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Death by Friendly Fire
When the Wounding Comes From the Most Unlikely of Places
by David Noblett
by David Noblett
"Everyone Listen Up! Shut up and listen to me! Freeze right where you stand! The phosphorus is all around us! Stay exactly where you are and don't you dare move even one inch except for Doc who's working on Sparky. Lobsterman, you're just a few feet away from Doc. Watching every step before you move, get over to Doc and lend him a hand! Get your machete and cut off a piece of bamboo for Sparky to bite down on and muffle his screams! Doc, don't even think about touching the phosphorus or trying to put it out! You can't, so don't waste your time! Get your Kbar and cut it out of his leg even if you have to take some meat with it. It's either that or letting it burn straight through his leg. Quick! Give me the radio, Mike! 'Red leg! Red leg! Red leg! Cease Fire! Cease Fire! I repeat, Cease Fire! This is Sky pilot one alpha. We are ground zero on your incoming rounds. Cease Fire and abort your mission. I repeat, Abort Your Mission! You are bombing your own men! Do you hear me?!"
Death by friendly fire. Casualties by friendly fire. They are mostly rare in war but they, nevertheless, do happen from time to time. The above incident is based on an actual event that I experienced in Viet Nam. We had just conducted a combat assault (jumping out of helicopters a few feet off the ground inside enemy territory) into a jungled area of the Central Highlands outside of Tuy Hoa. We were on a search and destroy mission to move upon a known NVA and VC base camp with gun emplacements and underground tunnels. As is with typical Army combat SOP, our artillery, based within striking distance from us, would "prep" our enemy target (the camp) prior to our arrival with a huge and unrelenting barrage of artillery shells. This was to inflict as much death and damage as possible to the enemy so we would have the advantage once we actually came upon the camp and engaged them in combat. It was as our platoon was moving forward toward the enemy base camp when, by error, a willie peter (white phosphorus) round landed nearby and sprayed the area all around us with hundreds of sizzling white-hot clumps of a blazing burning hell. It is almost impossible to extinguish the flaming phosphorus, as it will continue to burn even under water. That's why it will burn a hole straight through human flesh unless you cut it out from where it has landed.
Death by friendly fire most recently came to our attention when it was made known that the ex-NFL professional football player, Pat Tillman, who laid aside his lucrative football career to join the military and become one of the elite Army Rangers, was killed in April of 2004 by friendly fire in Afghanistan after being mistaken for the enemy. As tragic as it was, death and casualties by friendly fire is inevitable in every war. The obvious and depressing feeling comes from realizing that you can understand and deal with death and casualties when it comes from your enemy, but not when it comes from your fellow soldiers who are suppose to be on your side. You would think that death by friendly fire, if it is going to happen at all, would only happen in times of war where there are good guys and bad guys, the enemy and the friendly, us and them. At least in this kind of environment, when death by friendly fire happens, we can deal with it. Though unwelcomed and unwanted, we can at least halfway justify it as a rare and sometimes inevitable part of the price of war.
What we can't understand, and what we can't accept, is when our fellow Americans are made to endure and accept death and casualties by friendly fire, in the absence of war, in our civilian society at large. We are blind, fooled and deceived if we think that the military is the only source of death and casualties by friendly fire. There are, in reality, civilian counterparts that can also become the perpetrators of death and casualties by friendly fire upon their fellow citizens. These are those entities that have, on the one hand, pretended to be on the side of their fellow citizens and, to make their treasonous crimes even more despicable, may have even sworn an oath of allegiance to this end. One such civilian counterpart (defined as not being a part of or belonging to the military) that has proven to be an effective and destructive instrument in the administration of death and casualties (as if by friendly fire) upon its own fellow citizens is the Texas Medical Board whose historical record of destruction is totally antithetical to its own Mission Statement:
“Our mission is to protect and enhance the public's health, safety and welfare by establishing and maintaining standards of excellence used in regulating the practice of medicine and ensuring quality health care for the citizens of Texas through licensure, discipline and education.”
I was even further amazed when I read a message from the former TMB Executive Director, Donald W. Patrick, M.D. on the TMB website where he unveiled the new TMB official slogan: Safeguarding the public through professional accountability. In his "message" he says, "We arrived at this slogan through the combined efforts of several medical board staff members who brainstormed ideas to get what we do into a very few words."
First of all, were I the executive director of the TMB, the first thing I would do is to eliminate their mission statement completely because of the shame and embarrassment at how they have utterly failed in fulfilling it.
Secondly, it strikes me as being a total waste of time to gather together a bunch of medical board staff members to "brainstorm" to come up with some cute official TMB slogan that, again, like their mission statement is a complete fraud to their actual historical record. Better they get together, and better their time would be spent if they were to "brainstorm" over how they can face up to and correct their failure to fulfill their mission statement and slogan and repair all of the damages and injuries they have perpetrated upon their fellow citizens. They must, either voluntarily or by the force and rule of law, be made to stand before the citizens of the state of Texas and give accountability to the innocent victims of death and casualty inflicted under the guise of and by the so-called friendly fire of the Texas Medical Board. Why is this a justifiable statement? Just follow the trail of those lives that have been injured, broken, damaged and ruined by the TMB. It speaks for itself.
The TMB was formed for the purpose of and has been given a mandate to "serve" all Texas physicians and citizens in their oversight position. Remember their mission statement? The TMB was to have the attitude of being an advocate and ally for physicians and citizens instead of the adversary and enemy they have become.
There are vivid memories following the aftermath of combat action in Viet Nam and walking through the smoke-filled battlefield to see lifeless corpses and wounded soldiers being treated and readied for dust-off back to the rear for treatment. It seems the TMB has succeeded in creating its own battlefield, complete with dead bodies and wounded physicians and citizens whose lives will never fully recover again.
There isn't enough space here to list all of the casualties resulting from the despicable actions of the TMB. I think the well-known publisher/writer of the Internet based news/blog site The Provocateur, Mike Volpe, put it best where he suggested that as the cases of the TMB's atrocities committed against certain physicians are exposed and brought to light that they "…are likely to open up a Pandora's box of corruption throughout the medical system that infects the state of Texas. I have only begun to discover it all…" (The Provoc-
ateur; dated 5-20-08)
Mike Volpe is not alone in his assessment of the TMB. Throughout the medical community this current Texas Medical Board has developed a national reputation as being one of the very worst state medical boards in the nation. This is a reputation they have brought upon themselves. A couple of thousand years ago the Great Teacher stood before the multitudes to give His famous Sermon on the Mount. In His teaching He instructed His listeners on how to discern between good and evil when He said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits…" (Matt. 7:16a) The fruit of the TMB is obvious: Many good and innocent physicians have lost their practices, their profession and their careers. They have had their license to practice medicine taken away from them without a proven and justifiable cause, robbing them of their profession and the career they have spent decades building. They have been deprived of an income in order to support and provide for their families. They have had their reputations smeared and destroyed beyond repair in the public media with the complicity of the TMB. They have been made to endure hardships through no fault of their own. They have been falsely accused through anonymous complaints that are discovered to be nothing but a pack of lies, and yet still held guilty by the TMB.
Then there are the patients, the good citizens of the state of Texas. They have shown up at their doctor's office for their next scheduled appointment to find the doors locked, the lights out and their doctor gone forever. Overnight and without warning the TMB shuts down an innocent doctor's practice and leaves his victimized patients left standing alone and without their necessary-for-life medical treatment and medications. If a doctor abandons his patients, the TMB will strip him of his license. But when the TMB causes the doctor to commit the FORCED ABANDONMENT of his patients AGAINST HIS WILL, it's all right. Left abandoned by the TMB and without proper medical care, these patients regress into states of becoming invalid and disabled. They become sick and bedridden. They must make regular trips to the local ER as the only place to receive the medical care they once had. They lose their jobs and are no longer able to support and provide for their families. Families split up and marriages are broken up. Homes are lost and autos are repossessed. These once-productive members of society are now forced to go on welfare in order to survive. Then finally there comes the ultimate victim caused by the atrocious decisions of the TMB to take away their doctor and necessary-for-life medical care. These would be those who can no longer endure and choose the final solution for their misery: suicide. We know of three patient suicides (2 confirmed and 1 unconfirmed) of one such doctor alone. This is the fruit of the
TMB.
I opened this article by speaking of death and casualties by friendly fire. It is one thing when you are fighting alongside your fellow warriors, and in the heat of battle fellow soldiers within your ranks are accidentally and unknowingly made to suffer death or become a casualty by friendly fire. When such a mistake happens, the first thing you do is to call a cease-fire to immediately shut down the source of the problem. Then you begin to treat the wounded and take care of the dead. You learn what caused it and why it was caused. From this you make the necessary corrections to ensure that it will never happen again.
That is how death and casualties by friendly fire are dealt with in the military and, in theory, should be the example and template for our civilian society as well. On the other hand, if you can, imagine this: You are a soldier and going about your business while on patrol with your platoon out in the jungle somewhere. Without warning, you begin receiving incoming artillery rounds exploding all around you. You watch as fellow soldiers fall dead or wounded by the shell fragments. You make radio contact with your rear command headquarters and are shocked to find out that you are receiving friendly fire from your own artillery. You demand an immediate cease-fire and for the artillery to abort their mission to avoid further damage. And yet, to your surprise and frustration, your call for a cease-fire is ignored and the bombs keep coming. You get back on the radio to speak to your rear area command post once again. This time you get no answer, no response to your pleas. You are stunned when you realize your commanders have turned off their radios and have turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to your situation and the bombs keep on coming and more dead and wounded keep on happening. Your higher-ups at the command post have refused to listen to the cries and pleas of their fellow soldiers or to even consider the death and destruction they are causing. As you hunker down trying to protect yourself from the incoming rounds, what would you think? Would you think that this is what we expect from our enemies and not our fellow soldiers? NO! You would think that these people who are trying to destroy us under the guise of being with us and claiming to be our fellow soldiers ARE WORSE THAN THE ENEMY!!!
Your worst enemy is not the one you face on the battlefield in the heat of combat. Your worst enemy is the one who has come alongside you, wears your uniform, talks your language, buddies up to you, shares his meals with you and sleeps beside you. Then when you least expect it, on some dark night he sneaks up to your backside and slits your throat from behind. This is why the TMB has become worse than our true enemies. While claiming to be on our side and posing as a fellow soldier, they have roamed around in our midst as a wolf in sheep's clothing and have become as the Benedict Arnold of the medical profession in the state of Texas, reaping death, casualties and destruction within the ranks of those they claim to serve.
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