My NG Unit, the 442nd Military Police Company, Orangeburg, New York Armory, served in Samawah, Iraq in 2003. Our base and living area was within a railway yard, in this town which was a “burial” site for radioactive Iraqi tanks partially destroyed in the First Gulf War. Trenches were dug. The vehicles and equipment, “hot” with radioactivity from U.S. depleted uranium shells which had incapacitated them, were covered with desert sand. That sand where we camped was tested with Geiger counters by the Dutch military who were supposed to replace us when our deployment was over. They pronounced the area “uninhabitable.”
That highly contaminated desert sand was used to form traffic islands in the local roads we traveled. Our mess tent was next to the road. The microscopic particles of uranium, still radioactive of course, were continually blowing around for us to inhale and also ingest when we ate and even talked. Every morning we broom-swept the layers of brown dust which had settled on the floor. The train yard itself, where we slept every night for months, held abandoned flat cars with wrecks of Iraqi tanks sitting on them.
These tanks, I know now, contained uranium particles in a thick layer of “dust,” the product of the intense burn of the dense depleted uranium shells which had penetrated the tank armor and incinerated the occupants. Uranium oxides particles are microscopic and in the form of jagged molecules which, easily inhaled, lodge in the lungs, the kidneys, and eventually settle in the bones. Their active alpha rays steadily destroy adjacent cells including stem cells in the bone marrow and DNA strands.
I must emphasize here that I have learned all this after serving in Iraq. While serving there, none of us knew the danger we were in. I had never heard of depleted uranium. The U.S. Army had sent us
there with out mentioning the radioactivity, let alone supplying us with protective equipment.
When we returned to the United States, we of the 442nd had no ideas why we experienced sleeplessness, skin rashes, muscle and joint aches, enlarged thyroids, burning urination, blood in urine and stools, headaches, difficulty breathing and gum disease. Then we received our positive test results, funded by the Daily News, done in a German laboratory with an advanced mass spectometry testing process sensitive to the various isotopes of uranium, unlike the crude full body tests done by the VA. We learned that these symptoms, lumped into the phony category of “Gulf War Syndrome,” are in reality the symptoms of radiation poisoning. My positive test included U236, which, like U238, is only found in processed uranium. not in nature. One of us, Gerard Matthews fathered a beautiful baby girl with a specific anomaly, missing fingers, which is found now in Iraqi children and in at least one girl whose parent grew up next door to a DU weapon fabrication plant in this country..
Before we called Juan Gonzales of the Daily News, we tried to get answers to our illnesses through military channels. One of us, a medic, had heard of depleted uranium as a health issue. We approached the Medical staff at Fort Dix to inquire about a test for exposure. They promised to check with Walter Reed Hospital and notify us immediately upon receiving a reply. In one week we were summoned to a meeting.
At that meeting I lost all respect for the military after having given nineteen years, nine months and twenty days of faithful service to my country. We were told there was no test to detect depleted uranium in a human body. Our own word of mouth research had discovered the existence of an unmarked door in the basement of an unmarked building which led to a special unit set up to test soldiers suspected of being exposed to depleted uranium. Several members of our unit went to Washington and asked to be tested but were refused. We immediately contacted our Senators, Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. Senator Clinton had served on the Armed Services Committee. She expressed interest in our plight and held a press conference on the subject. At this point, we began to receive more cooperation from the VA.
We were amazed by what we learned. The Department of Defense had issued after the first Gulf War several Army Regulations (ARS) on the subject of depleted uranium’s danger to human health. These were endorsed by the Armed Services Committee including Senator Clinton. Those regs have never been followed in this present Iraq War although uranium munitions are being delivered all over the country by Abrams tanks, armored vehicles, A-10 Warthog planes, missiles. Every soldier was supposed to receive a full physical prior to being sent to a combat area, including blood and urine tests which would be repeated upon return to civilian life to identify contamination.
For example, Army Regulation 700-48, Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C. September 16, 2002, was the result of Major Douglas Rokke’s mission to clean up the initial radioactive debris from the First Gulf War. It states in part that
1) Military personnel “identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE--radiologically contaminated equipment.
2) Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible.
3) Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration or abandonment.”
It also mandates that the Commander, U.S. Army will “provide general awareness (of radioactive materials) to all soldiers who are currently entering or in the U.S. Army.” We are living proof that none of this has been done. Directives are arrogantly ignored that require the United States DOD officials to provide prompt and effective medical care of all exposed individuals (Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties-Pentagon 10/14/93.)
Here we have 12 year old information that could have prevented others from becoming contaminated, and it was concealed. We have not been protected from this radioactive poison. Our government is riskng its own troops and the human gene pool. I think this is a crime and requires a full investigation. Ten of our ill “Daily News Vets” have retained counsel and filed a notice of claim against the United States Government that we will file a lawsuit in Federal Court.
Will we never learn from our mistakes? All who have served in these contaminated areas, which now includes Baghdad, Fallujah and the Western towns being bombed this June will not know why they are sick or where to turn for help. I think we are only asking for what was promised us when we joined our Armed Forces to serve our country. We think it is time they held up their part of the bargain, and we will not wait another thirty years before they tell the TRUTH.
Congress, the governmental arm of the people, must be a vehicle for exposing and changing this truth. There are too many lives at stake, and we are talking about future generations, about men and women having children and then grandchildren with deformities and cancers, their genes altered forever. Do we really need this? Don’t we have enough diseases we cannot cure now? A crime is being perpetuated against our soldiers and future generations. I pray that you as members of Congress get on board, support our day in Washington by attending our briefing and by helping us make this best kept of all criminal secrets known to all Americans. If you support the truth, you will support the troops.
Very highly recommended.
When I was in college, the smart people were going into engineering, which had solid long-term prospects, and only we dweezils majored in English, and look what happened: Engineers are being laid off, America is losing its capacity to manufacture things, but every day we out trillians of words about ourselves, bloggers blogging, floods of memoir, day-dreaming, carpet-chewing, and when the Chinese repo men eventually come to collect on our debt, they will find a nation of highly articulate self-aware people who can't change an oil filter but maintain wonderful websites. A nation of English majors.
Reinhold Niebuhr
