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This week on NOW:
Thousands of injured and ill soldiers sent home from Iraq and
Afghanistan are not being counted in the Pentagon's official tally of
the wounded because they are considered "non-hostile" casualties. Some
say that if they were included, it would triple the total casualty
count. The Pentagon claims that until NOW's request, it hadn't been
asked for those numbers. But, critics say these often debilitating
injuries are not being reported to keep Americans from getting a clear
picture of the human cost of war. NOW's Michele Mitchell profiles these
soldiers who may spend the rest of their lives scarred and disabled, but
whose sacrifices are not being counted by the nation they served.
The government of Sudan has been blamed for tens of thousands of deaths
and for driving out more than a million villagers from western Sudan.
Amid continued reports of rape, massacre and torture, the UN has called
the crisis one of the world's worst. As the rainy season bogs down the
already beleaguered delivery of relief supplies, government experts are
projecting that an additional 300,000 to 1 million people there may die.
Is it already too late to do anything to stop what some are calling
genocide? NOW gets the on-the-ground perspective of veteran journalist
Julie Flint, who recently returned from the region where she was on a
fact-finding mission for Human Rights Watch (HRW). On Tuesday, Flint
testified on the HRW's behalf in front of the US Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations. David Brancaccio sits down with Flint to discuss her
findings and what she thinks the UN, the US and other countries should
be doing.
Many young Black and Hispanic voters will go to the polls for the first
time this November, and political analysts on both sides are trying to
figure out what will motivate them. Some are looking to The Hip Hop
Political Conference for answers. The convention, being held in Newark,
NJ this week, will attempt to mobilize this new generation of voters.
Among the speakers is Michael Eric Dyson, a University of Pennsylvania
professor, cultural critic, and Baptist minister who has been described
by the WASHINGTON POST as belonging to "a group of young intellectuals
who may yet define our view of Black American culture as did their
predecessors Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray." Dyson will speak to the
conference on the great divide between his father's civil rights
generation, represented by Martin Luther King, and today's younger
generation, represented by Tupac Shakur. David Brancaccio talks to
Dyson about his ideas to bridge the divide between those two
generations.
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