treatment of own soldiers?
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1248
Rumsfeld's New Model Army
Conn Hallinan
Foreign Policy in Focus
http://www.fpif.org/
Posted 11/2/2003 7:42:00 PM
November 2, 2003, Summary: Is President George Bush's war against Iraq a "no-win" scenario? Are Bush's anti-soldier and anti-veteran policies pouring salt into the wounds of an Army asked to police more than 20 million people? The essay below promts some tough questions for US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
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Wounded reservists returning from Iraq complain they have been "warehoused" at Fort Stewart, Ga. in barracks without showers or bathrooms and sometimes wait weeks to see a doctor.
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Inadequate medical care - another way the New Model Army is trying to save on personal costs - has touched a raw nerve among veterans as well, many of whom are partially or fully disabled from Gulf War Syndrome. Veterans groups charge that almost 150,000 vets from Gulf War I have been waiting more than six months to see a doctor, and the wait for a specialist is up to two years.
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Those numbers are likely to climb because solders in Iraq today are being exposed to many of the battlefield toxins that felled some 118,000 veterans in the first Gulf War.
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The Syndrome has been linked to some 345 tons of Depleted Uranium ammunition (DU) used in the 1991 conflict. According to the London Express, the Americans and the British used between 1,100 and 2,200 tons of DU, much of it in urban areas during the recent war. Radiation 1,000 to 1,900 times normal has been detected in four locations in Baghdad.
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The situation is "appalling," according to Professor Brian Spratt, chair of the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific body. "We really need someone like the UN environmental program or the World Health Organization to get into Iraq and start testing civilians and soldiers for uranium exposure."
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Such testing is unlikely because the Department of Defense denies that DU poses any health risks.
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Reservists also charge that they are given second-rate equipment in the field, including inadequate body armor.
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While the manpower crisis on the ground is bad---there are just not enough troops available to match the Administration's imperial sprawl--- it is likely to get a whole lot worse. A recent poll by the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, found that only 49 percent of the reserves intend to re-enlist.
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So is this blind folly? Or does "transformation" offer an unseen benefit?
"The arguments in support of technological monism echo down the halls of the Pentagon," Major General Robert Scales (Ret.) told the House Armed Service Committee Oct. 21, "precisely because they involve the expenditures of huge sums of money to defense contractors."
, espescially when they use BIG WORDS . Peace
