Gifford’s doc is battlefield-experienced surgeon

On top of several attendees at the Congresswoman Gifford rally in Tuscon probably being saved by a veteran, Col. Bill Badger, the LA Times says her surgeon is a 24-year veteran who honed his skills near the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan;

Rhee, 49, chief of trauma at University Medical Center in Tucson, said his work in the Navy tending to injured soldiers and Marines and teaching the next generation of battlefield medical personnel unquestionably played a role in his ability to treat Giffords and direct care for the 10 other victims who began arriving in his unit Saturday morning.

“There’s no doubt,” he said. “I was in the Navy 24 years, and I trained to do nothing but battlefield casualty care. When I did go to Afghanistan and Iraq, I wasn’t in a hospital. I was in very forward surgical units, so I was very accustomed to working with very little gear and people and personnel, very little resources, with wounds that are very different than civilian injuries,” Rhee said Sunday. “Did it prepare me? I would say of course it did. And that makes it so that when we have a mass casualty of 11 people here, it’s really not as bad as it can get.”

Hmmm, it seems that vets have done a good portion of the heavy-lifting in this case, yet the only time anyone seems interested in veterans is when a gunman makes a one-day visit to a MEPS station almost two years ago. Still waiting for Mark Potok and his protege Janet Napolitano to announce that community college students are the new threat.

Category: Veterans Issues