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Monday, August 14, 2006

The Agent Orange of the Iraq War
Posted by Jill | 6:25 AM
In 1991, almost twenty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the VA finally allowed Vietnam veterans to presume exposure to Agent Orange for the purpose of filing for disability benefits.

In the aftermath of the first Gulf War that same year, returning troops began to become ill, citing a variety of symptoms including chronic fatigue, loss of muscle control, diarrhea, migraines and other headaches, dizziness and loss of balance, memory problems, muscle and joint pain, indigestion, skin problems, and shortness of breath. that became known as Gulf War Syndrome. As recently as 2005, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses was considering a variety of possible agents causing the syndrome, one of which is depleted uranium munitions.

Now, returning troops from the Iraq War are experiencing many of the same problems -- and some are convinced that depeleted uranium is the culprit:

--It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.

Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.

There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.

In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist. He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact a high price.

"I'm just a zombie walking around," he says.

Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon's arsenal of it -- thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.

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 U.S. 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.


The U.S. government insists that DU is safe, even though it has 60% of the radioactivity of [ ]. Yet there has been little research into its impact. The VA and the government seem to have the same vested interest in insisting that it's safe as they did with Agent Orange. Yet when military guidelines require training in how to avoid prolonged contact with DU, and reservists and National Guard troops are not receiving this training, one wonders exactly what they're trying to hide.

We owe these soldiers better. Many of the casualties of Agent Orange are now dead and cannot speak for themselves. Many of the casualties of the first Gulf War are dead or have given up. And the government is still poisoning the men it sends to war.

We owe them better treatment than this.
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