Lies, Damned Lies from the Anti-War Left

Posted By Froggy

I have a Google Alert switched on for "Navy SEAL", so every day I get a couple of emails with links to articles mentioning those words.  The other day, I got a doozy.  As it turns out, there is a pack of degenerate lefty scumbags who put together a website called antiwar.com where they showcase all manner of moonbattery and psychotic conspiratorial ravings.  It's sort of like the Democratic Underground in essay form.  There's a moonbat there by the name of Aaron Glantz who included the following quote in his latest screed:

"I walk into the operating room and the general surgeons are doing their work and there is the body of this Navy SEAL, which is a physical specimen to behold," he told IPS. "And his abdomen is open, they're exploring both intestines. He's missing both legs below the knee, one arm is blown off, he's got incisions on his thighs to relieve the pressure on the parts of the legs that are hopefully gonna survive and there's genital injuries, and you just want to cry."

At first I was a little concerned that I hadn't heard about a comrade with these kind of catastrophic injuries so I asked around a bit, and nobody else had either.  Since Glantz had quoted a California Army National Guard Colonel named Vito Imbasciani for his article, I figured it wouldn't be too tough to find out if such a person even existed and if so whether he had had a SEAL patient in such dire condition. Well, Colonel Vito answered my email and was very upset saying,

I'm left speechless over what has become of my answers to this gentleman's questions, and don't quite know how to categorize them.

The Colonel is too polite to say it, but after reading his email after the jump you will easily be able to categorize Glantz' alterations of his comments as lies akin to enemy propaganda attempting to stir up pity and rancor among fellow moonbats using a Navy SEAL WIA to do it.

Dear Mr. Heidt,

Thanks so much for bringing this to my attention.  I'm left speechless over what has become of my answers to this gentleman's questions, and don't quite know how to categorize them.

It's true, I am a urologic surgeon, and the State Surgeon for the California Army National Guard, with 21 years (three deployments, and two wars) under my medical belt.  I have just returned from a three-month rotation to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where I had the honor to care for military and civilian casualties from Iraq, as well as the five other countries where we have soldiers and sailors posted. I was one of five urologists at Landstuhl, but the only one assigned to OIF/OEF patients, so I have a good sense of what the medical burden was, at least during the period from 15 September to 18 December, 2006.

I saw anywhere from three to five seriously wounded men everyday, and that does not include the walking wounded (the kidney stone, prostatitis, orchitis and testicle cancer patients) who made it to my office under their own steam.  I recall attending to one Navy SEAL, intubated, unconscious, with multiple extremity injuries and compartment syndrome, in the ICU, and later in the O.R.  But I would be dishonest if I could recall with any greater certitude his precise wounds.  Usually, when the general surgeons called me to the OR, it was to attend to some renal and, quite likely, some genital injuries needing repair.  Whether this fellow specifically was missing a limb or not I cannot remember.  We were not encouraged to keep those kinds of records (as I would in civilian life here in Los Angeles).

When Mr. Glantz called, I was in the middle of my morning clinic.  He did identify himself as a journalist, and recorded my remarks.  He didn't say precisely he was going to quote me at all, much less at great length; I thought I was giving him background information. Nor was I aware that his publication was anything but unbiased.  He clearly got many things very wrong, either by not listening carefully, by editing poorly, or by working out of a desire to sensationalize. For instance, I told him that I operated about once a week for testicular cancer.  This involves surgically removing one testis.  He reported that I severed the genitals almost daily -- making me seem more the butcher of Baghdad than Saddam ever was. His other errors are more of what grammarians would call elipsis -- conveniently omitting selected words to end up with a meaning quite different from the one intended by the author -- the way a newspaper extracts glistening words of approval out of a review that really panned the production.

Everything people say about bad journalists seems to have come true with this fellow.  I don't know what his response would have been had I demanded to see final copy -- they probably don't do that, do they?

I'm very proud of my work in Germany -- the best I've ever had the opportunity to do for the Army in all these years.  Something very noble and blessed goes on at that hospital over there, and I had the chance to come into close proximity to some truely wonderful, heroic people. This, however, puts a bad taste in my mouth, and it comes at the end, too.

I thank you again for bringing this to my attention.  It came as I was proofreading my own Iraqi-2004 blog (I'm showing it to a publisher soon), so I'm even more sensitive to how my words are received.  And I'm curious how this will play out.  You'll have to give me your site address.  Mine is www.yovito.com.

And thanks for your service, too.

Vito Imbasciani

COL, MC, CAARNG
State Surgeon

So there you have it.  I'd like to thank the Colonel for his thorough and rapid response.  This is clearly a decent man who was used by an unethical "journalist" (isn't that an oxymoron  redundant?) who gratutitously fabricated quotes, edited them to create sensationalist content, and besmirched the State Surgeon of California for "amputating genitals" daily to name a few. 

He goes on to extrapolate something from a raw number of VA claims for disability made with out differentiating what they are for.  I am officially "disabled" as a result of orthopedic injuries from the arduous physical activities common to Navy SEALs.  Just about everyone having left the military has a 0% VA rating because every service member (at least this was true for me) has his health record reviewed by a volunteer from the DAV.  If the DAV rep sees something, that member is encouraged to file a claim and as it stands, probably 1 in 5 will go through with it.  Obviously, there are some critically wounded people who are suffering as a result of their war service, but somehow casualty numbers have been successfully conflated by the left to be used as a weapon against an aggressive anti-terror policy. 

It's not like this is something new, but I don't cotton to using the heroic service of my comrades to undermine the very things those men were fighting to protect.

---

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Lies, Damned Lies from the Anti-War Left

I have a Google Alert switched on for "Navy SEAL", so every day I get a couple of emails with links to articles mentioning those words.  The other day, I got a doozy.  As it turns out, there is a pack of degenerate lefty scumbags who put together a website called antiwar.com where they showcase all manner of moonbattery and psychotic conspiratorial ravings.  It's sort of like the Democratic Underground in essay form.  There's a moonbat there by the name of Aaron Glantz who included the following quote in his latest screed:

"I walk into the operating room and the general surgeons are doing their work and there is the body of this Navy SEAL, which is a physical specimen to behold," he told IPS. "And his abdomen is open, they're exploring both intestines. He's missing both legs below the knee, one arm is blown off, he's got incisions on his thighs to relieve the pressure on the parts of the legs that are hopefully gonna survive and there's genital injuries, and you just want to cry."

At first I was a little concerned that I hadn't heard about a comrade with these kind of catastrophic injuries so I asked around a bit, and nobody else had either.  Since Glantz had quoted a California Army National Guard Colonel named Vito Imbasciani for his article, I figured it wouldn't be too tough to find out if such a person even existed and if so whether he had had a SEAL patient in such dire condition. Well, Colonel Vito answered my email and was very upset saying,

I'm left speechless over what has become of my answers to this gentleman's questions, and don't quite know how to categorize them.

The Colonel is too polite to say it, but after reading his email after the jump you will easily be able to categorize Glantz' alterations of his comments as lies akin to enemy propaganda attempting to stir up pity and rancor among fellow moonbats using a Navy SEAL WIA to do it.

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