A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Durango Herald, April 16, on U.S. soldiers suffering brain injuries:
As in every area of life, technology changes the effects of war. For Americans wounded in the Iraq war that is both a blessing and a curse: More of those wounded are surviving, but more of the survivors are permanently disabled in ways that doctors and the military are only beginning to understand. Most worrisome is what is called “traumatic brain injury.”
In recent decades, medical science has significantly advanced in the treatment of battle wounds. With that, too, has come better training for military medics, improved drugs and medicines, and a greater understanding of the extreme traumas inflicted in combat.
The upshot is that many who in previous conflicts would have died of their wounds now survive. Estimates vary, but according to the Defense Department’s American Forces Press Service, the ratio of wounded to killed in Iraq is 9-1. In Vietnam it was 2-1.
Another factor in that is the use of body armor. Ronald Glasser is a physician who treated U.S. soldiers wounded in Vietnam and the author of the book “Wounded: From Vietnam to Iraq.” In an op-ed in “The Washington Post,” he cited the astonishment of surgeons the first time they see a “trooper with two missing limbs and a traumatic brain injury and the surgeon removing the armor cannot find a scratch from the chin to the groin.”
Countering those American advances, however, is the ingenuity of our enemies who have learned, in the words of one general, to “weaponize leftover ammunition.” The results—called improvised explosive devices or IEDs—are crude but often extremely powerful bombs, what Glasser calls the “signature weapon” of the Iraq war.
The problem is that IEDs also produce what others have called the war’s “signature injury”—closed-head wounds caused by the sheer intensity of a bomb’s blast wave. Doctors are familiar with head wounds caused by blows or punctures. But an IED’s shock wave can itself cause brain injuries of a type and severity physicians are only beginning to understand.
Glasser quotes a neurologist who described the blast’s effect on the brain. The sound wave, he said, “seems to cause little gas bubbles to form. When they pop, it leaves a cavity. littering people’s brains with these little holes.”
Even mild cases of traumatic brain injury can result in headaches, memory loss, balance problems, trouble sleeping and irritability. Those hurt more can experience blindness, hearing loss, mental retardation or identity loss.
And that type of wound is being seen more and more often. The Associated Press reported Thursday that almost 18 percent of Fort Carson soldiers returning from the war had some form of traumatic brain injury.
Their long-term prognosis, however, is unknown. And therein lies the most tragic aspect of traumatic brain injuries. The effects of the damage are long-lasting, perhaps life-long. It is not clear that medical science can restore functions lost to traumatic brain injuries.
It should be obvious, however, that veterans with traumatic brain injury deserve whatever help is possible. That would start with therapy that recognizes their unique problems and continue with help for families stressed by their loved one’s slow recovery. It also should include Pentagon funding for research into the nature and treatment of brain injuries.
For as Glasser says: “The Iraq war is not a war of death it is a war of disabilities.” And few can be worse than the loss of a mind.
Editorial: n&article—path/opinion/opin070416—1.htm
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The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo., April 16, on FBI profiling taking a dark turn:
There’s a good reason why federal courts generally forbid intelligence agencies from monitoring protesters and various organizations within the United States unless they suspect a serious crime is being planned or committed. In a free society, Americans should be able to join any group they choose and espouse most any views they choose (ones inciting violence excepted) without having to answer questions from government agents.
The FBI, however, clearly violated that standard during a 2002 anti-war protest in Washington. Law enforcement authorities have denied that agents interrogated 20 or so protesters as they headed to their van in a parking garage, but a civil lawsuit has revealed documents proving that this took place.
It’s ironic that the feds will file charges against public figures for lying to federal investigators, but government officials can mislead the public for years without any ramifications.
“The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van?” asked “The Washington Post.” “They were wearing black—a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.”
This would be funny if it weren’t so offensive.
To the FBI, apparently, to wear black is to potentially be anarchist. And to be an anarchist is reason enough to be interrogated. The protesters were arrested for trespassing in the parking garage as they milled around the garage entrance, according to the Post. They were never prosecuted for this. Trespassing hardly rises to the level of a crime that would justify FBI interrogations and harassment.
This is not an aberration. “Similar intelligence-gathering operations have been reported in New York, where a local police intelligence unit tried to infiltrate groups planning to protest at the Republican National Convention in 2004, and in Colorado, where records surfaced showing that the FBI collected names and license plates of people protesting timber industry practices at a 2002 industry convention,” the Post reported.
It’s quite chilling to think that exercising your democratic rights to march and protest, might cause FBI agents to interrogate or monitor you. These are the tactics one finds in police states. Fortunately, a civil-rights lawsuit revealed the truth about this incident. We won’t hold our breath to see whether those who authorized these breaches of the Constitution will pay any penalty for their horrid behavior.
Newspaper:
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STATE/REGIONAL:
Rocky Mountain News, April 15, on the integrity of state testing:
The anti-testing crusaders tried again this year to make Colorado’s statewide tests essentially voluntary, and therefore useless for purposes of accountability. Fortunately, they failed, thanks to Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, and the three Republicans on the Senate Education Committee. Those four killed House Bill 1284, sponsored by Rep. Edward Casso, D-Thornton, and Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora.
Williams sponsored a similar bill in 2006, and this year’s version got through the House. Since this battle is sure to be fought again, it’s important to understand what’s at stake.
There are already several categories of students whose scores on the Colorado Student Assessment Program are not used in calculating a school’s ranking for school “report cards.” This bill would have added to the list “Any student who is absent from school on the days on which the assessments are administered” as well as students whose scores are invalidated by errors in administering the tests.
The idea is to appease a small but noisy faction of parents and others who oppose the test and either keep their own children out of school on testing days (which is their legal right) or campaign for others to do so.
The dilemma they face is that current law penalizes a school for no-shows by treating them in the report-card calculations as having received the lowest possible score. Since the number of no-shows is small, this usually makes no difference in a school’s ranking, but if a school is very close to the cut-off point between rankings, it could drop a notch.
So parents are in a bind. If they don’t allow their children to take the tests, they risk damaging their children’s school.
That’s unfortunate—but the alternative is worse. If there is no penalty at all for missing the tests, schools will have an incentive to encourage weaker students to skip them, or perhaps arrange selective “errors” in giving the tests. If that happens, a school’s CSAP results will be artificially inflated, misleading parents who rely on them.
Casso had earlier withdrawn a similar bill over concerns that failing to meet federal standards for test participation could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars from Washington. We think he should also be concerned about the integrity of Colorado’s testing program.
Editorial: ,2777,DRMN—23964—5 484754,00.html
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The Pueblo Chieftain, April 16, on Colorado inmates and the Wild Horse Program:
A group of inmates working for Colorado Correctional Industries and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has been training formerly wild mustangs to become steeds for the U.S. Border Patrol.
The Patrol has been leasing horses from a private vendor to work the U.S.-Canadian border from the Cascade Mountains to the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park, but the government considers this a cost-prohibitive venture. Once the Patrol takes ownership of the mustangs, they will carry agents along the rough-and-tumble border.
The Border Patrol has two targets in that area: potential terrorists and smugglers of a high-grade marijuana grown in Canada. LaAlan Pinkerton, assistant chief agent for the Patrol in Spokane, Wash., says, “We couldn’t have found a more perfect fit for our needs” than the trained mustangs.
BLM workers have been rounding up wild mustangs on public lands for the past 18 years and turning them over for training at the Colorado prison complex in Fremont County. Fran Ackley, BLM’s director for the Wild Horse Program, says, “There is a market niche for saddle-trained horses and they are in demand. I wish we could train more saddle horses because they are adopting out easier than the (untrained horses).”
This program is a way of giving select Colorado prisoners a way to rehabilitate while they work with these magnificent steeds and save the federal government—and taxpayers—money. We’d call it a win-win situation.
Editorial:
