Sir Arthur C.B.E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A. wrote:
> In article <bmlcho$2ktu$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, President, USA
> Exile Govt. says...
>>
>> Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
>>
>> Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards
>> Democracy. NOTE: Thanks to Rick Davis for this. -- kl, pp
>>
>> Please, anyone of you vfp members receiving this, if you have
>> information or ways of obtaining the information Steve Rosenfeld
>> needs to build his story and verify it, please respond. I ask you
>> to send me a copy of your response to Steve, as well. I would like
>> to see what he can do with this prior to Veterans Day.
>>
>> We thank you for your help,
>>
>> Woody
>> ================================================== ====================
>>
>> Hi. Good to talk to you. Here is a link to the most recent piece I
>> did on the Pentagon's failure to follow a 1997 law to create baseline
>> medical records for all deployed troops.
>>
>> http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8995 --- [Editor's
>> Note: This piece is appended below.]
>>
>> What I'm working on now is a report on what's happening to injured
>> soldiers who have returned from Iraq. Here's what I know. The
>> soldiers are being sent to several bases around the country, where
>> they're stranded because there aren't enough doctors to oversee
>> their treatment and transition out of the military and into the VA
>> system.
>>
>> I heard from one well-respected veterans' activist who was at Ft.
>>
>> Stewart, GA, this past weekend. He said that there were 450 soldiers
>> there and one physician overseeing their care. He said he heard
>> stories of some who simply left the military, signed away their
>> benefits, and just went home - because that was taking control of
>> their lives.
>>
>> What I'm trying to do is nationalize and personalize this very
>> important story. By nationalize, I'm trying to find out how many
>> injured soldiers are on bases throughout the country and how many
>> physicians are available for them. And by personalize, I'm trying
>> to find injured soldiers - or relatives - who can tell me what their
>> experience has been with receiving medical care.
>>
>> If any of your members can help me, please have them send me an
>> e-mail. I will respond to each one personally, and let them know
>> where I am going with my report. If you look at the above
>> TomPaine.com
>> piece, you'll see I quoted from e-mails but did not reveal anyone's
>> identity or location.
>>
>> Thanks again. Please feel free to call.
>>
>> Steven Rosenfeld Senior Editor/Reporter www.TomPaine.com 415-642-1434
>>
>> ================================================== =====================
>>
>> 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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