Veterans still suffering
U.S. weapons fire both ways
By Sara Flounders
As the Pentagon moves forward with plans for a new war
against Iraq, tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel are
wondering what they will face. The lesson of past wars is to
trust no one from the Pentagon on this matter.
The Defense Department claims to look after the health and
safety of U.S. troops. President George W. Bush argues that the
Pentagon must forcibly disarm Iraq's "weapons of mass
destruction."
But on Oct. 9, the New York Times reported that 16 newly
declassified documents show that the Defense Department used
chemical weapons and live biological weapons against its own
soldiers.
The documents detail secret tests involving Sarin and VX
gas, as well as biolo g ical toxins, conducted between 1962 and
1971.
This is hardly the first exposé of the government's
use of its own soldiers as guinea pigs. The is just the tip of
the iceberg.
From 1945 to 1963 the Pentagon deliberately exposed more
than 250,000 U.S. military personnel to radiation during
nuclear tests in order to study the impact on humans. These
tests also callously exposed thousands of Marshall Islanders
who were being secretly studied.
Any soldier who spoke out on this faced court martial and
imprisonment for violating "national security." Finally, after
veterans and their families mobilized and demanded treatment
for their unusually high rates of cancer and many other
diseases, a special 1984 congressional bill acknowledged this
vast secret program and promised compensation to the surviving
"Atomic Veterans." Fewer than 500 veterans received
compensation, however.
Then there was the 1991 Gulf War. U.S. soldiers protected by
an enormous shield of high-tech weaponry seemed invulnerable.
The Pentagon reported 148 U.S. deaths, half from "friendly
fire." Not one armored vehicle belonging to the allied forces
was reported lost.
In comparison, the United States and its allies dropped
88,500 tons of explosives on a country whose air defenses had
been obliterated by the third day. In 42 days of bombs and
cruise missile attacks, they killed over 100,000 Iraqis.
Now it is clear that the U.S. casualties were back-loaded.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans now in their mid-30s who
should be in the prime of health are wasting away from "Gulf
War Syndrome."
The mass inoculations with untested vaccines, the bombing of
industrial and chemical plants, and the smoke of burning oil
wells, along with radioactive depleted uranium weapons, have
all had an impact. The people of the Gulf region will have to
face the effects of this poisoning for years to come, and so
will the Pentagon's own soldiers.
The fact that the U.S. government's own studies had warned
of the dangers of using radioactive weapons confirms that when
the conquests of markets and great profits are at stake, even
their own troops are expendable.
Why the Pentagon uses DU
Uranium is 1.7 times as dense as lead. Shells with depleted
uranium casings penetrate steel like a hot knife through
butter. DU is also pyrophoric--that is, it burns fiercely on
impact and turns into tiny particles of uranium oxide dust.
This dust can drift dozens of miles on the wind. It can be
small enough to lodge in the lungs when inhaled, and then enter
the bloodstream or other organs. Since DU oxide is both toxic
and radioactive, its presence in the body can cause serious
ailments.
DU is a waste by-product of the uranium enrichment process.
The U.S. government gives it away free to weapons
manufacturers, making the production of these weapons quite
profitable. Yet U.S. government studies have warned of the
health risks from DU exposure.
A 1990 report before the Gulf War warned: "Short-term
effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term
effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer. ...
Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be
significant with potential radiological and toxicological
effects."
Nevertheless, during the 1991 U.S. war against Iraq, the
Pentagon fired over 940,000 of 30-millimeter uranium-tipped
bullets and more than 14,000 large DU rounds. More than 600,000
pounds of radioactive material were left in Iraq's soil, water
and air.
Seven years after the bombing, Iraq's southern provinces
showed an 11-fold increase in skin cancer, a six-fold increase
in breast cancer and a 16-fold increase in ovarian cancer.
The war comes home
By 1996, the number of chronically ill U.S. veterans became
a national scandal. Over 100,000 veterans were sick, with a
wide range of mysterious medical problems and unexplained
illnesses that were lumped together under the name "Gulf War
Syndrome."
The list of chronic ailments included unusually high rates
of tumors and cancers of all types, hemorrhaging, bleeding
gums, memory loss, overwhelming fatigue, persistent rashes and
eczema, and severe muscle and joint pain--among people who
should have been in the prime of health.
Children of the soldiers suffered above-average rates of
birth defects and auto-immune problems.
For years the Pentagon denied that the sickness
existed--until Gulf veterans organized themselves to demand
disability pay and medical care. Congress held hearings. A
presidential commission was established.
The Pentagon continued using these radioactive weapons in
the 1995 bombing of Bosnia, the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
and the bombing of Afghanistan.
Anti-DU activists have called for a moratorium on DU
weapons, a demand that is now backed by the European Union and
the parliaments of Germany, Italy and Norway. Angry mass
movements have denounced the test firing of these radioactive
weapons at U.S. bases in Okinawa, Japan; Vieques, Puerto Rico;
and south Korea.
DU use accelerates in Afghanistan
Despite the dangers, the Pentagon has expanded its use of
DU.
The 120-mm antitank round used in 1991 in Iraq had a maximum
weight of 12 pounds. Raytheon's "bunker buster" GBU-28 used in
Afghanistan can weigh up to one-and-a-half metric tons.
A March 3 report in Le Monde Diplomatique headlined
"America's Big Dirty Secret" charged that depleted uranium was
the heavy metal used in enormous bunker bombs that burrowed
through mountains of rock or many feet of reinforced concrete
to destroy cave complexes in Afghanistan.
The issue of Gulf War Syndrome receded from the headlines in
the United States. But the number of chronically ill veterans
has continued to climb.
According to the Veterans Benefits Administration, out of
504,047 eligible Gulf War veterans, 185,780 have filed claims
for service-related medical disabilities. That is 36
percent.
Of this number, 149,094 claims have been approved. This
means that 29 percent of all Gulf War vets have recognized
service-related disabilities.
Thousands of claims are still pending. These veterans can
die before they are compensated.
All the reports over the past six years confirm that the
Gulf War resulted in a huge number of soldiers wounded by
long-term sickness, disease and disability.
With similar weapons set for use in Iraq, what will the
health consequences in the region and for U.S. soldiers be?
Flounders is an editor of the book "Metal of Dishonor-How
the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU Weapons,"
published by the International Action Center in 1997 and
1999. It includes reports from scientists, doctors and
veterans themselves, along with government documents, and has
been translated into Arabic, Japanese, Italian and Greek. A
video of the same name was made by the late videographer
Ellen Andors.
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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