So much for supporting our troops

[Jeanette in FL]

Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers?

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer

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.

snip

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.

http://kevxml2a.infospace.com/_1_2DNVTO104OPLKYO__wind.main/apnws/story.htm?kcfg=apart&sin=D8JF06MG0&qcat=usnews&ran=10379&passqi=&feed=ap&top=1 for the full article

In the article Reed talks about how they have been just blown off by the US Govt physicians, telling them that their symptoms are all in their heads.

But there is an interesting point in the article, that when the Dutch marines came to work at the same depot, they had radiation detectors that were maxing out on radiation and set their camp in the middle of the desert instead of living in the depot.

These guys had to hire a lawyer and had to send out their urine to be tested in Germany, which proved that they had Depleted Uranium poisoning.

It is sad to read how they have been lied to and are still being lied too.

For those of us who remember, the Vietnam vets had to fight this same damn battle with Agent Orange. Nothing has changed, these men and women mean nothing to them, just fight their wars and shut the hell up after that.

So Sad.

[Sinti]

1. This is horrifying - same $&!t all over again

Probably worse this time. There are democratic apologists for this junk too - they swear there's no such thing as DU poisoning. Both sides swear it's just as safe as spring water.

They send them over there to kill and die so the Corporatocracy can steal more money/resources from both nations. Now if they're lucky enough to come home they get to suffer probably for the rest of their lives. And these are just the costs in physical terms - god knows what kind of hell exists in the minds of our returning soldiers.

Most of the young soldiers I've met always struck me as having "Superman" complexes - they all wanted to be big, tough guys saving the world, especially Marines. Funny (read sick and disgusting) how our own government always seems to blast them with some kind of kryptonite while they're "over there".