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Returning Soldiers Facing Radiation Effects

Returning Soldiers Facing Radiation Effects

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These soldiers are sick of it. Literally.

Eight sick soliders from the 442nd Military Police put the pieces together.

A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The United States has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous waste storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.

Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in July 2003, nearly unable to walk because of lightning-strike pains from herniated discs in his spine. Then began a strange series of symptoms he’d never experienced in his previously healthy life.

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.

“We all had migraines. We all felt sick,” Reed says. “The doctors said, ‘It’s all in your head.’ “

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.

But the medic knew something the others didn’t. Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They’d brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.

“We got on the Internet,” Reed said, “and we started researching depleted uranium.”

Read the rest of the Wired article.

There’s a lot of depleted uranium out there – affecting everyone who comes near it. Remember Agent Orange? This is probably worse. I blog on this every once in a while. It’s still not a topic that’s getting picked up in the public realm very much. I suspect we’ll be talking about it at some point, though. The use of weapons with depleted uranium may well be considered a war crime.

According to military guidelines, our soliders should have been made aware of the dangers of working with and around depleted uranium, and trained on ways to avoid prolonged exposure to its toxicity and radioactivity. The soldiers in this article say they got nothing of the kind. It’s not even clear whether their unit ever tested for radiation in the area.

The use of depleted uranium transcends the general ugliness of this administration – so nothing’s stopping Republicans from standing up on this issue, right? Support the troops – right? Right? … right?

Stop Forced Relocation Black Mesa AZ

Stop Forced Relocation Black Mesa AZ

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Oppose Senate Bill S.1003

Native people’s lives and livelihoods are on the line! Traditional Navajo (known in their language as Dineh) would be forcibly evicted and dispossessed of their homes under this bill. I support the right of these families, who are among the few remaining American Indians who still speak their traditional language and practice their traditional culture, to remain on their lands and strongly oppose Senate Bill 1003.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “estimates that enacting S. 1003 would have no significant effect on direct spending or revenues.” In fact, the original Navajo Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974 forced 1000s of hardworking self-sustaining families into welfare dependency, despair and early death. This ill-conceived bill may actual force hardworking independent people into welfare dependency on the federal government and increase the cost to US taxpayers.The cost overruns and inadequate financing of the relocation program are not the fault of the Navajo and are entirely due to major miscalculations on the number of affected people and federal governmental incompetence. Adding insult to injury, the lands designated for relocation are contaminated by one of the worst uranium mine accidents in US history.

A Washington Post investigative article has uncovered massive fraud and collusion involving Peabody Coal company and a consortium of 23 Utility companies in the passage of the original relocation law, P.L. 93-531 that led to the forced relocation of over 15,000 Navajo in what experts call one of the “worst involuntary resettlements” worldwide in the modern era. To remove the remaining people based on amendments to this corrupt and fraudulent law is nothing less than environmental ethnic cleansing.

The Navajo tell us that it is no coincidence that the land from which the Navajo are being removed contains over $ 20 billion worth of coal. Jack Abramoff and his associates have been involved in lobbying for companies interested in the Navajo’s land and we support the request of the Navajo families for an investigation into any activities regarding Jack Abramoff and Senate Bill 1003. This bill comes at a time while Peabody Energy is in the process of acquiring a life-of-mine lease in the Black Mesa area even though the Black Mesa Mine is temporarily shut down.

Therefore, we support the Navajo families in opposing Senate Bill 1003 and respectfully request

  • That the Senate remove Senate Bill 1003 from consideration
  • That the Congress pass a resolution opposing forced relocation of Native Americans
  • That Congress help the communities already relocated rather than closing any federal offices that may be able to help them
  • That Congress work directly with affected families and communities to resolve any land issues and listen to them, not just Jack Abramoff or other high paid lobbyists.

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