As you may already know, the Pentagon wants to cut research and treatment money for traumatic brain injuries in half. They want to do this despite the fact that this is one of the most common injuries to U.S. G.I.'s in Iraq. When a spokesman for the Senate appropriations committee was asked about this cut, she said:

"Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities," says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee. "They didn't have any flexibility in such a tight fiscal year."

I'll bet Ted "all pork all the time" Stevens is really worrying about our boys.

Yeah, there's that spiffy missile defense system that doesn't work while soaking up billions, and those private contracts, and those payoffs to Iraqi ex-pats for services rendered, and on and on and on.

What a stupid statement to make. But then, what could be said that isn't stupid about cutting a pittance of dollars (total program funding is only $15 million) for funding of treatment and research of the signature injury of the great Bush adventure?

I decided to do a little research on the subject of what actually happens in traumatic brain injury (TBI). Go read the whole thing. It's quite enlightening. Essentially, when there's a blast near a soldier, the shock waves just cause the brain to rattle around a bit inside their skulls. Here's an excerpt:

Sergeant David Emme, a supply officer with a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, was stationed at a submachine gun on a truck rolling through northern Iraq last November, in a convoy transporting Iraqi volunteers to Mosul for military training. As they entered the town of Talafar, Emme noticed that the streets were unusually quiet: no children were outdoors running toward the vehicles demanding sweets. Emme got on the radio and warned others in the convoy: "Something might happen. They might have some plan for us." Moments later, as they slowed at a traffic circle, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off right next to Emme's truck, knocking him out.

Emme's version of what happened next is patched together, from his own memories and what others told him later. "I remember waking up and wondering who the hell I was, where the hell I was, and why can't I see or hear? My soldier was screaming for me to get out of the truck and I told him no, because it hurt too much. So he literally threw me out of the truck and guided me to a Stryker," a lightweight armored vehicle.

The blast wave and fragments from the explosion had blown out Emme's left eardrum, fractured his skull, injured his left eye, and caused a severe contusion in the left frontotemporal area of his brain. His fellow soldiers rushed him to the nearby military base, where he partially regained his vision and tried to walk before again losing consciousness. He was medically evacuated, first to a combat support hospital in Balad and then to one in Baghdad. There, neurosurgeons performed a craniectomy, removing a large piece of skull from the left temporal region to give Emme's brain room to swell (see diagram). They implanted the bone under the subcutaneous tissue of his abdomen, hoping that it could be replaced later — if Emme survived. He remained unconscious and remembers nothing about his stops in these hospitals.

And this guy was one of the "lighter" cases.

I can't believe that thinking budget analyst looked at this item and said, "hey, let's cut research for brain injury". More likely, like so much that is the Bush administration, it was a matter of incompetence. Will the Senate remedy this incompetence? The Senate is led by Republicans. What do you think?