He lies flat, unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling, tubes and machines feeding him, breathing for him, keeping him alive. He cannot walk or talk, but he can grimace and cry. And he is fully aware of what has happened to him.
Four years ago almost to this day, Joseph Briseno Jr. was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range in a Baghdad marketplace. His spinal cord was shattered, and cardiac arrests stole his vision and damaged his brain.
The 24-year-old is one of the most severely injured soldiers — some think the most injured soldier — to survive.
"Three things you would not want to be: blind, head injury, and paralyzed from the neck down. That's tough," said Dr. Steven Scott, head of the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Tampa VA Medical Center, where Briseno has twice been hospitalized for extensive care. In recent days, Briseno was hospitalized yet again, this time at the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center.
As a high schooler, Briseno liked the Discovery Channel and CSI, and wanted to be a forensic scientist or investigator. He was 20, attending George Mason University, when he was called up from the reserves and sent to war.
After he was shot, he was flown to Kuwait and then to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. His parents and two sisters rushed to his side.
"They told us, 'Prepare for his service.' That's how bad he was," said his father, Joseph Briseno Sr., a retired career Army man.
But he survived. From Germany, he went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, then to McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia. In December 2003, he went home, to Manassas Park, Virginia, where his parents, Joseph Sr. and Eva, quit their jobs to care for him.
"All our savings, all our money, was just emptied ... the 401(k)s, everything," said Joseph Briseno, who took a new job a year and a half ago to make ends meet.
The family has help from VA-provided nurses, but not around the clock. Jay's mother and father often do overnight duty, making sure their son is turned every four hours so he does not develop bedsores, which can become infected and threaten his life. If they do not turn him and keep him on schedule, he does not sleep well and becomes agitated.
What happens to Joseph Briseno when his parents can no longer care for him? Will Joe Lieberman pay for his care? Will Willian Kristol pay for his care? Will Michelle Malkin empty his bedpans and bathe him? Of course not. Briseno may be one of the most seriously wounded soldiers, but he isn't alone. The maimed are the forgotten ones of this war. The dead are buried and promptly forgotten by everyone other than their families, while the war hawks continue to slap Chinese-made ribbon magnets on their SUVs and impugn the patriotism of the rest of us. George W. Bush gives speeches about the lives of embryos and cares naught about this young man or any of the others whose blood can never be washed from his hands.
All for greed and lies and oil.
And the Democrats sit in Congress and worry about appearances. And John Boehner goes on a crying drunk rant in Congress asking "When we're gonna go get 'em?" I wonder that too, only I have a different "them" in mind....and a different approach to getting rid of "'em" -- one codified in the U.S. Constitution; the one of which the Democrats are so frightened.
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