Many U.S. soldiers now suffering. (poison)

[ensho]

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20090906_Back_Channels__Many_U_S__soldiers_now_suffering_.html


Poison powder's damage ignored at Iraqi plant


A thick coating of orange powder was everywhere. You sat on it and slept on it. You walked through it and brushed it off your clothes. It was on the food and it was part of the air you breathed, especially when the wind kicked up.
The powder was one of the first things Glen Bootay noticed when, as a combat engineer with the Third Infantry Division, he arrived at the water-treatment facility at Qarmat Ali, Iraq, in April 2003. He even mentioned it to his mom in a call home.

Bootay and his squad spent three days and two nights at Qarmat Ali. They were there to determine if the vandalized plant, stripped bare of valuables and missing its roofs, could be salvaged.

Another vet told a Senate committee last month that there were about 1,000 100-pound bags of the orange powder at the plant. Medic Russell Powell said many of the bags "were ripped and exposed to the wind, . . . placed by doorways and buildings so we had to actually walk through the piles of the orange powder when we entered and exited the buildings. . . . We used them as security measures, as sandbags. . . . There were at least two inches of powder on my boots."

The powder was sodium dichromate, a deadly poison and carcinogen. Until fleeing Iraqis used it to sabotage the plant, the chemical had been used as an anticorrosive in water pipes feeding the oil fields. One expert testified to the Senate committee that "a grain of sand worth of sodium dichromate per cubic meter could lead to serious long-term health problems, including cancer." And yet, after a dust storm, Powell testified, "We'd all look like orange-powdered doughnuts."

-snip-

Hundreds of soldiers were there for months, protecting contractors from Kellogg, Brown & Root, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, which was rebuilding Iraq's oil-production infrastructure.

-snip-

Outraged senators are calling for investigations of the Army and KBR. Some are trying to make it easier for vets exposed to sodium dichromate to get help.
-snip-
------------------------


snips tell about the sick soldiers and how they are having trouble getting treatment

[Hekate]

1. KBR--again. The lot of them belong in the bowels of Hell--but first, prison...

There are no words for the betrayal wrought by Bush-Cheney Inc. and their friends.

Hekate

[Solly Mack]

2. k/r

[global1]

3. The New Agent Orange.......nt

[votingupstart]

7. good possibility - unfortunately it will take a (life)time to tell n/t

[Soylent Brice]

4. K&R

as if they didn't have enough to deal with over there already.

[undeterred]

5. What a screwed up situation.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. The contractors, then, also exposed.

I love this sentence:

"protecting contractors from Kellogg, Brown & Root"
which sounds as if KBR was a danger TO contractors.


Not one single person looked at all the orange powder and asked what the hell it was????

[windoe]

8. Incredulous no one knew it was poison.

No one, no officer, no military expert tested what was in the bags? In a war zone?

[Wilms]

9. k&r n/t

[Doremus]

10. "I would serve again. . . . I feel that it was a worthy cause."

Bootay enlisted on Sept. 12, 2001. "Because of the attacks, I felt like it was my generation's turn to step up to the plate," he said. And despite his illness and the grief from an unresponsive system, he added, "I would serve again. . . . I feel that it was a worthy cause."



:: thud ::

[Doremus]

11. Link to another article with more info:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/25/iraq_contractor_fights_suit_over_toxic_exposure/?page=1


They'll get away with it.

They always do.

:mad: :mad: :mad: