In article <bmlcho$2ktu$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, President, USA Exile Govt.
says...

Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):

Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards
Democracy.  NOTE:  Thanks to Rick Davis for this.  -- kl, pp

Please, anyone of you vfp members receiving this, if you have
information or ways of obtaining the information Steve Rosenfeld
needs to build his story and verify it, please respond. I ask you
to send me a copy of your response to Steve, as well. I would like
to see what he can do with this prior to Veterans Day.

We thank you for your help,

Woody
======================================================================

Hi. Good to talk to you. Here is a link to the most recent piece I
did on the Pentagon's failure to follow a 1997 law to create baseline
medical records for all deployed troops.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8995      ---    [Editor's
Note:  This piece is appended below.]

What I'm working on now is a report on what's happening to injured
soldiers who have returned from Iraq. Here's what I know. The
soldiers are being sent to several bases around the country, where
they're stranded because there aren't enough doctors to oversee
their treatment and transition out of the military and into the VA
system.

I heard from one well-respected veterans' activist who was at Ft.

Stewart, GA, this past weekend. He said that there were 450 soldiers
there and one physician overseeing their care. He said he heard
stories of some who simply left the military, signed away their
benefits, and just went home - because that was taking control of
their lives.

What I'm trying to do is nationalize and personalize this very
important story. By nationalize, I'm trying to find out how many
injured soldiers are on bases throughout the country and how many
physicians are available for them. And by personalize, I'm trying
to find injured soldiers - or relatives - who can tell me what their
experience has been with receiving medical care.

If any of your members can help me, please have them send me an
e-mail. I will respond to each one personally, and let them know
where I am going with my report. If you look at the above TomPaine.com
piece, you'll see I quoted from e-mails but did not reveal anyone's
identity or location.

Thanks again. Please feel free to call.

Steven Rosenfeld Senior Editor/Reporter www.TomPaine.com 415-642-1434

=======================================================================

Deserting Our Troops Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for
TomPaine.com.

The Army and Air Force failed to obey Congress' orders to create
baseline medical records for soldiers sent to overseas war zones,
in this case Iraq, Congress' General Accounting Office (GAO) concludes
in a just-released report.

"The percentage of Army and Air Force service members missing one
or both of their pre- and post-deployment health assessments ranged

>from 38 to 98 percent of our samples," the GAO, Congress' investigative

arm, found. "Moreover, when health assessments were conducted, as
many as 45 percent of them were not done within the required time
frames."

These statistics confirm what veterans of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf
War and members of Congress have been saying for months: the Pentagon
has been ignoring a law whose primary intention was avoiding a
repeat of the military's mistakes surrounding its handling of veteran
illnesses that have become known as Gulf War Syndrome.

After the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, tens of thousands of veterans
became sick with mysterious illnesses. But because the Pentagon did
not have baseline medical records for each soldier in that conflict,
it was very slow to acknowledge and act on its responsibility to
provide health care for these veterans.

So, in 1997, Congress passed a Public Law 105-85 requiring the
military to conduct detailed pre- and post-deployment medical records
for every soldier sent into a war zone. The GAO says the military
"did not comply" with that requirement in the Iraq War. It also
found the Department of Defense (DOD) "did not maintain a complete,
centralized database of service members' medical assessments and
immunizations."

The issue has been simmering in veteran's circles for some time,
but with the Pentagon announcing last week a new round of National
Guard deployments to Iraq, it raises the question anew: will the
Pentagon fully implement the law?

"We've been calling for it. It's time for it to happen," said Steven
Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Veterans
Center. "We've had the hearings on the hill. We've done the Kabuki
dance. [Undersecretary of Defense for Health Affairs William]
Winkenwerder says they don't need to do the screening. The GAO says
it's insufficient. Now what?"

Robinson said he and other veterans advocates will be speaking to
members of the House Armed Services Committee -- which requested
the GAO report -- and Veterans Affairs Committee this week to see
what the next steps may be.

Veterans' advocates became aware last fall and winter that troops
being sent to Iraq were not being examined as required. Instead,
the military gave soldiers a short questionnaire to fill out. After
congressional hearings and public criticism from veterans last
winter, the Pentagon said it would conduct post-deployment exams
and expand its questionnaire.

The GAO report was based on investigations at five military bases:

Fort Campbell; Fort Drum; Hurlburt Field and Travis Air Force Base.

It recommended that the Secretary of Defense and undersecretary
responsible for military health "establish an effective quality
assurance program that will help ensure that the military services
comply with the force health protection and surveillance requirements
for all service members."

In a Sept. 11 letter responding to the GAO report, Assistant Secretary
of Defense William Winkenwerder said his office "has already
established a quality assurance program for pre- and post-deployment
health assessments." Winkenwerder said this program has been in
place "since June 2003," which would be several months after Congress
held hearings on the law and launched the GAO investigation.

While it remains to be seen what impact the GAO report will have
on military health policies, many soldiers now in Iraq and their
family members say the Pentagon has all-but ignored the requirement
for creating the baseline medical records.

"My husband [an Army Reservist]'s physical was waived before he
left," wrote one member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), an
activist group of families with relatives in the military in Iraq.

Those contacted requested their names not be used.

"Myself and my wife were given the anthrax and small pox vaccines
and were not given a choice in the matter," wrote a soldier. "No
screening was done before these vaccines were given to see if there
might be complications from a genetic or health standpoint. No blood
work was done on us besides a few general questions from a colonel."

"My son has returned home and as far as I know no one has made any
mention of medical testing," wrote another member of MFSO. "They
arrived back the first week in August... [They] gave him a questionnaire
to look over. There are three sections, but he said [questions] in
the last section, more current symptoms didn't seem relative for
now."

These anecdotes corroborate the GAO's findings: that the pre- and
post-deployment medical exams were largely an after-thought, not a
policy priority.

Among the soldiers contacted, several said they were aware there
could be health consequences of their military services. What they
and their family members most frequently cited was exposure to
byproducts of depleted uranium (DU) munitions. DU is a slightly
radioactive metal that's denser than lead and burns at very high
temperatures. It is used in bullets and artillery pieces. Upon
impact, it burns and vaporizes. Particles from the smoke are very
tiny and can be breathed in and become embedded in lung tissue.

"My daughter told me that as they rolled into Baghdad from Kuwait,
right after the end of the big bombing, in mid-April, there were
Iraqi tanks on the sides of the roads, that still had the dead Iraqi
soldiers in them," wrote another MFSO member. "She asked why the
tanks were not cleared off or the bodies taken out, and she was
told that no one wanted the duty because the tanks had been hit
with DU shells.

"She said they all assumed the dust in the road was full of DU dust,
and she said she felt she would now be at an increased risk of
cancer, as did all of her unit. She was manning the 50-caliber on
top of the truck, and said she breathed in the dust for many miles."

Only one e-mail out of more than one dozen received from MFSO
families said their spouse or relative had received the pre- and
post-deployment exams and shots.

In conclusion, the GAO said the Pentagon was poised to repeat the
mistakes of the first Gulf War, where it did not promptly or
adequately address the illnesses among veterans that became known
as Gulf War Syndrome.

"Failure to complete post-deployment health assessments may risk a
delay in obtaining appropriate medical follow-up attention for a
health problem or concern that may have arisen during or following
the deployment," the GAO said. "Similarly, incomplete and inaccurate
medical records and deployment databases would likely hinder DOD's
ability to investigate the causes of any future health problems
that may arise coincident with deployments."

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