Two comics I regularly check out, Get Fuzzy and doonesbury, are each dealing with a character who has lost a leg in Iraq.

The Iraq war will likely be remembered as the maiming war. There are a lot of soldiers back from Iraq that are missing limbs. They don't get talked about the way that dead soldiers do. The numbers are tallied only in passing and so far no number has stood out as a benchmark. Is there a tipping point for the maimed? The dead get measured against conflicts past and present, the latter already waged long enough to have established benchmarks of its own. At some point public opinion will tip the other way. Who will measure the maimed?

  posted by jmd ¶ Thursday, April 22, 2004