When Johnny Comes Marchin’ Home: How uncle sam betrays veterans

On March 21, Congress passed a resolution “supporting the troops” in the United States invasion of Iraq. Later, after midnight, they voted to cut $25 billion from Veterans Affairs (VA), impacting healthcare, disability, education and pensions for veterans when they return home. What the public doesn’t know is that the government consistently denies veterans’ service-related disability claims and care, during war and after war.

“Support the troops? They dismissed us,” says Chante Wolf, an Air Force veteran of the first Gulf War. “We came home and people were dying. They were sick from the toxic soup of containers of chemicals we destroyed, oil smoke and then, you add depleted uranium (DU). We were told we were liars, opportunists, wimps. They turned their backs on us.”

The Pentagon insists there’s no long-term health effects of DU weapons—those nuclear-tipped “bunker busters” CNN showed. Of the 100-member military team (lead by Dr. Doug Roche) who assessed radiation-contaminated sites in 1991, 70 became ill almost immediately, and 30 have since died. Dozens of studies from the World Health Organization, United Nations Environmental Program, the British Royal Society and even the U.S. military document the harmful reality of these radioactive weapons. A British Atomic Energy Authority study projected half a million premature deaths from the 320 tons of DU used in 1991 (findings kept secret until 1998). Leukemia rates in Iraq soared 12 times higher by the late 1990s.

“Depleted uranium was on the destroyed tanks. Soldiers have it on their boots. It came home on the trucks and on soldiers’ clothes,” soberly observes Wolf,” Depleted uranium came home in their blood, in their semen, in their urine.”

This March, as much as five times more depleted uranium was used in the Iraq invasion: more than 1.500 tons, mostly over cities. The Pentagon denies the dangers, perhaps because of concerns about “financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs...”(Army Environmental Policy Institute report, June 1995). Military reports also document fear that they would have to stop using nuclear-tipped weapons.

Estimates are that since the first Gulf War, 130 veterans die every month. That’s around 20.000—an invisible one-third the number of soldiers whose names are on The Wall in Washington, D.C.

“I know another woman vet from the first Gulf War—part of a 19-member team sent to the Highway of Death. That’s where the Air Force slaughtered retreating Iraqi troops, rather than allow them to surrender,” relates Wolf, a member of the Minnesota chapter of Veterans For Peace (VFP). “She was there to bury the dead, clean up. She’s the only one left alive and she’s very sick, mostly confined to a wheelchair.”

The VA says it’s “resolved” more than 100,000 disability claims—a term previous disabled veterans translate as “denied.”

“The VA is set up to deny help until they CAN’T refuse,” says “Matthew,” a disabled Vietnam veteran, still battling with that bureaucracy and wary of retribution. It took years for him to be granted even a partial disability. “They use stalling tactics, lose paperwork and count on you giving up—or dying—before they’ll do even what their own rules say to do.”

Plenty of precedents back up Matthew’s observations and the Pentagon pattern of cover-ups when American soldiers are used as guinea pigs for new weapons. It took decades to uncover the deliberate exposure of Cold War soldiers to radiation—men known as “the Atomic Veterans.” Initially, it was believed only a “handful” of experiments occurred, but hundreds were revealed by the President’s Advisory Commission On Human Radiation Experiments in the 1990s. That commission found that the experiments were “part of a plan that was debated and approved at the highest level...[and included] deliberate release of radiation into the air to injection of people with radioactive plutonium.”

“They don’t care about the troops. We’re expendable,” Wolf echoes other veterans’ feeling. She alludes to a military rule that if one gets a tattoo, “it’s damaging government property! They’re matter of fact about it—that that’s what we are.”

Wolf can recite a tragic litany of American veterans abandoned by the government that demanded their sacrifices: WWI vets damaged by chemical weapons without compensation promised to them, camped out on the White House lawn in the early Depression—Douglas McArthur led troops to fire on them; Nevada tests made soldiers into guinea pigs to discover how long troops could keep fighting after radiation exposure.

“They dropped a nuke and told young men, ‘Run towards the light. Don’t worry—it won’t hurt you. Run toward the light.’ Our soldiers would be horrified about depleted uranium—but, they’re NOT being told,” Wolf says bitterly.

The British Royal Society concluded that DU (shot from tanks, planes and helicopters) poses immediate and long-term threats to both civilians and soldiers. The London Guardian reported April 19 that the Pentagon is misrepresenting the Society’s findings; in Orwellian fashion, the Pentagon said the study proved DU was harmless. Military studies before the first Gulf War reported that DU’s “short-term effects of high doses can result in death...long-term effects of low doses are implicated in cancer.” (Science Applications International Corporation—SAIC—for Pentagon strategic planning, July 1990).

History is repeating itself: The NY Times, Dec.14. 1994, reporting on the atomic veterans, stated that “military and nuclear energy officials motivated by fear of law suits and unfavorable publicity decided to keep secret many radiation experiments on humans.”

Sometimes it was even claimed that atomic veterans never served in the military. Vets were often told their records must have been destroyed in the St. Louis Military Records Center fire of the 1970s. Matthew cites an indifference bordering on criminal negligence:

“They have two different doctors screen you and it’s obvious the second one is just there to rubber-stamp a denial no matter what the first one finds,” he says, saying that during his five years of determined efforts, no referral for care was offered. The VA didn’t even bother to pull his service records to verify that what he told them was true. “If I’d been less articulate, less persistent I’d have just gone away and not gotten anything. That’s what they want people to do.”

Many atomic veterans died before the VA honored their disability claims. The Atomic Veterans Radiation Newsletter reported in March 2001 that the Clinton Administration continued stalling tactics by refusing to include certain cancers as part of “qualifying” radiation-exposed veterans for disability.

In the late 1960s, U.S. planes saturated parts of South Vietnam with an herbicide, known as Agent Orange. It decimated all plant life in 25 percent of the country. Its most active ingredient is the deadly dioxin. Civilians, American soldiers, ground troops and even the Air Force pilots suffered devastating effects: central nervous system damage, infertility, mobility and memory impairment, extreme psychiatric disturbances and major birth defects in children fathered by men exposed. Industrial research was already proving how destructive dioxin is but the VA continued to ignore vets’ illnesses, until the Center for Disease Control studies in the late 1980s.

“Fifteen of us with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) went to the Memorial Day event the Minneapolis VA had in 1976. This was one year after the war ended,” Matthew remembers, “and we said, ‘We want to speak!’ We blasted them about Agent Orange. We filed a lawsuit and even after that, every guy had to fight to prove he’d been exposed. The VA always looks for a loophole.”

The widest crack that disabled veterans seem to fall through is when struggling with psychological scars from war. For almost 140 years, the wounded warrior without physical injury has been recognized even by the military: the Civil War sufferers were said to have “soldiers’ heart”; WWI vets had “shell shock”; the Cold War-era called it “battle fatigue”; Vietnam veterans were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Official silence seems to surround Gulf War veterans like Timothy McVeigh or Afghanistan vets who came home and murdered their wives.

“You have to be a psychiatric causality for the VA to respond,” says Matthew, a longtime VFP member. “By then, it’s too late.”

“The VA has a system where employees gain points and retirement benefits by refusing veterans’ disability claims,” says Dick Saholt, a WWII vet who, at 19, faced 40 percent casualties against the SS Ski Troops. Saholt has endured innumerable breakdowns and held over 100 menial jobs. The VA denied him disability for 29 years, although that agency’s own records revealed they’d secretly labeled Saholt “chronically schizophrenic...one of the most bizarre and genuinely crazy veterans” they’d ever seen.

How many tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans succumbed to far higher rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and divorce than the non-combatant population? By 1980, VVAW estimated 60,000 Vietnam vets had committed suicide.
“That’s ANOTHER Wall of names,” Matthew gravely notes, adding that today’s total estimate is almost twice that number.

Saholt’s allegations of systematic VA denial of vets’ disability claims was proven through investigations by the New York Times and The Progressive magazine in the late 1980s. Rewards were given for faster processing of disability claims, including higher salaries and promotions—rejecting claims counted as much as accepting them—and the former is much faster. (“U.S. Court Told of VA Abuse in Claims Denial,” NY Times, 12/7/1986 and “Conditions Less Than Honorable,” The Progressive, May 1987). As “privatization” of all human services has escalated since Clinton and the current Bush budget slashes, it’s reasonable to believe such abuses continue.

“So many issues come back five, ten, 15 years later. You come back, realize what’s going on and ask, ‘Was I duped?’ That’s how I felt after Vietnam. Alienated,” says “Bob,” a VA employee, who wished to be anonymous. “These Gulf War soldiers were not prepared. They thought they’d be back in a week, while we knew our [Vietnam tour] was 365 days. Now, GIs are being picked off by snipers. That will come back later.”

Female veterans face an extra trauma: a permeating atmosphere of sexual harassment and sexual assault from their fellow soldiers. A recent VA study showed that 60 percent of military women suffer PTSD; the trauma of the majority stems from sexual assaults by fellow soldiers. Wolf describes a “conspiracy of silence” and victim-blaming resulting in the discharge of most women who report assaults. Does the VA even offer services to these rape survivors? Gov. Pawlenty’s budget has eliminated funding for nonprofits who might offer services.

Historical denials of veterans’ disability claims will likely be exacerbated by the recent Congressional $25 billion cut of VA. Bob expressed concerns about big cuts to rural vets’ reimbursements for travel to get care, vocational rehabillitation and counseling services, coupled with changes of income standards to qualify for free care, adding costs to veterans.

“Congress made mandates that the VA has to charge clients. Veterans who can’t afford to pay will HAVE to pay for medications and doctor’s visits,” he says.
No VA officials responded. A phone interview appointment made with Medical Center Director Steve Kleinglass “coincided” with him being out of town and Public Information Officer Schultz deferred comments on the cuts to Kleinglass. This reporter could only conclude that this exemplified the “stalling tactics” that veterans are regularly subjected to.

“It’s an urban myth that Vietnam veterans were spit on by anti-war protesters,”Bob remarks. “It’s the government that does that.”

“Protest organizations have not only raised moral questions about war,” Matthew elaborates. “They’ve always fought for veterans’ rights and needs.” Chante Wolf confirms, “Gulf War veterans have been told to shut up. The ones who turned their backs on us were the government.”

Chante Wolf, who has channelled her anger into ongoing peace activism, fights for rights of U.S. veterans. “It’s the flag-wavers, the ones who have never been to war, who turned their backs on us. They’re not the ones who go to the VA and hold the hand of a veteran dying of cancer. They’re not the ones who go to the VA psych ward and listen to the stories of what these men will live with the rest of their lives. They don’t care!”

While no weapons of mass destruction have yet been found in Iraq, the United States is violating international law. In 1996, the United Nations Subcomission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared depleted uranium munitions to be a weapon of mass destruction.