Whatever
This member of the Anti-Everything League enjoys a good Bush snark as much as the next … whatever “Whatever” is. Snark encounters reality, undercut somewhat when the maimed detritus of Bush’s war in these pics appear to be enjoying his visit. Unclear from this site how familiar “Whatever” is with either the consequences of war or the consequences of appeasement, though “Whatever,” true to ”Whatever’s” name, appears to prefer the latter.
While we’re on the subject, it’s three years since I went to Walter Reed to meet some guys, produced this Veteran’s Day 2004 article. It’s tragic and horrible, the kind of place you expect to leave depressed and full of pity. So how come, just like every other time I visited war-wounded GIs, I ended up walking away feeling uplifted by the contact and a smaller person for having preferred, in my own time, to die rather than end up like that?
WASHINGTON D.C. - It could be an upscale gym anywhere, full of purposeful activity. The good-natured but harsh ribbing among the men working out is relentless.
“Hey, how long has that guy been here?” says one kid, who is practicing with his new titanium alloy leg. He is talking about a man who is working his stump on a leg-press machine.
“About five months,” another man tells him.
“He’s been here three months longer than me, and he can’t walk yet? I can walk already!” the first amputee gloats.
“Hey! He’s above-the-knee! You’re below-the-knee!”
A cellphone rings, and someone says, “I think that’s yours,” to a man who is working his stomach muscles.
“Yeah, let it ring. I don’t feel like getting up right now,” says the man, who is missing both legs.
This is Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the human cost of America’s war in Iraq is seen in naked stumps and scars. The 46 soldiers hospitalized here are among the more than 8,000 war wounded.
What does it mean to be a Marine when you are one of the maimed at Walter Reed on Veterans Day?
“Everything,” Cpl. Peter Bagarella, 21, of Falmouth said simply.
Theirs is the story of service and sacrifice behind the statistics.
“This place is awesome. They gave me my eyes back,” said Bagarella. A remotely detonated bomb blinded him and vaporized his left leg in a palm grove in Haditha on Aug. 12. As the Iraqi ambushers opened up with machine guns and the Marines returned fire, Bagarella screamed, “Oh God! Oh God!” and used his thumbs to count his fingers. He asked the medics, “What’s gone? What’s gone on my body?”
Army PFC Paul Skarinka’s shattered left leg is caged in a cumbersome brace, with metal pins screwed through the flesh into his calf bone.
“I’m one of those people who likes to be in the middle of things,” said Skarinka, 24, of Whitman. “I knew I could end up being deployed. I had no problem with that.”
He has fond memories of Baghdad - visits with local elders, giving kids candy and being asked to stay for dinner at wedding parties.
Then in late August, they moved into Sadr City against rogue cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
“After evening prayers is when they would come out,” Skarinka said. In the early morning hours of Sept. 13, the night’s business was mostly done when an RPG came screaming up the alley.
“It looked like an oversized bottle rocket flying at us,” he said. It hit as he dove for cover. “There was debris around me. My ears were ringing. I thought, `This is OK.’ It was kind of normal. It was when I tried to get up that I realized something was wrong.” He couldn’t move his left leg or arm. He felt the blood pouring out of his side.
“I was thinking, `I’ve got to get out of here. I’m still in the kill zone. I’m not dying in this crappy alley in Sadr City.”
Someone dragged him out by his flak vest and threw him on the back of a Humvee. As a former medic, he knew the dryness in his mouth was a sign of massive blood loss. He wondered whether he was going to make it.
Skarinka probably always will walk with a limp and never have full use of his left hand.
“I don’t regret it one bit, what happened to me in Sadr City,” he said. “I signed up for this. I knew the risk. Luck wasn’t on my side.”
For Cpl. Matthew Boisvert, 21, of Tyngsboro, his missing right leg and damaged right arm are obstacles he must conquer to convince a Marine Corps Medical Board to let him go back for a third time.
“I loved it,” Boisvert said. “We enjoyed it.”
He described the transcendental experience of battle, of becoming almost mentally detached from one’s body, watching oneself and one’s friends do unimaginable things. “There is nothing in civilian life like the camaraderie you experience over there. I played sports all my life. You get an adrenaline rush playing sports, but it’s nothing like the rush you get in combat.”
His platoon fought in the initial invasion of March 2003, and went back into the bitter streetfighting of Fallujah a year later.
“It didn’t have that warm and fuzzy feeling the second time,” Boisvert said. But the war-hardened Marines went into battle with the spirit of athletes, a practiced team eager to perform again. They ribbed each other mercilessly when a flesh wound forced one or another temporarily out of the fight. The loss of friends killed in action solidified their already intense bond. Then a bomb placed in an orange traffic cone ripped Boisvert’s body apart on Aug. 17. He admits a sense of guilt that he is here, with his friends once again fiercely engaged in Fallujah.
There is another kind of camaraderie here at Walter Reed, he said.
“It helps to have people with the same injuries around,” Boisvert said.”You’ll be all pissed off because you lost your leg. Then, you see a guy who’s lost two legs. That guy’s worse off than me. I have no right to be pissed off.”
Boisvert’s grandfather, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, used to take him to Veterans Day events when he was a kid.
“I saw how much it meant to them, but I didn’t understand it,” Boisvert said.
Bagarella said, “It’s a part of me now.”
Boisvert at last check a year ago or so was at UMass Lowell. Skarinka recently got married, walking fine, according to my wife’s cousin who used to work with him as a medic south of Boston. No contact with Bagarella.
Hey, here’s some good Bush-snark material that “Whatever” failed to fully exploit. Prevaricator-in-Chief plays at fake war with real war vets. Come on, you’re slacking. OK, here’s we go. An indignant All Spin Zone:
No Mr. Bush, you do not know the consequences firsthand. Someone who has never faced combat can never know firsthand. Someone who has never had to watch their fellow soldiers be struck down by a sniper’s bullet or blown to bits by an roadside bomb can ever know firsthand. Someone who has never had to take the life of another human being will never know firsthand (and no, video games do no count).
By and large true. Unclear whether ASZ’s Xsociate knows any of that himself, however, or whether Xman knows anything about occupying the Oval Office, and what it’s like to order men and women to go to their deaths, see the results, etc.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:14 am on Saturday, November 10, 2007
5 Responses to “Whatever”
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November 10th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I wonder how many visits to a veterans’ hospital “Whatever” has made. I’d say going there is obtaining firsthand knowledge.
Really, what should Mr. Bush do when he visits such places? Wail and weep? Walk around with pity on his face? Or should he smile when he talks to the young soldiers, look them in the eye and laugh at their jokes, offer them words of encouragement and gratitude, with a firm touch? I know which kind of person I’d rather see in that situation. Doubtless “Whatever”, being negative about everything, would prefer the other kind.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
“Whatever” might be better off not visiting the hospital and expressing his opinions. Wounded or not, those men are still Marines, after all.
November 10th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
It hasn’t been mentioned in the news for a long while, but there have been notes to the effect that Mr Bush visits Walter Reed two or three Sundays each month, and that the Press is not included.
Cheers
November 11th, 2007 at 3:23 am
Cretins like “whatever” vomit words they do not understand about men they aren’t fit to gaze upon. They know nothing of the courage it takes to fight, or the courage it takes to live with the consequences.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
[...] his leg in Haditha, over a year before the events described above. You’ll be glad you met USMC corporals Peter Bagarella and Matt Boisvert, and Army PFC Paul Skarinka. You can ignore the parts where I’m counter-snarking on Bush [...]