War, Scarry says, represents the “mining of the ultimate substance, the ultimate source of substantiation:” the “extraction of the physical basis of reality from the dark hiding place in the body out into the light of day.” That which oozes out—the “interior content of human bodies, lungs, arteries and brains”—functions as a form of verification: to prove that ideologies are real or true. The internal content of a soldier's body is the "precious core of confirmation."

____________________________________________________________________________________