Word of soldiers coming home with mysterious terminal illness

[treefrogjohn]

My aunt lives in military retirement housing and has volunteered for years at the base hospital. I talked to her last night on the phone and she told me that there are soldiers returning from Iraq suffering from a new, mysterious illness which is proving terminal. She says that there is a lot of activity at the hospital to try and understand the nature of the illness but that very tight wraps are being placed to keep the information from leaking out. Has anyone else heard anything consistent with this?

[Stephanie]

1. radiation sickness?

depleted uranium poisoning.

[Poiuyt]

26. That was my first thought too

That will be causing deaths in Iraq for many years

[rfranklin]

2. Probably poisoned by the Bush junta's black ops boys...

and they will then blame the resultant deaths on Saddam's massive--though well-hidden--supplies of biological agents.

[Trajan]

3. Consistent with

Bush making our soldiers suffer for his oil grabbing policies ? ...

Hell yeah ....

I am sorry for our soliders: who knows what evil shit the BFEE is pumping into Iraq these days .... Under Reagan/Bush I: they sold Saddam some evil WMD's: knowing they would use it ... In Desert Storm: MANY soldiers came back with serious afflictions of unknown origins ....

WHo knows what kind of DANGEROUS shit Bush and the Neocons would foist unto an unsuspecting world .....

[indigobusiness]

4. Gulf War II Mystery Illness

Gulf War II Mystery Illness

Gulf War Vet advocate Joyce Riley (gulfwarvets.com)re: the mysterious illness affecting the troops in Iraq. She related details in the case of Josh Neusche, a 20-year soldier who died on July 12, 2003 after going on a "hauling" mission at the Baghdad Airport.

At first, Riley said that Neusche's parents were told their son had been affected by a toxin, then the explanation was changed to pneumonia. Now with over 50 soldiers falling ill, the Anthrax vaccine is being called the culprit. Riley believes we are not being told the true story, and speculated that the soldiers may have been wearing defective protective suits during a chemical exposure. However, "I think the story is going to be whitewashed and removed from the scene," she said. For more on her investigation:

http://gulfwarvets.com/

[treefrogjohn]

9. Thanks for posting this link

There appears to be a lot of relevant information.

[Ian David]

11. Gulfwarvets.com

The site looks a little overly credulous to me.

Not tin-foil-hats credulity, but possibly a little too un-critical.

I could be wrong, and even so, it doesn't mean she's not right.

I'd try and get the idea some exposure and see what pans out.

I would not be at all surprised if it were legit, and part of something very sinister.

As for depleted uranium:

Do you think the army would stop using it if they found out terrorists could pick the stuff up off the battlefield and use it to make dirty bombs?

[indigobusiness]

13. Prepare to be surprised.

Joyce Riley is sincere and dedicated.

Bio

Joyce Riley is a Registered Nurse who has been a Director of Nursing of four institutions and has been a heart, lung, liver and kidney transplant nurse. She also served as a Captain in the USAF in support of Operation Desert Storm, flying active duty missions on a C-130 aircraft from Alaska to Cuba. Her experience as a medical-legal testifying expert in medical malpractice trials gave her the background to investigate the truth about the Gulf War Illness. She has since become an advocate for all veterans and citizens experimented upon by the government. Joyce was a whistle-blower in the famous "Baby Death" case in which Nurse Genene Jones, (who now serves a life sentence in the Texas Prison system) was convicted of causing injury to many babies in the Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. She presently serves a spokesperson for the American Gulf War Veterans Association.

http://gulfwarvets.com/hot.htm

[Window]

18. This is the same Joyce Riley

who ran for "American Candidate," along with ten regular people from all walks of life, on the Showtime cable station. I remember being very impressed with her activism. "On Demand" was carrying the series, but have since replaced it with "Huff."

edited for typo

[Occams Razor]

14. They couldn't if they wanted to.

As for depleted uranium:

Do you think the army would stop using it if they found out terrorists could pick the stuff up off the battlefield and use it to make dirty bombs?

Naturally occuring uranium isn't even all that radioactive. Depleted uranium is much less so.

[Ima]

15. Depleted Uranium is TOXIC!

Depleted uranium is chemically toxic. It is an extremely dense, hard metal, and can cause chemical poisoning to the body in the same way as can lead or any other heavy metal. However, depleted uranium is also radiologically hazardous, as it spontaneously burns on impact, creating tiny aerosolised glass particles which are small enough to be inhaled. These uranium oxide particles emit all types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma, and can be carried in the air over long distances. Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.5 billion years, and the presence of depleted uranium ceramic aerosols can pose a long term threat to human health and the environment.


http://www.cadu.org.uk/intro.htm


For anyone interested here are plenty of links.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=What+is%3F+depleted+uranium&btnG=Google+Search

[Occams Razor]

17. Not really

These uranium oxide particles emit all types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma, and can be carried in the air over long distances.

Complete bollocks. If you happen to be in a DU armored vehicle that is struck, you might be exposed. (At that point DU might be the least of your concerns) You would have to inhale an incredibly large dose of that dust, on the order of grams according the WHO, in order to be in any serious danger.

Yes, there are plenty of links. There is also plenty of propaganda. Be discriminating in your use of them.

The danger of radiological poisoning from DU is negligible.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf14.htm

Another factor to consider is that the insurgents aren't using armored vehicles, so we aren't using much, if any, DU ammunition in this phase of the conflict.

[Ima]

25. Hmmm

"Yes, there are plenty of links. There is also plenty of propaganda. Be discriminating in your use of them."


I posted enough links that people can make up their own minds, what they believe.:boring:


You may want to take your own advise. I've been here since 2001, and have never used propaganda.:spank:

[bhikkhu]

27. Too early to judge on depleted uranium

Once in the environment it resides as a dust, which is terribly difficult to "clean". It is difficult to say that hundreds of tons of radioactive dust in an urban environment should be of no concern. The tests which have shown there are few health risks are also incomplete - hence, too early to judge. Stress seems to be a big factor in how the body reacts to carcinogens, and the studies on this have only begun.

[NickB79]

29. Do you want to rethink this statement out for a minute?

You posted the claim that depleted uranium can be radiologically hazardous, yet your post goes on to state "Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.5 billion years". As all first-year college students taking physics and/or chemistry should know, the rate of decay of a radioactive material is inversely proportional to it's radioactivity. The more radioactive (and more dangerous) a material, the more rapidly it decays, giving it a shorter half-life. The less radioactive (and less dangerous) a material, the longer it takes to decay. How radioactive do you think a block of depleted uranium could be, given that it takes 4.5 billion years for it to reach half-life? Compared to virtually any other radioactive material we know of, depleted uranium released the least amount of radiation per unit of time.

[indigobusiness]

23. That's an outright lie.

Depleted uranium was once enriched.

[Solly Mack]

5. Yes. There's something going on that affects their blood.

"Some sort of blood disease" is how I've heard it described.

If I find out anything more I'll be sure to post it.

[Razorback_Democrat]

6. I read about a blood borne infection

that is rare here, but apparently is rampant in field hospitals there and now in Germany and here.

Poor infection control on the battlefield is what I got.

Don't know if this is the same thing or not.

[Solly Mack]

10. My husband contracted a disease only found in 3rd world countries

while in Iraq. Luckily, there was a cure. Once back from Iraq the soldiers are supposed to be given a full exam...blood-work, etc....and one of the questions they ask is "do you think you've been exposed to D.U.?"....most soldiers say "No" without ever knowing what D.U. is...

Both my husband and I have prompted soldiers to always say "Yes" to that question in case the future brings them "unexplained health problems." If they say "No" and fall sick later, believe me, the military will deny them treatment for it because they said "No"

Soldiers are contracting sepsis.

A lot of respiratory problems with the soldiers...especially pneumonia..which can lead to sepsis.

if people will recall, there was a rash of soldiers dying of/getting sick with pneumonia in 2003.

[reprobate]

20. Are you sure it was pneumonia?

The word can be used for a number of conditions that display similar symptoms.

[Solly Mack]

22. The military called it pneumonia

Medics I know called it pneumonia...but am I sure? No

[quiet.american]

7. How long before....

...Bushco spins this into "proof" Hussein possessed chemical weapons?

[punpirate]

8. There was, a few months ago...

... mention of a very weird sickness that was showing up at military hospitals in Europe, where soldiers were coming down with flu-like symptoms, got worse and were evac'ed out of Iraq, and then went on to respiratory/cardiac failure. Nothing official was said about numbers or epidemiology, but one reservist doctor said it was happening "a lot."

Just a guess, but this might be vaccine-related. Maybe not anthrax vaccine, but something else, such as a big batch of plague or black fever vaccine going bad, something like that. There have also been some anecdotal reports from soldiers that sand fleas and ticks are everywhere and very aggressive, and there may be some insect-borne disease to which the Iraqis are resistant, but our soldiers are not.

[boomboom]

12. between those symptoms and "blood" disorder

Sounds similar to how Arafat's fatal illness was first described

[Lone_Wolf]

16. respiratory/cardiac failure

Is suggestive of many things, but I'd suspect nerve agents being the cause just because they seem to be secretive about it. Next I'd suspect a parasitic disease like Visceral leishmniasis

[Ironpost]

24. Oh my

sand fleas and ticks are very aggressive....What to do what to do. Depleted uranium most likely along with chemical and biological weapons. We Know we sold (gave) it to them years ago.

[indepat]

19. What is so mysterious: aren't the reasons likely as clear as the noses

on our faces?

[amazona]

21. all i heard was pneumonia

A lot of real young kids (19,20, 21) were being written down as dying of pneumonia while in Iraq. Not sure what to make of that. I haven't read those news stories in a while though. The dead from disease are not included in the KIA statistics.

[Columbia]

28. Terminal?

That isn't good...

I've been back for a little over a year and so far the worst thing I've experienced physically is 10 extra lbs around the middle.