08/02/10 – Mike Ludwig – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm joined on the phone now by Mike Ludwig.
Welcome to the show.
Mike, how are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me.
You've got this great article at truthout.org.
Document reveals military was concerned about Gulf War vets' exposure to depleted uranium.
Now, I want to ask y'all about this, but first, please accept my apology for not having a bio ready here to read to everybody.
Could you introduce yourself, please?
Yeah.
My name is Mike Ludwig, and I write for Truthout, and I do environmental and political reporting.
We got contacted by Paul Sullivan from the Veterans for Common Sense.
He was about to testify with this memo, and we decided to look a little bit deeper into the situation.
Alright.
Well, and people might remember the name Eric Shinseki.
He's the guy that got into the controversy before the Iraq invasion in, I think it was early 2003, saying to the Congress that we would need hundreds of thousands of troops, and Paul Wolfowitz ridiculed him and said, no, we could do it with 5,000 or whatever, and now he's the secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and so now go back in time to 1993 when he wrote up this memo.
What's this memo?
Well, this memo is, it kind of was going between the Department of Defense and was signed by Shinseki, and it basically says there was some concerns about people who might have been exposed to DU, and it kind of like, he signs off, at the time he was a Brigadier General, and he signs off on three orders.
Basically, the first one is to provide adequate training for people who might come in contact with DU or contaminated equipment, and also complete medical testing for those people, and also to develop a plan for recovery of equipment that might have been contaminated, you know, to kind of take care of the situation in the field.
And so then they did all that, right?
As far as we can tell, they didn't, and that was Paul Sullivan, when he testified before Congress, that was his big issue, is that here's this memo saying that they recognized a potential problem, and they recognized potential health and environmental effects of DU, and then they just didn't follow through.
But no big deal, right?
His stuff's harmless?
Well, see, now, you know, there's an information war going on out there about DU, and it all depends on who you talk to.
But there is one thing that everyone can agree on, and that's the Veterans Affairs down to people who are straight-up anti-war, and you can read about this on the Veterans Affairs website, that there are 250,000 veterans who suffer from a multiple array of illnesses and symptoms that don't have a specific diagnosis.
What they call it is Gulf War Veterans Illnesses.
And there's been research trying to link DU to these illnesses.
There's been, you know, research done independently, however, the way Paul Sullivan put it to me is that as far as government station research, as far as the Department of Defense, they prefer a don't-look, don't-find policy when it comes to a connection between DU and this array of illnesses.
Well, you know, something that's always been puzzling to me is, and I guess, you know, I'm sure I plead guilty to not having looked well enough, I don't know if you know, but I never could find any good scientists who could argue that here's what's happening, and here's what we found, and here's our science.
There are lots of activists, of course, but, you know, it's possible that people would just get heavy metal poisoning, that uranium could be very poisonous for, you know, having inhaled the dust from one of these self-sharpening, armor-piercing rounds or whatever.
We could see that being problematic, getting it under their fingernails, something like that.
But then there's the other question of, you know, shooting off alpha particles and whether that's destroying people's chromosomes and this and that, and I can never find any real answers about this.
Have you found any real answers?
You know what?
I've been looking, ever since I wrote this article, I've been looking all over to try to find some real answers.
And, you know, there is a spectrum, and it ranges from, you know, the fringe to people who say that uranium is everywhere and it's completely safe, and that's usually scientists that work with the government.
I think that the way Paul Sullivan explained it to me was, we don't know yet, and that is the reason why there needs to be independent testing of a possible correlation between these six soldiers and the EU.
You know, for once and for all, we can say either yes, these people were affected, and this is how and why, or no, and the government's not responsible for using these kind of munitions.
But for some reason, over 20 years of repeated demand, the government has not sanctioned specific research to look at a possible correlation.
Well, I want to get into the politics of this a little bit, but maybe we'll save that till after the break, because I want to get to, you know, what you said about the various possible causes of the Gulf War illness.
You said it was really 250,000, huh?
I lost track of the numbers.
Do you know how many soldiers have died of different Gulf War illnesses?
Has anybody kept track of that?
You know, no.
I can just tell you the numbers that I have, and this comes from both the VA and from Veterans for Common Sense.
This is a government number.
It was a number that was supplied by the Institute of Medicine that has, and now, you know, Congress and the VA have asked the Institute of Medicine to study Gulf War illnesses, but so far, they say there's no link to a specific cause known yet, and this is the VA's official stance, but the number is 250,000 Gulf War veterans are recognized to have or suffer from Gulf War Veterans illnesses.
Well, and there are different suspects, as you mentioned, other than depleted uranium.
You know, I just saw it was recommended to me by a guest who'd written an article about what it's like to be in the Marine Corps, and he recommended I watch Jarhead, and then one of the things in that is they're in the first Gulf War, and they're forced basically to eat these antiserum nerve gas pills, and I know that there was a study that connected those pills to brain stem damage and things like that, and of course, there were the completely unproven anthrax vaccines that were given to the soldiers, as well as at least, you know, I don't know about rumors, but supposedly Saddam Hussein shot a couple of chemical warheads.
I don't think that's really true, but they definitely detonated the Kamasia chemical weapons bunker in southern Iraq that was the biggest, at least at that time, non-nuclear explosion, man-made non-nuclear explosion, that was just TNT, it wasn't, you know, napalm or some fancy implosion bomb or whatever, it was just a TNT bomb that created this giant mushroom cloud of poison gas that blew all over the troops, so no wonder the VA gets to say, oh, well, it's unproven what the cause is, because they treat the soldiers so bad, there's six, five, four, at least right there off the top of my head, five different causes right there.
Absolutely, I mean, war is an ugly business, there's a lot of poisonous things, there's a lot of deadly things involved, and, you know, it's right, we don't have the science to completely say all 250,000 of these veterans are sick because of X or because of Y, but what advocates like Sullivan are pushing for is to more research to find out why, because it's important that, you know, whether it was, you know, serine nerve gas, or was DU, or was an amalgamation of all these highly dangerous and toxic things that our soldiers came in contact with, you know, it's important that the government looks in to find out these causes so that these people can get the treatment that they deserve.
So there's also a whole question here, which I don't think you really get to this in your article, but it's been in the news recently about a new study about the Iraqis, of course, they're the ones who live in this battlefield covered with depleted uranium dust, etc., etc., and they're trying to compare their cancer rates to Hiroshima now, where we know there was an alpha particle problem there.
Anyway, we'll be right back with Mike Ludwig from Truthout.org, right after this.
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I'm about to have a nervous breakdown, my head really hurts, if I don't find a way out of here, I'm going to go to jail because I'm crazy and I'm hurt, and I'm at your line.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm talking with Mike Ludwig, he's a writer for Truthout.org.
This article is called, Document Reveals Military Was Concerned About Gulf War Vets' Exposure to Depleted Uranium.
Again, Truthout.org.
Now, can you please tell us, Mike, about the politics of this thing?
You write about a group called the VCS, what's that?
Yeah, the VCS is Veterans for Common Sense, and they're an advocacy group that has been involved in lobbying Congress over a lot of different issues.
PTSD was one of them.
They were instrumental in getting the new PTSD rules that recently came out, making it easier for veterans to get treated for PTSD, that's post-traumatic stress disorder.
They also were active in getting the government to agree to treat veterans suffering from the side effects of Agent Orange from their exposure during Vietnam.
Oh, come on, that was a long time ago.
They must have been taking care of the Agent Orange victims all along, right?
Right.
Again, I talked to Paul Sullivan, and he told me that it took 40 years for Congress to act on Agent Orange and take responsibility for the fact that herbicide was causing deadly diseases and disorders.
Yeah, well, I know a couple things about that.
First of all, I knew a guy who was sick from Agent Orange who was prescribed pot by the government that would send him a tin can full of it.
He was one of the few, I guess, half-dozen people who were sent pot by the federal government, and that was why.
They took care of some of them on an individual basis, but certainly they never made it right.
They never made it right with all of them.
Then the second thing is that the number one advocate for the rights of enlisted men in our society was David Hackworth.
People can disagree with him about lots of things or whatever, but all he cared about was protecting the enlisted men from their officers.
The reason he's dead now is because he had bladder cancer from the Agent Blue, because there was Agent all different colors of the rainbow poisons that they sprayed on the American soldiers fighting that Vietnam War, as well as, of course, the people of Vietnam.
I'd just like to note that.
That's why David Hackworth isn't here, is because that's what the American officer corps thinks of their enlisted men, I guess.
They just spray them with cancer-causing poisons.
Well, but Congress is going to take care of this, because there are elected representatives in the democracy and everything, and even though it's been 20 years since the First Gulf War almost here, now everything's going to be fine, right?
Well, we'll have to see.
I mean, this isn't the first time that veterans' advocate groups have petitioned Congress or petitioned the VA to get some concrete independent testing done on Gulf War veterans' illnesses.
As far as the veterans' common sense goes, the VA and Congress said they'll go back to them in a couple weeks.
They often refer to studies they've done in the past, although Sullivan told me that they were disorganized and just not sufficient.
And also, the VA announced $2.8 million worth of research on Gulf War veterans' illnesses about a week or two ago, but apparently, according to Sullivan, that's just not enough.
They said their press release, and although they do acknowledge that there are 250,000 veterans suffering from these illnesses, they say, quote, they cannot be ascribed to any psychiatric disorder and likely result from genetic and environmental factors, although the data is not strong enough to draw conclusions about specific causes.
So it's still this vague thing that it looks like they're just throwing money at.
Yeah.
I remember this issue back in the 1990s, and it was the kind of thing where they just denied it up and down for years and years and years and years.
There was a guy on the cover of Time magazine, this kid born without arms and legs, and that was back then, and the government just put up the stone wall.
I don't know.
It wasn't until, I guess, the late 90s before they even started saying, okay, well, maybe we can start calling it illness instead of syndrome or whatever.
Maybe we can start taking seriously some of these studies that have been done.
Right.
And, you know, for instance, and you have to wonder what the motivation is here, because if the Department of Defense, you know, allows the Institute of Medicine to do some kind of conclusive study and some kind of link is made between DU or any of the toxic explosive things that you had brought up earlier, that means that just like with Agent Orange, the VA and the government have to pay for treatment for all of these people, which, I mean, right now, you can read articles about veterans who are suffering from this, and they're just taking pills every day.
They're basically doing things to make it bearable to live, but there really is no cure in sight.
And the suspicion is that perhaps the Department of Defense does not want to take responsibility because they're going to have to put a hefty bill to try to cure this many veterans.
Yeah.
Maybe they couldn't afford to occupy all of Asia anymore if they had to take care of the soldiers that they betray.
You know, here's this quote that you have from Sullivan.
Again, he's the, I guess, the chair or the president or something of the Veterans for Common Sense.
Right.
Yeah.
He's the chair.
The chair.
And he says here, as a Gulf War veteran, I have watched too many of my friends die without answers, without treatment, and without benefits.
In a few cases, veterans completed suicide due to Gulf War illness and the frustration of dealing with the Veterans Administration.
And now here's a guy, when he says too many of my friends, here's a guy who's the chair of an organization of Gulf War veterans.
So you've got to figure he's got, what, hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of people that he would call friends who are Gulf War veterans.
I don't want to know how many too many is to him, but I bet you it's a hell of a lot.
I'll bet you.
I think anyone who knows veterans personally who are suffering from one thing or another know that just going to the hospital on a daily basis can really be very frustrating.
I have a neighbor and a friend who's a veteran who suffers from a liver disorder, and he's constantly telling me about how he has to play the game when he goes into the hospital to work around the bureaucracy to get the benefits.
They told him we're going to be automatically guaranteed he's constantly playing the game.
And that's something that I think we hear time and time again.
And it's got to be even more frustrating for these Gulf War veterans who are suffering from these painful disorders and illnesses, and there's no real answers in sight, and no one is stepping over the plate to tell them.
Yeah, well, and how are you supposed to play the game when you're in a hospital bed all laid up and dying or, you know, terribly sick?
If you're somewhat sick, then maybe you can play the game.
You get worse than that.
Now you're just at their mercy, right?
Isn't today the day that the new health care law kicks in?
I love this.
I can't wait until we're all treated like American veterans in the hospitals.
Right.
You know, it's interesting that you bring that up, because I recently talked to a nurse who works for a VA in Brooklyn, and what she told me was that she loves the VA.
I mean, she works for the VA, and she thinks that had the VA been given adequate funding, then it would be basically the poster child for socialized medicine in the United States, but it's underfunded.
And I'm wondering if the same thing is going to play out with the new health care bill.
You know, the thing is about that, I guess, that, you know, if there was unlimited money to spend on health care, then fine.
But we see what their priorities are.
And they'll always spend more money on making, you know, better equipment for killing people with and taking care of the people that they send to do the killing.
And, you know, I talked with Aaron Glantz about this the other day, too.
He's, you know, a broader subject of just, you know, veterans affairs in general.
And, you know, he says that the Pentagon basically just treats these soldiers like trash.
They'll use any excuse to get out of taking care of them that they can't.
You know, like those great articles by Joshua Coors about specialist towns, benefits.
Oh, you have a personality disorder.
So you can just go kill yourself.
We're not going to take care of you.
And they really do treat these guys terribly.
And, you know, we all grew up seeing Vietnam veterans on the side of the road.
We all somehow were convinced, I don't know, not we all, many, the society in general, I think, was convinced in 2002 and 2003 that it's just going to be different this time.
George Bush and those guys, they just, I talked to an Army guy who was a friend of mine who said, George Bush is doing some really good things for us right now.
I don't need to hear any dissent from you.
We're doing okay here.
And the truth is that they just, they don't care about their soldiers at all, do they?
They just make it the lowest priority of all.
Well, I mean, I think you've got to follow the money.
I think you've got to follow, you know, the strategic advantage, which is what people look for in war.
I think the most recent example is $33 billion going to Afghanistan.
We've been there for nine years.
You know, that's been the headline of the supplemental just passed.
If we bring it back to 20 years ago, if we bring it back to this memo, here's the concern.
Someone in the Department of Defense looked at some research and said, hey, we've got to do something about depleted uranium exposure.
We have to, you know, provide training.
We've got to get people tested.
And somehow this flipped through the cracks in favor of allowing the military a strategic advantage of using this heavy metal in their munitions, you know, to pierce armored tanks and whatnot.
So I think that is a good example of priorities.
You know, we have the advantage on the battlefield at the cost of our veterans potentially.
And I think, you know, this is a good historical anecdote of how that works.
Yep.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time, Mike, and thanks very much for your great journalism here.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, hey, thanks for having me.
Everybody, that's Mike Ludwig from Truthout.org.
The article, again, is called Document Reveals Military Was Concerned About Gulf War Vets' Exposure to Depleted Uranium.
And they forgot about it.