Bad News: Fewer American Soldiers Die

Nope, that's not really me talking, that's my interpretation of a Reuters article.

Improvements in emergency battlefield medicine are keeping soldiers alive who'd've died just a few years before.

Sounds like good news, albeit good news about an essentially grim subject, right?

Not to Reuters:

Number of badly wounded soldiers on rise in Iraq

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Military medical advances are keeping more soldiers alive in the Iraq War but also creating a growing pool of badly wounded veterans who will need expensive, long-term medical care, the U.S. secretary of Veteran Affairs said on Friday.

It's true that this is a good news/bad news story. While many badly wounded men are being saved, they are, largely, going to suffer from serious medical problems for the rest of their lives.

So why not give it a good news/bad news headline, like:

Medical Improvements Save Many Soldiers, Resulting In Rise in Number of Badly Wounded Casualties of War

Nope. To Reuters, apparently, saving the life of a badly wounded soldier is unambiguously bad news.

Of course, were new weapons (like some frangible super-bullet) killing more soldiers outright, Reuters wouldn't have run a headline like New Ultra-lethal Iraqi Weaponry Saves American Taxpayers Cost of Long-Term Veterans' Medical Care.

But then again, who knows? This is Reuters after all. Maybe they would headline the article exactly that way.

Thanks to the A-Man.

posted by Ace at 11:44 PM

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