Good article.
But the study doesn't take into account the effects of depleted uranium - the factor no one seems to want to talk about.

article quote: "An estimated 250,000 service members in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm were given the drug pyridostigmine bromide because the military thought it would offer protection against nerve agents."

In science, they would call what the military 'thought' an hypothesis.

In order to test the hypothesis, the military (as a favour to Big Pharm) conducted a human clinical trial of 250,000 people. Did the military get informed consent agreements from these clinical trial subjects? Did the military inform these subjects of the possible risks of the drug?

Why do I bother asking? We all know the answers.

Don't trust Big Pharm any more than you trust Big Guns. Both industries are in bed together and both are filled with high functioning psychopaths, sociopaths, and autistics - basically people who do not have the genetic capacity to emphasize with other human beings or feel remorse for any of their actions.

Inquiring minds want to know the kinds of clinical trials Eric Prince's mercenaries have unknowingly and unwittingly taken part in. An educated guess would suggest that they're equally bad - likely worse - than the military. Wouldn't it be interesting to know if Blackwater board members also have ties with Big Pharm?

But then again, Eric Prince is likely to be a psychopath himself - and most of the mercenaries probably are, too.

more interesting info on psychopathy: http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm

didn't i read somewhere that former defsec rumsfeld had ties to bioport, the sole-source supplier of PB to the military?

as to informed consent, i don't believe it's applicable to uniformed troops---you sign up and follow orders, including an order to roll up your sleeves.

Getting a sun burn can be really really bad for the grunt,

as he's destroying govt property

Megapharms give the VA a billion per year for research. That gets funnelled to the Physicians in the form of HUGE grants. God only knows how much money they and other war profiteers give politicians.

They will NEVER come to a conclusion that puts Drug or Munitions Manufacturers in potential civil or criminal liability... but of course all that research is untainted because the VA and DoD launder the money to the docs.

No matter HOW MANY Veterans suffer and die, without benefits, no matter HOW MANY widows and orphans lose their wage earners... no matter HOW MANY civilians experience all of the above...

DU? Contaminated Serums? Experimental Drugs? Agent Orange?... nothing to see here folks... move along please.

How many Gulf War Veterens from the Bush, Sr,
war have died, already?
Isn't it an astronomical percentage?
The best thing that can happen is for the war monster to collapse; hopefully before the damage to mankind is so great that we will not be able to heal.
Thank you to all the poor people that are contributing to its demise: those with massive credit card debt, foreclosing mortgages, and soldiers in the field. Your current suffering is paving the way for a better life for all.

The combination of untested "prophylactic vaccines", depleted uranium and in the case of Gulf I, large amounts of petroleum burned into the atmosphere creates a powerful source of illness and death for all exposed: Iraqis, current US soldiers, mercenaries and veterans.

Indigineous infectious diseases, high stress, questionable water quality and other conditions including PTSD add up to an enormous laboratory a la Joseph Mengele.

Except it the US and the Bush/Cheney regime that has continued and expanded it.

Tell me again, did the Nazis lose WWII?

Surprise, Surprise

1000's of tonnes of DU in the planets atmosphere thanks to criminals in the Black House... we are now all the guinea pigs in the 'Joseph Mengele' experiement...

The govenment denies DU (depleted uranium)is a health hazard and these links show why they do deny it. The first link is brief, it takes about two minutes to read. The second is lengthy and very detailed, so one may consider printing it and studying it thoroughly. It is actualy quite important if any have children, as our mlitary has expended more DU here in the United States than anyplace else.

http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du_blowinginthewind.htm

http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/background.htm

By going to other reasons for PTSD, it takes the heat off of the DU issue. Although I am certain other chemicals are also part of the problem. At least the government then doesn't have to explain why they have tested thousands of tons of DU ammo and bombs here.

Bill BRG

"Tell me again, did the Nazis lose WWII?"

They just moved the main office.They have and will continue to do as they please so long as the sheeple allow it.

The Nazi connection is covered in JFK The Bush Connection on google

//video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4315024059102108031&q=jfk+the+bush+connection&total=96&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Those of us civilians who've been ruinously poisoned by exposure to the domestically pseudo-regulated sale & dispersal of nerve agents (like Dursban/chloropyrofos), learned ong ago how humanly rotten and murderously insane our corporate-dominated commercial culture & government have become.

One measure of the Insanity that America's become, is that even the corporate exec's and high shareholders who're momentarily cash-benefitting from the dispersal of clearly toxic agents, are themselves [and their children] being poisoned.

You don't need to be a Marxist (which I am not) to understand Lennin's depth-of-insight into the monstrous contradictions of an unregulated capitalist system, when he observed:

A Capitalist moved, as Capitalism demands, only by the needs of his personal cash profits, can be guaranteed to sell the rope to his systematically-brutalized victims who damn well mean to hang him.

workreno,

Appreciate the video link, but try to break such long URLs or links
over two lines, or more, for [super-long] links.

Why? Some of us need to increase the font size for reading and when links are too long, then, and once the font size is readable,
we are forced to use the horizontal scrollbar, in addition to the vertical one, and that is such a nuisance that I will NEVER bother reading such Web pages.

Use prescription eyewear? It's an idea, but wouldn't really be much better than simply and costlessly increase the font size by very simply pressing CTRL and the '+' keys together. And then there's the issue that some people, even in the West, are so poor that getting prescription eyewear isn't particularly feasible, for we also need to eat and cover costs for other essentials, before having sufficient money for eyewear. Oh, I got a very inexpensive $2 pair, but they're definitely not prescription-fit and are bad for the eyes; won't help, except for very temporary, short uses. Otherwise, they'll worsen eyesight.

So the most appropriate solution for general considerations is to simply break up URLs and texts when their lengths force horizontal scrollbars upon [all] readers of the general public. Horizontal may be okay for some uses, but these would not amount to more than very few actual uses; they'd be an exception, a very infrequent one.

People might not notice that this happens when they don't also increase the webpage font size, in which case a very simple way to determine if a H-scrollbar will be forced is to increase the font size one and then two times; using CTRL++ and then CTRL+- for decreasing the font size. If that proves the H-bar is forced to appear, then the post can be edited and the link broken up.

They do not care how they poison our soldiers, be it pesticides, medications, or depleted uranium. The figures from the Gulf War alone...related to depleted uranium are terrible...

Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world.

For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain. Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

On average there are 175,000 new cases of lung cancer each year in the United States. For just the months of January and February 2006 there are 172,000 confirmed, newly diagnosed cases of lung cancer. This is not just a little spike on the charts and much worse news is coming. That is already averaging this year about 6 times the normal incidence of new lung cancer cases in a year.

They tried to attribute it to second hand smoke, but second hand smoke and cigarettes are nothing compared to being exposed to Depleted Uranium ("DU") and particulates created by DU explosions. You can smoke for 30 years and not do the damage that DU can do to you in 30 days.

How long does it take to get lung cancer after being exposed to DU and nano-particulates? On average 2-5 years is the correct answer.

This doesn't include the multitude of other disease and problems attributed to DU.Nearly 700,000 American Gulf War Veterans returned to the US from a war that lasted just a few weeks. Today more than 240,000 of those soldiers are on permanent medical disability, and over 18,000 are dead. In a US Government study on post-Gulf War babies born to 251 veterans, 67 per cent of the babies were reported to have serious illnesses or serious birth defects. They were born without eyes, ears, had missing organs, fused fingers, thyroid or other malfunctions. Depleted uranium in the semen of the soldiers internally contaminated their wives. Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time.

I wonder if supporting the corporations and oil industry and power greedy is worth this?

Rokke became director of a Pentagon project designed to learn more about DU contamination and to develop training that would minimize its risks. "I'm a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission," Rokke says. "I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use DU safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can't do this safely in combat conditions. You can't decontaminate the environment or your own troops."

Dr. Andras Korenyi-Both, who headed one of the main field hospitals during Desert Storm and later conducted some of the first research into Gulf War syndrome, the position is less clear-cut. "You'd have to deal with the question of whether it's better not to use DU and have more of your soldiers die in battle or to use DU and lose very few in the field-but have them get sick and die when they get home."

Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets the US Government's own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The fact is that the United States and its military partners have staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under the wire" by using dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US needs to control. Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently contaminate vast regions and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those regions, where there are resources which the US must control. Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. Imagine the people who came in contact with the areas where it was and still is being used...including US soldiers. And McCain wants 50-100 years more of this.

Depleted uranium weapons were first given by the US to Israel for use under US supervision in the 1973 Sinai war against the Arabs. Since then the US has tested, manufactured, and sold depleted uranium weapons systems to 29 countries. An international taboo prevented their use until 1991, when the US broke the taboo and used them for the first time, on the battlefields of Iraq and Kuwait.

There is no possible protection from exposure to very fine particles of depleted uranium through filtering of air. Water and food contamination. A gas warfare instrument
Particles in this size range behave like a gas when inhaled, disperse in the lungs to the blood lung barrier where the white blood cells (greater than 7microns in diameter) engulf the tiny particles of depleted uranium and carry them throughout the body. Once these particles have been engulfed by blood cells or lodged in tissues, they may not be detectable in the urine. Contaminated personnel will take the depleted uranium home, deposited in tissues throughout their bodies.

Concluding or adding to my above post:

Those of us with this vision problem can read the articles CD posts by using the Print Page copies, but those pages exclude all of the reader comments, and I seem to often get more information of interest from these than the articles the pages were created for posting. I just checked this after making the above post, not having thought of this before.

And it's probably a good idea that CD does not include the comments from the Print Page, and for the obvious reason; while I'm saying this because the same post causing the H-bar to be forced upon the reader needing to increase the font size would again cause this problem, so nothing would be gained.

It's not good to exclude the reader comments.

F.e., Kem Patrick provided two good links for resources on DU, further above, and I'd have missed these if I hadn't checked the reader comments before reloading the page in order to get the comment text box. I certainly wouldn't want to have missed the World Uranium Weapons Conference of 2003 that he provided a link for.

Unchained,

Good and interesting post, BUT WHERE ARE THE LINKS to the resources from which your information is drawn?!?!?

What the people you referred to, Dr. Chris Busby and Doug Rokke, have said can be easily enough found with Web searches; certainly for Doug Rokke anyway. But what you say about the sudden and evidently huge increase in terms of lung cancer needs a link to supporting resources, for this information would be more difficult or tedious to try to find, and relatively long to try to do; when you definitely should know where your information is from and could easily provide a copy of the link, or minimally provide some search tips, keywords, that would definitely work.

The same surely applies also with respect to you saying,

"In a US Government study on post-Gulf War babies born to 251 veterans, 67 per cent of the babies were reported to have serious illnesses or serious birth defects. They were born without eyes, ears, had missing organs, fused fingers, thyroid or other malfunctions."

and MORE things you stated.

And this should be simple common sense to MOST Internet users who [think] and aren't lazy, which you don't seem to be, but while hasty sure does evidently apply.

Not doing this basically means that the writer doesn't think there's really much value in what he or she says, or that he or she has a condescending view of readers; therefore, readers should then realise that they do not have cause to give the writer's words any value, either.

That'd be unfortunate, for your post seems to contain information everyone should know about; if what you say is entirely true.

What ~UNCHAINED~ posted is correct. I will post some
other links here. He may not have had them. But if one Googles
Depleted uranium, there are actually over a milion articles
on the subject. Some are written by governments and they deny
the danger.

Inhaling DU is expecially bad for children. For
once a single speck of DU gets into the blodd stream and settles
in bone marrow, it attacks the body's immune system. Many medical
problem may then surface. Autism, cancers, hodgins disease, Lou
Gehrig disease, diabetes, etc. "Head On", apply directly to the
forehad will not help. Brain cancers are very common from inhaling DU.
Inhale a single microscopic speck through the nose and it may cross
the oflactory bulb and go directly to the brain. __ Cancer is assured.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Moret26feb06.htm

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

On that first link above, The DU article is found on the right
side of the page under current news. after opening that
link, you can click onto three articles on the following page.

DU dust is smaller than a speck of pollen and will float on
water. 70% of our planet is water and DU will kill anything,
down to the microbal level. We are now experiencing a dramatic
loss of the Ocean's microscopic plant life, named phytoplankton,
which float near the surface of the ocean's waters and they supply
our atmosphere and ocean's with most of our oxygen.

The following link can be read in less than 30 seconds.
Is DU one reason for the loss of phytoplankton? ___ Maybe, there
are other man made poisons in our oceans'also. DU sure cannot be
helping anything.

There are over five billion nano-particles of DU in a cupful. About
three cups in a single DU tank round, over 2,000 pounds in a bunker
buster bomb, or hundreds of cupfuls of DU. They are super duper weapons.

Http://www.whyplankton.com

DU is a red herring. It is undoubtedly dangerous, but it causes people to overlook the everyday toxins that are claiming the health of civilians, not just military personnel. DU must be the darling of the pesticide/petrochemical industry because once people start talking about it, they forget everything else.

As Gestalt says, many of us with no known exposure to DU have been harmed by Dursban and other organophosphate pesticides here at home. Our symptoms are like GWS. In fact, we were the first to understand what GWS was, not through research, but through our own unfortunate experience. It's no mystery why these chemicals do the harm they do: they were developed as chemical warfare agents for the express purpose of killing people. It just so happens they kill bugs too.

"Even outside the military setting, Golomb said, studies show a link between exposure to pesticides used in agriculture and similar complaints of illness among farmworkers.

"These findings add to evidence for concern about the health effects of pesticide exposure," she said."

KEM & UNCHAINED: I wonder how many of us can LIVE with this info? It basically says we can all die in a matter of years. I have a new grand child on the way and this data is beyond depressing. One wonders if like the scorpions of the Arizona/NM deserts that survive the nuclear test blasts, if some kind of rapid adaptation might occur in SOME humans so as to bypass the effects of radiation? Meanwhile, this type of discussion makes me feel pretty good about putting off expensive dental work. Like why bother... what is the length of human "shelf life" these days when warriors have been allowed to use our treasury to kill every living being when they might have promoted genuine pro-life, pro-ecology, pro-sustainability, pro-community, pro-love agendas instead. Makes sense to vote for torture (I would not) in this twisted milieu! A lot of people think they will be rewarded in the after life. Religions, like team sports, have taught they to show fealty to the "winning" side, and by so-doing, even if they murder their brother across the artificial divide, they get "heaven" as payoff. Kind'a reminds me of all the slugs that did what they pleased, but had the $ to bribe the early church with the certificate of entry into the next realm... you know, a little thing called selling "indulgences," which is pretty much what right wing churches (and religious affiliates of other stripes) are busy doing RIGHT now.

Well ~SPRUCEWOLF~ your posted opinion of DU is about the same
as most denyers who want the DU issue to be disregarded.
Actually the vast majority of people on the planet don't
know anything about DU, but almost everyone is aware of
other poisons such as pesticideds. So DU is not a RED HERRING,
it's a deadly, man made, silent poison and it's use will
eventually destroy most life on this planet.

Those are not my opinions, read the links provided and if you
choose to disbelieve the medical doctors who wrote them, or are
quoted in them, that's your free choice.

Hi ~Siouxrose~. If the medical experts who are informing us of the
DU use problem are correct, we're screwed. I do have some doubts,
because most of the people I know don't have cancer. However some do
and two have Parkinsons and several have diabetes and one young
friend of ours just died of brain cancer. He was a Gulf War vet.
I dunno Sue, I think it depends a lot on how muuch DU one inhales and
if any inhaled lodges in the body and is not passed out through the
urine. Naturally we should be wary of everything we read on the internet,
but there are far too many scientists and doctors who state that
inhaling ANY DU is deadly and those people have no reason to be
lying about it. Of course some may be nut cases but I doubt hundreds
of them are. That DU weapons conference I posted is very convincing to me. It's the children that bothers me. They aren't guilty of any of the messes
our generation has made. Nothing is going to be done about it now,
we both know the military comes first and our militay isn't going
to stop using a "wonderful" weapon and allow other nations to have them .

I will not venture to get into an Intellectual debate or analyze DU, pesticides, or any other chemical.

It is known that chemicals, pesticides,and DU were used in the area. The Soldiers were deployed in the name of The United States of America. All of the Authorities(Scientists, Chemists, Biologists, etc) knew and know that there were possible side effects from exposure.

Stop debating, spending money on studies, Lawyers. Pay for the Veteran's Damed Medical issues. Veterans and their Families are dying while these Politicians debate. This is the Hypocracy of the Representatives in this Country.

We waste Billions of Tax Dollars on all kinds of Bullshit,while the Veteran and his or her family suffer. This is precisely why we need a change of perspective in this country.

"Cause and Effect, Exit Strategy. Liability, and Human Sufferage seem to be missing from the equation when these Questionable Leaders decide to create these Conflicts.(so called Wars)

You have profited greatly, you have advanced your Idea, now pay the damned bill for these Veterans. Purveyors and Profiteers of these so called Wars should pay the cost for these Human Liabilities.

I agree with Kem Patrick that DU is not a red herring.

SPRUCEWOLF - my post above mentioning domestic pesticides was not meant to pan the issue of DU.

Buckoo - good that you support decent treatment of veterans after they're injured. On the other hand, it's also legitimate to try to prevent [by debate] troop exposure to monstrous toxics, like nerve agents & DU -- in the first place.

--> To say nothing of preventing lied-into wars in the first place...

I have been observing changes in my fellow humans for some time now. I live in a town that has heavy military usage with several Superfund sites. Now that I am a parent I have noticed even more. Depending on which park in what neighborhood we go to. There are certainly many beautiful, healthy children, however, I have noticed a percentage that dont seem healthy. Lazy eyes, behavioral issues, limited language and comprehension. This percentage seems to have increased in the past couple of years. I have felt like "we" (my fellow citizens)are a group of "guinea pigs" . With our madcow burgers and unlabeled GMOfood. Superfund sites that Nobody talks about. The day that Bush and Blair are charged for crimes against Humanity - this will be a great day for every Earth dwelling human and animal.