we live in...

Rp

[tanyev]

12. If their babies are born in Iraq, do they get automatic Iraqi citizenship?