[Peace-discuss] Deserting the troops

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8995

Deserting Our Troops  

 
Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for TomPaine.com. 

The Army and Air Force failed to obey Congress' orders to create
baseline medical records for soldiers sent to overseas war zones, in
this case Iraq, Congress' General Accounting Office (GAO) concludes in
a just-released report. 

"The percentage of Army and Air Force service members missing one or
both of their pre- and post-deployment health assessments ranged from
38 to 98 percent of our samples," the GAO, Congress' investigative
arm, found. "Moreover, when health assessments were conducted, as many
as 45 percent of them were not done within the required time frames." 

These statistics confirm what veterans of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War
and members of Congress have been saying for months: the Pentagon has
been ignoring a law whose primary intention was avoiding a repeat of
the military's mistakes surrounding its handling of veteran illnesses
that have become known as Gulf War Syndrome. 

After the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, tens of thousands of veterans
became sick with mysterious illnesses. But because the Pentagon did
not have baseline medical records for each soldier in that conflict,
it was very slow to acknowledge and act on its responsibility to
provide health care for these veterans. 

So, in 1997, Congress passed a Public Law 105-85 requiring the
military to conduct detailed pre- and post-deployment medical records
for every soldier sent into a war zone. The GAO says the military "did
not comply" with that requirement in the Iraq War. It also found the
Department of Defense (DOD) "did not maintain a complete, centralized
database of service members' medical assessments and immunizations." 

The issue has been simmering in veteran's circles for some time, but
with the Pentagon announcing last week a new round of National Guard
deployments to Iraq, it raises the question anew: will the Pentagon
fully implement the law? 

"We've been calling for it. It's time for it to happen," said Steven
Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Veterans Center.
"We've had the hearings on the hill. We've done the Kabuki dance.
[Undersecretary of Defense for Health Affairs William] Winkenwerder
says they don't need to do the screening. The GAO says it's
insufficient. Now what?" 

Robinson said he and other veterans advocates will be speaking to
members of the House Armed Services Committee -- which requested the
GAO report -- and Veterans Affairs Committee this week to see what the
next steps may be. 

Veterans' advocates became aware last fall and winter that troops
being sent to Iraq were not being examined as required. Instead, the
military gave soldiers a short questionnaire to fill out. After
congressional hearings and public criticism from veterans last winter,
the Pentagon said it would conduct post-deployment exams and expand
its questionnaire. 

The GAO report was based on investigations at five military bases:
Fort Campbell; Fort Drum; Hurlburt Field and Travis Air Force Base. It
recommended that the Secretary of Defense and undersecretary
responsible for military health "establish an effective quality
assurance program that will help ensure that the military services
comply with the force health protection and surveillance requirements
for all service members." 

In a Sept. 11 letter responding to the GAO report, Assistant Secretary
of Defense William Winkenwerder said his office "has already
established a quality assurance program for pre- and post-deployment
health assessments." Winkenwerder said this program has been in place
"since June 2003," which would be several months after Congress held
hearings on the law and launched the GAO investigation. 

While it remains to be seen what impact the GAO report will have on
military health policies, many soldiers now in Iraq and their family
members say the Pentagon has all-but ignored the requirement for
creating the baseline medical records. 

"My husband [an Army Reservist]'s physical was waived before he left,"
wrote one member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), an activist
group of families with relatives in the military in Iraq. Those
contacted requested their names not be used. 

"Myself and my wife were given the anthrax and small pox vaccines and
were not given a choice in the matter," wrote a soldier. "No screening
was done before these vaccines were given to see if there might be
complications from a genetic or health standpoint. No blood work was
done on us besides a few general questions from a colonel." 

"My son has returned home and as far as I know no one has made any
mention of medical testing," wrote another member of MFSO. "They
arrived back the first week in August... [They] gave him a
questionnaire to look over. There are three sections, but he said
[questions] in the last section, more current symptoms didn't seem
relative for now." 

These anecdotes corroborate the GAO's findings: that the pre- and
post-deployment medical exams were largely an after-thought, not a
policy priority. 

Among the soldiers contacted, several said they were aware there could
be health consequences of their military services. What they and their
family members most frequently cited was exposure to byproducts of
depleted uranium (DU) munitions. DU is a slightly radioactive metal
that's denser than lead and burns at very high temperatures. It is
used in bullets and artillery pieces. Upon impact, it burns and
vaporizes. Particles from the smoke are very tiny and can be breathed
in and become embedded in lung tissue. 

"My daughter told me that as they rolled into Baghdad from Kuwait,
right after the end of the big bombing, in mid-April, there were Iraqi
tanks on the sides of the roads, that still had the dead Iraqi
soldiers in them," wrote another MFSO member. "She asked why the tanks
were not cleared off or the bodies taken out, and she was told that no
one wanted the duty because the tanks had been hit with DU shells. 

"She said they all assumed the dust in the road was full of DU dust,
and she said she felt she would now be at an increased risk of cancer,
as did all of her unit. She was manning the 50-caliber on top of the
truck, and said she breathed in the dust for many miles." 

Only one e-mail out of more than one dozen received from MFSO families
said their spouse or relative had received the pre- and
post-deployment exams and shots. 

In conclusion, the GAO said the Pentagon was poised to repeat the
mistakes of the first Gulf War, where it did not promptly or
adequately address the illnesses among veterans that became known as
Gulf War Syndrome. 

"Failure to complete post-deployment health assessments may risk a
delay in obtaining appropriate medical follow-up attention for a
health problem or concern that may have arisen during or following the
deployment," the GAO said. "Similarly, incomplete and inaccurate
medical records and deployment databases would likely hinder DOD's
ability to investigate the causes of any future health problems that
may arise coincident with deployments." 


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