To be fair, a massive traumatic brain injury wouldn’t be much of a concern to trump or most any trump voter, because they have little use for such an organ in the first place.
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I think Trump’s a shit, but denying injuries in the short term was the exactly right thing to do. I guess it was about a week or so before this news started to come out and the delay allowed some time to let things cool down without the US deciding it needed to hit Iran directly.
Whether it was Trump’s idea or someone else’s (more likely), I’m happy they lied about this, at least in the very short term.
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Being Ok with trump lying is not cool in my book but, whatever floats your illusion.
There are families of real people involved here. Truth matters.
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I spent the last 10 minutes trying to formulate this joke. I’m sure there’s a really brilliant formulation of it out there (not dissing your effort, just saying I feel like there’s gold in the hills).
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The elephant in the room is all the brain damage around trump?
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I feel like it would involve an MRI of a brain destroyed by Syphilis or something…
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Many aren’t even diagnosed with brain injury until long after the fact. I saw a heartbreaking mini-documentary on some American service members struggling with brain injury from their time in Iraq, one woman had been repeatedly reprimanded and demoted for her inability to concentrate or follow orders before doctors realized the reason for her behavior.
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You guys are forgetting something: they’re brain injuries.
Trump doesn’t know what a brain is, therefore he doesn’t understand how it can be injured.
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Fuck him in the face with a radioactive shit-encrusted flaming chainsaw.
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Alternatively, acknowledging that the US military actually did face tangible consequences for military adventurism might sour the US public from supporting governments that wantonly assassinate Iranian generals.
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I’d kinda like a few of these “not seriously injured” troops to appear on stage at the Democratic Convention this summer.
I can’t work out if this is inviting trouble or would be seen as opportunism and blow back on the campaign, though.
EDIT: actually, it could blow back in that as the incumbent party, the R convention goes second. The obvious rejoinder is to find similarly injured people on their side and trot them out.
The Black Knight is welcome to be delusional about his own wounds.
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I’d be interested to know if the military even told Trump. I can imagine some general not wanting war with Iran deciding that it was better to tell the President there were no injuries. If Trump had been told, would ha have been able to keep quite and not immediately scream about it on twitter?
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Wow, and I thought I had some ‘creative’ derogatory phrases in my personal vernacular…
*lolz
Nevertheless, I fully agree with the core of your sentiment.
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Somewhat related:
A major theme of recent neuromedical education has been the point that “concussion” and “traumatic brain injury” are just different ways of describing the same thing. And that even minor brain injury can have lasting negative effects, especially if repeated.
Pretty much anyone who’s ever been near combat (or heavy combat training) is going to have some degree of brain injury. As is pretty much anyone who’s ever seriously played American football.
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To bring this back to the present situation: saying “100 troops have brain injuries” is an almost meaningless phrase.
“Brain injury” is a term that covers everything from “half of his head was blown off and he’s now in a persistent vegetative state” to “I was standing too close to the rocket team when they fired, and I had a headache for a day afterwards”.
Trump has a political incentive to minimise the casualties. The Dem establishment have a political incentive to maximise the casualties. The military statement describing them as “mild” brain injuries suggests that they were closer to the bad headache end of the scale.
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Someone tells Trump they are “uh-brain” injuries and a dawning realization of the damage done fills Trump with horror.
No. Mild brain injury is a specific phrase. It largely means less than moderate.
Moderate is being immediately rather fucked up. Mild means damaged, not as obviously damaged as moderate and over a month you figure out how bad.
Moderate brain injury is a clinical term, brain injury resulting in a loss of consciousness from 20 minutes to 6 hours and a Glasgow Coma Scale of 9 to 12.
Mild is defined as the result of the forceful motion of the head or impact causing a brief change in mental status (confusion, disorientation or loss of memory) or loss of consciousness for less than 30 minutes.
Most, on average, recover from mild brain injury, only 15% have obvious symptoms more than a year. That statistic is from general population studies, it may well be higher in people who have experienced concussive blasts at close quarters. Yes, brain injury is common in the military, and in football. Both of those being true is not something to shrug off, both of those facts are horrific. Mild brain injury is correlated with unemployment, severe headaches, daily headaches. depression, difficulties with personal relationships and divorce, twice the rate of suicide.
So, not nothing. Yes, people go into the military knowing they can be hurt, but I think you’re bothsidering a situation where real people who’ve been hurt, and deserve acknowledgment. Lying about battle statistics is a bad thing.
Also there are people with “just headaches” that you would not want to trade lives with. Just headaches can be a lifelong disability.
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I was in the Navy. This is mild.
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Sin loi. IF anyone can show they were subjected to unwarranted or illegal exposure to dangerous conditions, there is reason to get up in arms about it. But people let’s face it, the entire point of the US Army is to blow !@#$ up. It’s a job where the normal, everyday, garden variety, run of the mill occupational hazards include the chance of getting blowed up. As I knew when I signed up to serve on a tank, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it.
