There was an article this weekend about the use of a new blood coagulating agent on wounded GI's. Seems that because of the nature of the primarily bomb-blast injuries suffered, our military doctors are saving a ton more people by use of this controversial drug that stems the severe bleeding. The problem seems to be that even though they don't die in the trauma room, it's suspected that this drug causes an unwanted side effect of making these victims highly susceptible to blood clots in the lungs that eventually do them in. Many doctors are warning against its use.

My own guess is that its use is probably worth the risk and done under noble intentions since most would die anyway but I would be horrified if our military was using the drugs to simply delay death to lower the initial body counts.

Bottom line though is that one cannot simply deduce the effect of war by a game of numbers. I've actually heard people say Iraq is a success because the casualties have been much lower than previous wars. Battlefield casualty counts don't and never will give the big picture. The ratio of killed to injured has dramatically shifted from our last full fledged battles in Vietnam because of improved life-saving techniques but there's a price to pay for that success. The numbers of severely injured soldiers returning to the states (many of them missing multiple appendages or severely brain damaged) is staggering and is overlooked by just citing combat deaths.

Art