Valenzuela continues..
Gulf Wars I & II and Depleted Uranium (Gulf War Syndrome)
More recently, the introduction of Depleted Uranium (DU) as a key component of America’s military arsenal has created a present wave and future catastrophe of disease and death among US troops, most notably those that served in the first Gulf War. DU, made of nuclear waste and used in military shells, munitions, missiles, bullets and tank armor, has made of Iraq a nuclear dump that has ruined the environment. Hundreds of tons of DU material has been used in both Gulf Wars, Kosovo and Afghanistan, releasing into the environment minute particles of vaporized uranium that linger in the environment and in the air, penetrating into water tables, food supplies and cities. The usefulness of DU, its inexpensive production, troop armor protecting strength and target penetrating ability, had made this weapon a useful instrument of war – if the aftereffects are not taken into consideration.
It is estimated that anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 American veterans who served in Gulf War I have died of mysterious diseases and maladies, most notably cancers, neurological disorders and immunodeficiency illnesses and diseases. It is estimated that 40,000 to 80,000 more will die in the next twenty to thirty years as the effects of DU run their course. Only about 150 members of the military died during the actual fighting in Gulf War I.
Half of the 700,000 troops used in Gulf War I have reported serious illnesses, however, with many suffering chronic illness. Hundreds of thousands suffer from the so-called Gulf War Syndrome. There is a strong indication, and indeed a growing likelihood, that the use of DU by the military is the primary culprit. Most of these veterans are in their late twenties and early thirties, in the prime of their health, cleared as healthy before the war in military conducted medical physicals. Added to these diseases is the growing evidence that DU is responsible for the large number of genetic birth defects, gross mutations of fetuses, miscarriages and stillborns arising from veterans of Gulf War I.
The implication for veterans of Gulf War II and Afghanistan is mind boggling. The example of Gulf War I and its health related implications is but a small ripple compared to the coming tidal wave approaching Gulf War II veterans and our society. Estimates say that the US and Britain used five times more DU munitions in 2003 than used in 1991. When up to 350 tons of DU munitions was used by the Pentagon in 1991, the ramifications for the present and future health of American soldiers is worrisome at the least and calamitous at worst.
The same diseases, cancers and fetal deformities and miscarriages being discovered by our soldiers are widespread throughout the population of Iraq and now Afghanistan as well. Coincidence? Not likely. Of course the environmental disaster DU has unleashed will eventually disappear, in 4.5 billion years. Meanwhile, Iraq’s population has shown steep increases in cancers and genetic birth defects, numbers never before seen in such quantities for a sample nation, except perhaps in post WWII Japan. It is not a far-fetched statement to say that Iraq and its citizens will be devastated for generations to come. The government purposefully allowed the use of uranium rich DU munitions, exposing both soldiers and civilians to one of the worst weapons of mass destruction. Make no mistake, Iraq and Afghanistan are now nuclear dumps, their citizens are dying in incredibly large numbers and the US government, along with corporate media complicity, is covering up this growing pandemic that would rightly outrage the entire planet if it was exposed for the war crime that it is. We must stop the use of our own WMD’s on both land and man before we ask others to stop theirs.
The government has remained quiet on the subject but a growing landslide of evidence is pointing to the morbid conclusion that in Gulf War I and now II the US military and government, in order to pro-rate American deaths from “during the war,” (in essence minimizing death during the war) to a gradual death rate in the immediate decades “after the war,” and in order to prevent large numbers of casualties that would inevitably alienate the American public, -- think “Vietnam Syndrome” – used DU armor and munitions, knowing full well its dangers to troops and innocent civilians, deciding the slow and clandestine death of troops after the war was better than thousands of casualties that had been expected during it. This happened in 1991, and, with more than a decade to correct its actions, the Pentagon instead relied more heavily on DU in 2003 when mounting evidence showed the effects of DU on humans. Can we dare bring to light and investigate this criminal exploitation by those at the top of our loved ones?
Soon, American troops will return from Iraq, and deep within them will grow an embedded poison, a weapon of mass destruction that will linger inside their bodies until the day arrives that DU decides to begin its evil process of annihilation. We must keep on eye on these veterans because many will die, many will give birth to the most deformed babies you will ever see and the government/military will speak not a word. The cover-up and stonewall will be methodical, both by government and the corporate media, for the implications of what is happening to our soldiers and Iraq’s citizens will send shockwaves throughout the world. Payments of this criminal deceit may run into the hundreds of billions, devastating entire industries. An objective investigation would most likely lead to the incarceration of those at the top and expose this nation for the evilness of its wars. Thus, the DU enigma will never see the light of day, and veterans will be swept underneath the rug of disregard, gathering cobwebs as more and more veterans die off.
The evils of DU are visible in Iraq, they are visible in Gulf War I veterans and they will soon be visible in many of the men and women today serving in the cradle of civilization. Nuclear war was unleashed on Iraq and Afghanistan by our military. In the end, it is our own sons and daughters that must pay the price for this most wicked of actions, this most unmoral of wars. And we have our own government to thank for the coming decimation that will in the next few years and decades devour our loved ones and the children they bear.
Systemic Abuse of Veterans and Soldiers
As soldiers struggle to survive in the desert sands of Iraq the Bush administration is waging its own war at home against them and their families. In order to help pay for the enormity that has become the Iraq quagmire, Bush has cut or held down numerous soldier and veteran benefits and services. Bush has cut off access to the VA’s health care system for approximately 164,000 veterans. The President is also trying to cut off $1.5 billion in military family housing and medical facility funding in his 2004 budget, a 14 percent reduction. The White House also opposes a proposal to give National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon’s health-insurance system. The General Accounting Office has estimated that one of every five Guard members has no health insurance.
The war by Bush against members of the armed forces continues as the White House tried to roll back recent increases in monthly imminent-danger pay, from $225 to $150, and family-separation allowance, from $250 to $100, for troops being shot at in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to the administration, the military’s pay raise for men and women in desperate need of better wages was a paltry 4.1 percent hike for higher ranks and a 2 percent raise for the lower ranks, a raise that does not even cover the rise of inflation. The White House labeled as “wasteful and unnecessary” a very modest proposal to double from $6000 to $12,000 the gratuity given to families of those soldiers that die on active duty, an amount that would not cover a year of expenses and that does not even surpass the poverty line for a small family.
The White House budget for Veterans Affairs cut $3 billion from VA hospitals even with the large number of casualties returning from Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. VA spending today averages $2,800 less per patient than nine years ago. Bush has raised VA prescription drugs co-payments for veterans more than 200 percent even at a time when veterans of Korea and Vietnam begin aging and see themselves in greater need of medicines. With hundreds of thousands of Gulf War I veterans suffering various chronic illnesses and diseases, this move further erodes the necessary mechanisms needed to live a life with the least amount of pain.
Further proof of the war being waged against members of the armed forces is Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to shut down 19 commissaries, military-run stores that offer discounted food and merchandise that helps low-paid enlisted troops and their families get by, with the possibility of closing down 19 more. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also trying to determine whether or not to shut down 58 military-run schools for the children of soldiers. Listed above are but a few of the tactics used by the Bush administration to strangulate soldiers, veterans and their families. Expected to fight and sacrifice lives, they are now being forced to sacrifice benefits and pay, education and healthcare. How much more can be asked of our sons and daughters before they and the nation begin wondering what Bush is doing? They deserve better, perhaps not Bush’s silver spoon but definitely some dignity and appreciation.
These moves by the Bush administration have lacerated those tools members of the military and their families need in order to live their lives with a semblance of meaning. Bush is in essence shackling soldiers and their families to a collective chain of apathy and exploitation. As these men and women head into combat zones, willing to sacrifice limb, mind and life, their benefits, pay and services are being decimated by the same man putting their lives on the line. It is a slap in the face to at the same time send soldiers to die abroad while slashing their benefits at home. It is a slap in the face to all veterans who courageously served their country in battle only to have their benefits reduced. And the person responsible is a chickenhawk who escaped his duties and now smirks and struts while terrified, maimed and killed soldiers return home, telling the world to “bring it on,” in essence challenging the world to kill those men and women he sent to fight his war.
The exploitation of the American Soldier is methodical and arrogantly shameful. It is enslavement and oppression. It is the continuation of a mercenary army created to fight for and defend the interests of the Leviathan and the oligarchy. The illusions of “fighting for freedom,” “our way of life,” and our “democratic principles” is but a mirage designed to hide the real reasons behind Bush’s wars. Through propaganda the American people are being lied to and misled down the path of perpetual war. Through the use of fear and terror Bush propels the Leviathan’s war agenda, scaring the populace into acquiescing to exporting terror abroad and importing the erosion of freedoms and liberties at home.
Meanwhile, the Leviathan’s hostile and open war against Americans continues without us realizing what is being done to us. Blindly we believe what is shown; ignorantly we follow what is said. We no longer question authority nor self-educate ourselves. To many Americans Bush is the second coming of Christ, a most trusted man of honor and integrity. Reality, however, is altogether different. His policies are completely the opposite of Christ’s teachings. The worst president in history is destroying this nation, and he is bringing us all down with him. The rise of the fascist state of Amerika begun in 2000 will accelerate in 2004 and become a possible reality in 2005 with a further degrading of our rights, democracy and liberties, the acceleration of a police state and the complete usurpation of government and our representatives by the Leviathan and its puppet in the White House.
All this will be accomplished thanks to the invasive and systematic cloud of fear the administration has released into the fabric and environment of this country. The instilling of fear into an ever jumpy and paranoid nation by the administration is the ultimate WMD, (weapon of mental deception) destroying our once free and open society, scaring us into submission and making of us fearful citizens devoid of a once vibrant energy. If we do not stop fearing the illusion of evil Bush has indoctrinated us with, we will soon really have something to fear, and that is the terror of living in a fascist state.
In order to continue their perpetual profit-and-power-pillaging-war fighting ghosts and goblins the MIC, Leviathan and oligarchy will unleash a government enacted draft after the election of George W. Bush in 2004. Large troop numbers – at present not available through the “all volunteer” army – are needed to quench the three-headed monster’s greed-infested appetite for power and resources. All governmental and state action taking place today is clandestinely leading to this most ominous circumstance, one need only open his/her eyes. As is usually the case, those in the lower castes will become the great majority of draftees, brought out of their reservations and turned into mercenaries of the oligarchy.
Trained to become lethal killers of humanity, our sons and daughters will be dehumanized, exposed to the inhuman emotions of war and battle, death and blood. Spread to those regions our feudal lords deem strategic and necessary, our soldiers will decimate both land and man, becoming both a plague of locusts devouring everything in its path and a malignant virus hemorrhaging the planet. The Evil Empire, now openly and arrogantly waging war throughout the world, no longer acting clandestinely to determine geopolitical destinies as it has done for decades, will need vast amounts of cannon fodder and armies to guard the many lands, interests and resources of the Pax Amerikana and the United Corporations of Amerika.
The exploitation of the American Soldier will increase, the draft will take from our homes those young lives we most cherish. Conscripted to serve the Leviathan and oligarchy, trained to kill their fellow exploited man with the MIC’s instruments of death, our young loved ones will die and suffer. They will become maimed, both physically and mentally, scarred for life, becoming the disposable refuse our government throws into its landfills.
The story of the American Soldier is a story of ceaseless exploitation, of ceaseless sacrifice to the interests of the elite oligarchs and of ceaseless bravery in the face of ceaseless obstacles. No longer fighting for freedoms or liberties or in defending our borders or ways of life, soldiers now fight for the profits, resources, power and ideology of the Leviathan and oligarchs. The poor continue to be subjugated; they continue to fight like the serfs and slaves of old for the interests of the elite few.
The story of the American soldier is the story of human war, of the rich and powerful using the poor in the continual cycle of exploitation. It is the story of humanity, of civilization, and of the unrelenting and time honored tradition which by our indifference to act we inherently decide to live in. Through our passivity and unwillingness to force change we are condemning ourselves to the coming future that awaits us. A future that has been both our past and our present, and inevitably, the continuation of what has been, and what seems to remain. The symptoms of our disease, it seems, cannot be cured, and slowly our sickened and palpitated society chains itself to its cold and dreary death bed awaiting the inevitability of our lives.
© Copyright 2003 by AxisofLogic.com
Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in 2004. His articles appear bi-weekly on axisoflogic.com. He welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net .
Other articles by Manuel Valenzuela:
Critical Analysis
Exclusive! The Exploitation of the American Soldier: Part I of II: Of Caste Drafts and Society's Complicity, Manuel Valenzuela
U.S. News/Comment
Exclusive! Fear Factor Orange: Mind and Behavior Control in America, Manuel Valenzuela, Christmas, 2003
U.S. News/Comment
Exclusive! The Evisceration of Democracy: The Corporate Leviathan and the Emergence of the Fascist State, Manuel Valenzuela, December 19, 2003
Media Critiques
Axis of Logic Exclusive: The Stupefication of a Nation: Corporate Media Propaganda and its Weapons of Mass Distraction, submitted by Author, Manuel Valenzuela, December 11, 2003
Critical Analysis
Axis of Logic Exclusive - The Enemy Within: The NeoCon Hijacking of America, Manuel Valenzuela, December 15, 2003
Iraq/US Policy
The Hidden and Unseen: The Reality of Bush’s Iraq, Manuel Valenzuela
Palestine/Apartheid Wall
Another exclusive from Manuel Valenzuela - The Walls that Divide Us, December 12, 2003
U.S. News/Comment
Perpetual War, Perpetual Terror, submitted to Axis of Logic by author, Manuel Valenzuela, December 11, 2003
World News/Comment
Automatons and Slaves: The Corporate Leviathan's "Global Realization", Manuel Valenzuela, Dissident Voice, December 4, 2003
World News/Comment
Exclusive: Mission Accomplished: Bush Triumphs at Alienating World, December 15, 2003
Autumn Leaves and the Failed Iraq Experiment
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