Video games as therapy for wounded warriors

The Post ran an interesting Memorial Day Weekend article about the use of video games as a form of therapy at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It isn't surprising that video games are popular among troops who are undergoing physical rehabilitation, but I was surprised to learn that there are several charities, and even an Eagle Scout Project, focused on buying video game systems for military hospitals.

Organizers said that the games have helped wounded soldiers regain dexterity, helped troops with brain injuries regain their mental agility, and more broadly, made troops feel at home. Seems like a great idea (and if anyone has a link for any of these charities, please email it to me).

"Games as Therapy for Walter Reed's Wounded" [Washington Post]

UPDATED 5/31/2007:

Groups accepting video game donations for U.S. troops include Cause (mentioned in the article), Soldier's Angels, and Operation Gratitude.

What is a citizen's duty?

Andrew J. Bacevich, a history professor who served in the Vietnam and the Gulf wars, marks Memorial Day with a profound essay on the difference between a soldier's duty and a citizen's duty. Bacevich's son died fighting in Iraq in early May.

Perhaps the most important part of the essay addresses the issue of how citizens' views on foreign policy get drowned out by monied interests, and by the two parties' adherence to conventional wisdom and political cliches:

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

"I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty." [Washington Post]

Hitchens: GOP "dropping their most intelligent people"

Somehow I missed this until now, but Wolfowitz allegedly threatened investigators by saying: "If they f*** with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f*** them too." [Guardian] Wolfowitz hasn't said what he's doing next, but across town, I've heard that Georgetown's School of Disgraced Bush Administration Officials is hiring. [Washington Post]

Mr. Wolfowitz still has one true believer: devout atheist Christopher Hitchens, who is claiming that the Republican Party is "dropping their most intelligent people over the side . . ." [London Times] Could someone please explain to me why this guy still considered relevant in intellectual circles? Sometimes it seems like Hitchens' recent American citizenship must have been granted on the condition that he promote the neocon agenda until the bitter end. I'm about as interested in reading God is Not Great, Hitchens' self-righteous attack on religion in general, as I am the inevitable self-serving Wolfowitz apologia, which we can expect by this time next year. Maybe Wolfowitz will title his book The Ten Percent Rule.

WOLFOWITZ RESIGNS!

Thank God. Of all the bad decisions the Bush administration has made, naming Paul Wolfowitz President of the World Bank was one of the very worst. Wasn't there someone else out there who hadn't squandered hundreds of billions of American taxpayers' dollars by taking us into a war based on false rationales?

I can't believe that it has taken two years and a completely separate scandal to force this guy out. To those who say that this is really about Iraq, and not the scandal over his girlfriend, I would respond that Iraq is obviously going to be a major problem for Paul Wolfowitz for the rest of his career. Once you know someone has repeatedly lied about something as serious as which countries were involved in the 9/11 attacks, you're going to pay closer attention when his girlfriend gets a $47,000 raise from the organization he runs.

Nobody's perfect. But most of the rest of us haven't made any mistakes that have permanently damaged our Nation's standing in the world, cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and cost American taxpayers $400 billion - all without any clear benefit to American citizens, whatsoever.

Wolfowitz had a truly central role in the Bush administration's attempts to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, which began just hours after Al Qaeda hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, on September 17, 2001, Wolfowitz wrote a memo titled "Preventing More Events," which argued that "if there were even a 10 percent chance Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, maximum priority should be placed on eliminating that threat." (I have requested this memo under the Freedom Of Information Act; the Defense Department said that it could not be located).

As I noted in a prior post ("Hard to get a good case": Early Attempts to Link 9/11 and Iraq), "Wolfowitz’s '10 percent' logic has to be the single most absurd argument that was ever made for invading Iraq. Does that mean that if there is a 90% chance Al Qaeda did it, and a 10 percent chance Iraq did it, we should place 'maximum priority' on Iraq?"

Probably not - but that's exactly what Wolfowitz did. And that's some fuzzy math coming from a future President of the World Bank.

"Wolfowitz Resigns From World Bank" [Washington Post]
" 'Hard to get a good case': Early Attempts to Link 9/11 and Iraq" [outragedmoderates.org]