Support the troops! Quick, buy a yellow sticky ribbon!!

[flamin lib]

I contemplated writing something about the anniversary of September 11, 2001 but Keith Olberman did such a wonderful soliloquy that any offering I might make would pale in comparison. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

That left me at a loss as to what do this week. A day without outrage is a day without Republicans so there had to be something, right? Then I found this here on DU: VA study: Gulf war syndrome doesn’t exist http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/12/ap/health/mainD8K3CRG80.shtml Well, that makes it official doesn’t it! Simple as that, all those sick soldiers coming back from Gulf War I and II are just faking it.

The latest study says that there is no single set of symptoms identifying “Gulf War Syndrome” and symptoms exist in all veterans. The only thing is that the symptoms show up more often in Middle East vets. Lots more often. Like, ten times more often. Yet it doesn’t exist as a syndrome.

This has happened before.

In 1937 the Army intentionally infected black soldiers in Tuskegee, Alabama with syphilis and withheld treatment to see if it might be useful as a weapon. In 1997 President Clinton made the project public and issued an apology to the families of the men involved. Those being tested were long since dead.

In 1947 the Army deployed entire companies of infantry to the New Mexican desert and exposed them to nuclear blasts with nothing more than a shallow fighting hole and a poncho for protection to test the effects of radiation on readiness. It was 40 years before the Pentagon admitted that the early deaths and cancers that afflicted these men was a direct result of the nuclear tests. Long after they were all dead.

For 25 years the VA said there was no link between Agent Orange and the maladies suffered by Vietnam vets. They had studies to prove it. They compiled data on the pilots who flew the missions and the handlers of the chemical at the airfields. You know, back in the rear area where they got showers at the end of the day. They didn’t include the jungle rats who slept in the stuff for a week at a time while on patrol. In the '90s the VA admitted that there was a link between dioxin in Agent Orange and the illnesses suffered by veterans. Most of the affected veterans were dead by that time.

Now we have two new wars with soldiers exposed to low-level radiation from Depleted Uranium, breathing it in as micro-pulverized powder, drinking it in the water and having it settle in their wounds. They are complaining of everything from joint pain to birth defects in their children. The cancer rate in Iraq is up 400% since the first gulf war. Meanwhile the Pentagon does what it has always done. Stall. Like syphilis, nuclear testing and Agent Orange this is a problem that time will solve.

If that isn’t bad enough, they are about to do it again! Michael W. Wynne, the civilian Secretary of the Air Force, says that “non-lethal” weapons should be used for crowd control on US citizens before being deployed on the battlefield. He says it will make us look better to the rest of the world if we use them on our own people first. The weapons in question are microwave emitters that make the skin feel as if it is burning. Nobody knows the long term affect of being irradiated with high frequency microwave energy but I’ve got a feeling we’re going to find out.

The bottom line is that when you create huge numbers of veterans with health problems it becomes very expensive to treat them. So expensive that the VA budget can’t handle it, so they drag their feet while veterans suffer and die. Heaven forbid we take back any tax cuts for the top 2% to treat those who stand in danger for the rest of us.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/may97/tuskegee_5-16.html Tuskegee experiment

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2033859.php DU, Agent Orange, Atomic tests

http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html DU study

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/12/usaf.weapons.ap/index.html Air Force says we should use weapons on US citizens.