You May Not Have A Face

... but at least you aren't dead:

"For every American soldier killed in Iraq, nine others have been wounded and survived - the highest rate of any war in U.S. history. It isn't that their injuries were less serious, a new report says. In fact, some young soldiers and Marines have had faces, arms and legs blown off and are now returning home badly maimed.

But they have survived thanks, in part, to armor-like vests and fast treatment from doctors on the move with surgical kits in backpacks.

'This is unprecedented. People who lose not just one but two or three extremities are people who just have not survived in the past,' said Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who researched military medicine and wrote about it in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine."

Depending on the quality of life they can expect, I guess this is good news.