She uses Beth Nissan to 'pull at the heart strings' but when Beth's reporting turns into Anti-War testimony it is all RE-Written.
May 4, 2004
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Since the war began, there have been 3,000 of these flights, 40,000 patients. They haven't lost one yet.
BROWN: Quickly looking ahead to tomorrow, the beginning of a series of reports on the wounded and bringing them home from Iraq in the wake of the deadliest month in the war. Beth Nissen returned to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, where the injured are brought. Eventually, they are flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. And Nissen made the trip home with some of them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is one scheduled almost every day from Ramstein Air Force base in Germany, a medevac flight carrying troops wounded in Iraq back to the U.S.
On this flight, 37 troops with gunshot wounds, blast fractures, serious shrapnel injuries. Two are in critical condition. One with a spinal cord injury is on a ventilator. For the nine-hour flight home, the huge cargo plane turns into a flying hospital. It is a constant struggle for the onboard medical team. Stethoscopes are useless. They can't hear heart sounds or breath sounds over the roar of the C- 141 engines.
Changes in altitude, turbulence can cause drops in blood pressure, spikes in pain. Everyone from the onboard nurses to the on- ground refuelers has the same sense of mission: get these sick and wounded soldiers and Marines back to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other U.S. hospitals for surgery, treatment, rehab, to carry on the fight to recover.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
The initial report clearly stated there were 3000 flights with 40,000 wounded. It was the first time the 'reality' of the level of disabled became known to the USA public. The reality was staggering.
This was the narrative to the Nissan Presentation. Above is the concluding statements and the ones manipulated by von Zwieten.
BROWN: In a week when we've talked a good deal about bad apples in Iraq, it is time to talk of angels. We found these angels on a clunky airplane filled from ceiling to floor with the wounded of the Iraq war. They travel from Iraq to Germany and then on to Washington, the beginnings for many of a very long road back to health.At every mile they travel, they're watched over and tended to by medics and nurses and doctors who have seen too much to be unchanged by a war that is still just a year old.
NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen made the journey with them this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thirteen hundred hours, Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. On approach, the day's medical evacuation flight from downrange, a C-141 Starlifter bringing in sick and wounded troops from Iraq.
CAPT. DAN LEGERE, MEDICAL CREW DIRECTOR: We continuously move patients out of theater. The patients that we see, most of them have trauma of one type or another from their battle injuries.
NISSEN: The war wounded, almost 20 on this flight, are all floated on to buses that will take them to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the big Army hospital nearby. The plane is immediately reconfigured for the next medevac flight to carry another set of sick and wounded troops from Landstuhl to military hospitals in the U.S. for more surgery, treatment, long-term rehab.
SMSGT. RICKY SMITH, PRIMARY LOADMASTER: These kids, they've done their job. And it is our job to make sure they get back to medical attention and get put back together, if you will.
NISSEN: Seventeen hundred hours: 37 patients loaded on to the plane for the long flight to the U.S. Their injuries are typical of those carried on medevac flights, especially in the last five weeks, gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen, legs and arms fractured in mortar blasts, eyes ruptured by shrapnel. Two patients are in critical condition, both with spinal chord injuries. One is on a ventilator. For the ground and flight crews, seeing so many so badly injured is hard, yet hardens their sense of mission.
LEGERE: A few things that you see will really tug at your heart.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just sympathize with them so much. And I just want to make sure that we do everything, everything possible for them.
NISSEN: That isn't easy on board a C-141 cargo plane, an inhospitable flying hospital. The challenges start on takeoff, especially for the critical patients.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most dramatic thing here is when the airplane takes off and the nose pitches up, the head pitches down and kind of destabilizes things for us when that happens.
NISSEN: Changes in altitude, cabin pressure can cause drops in blood pressure. Turbulence can cause spikes in pain.
MAJ. STEVE GRIFFIN, AIRCRAFT COMMANDER: We try to watch out for it. We keep the smoothest flight that we can for our patients. It is their comfort level we're concerned about. And we try to make it as comfortable as what we can for them.
NISSEN: Things are far from comfortable for the medical flight crew. Most crew members are Air Force reservists, Air National Guard. In civilian, they are E.R. nurses, EMTs. At 30,000 feet, their work is the same, but working conditions are radically different. The light is dim. Space is cramped. Stethoscopes are useless in the roar of the C-141's engines.
TECH SGT. TIMOTHY MITZEL, MEDICAL FLIGHT CREW: We all have to wear ear plugs. We can't hear. We can't hear blood pressures. We can't hear lung sounds.
NISSEN: Crew members use monitors, use informal sign language, lean in to listen to patients. For nine hours, they work to control pain, to monitor mortar and bullet wounds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're OK.
NISSEN: To dispense comfort.
LEGERE: The kids that we see, they've all got still that great spirit. You don't ever hear any of them complaining or whining or any of the things that you really would expect seeing the disfiguring and the severe injuries that these guys have.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.
NISSEN: Twenty-two hundred hours: Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. Patients are off-loaded onto buses bound for Walter Reed Army Medical Center or Bethesda Naval Hospital. It is hard for the flight crew, especially the older ones, to see them go.
GRIFFIN: You don't look at them as some stranger that is on the other side of the world. You look at them as, wow, this could have been my son or my daughter.
NISSEN: There is little time for reflection. Within hours, the medevac missions go again, back to Germany, back downrange, back home with the latest casualties of war. Beth Nissen, CNN.
THE MANIPULATION
May 14, 2004
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the fighting in Iraq (unintelligible) of course of the casualties, Nissen returns to Landstuhl, a military hospital there where the soldiers are treated, their stories and their caregivers too.Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Every war is marked by milestones, of course, and most of them are grim. Last month was the deadliest yet in Iraq. As the Iraq insurgency spread, the American death toll spiked, and so did the medevac flights. Every time the fighting worsens, a new surge of injured soldiers arrive at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. It will be that way again in the next 24 to 36 hours in the wake of fresh battles in Najaf and Nasiriyah.
NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen returned to Landstuhl recently to check on the wounded and the medical heroes who treat them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The number of sick and wounded troops arriving at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is at a six-month high. In the month of April alone, more than 1,000 were medevaced here from downrange in Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're busy. We're very busy. This is the new normal. So being very busy is the new normal here.
NISSEN: Part of the new normal, a sharp increase in the number of medevaced trooped with battle injuries, from 20 percent to more than 50 percent.
LT. COL. RONALD PLACE, LANDSTUHL REGION MEDICAL CENTER: We're seeing a large increase in improvised explosive device-type wounds, fragment wounds that are just open, jagged, ragged wounds.
MAJ. JIM MILBURN, CHAPLAIN: We have seen amputees. We have seen lots of burn patients, badly burned patients.
1ST. LT. TINA HALL, POST-ANESTHESIA CARE UNIT: Lots of broken bones. Sometimes, both legs are broken. Sometimes, one leg may be broken or they may have suffered an amputation on the other leg.
NISSEN: The surge in serious injuries reflects the escalation in fighting in Fallujah and Najaf and what seems to be a change in insurgents' attacks.
COL. RHONDA CORNUM, COMMANDER, LANDSTUHL REGION MEDICAL CENTER: Unfortunately, the enemy has recognized that our body armor is really quite good. And I think instead of aiming for the chest or torso, where they know they can't be very effective, they are probably aiming at the head and neck.
NISSEN: Many patients have head injuries, eye injuries. Shrapnel from a grenade blast damaged Corporal Joshua Carpenter's (ph) right eyeball.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Best case is I'll be back to 20/20. Worst case is, I won't be able to see.
NISSEN: Shrapnel from the same grenade blast also hit Lance Corporal Brian Carnot (ph) in the legs and chest, cut nerves in his face, sliced into his neck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was very close to my jugular vein, they were saying. And at the time, I thought it did hit it, because I had my hand on my neck and it was squirting through my fingers.
NISSEN: Like most of the seriously injured, he has vivid flashbacks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can remember the screaming and I remember seeing what I saw when I first opened my eyes.
NISSEN (on camera): What was that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw another Marine looking at his arm screaming really loud.
NISSEN (voice-over): That Marine was Lance Corporal Zack Thunecannon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I heard a loud pop. Then I looked over to my left and I seen that my arm was dangling. I didn't think I was going to make it.
NISSEN: He made it to Landstuhl, but his lower arm was too mangled to reattach. Surgeons here had to amputate just below the elbow. It is hard for Landstuhl's corps of doctors and nurses to see so many so young with such serious injuries.
PLACE: While they are still here, while things are still fresh, typically, the reality of the situation haven't set in yet. They are so young, many of them don't really get it that they are hurt this bad.
NISSEN: It is hard for nonmedical staff, too, for the orderlies and the chaplains who meet every group of new patients bussed from medevaced flights that land at nearby Ramstein Air Force Base.(on camera): What's been the hardest for you personally?
MILBURN: Probably unplugging machines with some of the young men when they are not going to make it and to sit there with mom and dad or a wife while they pass away. That's very difficult, heart- wrenching, heart-wrenching.
THE LIE and THE OVERT PROOF of Propaganda using the very troops this network claims to uphold in dignity. It is not their dignity they are interested in. It is the ability to manpulate the reality of these troops in propagands Sharon von Zwieten holds an interest.
NISSEN: Those heart-wrenches are rare. More than 14,000 troops, the injured and the sick, have been treated at Landstuhl since the start of the war. Only eight have died here. Doctors say the high survival rate is due in large part to the patients themselves, their resilience, their dedication.
CORNUM: We have a generally young population who can tolerate an unbelievable amount of trauma and will still -- will just fight to make it.
NISSEN: For hospital staff, the mission is clear, stay ready for incoming wounded in any number with any injuries, stay ready for the next six weeks, six months, two years, the new normal. Beth Nissen, CNN, Landstuhl, Germany.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
To Review and contrast and compare:
One of the star princesses at CNN is a reporter by the name of Beth Nissan. I don’t really care her ethnicity all I know is that under the direction of Executive Producer Sharon “The Religious Zealot” von Zwieten; Ms. Nissan has turned into a propaganda Queen.
May 4, 2004
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Since the war began, there have been 3,000 of these flights, 40,000 patients. They haven't lost one yet.
BROWN: Quickly looking ahead to tomorrow, the beginning of a series of reports on the wounded and bringing them home from Iraq in the wake of the deadliest month in the war.
May 14, 2004
NISSEN: Those heart-wrenches are rare. More than 14,000 troops, the injured and the sick, have been treated at Landstuhl since the start of the war. Only eight have died here. Doctors say the high survival rate is due in large part to the patients themselves, their resilience, their dedication.
CORNUM: We have a generally young population who can tolerate an unbelievable amount of trauma and will still -- will just fight to make it.
A desparity of 26,000 injured erased by von Zwieten in complete disrespect of the soldiers involved was proven to be true to exist a few days later in The New York Times in a Op-Ed Chart.
