Cost of War

Ronald J. Glasser, M.D. Bestselling Author of Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq

The Wounded Keep the Death Count Low

The real "body count" of this war is not only our dead, but our wounded. The real risk to our troops is no longer the numbers of dead but the numbers ending up on orthopedic wards and neurosurgical units.

“Americans who believe that the human cost of Iraq can be measured primarily by body bags, need to read ‘Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq.’”

—Michael Arnold Glueck, New Wounds, Orange County Business Journal, April 24, 2006

A War of Disabilities

For most soldiers, the war doesn’t end with the playing of taps. The tens of thousands of wounded are rarely heard and as a result, as pointed out in the recent Washington Post articles on the lack of adequate care at Walter Reed and in the current government hearings, these casualties are not getting the help they need.

• Those not returned to duty within a week number (excluding PTSD) now number over fifty thousand.
• Amputations are well over eight percent of those wounded—numbers not seen since our Civil War.
• The number of traumatic head injuries is well over thirty percent of those wounded.
• Physical injuries combined with TBI and PTSD puts the number of casualties at well over a hundred thousand and those numbers are growing.
• The ultimate cost of this war has been calculated to be over 600 billion dollars for disability benefits and another 700 billion for medical care for the wounded and injured…and those numbers grow each day.