On Medicine and terrorists/insurgents

This post was truly something to read. Besides the immediate, emotional impact - it led me to think about something I have not heard much, if anything about. The provision of medical care by The US and it's Coalition partners vs. that of the "insurgents" and AQ.

An overview of the Army's Medical Department can be found here. An overview of the Navy's Medical organization can be found here. An interesting inter-service organization of medical folks is this one. Way too much information for me to go into detail - please surf around when you go into each.

So what do our people do? They want to help. They treat our forces. They treat civilians hurt by enemy action. They help civilians every other way too. Every way.

We seem to save anyone hurt in combat. I mean ANYONE.

They are the BEST there ever was, were or are. I do meant the BEST. They save lives, period.

Oh, and I am not ignoring the Air Force either.

AQ offers its members in Pakistan "free medical". Saddam used to pitch in with some medical support. Saudi groups would pitch in for medical help afterwards too. AQ did have interest in pharmacies - but for other reasons.
I cannot find anything on insurgent medical assets - they do seem to threaten doctors however.


Oh, and one little personal memory that stands out - I have never seen US Marines so fiercely protective or respectful of anyone as they are of their "doc" - as they call their Navy Corpsmen that is assigned to them. From everything I saw and heard, those Corpsmen are cool under fire, and damned good at what they do.