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The Trauma of War

"Don't let me die! Please, don't let me die," the U.S. soldier said repeatedly as medics carried him to the trauma room.

His glazed eyes focused on an Army chaplain kneeling over him. There was blood everywhere.

A roadside bomb that exploded next to his patrol vehicle sent shards of metal into his body and catapulted him from the vehicle.

He, like so many of the gravely wounded soldiers in Iraq, was rushed to the 10th Combat Support Hospital, where minutes or seconds can mean life or death.

"Am I going to live?" he asked, in a pleading, rhythmic voice."

CNN International, in a piece here, describes in graphic detail what it is really like "on the ground" in Iraq. As CNN reports:

"In Iraq, roughly 17,500 U.S. troops have been wounded, and nearly 2,500 have been killed."

The hell of War!

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