Associated Press reports, "The Army is trying to figure out what is causing a rash of serious pneumonia cases, including two fatalities, among soldiers serving in Iraq." A team of specialists have been sent to Iraq to investigate over a dozen cases of pneumonia sufficiently serious to put the soldiers on ventilators to breathe and to be evacuated from the area.
 
The Army reports that two soldiers have died, nine recovered and three are still hospitalized. Is this normal? The Army Surgeon General says, given the number of troops deployed, 100 cases "do not exceed expectations."

Maybe…But who's expectations and based on what data?
• Are expectations based on forecasting statistics for depleted uranium munitions exposure?
• Or assorted vaccines?
• Are the pneumonia incidents routine?
• Or statistical anomalies?
 
For at least 72 years our government has engaged in highly questionable (unethical) medical experimentation. The same kind of stuff they make movies out of and that we have vilified the Japanese and Germans for doing, our government has done (and arguably continues to do).
 
I wrote about The Mushroom Policy back in January but it bears repeating.
 
It is easy to "pooh-pooh" any "mad scientists" suggestion as mere "conspiracy theory" hogwash. However, a litany of FACTS should disabuse a reasonable person of the conspiratorial fiction line when you review history.
 
Washington Post Matriarch the Late Katherine Graham once said, "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

The list is too long to chronicle but here is an incomplete (edited) generational overview:
 
The 30s:
· Starting in at least 1931 "Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells."
· In 1932 there was the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
· Three years later The Pellagra Incident
.
The 40s:
· In 1942 Chemical Warfare Services started mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen.
· A few years later "Program F" is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production.
· In 1947 the CIA started to study LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.
 
The 50s:
· One of the most outrageous experiments was conducted in 1950. The purpose was to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack. To find out the U.S. Navy sprayed a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.
· A year later the Department of Defense began open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969.
 
The 60s:
· In 1960 The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence authorized field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East.
· Five years later prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia were subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam.

The 70s:
· In 1977 Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirmed that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the
areas included
o San Francisco
o Washington, D.C.
o Key West
o Panama City
o Minneapolis
o St. Louis.
 
The 80s:
· A 1986 report to Congress revealed that the U.S. Government's (then) current generation of biological agents included: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.
 
The 90s:
· In 1990 over 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an
"experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental.
· Another report was issued in 1994 by Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances.
· Just six years ago eighty-eight members of Congress signed a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.
 
Benjamin Franklin said, "A nation of well informed men, who have been taught to know
and prize the rights that God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of
ignorance that tyranny begins!"
 
© 2003 Geoff Metcalf - All Rights Reserved

"Geoff Metcalf is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host for TALK AMERICA and a veteran media performer. He has had an eclectic professional background covering a wide spectrum of radio, television, magazine, and newspapers. A former Green Beret and retired Army officer he is in great demand as a speaker. .

Visit Geoff's Web Site: www.geoffmetcalf.com . E-mail: geoff@geoffmetcalf.com

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


Preheat Oven to over 50 YEARS of being a ‘CLOSED SYSTEM’

Prepare pans:
 
- generously grease with the UCMJ (the Uniform Code of Military Justice)
- then, flour them with the Feres Doctrine that makes even MURDER an "incident of service".

Blend:

Who:   Bad men, who disgrace the uniform they wear, while waving a U.S. Flag.

What:  ABUSE of POWER and every profitable crime imaginable.

Where: Throughout the world, everywhere that the military has access.

When:  On going.

Why:   Greed and Power...give and abuser an inch and they'll go for a mile.

How:   By working from within a structure that:
    1) is an entity unto itself (above and unaccountable to general law),
    2) enables the power source to surround itself with people who are trained to follow orders and not ask questions and
    3) is based in a country where people suffer great stress and distress to even contemplate that any section of their great government could be used to cover up wrong doing...the United States of America!

BAKE:

- Until the World is engulfed in a Perpetual WAR

This recipe is not very palatable. The 'Take it home Recipe' is preferable, but may require outside intervention...as noted in an article by Thomas Walkom that was published in The Toronto Star on November 16, 2004: Should Canada indict Bush? to bring the Military ABUSE Train to a controlled STOP!

Part B...

As you may or may not know...ABUSE is an ugly insidious animal that feeds and grows on it’s own heinous elements of secrecy, deceit, intimidation and DENIAL by....
- the perpetrator, who justifies his/her behavior by blaming the victims,
- the people, who turn a blind eye to the situation and enable the abuse to continue and
- the VICTIMS, who frequently take on the responsibility for their own abuse or downplay its' severity.
Military ABUSE is the ugliest and most vicious animal of all. Bred in a culture of SURVIVE or DIE...the Military breed is deadly!

Following is a look at the UGLY beast of ABUSE that has been devouring US military members, for decades.

1) World War II starting with an 'up close and personal' account of Harvey Lucas...followed by an overview series of articles that tell it like it is.

2) Vietnam War an 'up close and personal' account by Jennie Lefevre (now, deceased).

3) Gulf War I starting with 'up close and personal' accounts of David Vaughn and Kevin Shores ...followed by the overview testimony of Denise Nicholas on DoD's failure to obey PL 105-85. 

4) Gulf War II starting with a look at the drug 'Lariam' and the shamful use (and abuse) of GIs as 'guinea pigs'...followed by an overview article ...demonstrating the current 'break neck' speed of the Military ABUSE Train.

5) THINK...medical journals and responsible Journalism!







1) - World War II...'SAMPLE':

Seaman HARVEY RAY LUCAS, US NAVY (May 6, 1938 - June 17, 1985)

Harvey Lucas served his country, in the Navy, from 1956-1960. Harvey served aboard the USS Calhoun County, a LST-519 Class Tank Landing Ship, which was regularly deployed to ‘dump’ Radioactive waste.

During one of these deployments, some of the barrels rolled off the pallets that were on deck and landed on top of Harvey, injuring his back. When his ‘tour’ of duty was over, the Navy wouldn’t allow him to re-enlist, noting he was “physically unfit” for duty and he was Honorably Discharged. But, in addition to his back injury he was suffering from radiogenetic disease.

By 1980, Harvey was completely physically disabled and unable to work. Bone degeneration had set in and his bone marrow was disintegrating within his body. X-rays showed that at the age of 41, his bones were that of a 95-96 year old man and he had developed ‘tumors’ from  one of the rarest forms of cancer known to man. A cancer that is induced by radioactivity from atomic wastes, iodizing radiation, nuclear warfare or cobalt poisoning and results in damaging bone, skin, eyes...etc. and life itself. An 11 pound tumor was removed from Harvey in 1984 and at the time of his death, in 1985, he was inflicted by a 34 pound tumor.

The Lucas Family can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what Harvey R. Lucas was
subjected to in 4 years of military service, not only endangered and ultimately took his own life but also injured his genetic offspring. Harvey fathered five (5) children, who were all born with severe birth defects caused by radiogenetic diseases....CONTINUED AT...

The following three part series was published by the Free Press. It's obvious that their writer, David Zeman, did his homework. It goes past SAD! to say that it seems he failed to learn anything. The indications are that, at the end of the day, he, like too many others before him, filed his 'story', turned out the lights and went home...failing to have served any of the ABUSE VICTIMS (he wrote about), who are still denied TRUTH and JUSTICE!

Make no mistake, the ABUSE of POWER is SYSTEMIC and well entrenched. Breaking the cycle of ABUSE that has engrained itself into the military mind set and initiating redress of the situation will require outside intervention...either from God or the Media, whichever comes first.  



As enlisted men, they were the military's lab rats

November 10, 2004

BY DAVID ZEMAN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The room is small and cramped, like a vault. The soldiers are in full combat gear, rifles in hand, packs anchored on their backs. As the steel door slams shut, the men look about, this way and that.

And the ground begins to hiss. Army Pvt. Sidney Wolfson notices it at once, a faint green aerosol seeping from the floor, rising in lazy corkscrews around his waist, arms and chest and across his eyes.

It's adamsite, what the troops come to know as puke stuff, a vomiting agent. The soldiers cower. They flop on their bellies and retch. Wolfson rises to leave, but can't. He pounds and pounds and screams for the doctors, but he can't leave. He can't get out!

"It's like I'm in jail," he says, quietly now. And he fidgets. Six decades after exiting the chambers of his youth, Sidney Wolfson sits in his Farmington condo and squirms. He is 85 and frail, but the dream is still vivid, the image keen.

He was young and fit once, part of the 1st Chemical Casual Company, a unit of 100 bright soldiers who struggled through chamber tests of mustard agent, lewisite, phosgene and other poisons on a military base near Baltimore in 1943.

Some are still struggling. (a lesson to be learned)

This is the story of patriots deceived -- not once but three times: first as young recruits, conned into entering chambers of lethal gas during World War II; then as war-hardened soldiers, shipped home with no warning of the time bombs lurking in their bodies; and finally as aging veterans, misled by a government that promised to find them, wherever they lived, and compensate those who were harmed.

"At no time after these experiments was I notified or told anything," said Franklin Smith, echoing the account of many men. "They shipped my butt over to the Pacific and that was the last I heard from the War Department."

By the end of World War II, the military had exposed more than 70,000 Army and Navy recruits to poison gases in various forms -- from swabs of mustard agent on their arms, to the more than 4,000 servicemen who marched into chambers or through fields soaked with chemicals. The mission was noble: to develop protective gear and ointments that would insulate troops from enemy chemical attack. The means were not: Officers deceived the men about the health risks and intimidated those who balked.

The recruits, many still teenagers, were sworn to secrecy. In the decades that followed, some of these veterans sought benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs for illnesses linked to the tests. But the military had a ready reply: The tests never happened. Not until 1991, when four Navy vets swayed an influential congressman to their cause, did the Pentagon acknowledge the secret program and apologize. The government, at long last, vowed to make amends.

But the Free Press has found that Washington broke its promise. The VA, which pledged a painstaking effort to track down and compensate the men, contacted nobody. Not one letter. Not a single phone call -- even after the Pentagon turned over lists of thousands of
potential victims. The VA relied mainly on unpaid public service ads in veterans magazines, even though the agency was aware that most veterans don't see those publications.

In recent years, a few veterans who did press claims were rebuffed -- often with form letters, and even when it was clear they had diseases linked to the wartime experiments. (incident of service)

VA Secretary Anthony Principi, who as deputy secretary in 1991 pledged to "do right" by the veterans, said in an interview last month he was unaware the veterans had been ignored.

"My assumption was that steps were taken to do what was possible to reach as many as we could find and to provide them with the benefits they've earned," he said. "If more needs to be done, it will be done."

The men of the 1st Chemical Casual Company represent only a sliver of the WWII recruits exposed to poison gases. But to the government, they are less than that. The unit does not even exist in Washington's official database on the testing program. It's almost as if they were never there.

But they were.

And 61 years later, they're still waiting for help.

'The place God forgot'

The soldiers grabbed their gear and stepped wearily from the train.

It was Sept. 3, 1943, and after riding all night through the Appalachians, the men found themselves standing before the front gate of Edgewood Arsenal, a leafy Army outpost on Chesapeake Bay, 20 miles northeast of Baltimore.

It looked swell, that's for sure.

From its inception in 1917, Edgewood's 3,400 acres of rolling farmland and pleasant rivers belied the serious and occasionally deadly work performed in its covert factories. Horses still ambled across fields once crossed by Susquehannock Indians and George Washington's troops. The grounds of the Gunpowder Neck peninsula were thick with sweetgum and blackberry. Overhead, bald eagles shared the breeze with osprey, sandpipers and other shorebirds.

Though the soldiers could not see it from where they stood, the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a testing ground for artillery and other ordnance, lay just to the north across the Bush River.

The twin posts of Edgewood and Aberdeen had sprung up in World War I after the Germans unleashed chlorine gas on Allied troops in Belgium. Edgewood quickly became the headquarters of chemical warfare research, its factories producing chlorine, a lung irritant; chloropicrin, a vomiting gas; phosgene, a lethal choking agent, and mustard gas, a blistering compound that could be lethal if inhaled.

Notoriety soon followed.

"At Baltimore, we began to hear about the terrors of this place," wrote one dashingly named World War I recruit, Jet Parker, as he rode a train to Edgewood in 1918. "Everyone we talked to on the way out here said we were coming to the place God forgot! They tell tales about men being gassed and burned ..."

Another private, Alexander London, wrote a grim ode to Edgewood's perils:

"... If a little drop of any gas would touch the head or face,

It meant a speedy ride and a long stay at the base.

A pal of mine was working at the filling plant one night,

When a poison shell exploded and my pal lost his sight.

He suffered untold agonies, for the poison entered deep,

It was a sight to make brave men stop in their tracks and weep."

But to the 1st Chemical soldiers who arrived in September of '43, Edgewood must have seemed like heaven itself.

The men had entered the Army seven weeks earlier, in a nasty slice of hell known as Camp Sibert, Ala.

They were an unconventional group of Army grunts, that's for sure. Nearly all were college boys or on the way to college. They studied chemistry, which is why they had been earmarked for Sibert, in the military's chemical weapons service.

Most had joined eagerly. Walter Butinsky, the nearsighted son of Ukrainian immigrants, wanted in so badly he memorized the reading test to pass his induction exam. Abe Hedaya, a 19-year-old Brooklyn boy, dropped out of his beloved Columbia University. Franklin Smith could have stayed home to support his widowed mother. But with her blessing, he joined, too. Six buddies signed from the University of Scranton. Six more arrived from Mississippi State University.

And for what, they must have wondered as they arrived in the steamy Alabama summer.

They were put to work building barracks and roads for the 5,000 soldiers descending on Sibert. They received "a spade, a shovel and a short pep talk almost before they had officially reported to their company officers," one historian wrote.

The barracks, if you could call them that, were wooden beams covered by tar paper, with wood-burning stoves at each end. They shielded the men from summer rains, but not from the heat. And certainly not from the insects that drove the soldiers to distraction.

"I wanted to get the hell out of Alabama," said Lee Landauer, a gruff, compact recruit from Baltimore. "Camp was terrible. We were sleeping in tar-covered paper bags."

As for social life, there was nearby Gadsden, or as some recruits called it, Gonorrhea Gardens.

"When you went out there, there was nothing to get out for," Landauer said. "So you never went out again. It was just a hell of a place."

The men were only a few weeks into training when a commander gathered them one day and offered a deal: If they volunteered for chemical experiments in Maryland, they would receive 10-day furloughs. These many years later, the men differ on the particulars of what was said that day. But they do agree on two things. The commander was not terribly specific. And the opportunity to decline the offer was never really on the table. "You're not told too much, just line up and shut up," is how Richard Wickens, who now lives in Albuquerque, N.M., described it.

Smith recalled, "There was a great deal of talk about what a wonderful thing this was to do for our country and you guys are heroes and it would save a great many lives.

"I was a totally green 19-year-old. I had grown up in a remote little farming town in Oklahoma called Texhoma. The war was going full blast, and we were all dedicated to winning. They certainly convinced me at the time their motives were pure."

New Jersey recruit Michael Geiger had his own reason to join.

"I think I lost 30 pounds in three weeks in Alabama," Geiger said. "You'd go out on 10- to 20-mile hikes every day -- you couldn't even eat at night, you were so tired. All you wanted to do was drink the water. Any change couldn't have been worse. I ran up and signed."

Even for Southerners, the Maryland shore had its appeal.

"I looked forward to it," said Cham Canon, a self-described country boy from Mississippi. "But with some apprehension, because we did not understand until we got there what we would be doing."

What they would be doing wasn't entirely clear to a lot of the soldiers. "I thought we would be doing studies, working with chemicals," said Wolfson, the recruit from Michigan. "When we got there, lo and behold, it was a different story."

At first, good food and leisure

The soldiers settled in at Edgewood, happy to have quarters with four walls and a ceiling. Spread before them were single beds, widely spaced. Over there were the latrines --  sparkling clean. On the grounds, the men noticed an absence of military staples: no surly officers, no saluting at every corner, not even many uniforms.

That first day, the soldiers savored their first decent meal since leaving their mothers' kitchens. "They gave you all you wanted to eat -- bacon and eggs, real steak," Landauer said. "At Sibert, all you got was chopped beef stew, seven days a week."

This, they could live with.

After a day or so of leisure, the men of 1st Chemical were ushered into Edgewood lab buildings, where they changed into chamber gear: cotton undershirts and shorts; khaki or herringbone twill pants, shirts and jackets; canvas leggings; a wool hood and white wool socks. The clothing was soaked in agents meant to neutralize the test chemicals, which left the garments stiff and hot.

The gas masks, with their conical snouts and wide lenses, made the men look like immense insects, though they usually kept the poison at bay. Usually. High levels of chemicals could overwhelm some masks. And even a two-day stubble of beard could break the seal around the face.

The men gathered their rifles and backpacks and marched for 30 minutes until perspiration soaked their bodies. They were then placed in single-file lines, a yard apart, before a chamber door.

They entered in groups of five to seven. It might be the chamber in Building 325, a 9-foot-by-9-foot cube of hollow tile; or one of two chambers in Building 358; or the glass cylinder chamber in Building 357.

The door was quickly shut. Researchers peered in through a small porthole as they jotted notes. The mustard vapor entered with a whisper, running through a hose in calibrated bursts. The soldiers recognized the faint odor of garlic, or a pleasing sweetness. The vapor was colorless or a light yellow and they were quickly enveloped as it probed the seams of their trousers, or the rim of their masks, searching for a pathway to their skin.

The warmer the conditions, the more potent the gas became. Indeed, the tests were designed to mimic jungle conditions in the Pacific, where Allied forces guessed the Japanese might unleash chemical shells. In some tests, the exposure level equaled that faced on World War I battlefields. As the men marched in 90-degree-plus heat, with the chamber's humidity kept at 84 percent, they perspired under their arms, inside their hoods, or near their knees and genitals.

They were soon drenched, which only heightened the mustard's ardor for human skin.

Once the gas reached skin, it snaked through pores deep into the tissue, or entered the bloodstream. Within minutes, the mustard quietly went to work, binding to strands of DNA deep within cells, causing them to mutate and die. The damage was irreversible.

Mustard's toll was not immediately apparent. It took hours or days for soldiers' skin to turn crimson along sweaty regions like the thigh or buttocks; or where skin was bare, like the hands or neck.

The skin began to itch and burn like a griddle. A day later, the red patches turned to watery blisters 2 inches high. The fluid was actually the body's tissue, which had liquefied under the assault.

"They told us not to puncture it," Smith said. "But if you turned your arm a quarter turn, the weight of the fluid would tend to separate the skin from your arm. So some guys just punctured these things, because it hurt so bad."

Painkillers helped.

Other men suffered grotesque burns on their genitals, causing their scrotum and penis to swell and blister, the skin to peel away in strips. Years later, some discovered cancerous skin growths or genital scarring that made it difficult to father children.

Sometimes, frayed uniforms left elbows or legs exposed. Other times, the gear was almost comically inadequate. Take, for instance, the neck and ear protection afforded soldiers in some tests, as described in a 1943 Army record: "Two socks wrapped around the neck, with the upper portion of a sock covering each ear. The socks are held in place by string and by the gas mask straps."

Equipment breakdowns were common in the trials, which lasted up to two months. Faulty masks allowed vapors to bind to the eye, causing soldiers' eyelids to swell and spasm.

Their noses ran steady, like the onset of a cold. They emitted a dry cough and began to vomit. The mustard had reached their lungs, inflaming the tracheal lining, which might simply slough away. Years would pass, even decades, before other problems arose.

A willing sacrifice

America, as historians remind us, was a far different place in the 1940s from the era since Vietnam. Isolationist sentiments that prevailed when war erupted in Europe in 1939 largely evaporated after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Millions of men enlisted to fight. Millions of women joined factories that fed the war machine. Children collected scrap metal for tanks. Civilians rationed sugar, coffee, gas and other staples. Sacrifice was the theme and urgency its byword against a potent and frightening enemy. The notion that a few people might sacrifice for the greater good of our troops was neither controversial nor seriously questioned.

The United States spent more than $25 million on ethically dubious studies to find antidotes for conditions faced by troops: orphans were injected with dysentery; prison inmates were given malaria; mentally ill people were infected with influenza.

Against this backdrop, military scientists were exhorted to improve the protective gear used by American troops. Young recruits -- still stateside while their brethren were dying overseas -- were asked to test this new gear. They performed their duty, as they were told.

"We desperately needed research in a variety of areas to move the war effort forward," said David Rothman, director of the Center for the Study of Society and Medicine at Columbia University. "Patient consent, which had been recognized earlier as a major consideration, was now ignored because the military's needs seemed to trump all others. It was purely a utilitarian calculus: the greatest good for the greatest number."

America's fear of chemical attack was well founded. The Germans had released chlorine and mustard gas against the Allies in World War I; Japan and Italy had used poison agents in the 1930s. Such was the fear that the Walt Disney Co. designed a Mickey Mouse gas mask so children would not be afraid to use masks in the event of an assault.

In their initial research, U.S. scientists used goats, cats and other animals to test mustard and other blistering agents on the skin. But they found it difficult to extrapolate the results to human skin. Scientists thought they solved this dilemma by using Mexican hairless dogs, but abandoned the plan after the dogs proved too costly. (Imagine that....human ABUSE is cost effective!)

They eventually concluded only human skin would do. Citing tests already under way in Canada and England, U.S. officials played down the health risk to humans.

"In the hands of competent experimenters, much can be learned concerning the prevention and treatment of gas burns in men without subjecting them to more than relatively trivial annoyance or disability," Alfred Richards, the chairman of a government committee on medical research, wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson in April 1942.

The Army and Navy secretaries formally approved the test program a month later.

A break from camp

That autumn -- one year before the men of 1st Chemical arrived -- the first 200 soldiers from Camp Sibert were shipped to Edgewood for "patch tests" on their arms. The arrangement ended badly. Sibert's officers howled about the loss of their soldiers. And it soon became apparent that few soldiers at Sibert were eager to replace the first wave of volunteers.

That "may have been due to the look of the scars on men returned to the training companies," wrote Rexmond Cochrane, a military historian stationed at Sibert during the war.

So commanders in Washington hatched a plan to make the tests more palatable. They promised the men furloughs and a change of scenery in exchange for their willingness to test "summer uniforms." It worked. By war's end, at least 4,000 soldiers and seamen were tested at more than a half-dozen facilities beyond Edgewood -- from Florida to Illinois, Utah, Panama and, in great numbers, at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Insurrection was never a problem. Commanders made sure of that.

"The fact that has been most obvious throughout these experiments is that when the men first begin the work they should not be told too much," a Navy commander wrote in August 1943. "If they are, it sets up a fear reaction that remains for varying lengths of time and definitely affects their 'virgin' runs in the chamber, and, occasionally, requires a removal from the chamber before the run is completed. However, after the first two runs in the chamber, the men become veterans and can be told almost anything without affecting their morale."

That sounded about right to Landauer of Baltimore who, despite encounters with mustard gas, lewisite and what he believed to be nerve agent, preferred his lot at Edgewood to the perils of combat in Europe.

"It was a question of having a pretty good life and figuring these guys aren't going to kill you," Landauer said of the Edgewood scientists. "Once you last three or four days in the chamber without dying, you figure, 'What the hell.' "

Only rarely did recruits balk. When that happened, the Navy memo noted, "A short explanatory talk, and, if necessary, a slight verbal 'dressing down' has always proven successful. There has not been a single instance in which a man has refused to enter the gas chamber."

Recruits who complained of nausea, headaches, laryngitis or eye infections were told their "physical unfitness" -- not the tests -- was to blame. (Always...blame the VICTIM!) "Occasionally," the memo continued, "malingerers and psychoneurotics are discovered. These cases have all been handled so far by minimizing their symptoms and then sending them into the chamber."

As critics would note decades later, U.S. scientists downplayed the dangers despite research dating to 1928 of long-term ailments linked to mustard gas. Medical journals in the United States and abroad reported bronchitis, emphysema, bronchial asthma and conjunctivitis among World War I chemical casualties. By the late 1930s, delayed-action blindness also was reported.

But these medical findings were never shared with the World War II guinea pigs.

Watching the rabbit die

Some men in 1st Chemical were sent into chambers without masks. Joining the soldiers in one test was a very unhappy rabbit. The men trudged in and waited for the vapors. It is unclear which gas was being tested that day, but whatever it was, it didn't sit well with the rabbit, which fell over and died.

"I can still see the expression on this one poor guy's face," Landauer recalled. "He was pounding on the door. He wanted to get the hell out of there."

On another day, Pvt. John Berzellini, an asthmatic, grew increasingly anxious as his mask filled with drool and mucus. Hours passed, but the researcher monitoring the test would not allow Berzellini to leave. He had to tilt open the mask to drain the fluids, exposing his face to vapors. "He was forced, asked, cajoled to stay in there," recalled Bill Chupka, who was inside the chamber with his friend. "I suppose that if he collapsed he would have been removed immediately."

In Building 326, meanwhile, soldiers were exposed to another blistering agent, lewisite, an arsenic-based compound with the scent of geraniums. Touted as the dew of death by newspapers of the day, lewisite never quite fulfilled its promise as a more lethal successor to mustard gas. While mustard bided its time, lewisite caused immediate pain and blisters. Yet the oily liquid was not nearly so toxic as a battlefield vapor and eventually fell into disfavor.

Blistering agents were not the only poisons at Edgewood.

Some men said they were subjected to what they described as low levels of nerve agents, designed to incapacitate enemy soldiers during an attack. Among other things, exposure to the agent caused the men's pupils to shrink to the size of pinpricks and blurred their vision for days.

"They took us out to shoot at the rifle range," Landauer said. "Then we came back and they put us in a chamber, eight to 10 of us, for less than a minute. It was some kind of nerve gas. Then it was back to the rifle range to re-shoot the same targets. By the time we got out there, we couldn't see the targets.

"Our buddies had to cut our food up for us that night."

What's remarkable about these accounts is that the Pentagon has always maintained it did not conduct human testing with nerve agents -- such as sarin -- until after World War II.

Pentagon officials did not respond to requests for comment on whether nerve agents were tested.

Though the tests were harrowing, the time between them was a pleasure.

The men passed their downtime, which was considerable, reading books, playing cards and getting to know each other. The base had a library and movie theater. Its staff arranged dances with local girls. Soldiers usually could find enough friends for a game of baseball or volleyball. Walter Butinsky whipped all comers at chess. On days off, the men took a train or bus to Washington or Baltimore for burlesque shows or dates. For the Eastern boys who went home on weekends, the greatest fear was that their parents would see their burns and raise hell with the military.

Jesse Schraub, who had never left Brooklyn before enlisting, remembers one humid evening having dinner back home, wearing long sleeves to cover his burns. "The pain was excruciating, but of course, I wasn't supposed to tell anybody," Schraub said. "I was afraid of what my dad's reaction would be."

Some men formed close bonds. In their first weeks at Edgewood, some Christian soldiers took on extra kitchen and guard duty so their Jewish buddies could go home for Yom Kippur. The men held friendly wagers over whose arm yielded the biggest blister. For those with more severe burns, friends stood ready to help them comb their hair, or use the bathroom.

"It was the first time I began to feel like a person in the Army, like an individual," Howard Hoffman wrote in a war memoir.

For some men, it was a sad day when, in late October, they were returned to Alabama.

"My husband was very happy at Edgewood," Nellie Strauss said of her husband, Alfred. "He was a good soldier and he felt he was doing his duty. He never complained."

Nellie concedes she was pretty tickled, too.

"He was way over 200 pounds when I married him, and he went down to 170 pounds when he came home," she said.

"He looked gorgeous."

Contact DAVID ZEMAN at 313-222-6593 or zeman@freepress.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

PART II:


BY DAVID ZEMAN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

November 11, 2004

Al Felgendreger entered World War II an anonymous Army grunt. He exited a war hero, gaining three Bronze Stars in the Pacific.

Friendly and bright, Felgendreger returned to Philadelphia after the war to embrace his new wife and his own lofty ambitions.

His life was busy, secure, overflowing with promise.

And then, suddenly, it was not.

In 1955, Felgendreger suffered what his wife Eleanore characterizes as a nervous breakdown. The outgoing chemist was now depressed, sluggish, and reluctant to leave home. There were times when he drank too much. He asked his pastor to care for his wife and three children if something happened to him. He spent two months in a hospital.

"I've always wondered," Eleanore says now, "if those tests could have caused that."

The tests that haunt Eleanore Felgendreger do not appear in her husband's Army records. Like thousands of World War II soldiers and sailors, Felgendreger's work as a human guinea pig was omitted from his file. In the autumn of 1943, he served in the 1st Chemical Casual Company, a unit exposed to mustard agent and other poisons in the gas chambers of Maryland's Edgewood Arsenal -- tests that would stalk some men, physically and psychologically, until their deaths.

Tests they were forbidden to discuss.

With the help of a psychiatrist, Felgendreger eventually regained his footing and returned to work.

But he never discussed his breakdown again.

Best and the brightest

If ever an Army unit was poised for excellence, it was the 1st Chemical Casual Company.

Mostly young science buffs, the soldiers of 1st Chemical had been culled from science programs across the country for chemical warfare training. But they soon learned that their value to the Army was more as lab rats than lab scientists.

They were shipped to Edgewood and herded into chambers to test how long uniforms, ointments and gas masks could withstand chemicals that might be unleashed in combat. When the experiments ended two months later, some, like Felgendreger, would gain Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts overseas, or embark on estimable careers in science, medicine or academia.

Their ranks included Ivy League professors, computer pioneers, chemists at Fortune 500 firms, a Guggenheim Fellow, and another fellow who pursued the life of a pastry chef.

Scanning the resumes, one might assume Edgewood was but a brief interlude in a soldier's life -- distasteful, perhaps, but long since forgotten.

Yet many soldiers quietly took Edgewood to their graves. Sworn to secrecy, or just plain stoic, the men of 1st Chemical rarely spoke of the harrowing experiments at the Maryland camp -- not to their families, and not to their doctors, even as they succumbed to diseases they traced to Edgewood. Decades later, no one can say for sure whether Felgendreger's collapse also was linked to those chambers. What is known is that, for many of these men, the silence that surrounded the project began to feel like a prison, one that separated them from their wives and children, one they felt they could never escape. In 1983 -- 40 years after the chamber tests -- Lee Landauer of suburban Baltimore began treatment for skin cancer that still bedevils him. His elderly mother delicately broached the subject of his service. What, she asked, really happened at Edgewood?

"Nothing I can tell you," the ex-platoon sergeant said.

And that was that.

Some families learned of the chambers and their psychological hold on the soldiers only after the men died. They would be sorting through papers left by the men and discover a journal or note that betrayed a well-guarded despair.

"See what happens when one has been involved with Army poison gasses?" Albert Jasuta, a veteran with leukemia and lung disease wrote, seven weeks before his death.

To be sure, of the scores of soldiers from 1st Chemical interviewed for this article, several spoke favorably of their work at Edgewood and defended the military's decision to expose at least 4,000 soldiers and sailors to dangerous levels of toxins in chamber and field tests. Germany and Japan had used chemical and biological weapons in the past, they noted. The United States had a duty to protect its troops, to learn all it could about how mustard might spread along the front lines of Europe, or the tropics of the Pacific.

"We were going against Hitler!" said Brooklyn recruit Abe Hedaya, pausing to let his point register. "He was crazy, and we had to get him!"

Whatever the program's merits, this much is certain: Pentagon officials lured young recruits from boot camp with the promise of furloughs, then bullied them if they tried to back out. They misled the men about the health risks involved, then denied the tests ever took place. For nearly 50 years, the secret held.

Even as some men faltered. (It's a 'guy thing'...better to be dead than admit being a VICTIM!)

Worse than combat

For many relatives, the soldier who marched off to Edgewood in '43 was different from the one who returned after the war. Of course, that is generally true of soldiers in all conflicts; war changes those who fight it. But something about the experiences of the chemical volunteers in sealed chambers, and their inability to talk about their experiences, transformed them in ways even combat never would.

Pvt. Francis Earnshaw Jr., a lanky blond chemical engineering student from West Virginia, saw his military career collapse one afternoon in November 1943, a few weeks after he left the chemical testing at Edgewood and returned to boot camp at Camp Sibert, Ala. As his company drilled that day, Earnshaw was overcome with anxiety and laid down in the field, unable to move until other soldiers carried him to bed. When Camp Sibert doctors saw him later, Earnshaw's lip quivered and he fought back tears. He'd been having headaches, he said, brought on by "nerves." He was hospitalized for a month.

"He does not have enough confidence to feel that he will be able to adjust," an Army psychiatrist wrote. "Diagnosis: Psychoneurosis, anxiety type, manifested by sleeplessness, nervousness and mild depression."

Earnshaw's records are typical of ailing chemical soldiers in that they make almost no reference to the experiments that preceded his hospitalization. From his file, it is unclear whether Earnshaw even told doctors he had taken part in chemical tests. This was not unusual. Even doctors stationed at Edgewood during the war were often not told what chemicals had injured their patients.

Earnshaw received an honorable discharge in December 1943. Yet even though he was released on medical grounds, the government denied his claim for disability, ruling that his nervous condition was unrelated to his military service.

He died of a heart attack in 1997, having never discussed Edgewood with Mary Jo, his wife of 50 years.

Not every soldier's life ended badly -- far from it. For many in the unit, the postwar years were marked by academic success and staggering career advancement.

After his war service, Bill Chupka left the coal country of eastern Pennsylvania for a classical education at the University of Chicago. One of his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers was Howard Hoffman, a former chamber mate at Edgewood, who later became a professor at Bryn Mawr.

Fraternity life, as Chupka tells it, was more "Masterpiece Theatre" than "Animal House."

"The evening conversations were very civilized arguments more typically centered on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ... Nietzsche, Einstein, national politics and other serious affairs," Chupka, now professor emeritus of chemistry at Yale and a former Guggenheim Fellow, recalled in an e-mail. "The music was exclusively classical and opera."

Other soldiers flourished as well. Walter Butinsky became patent counsel for Eli Lilly and Company. Roy Wiig was a pioneer in computer program development at IBM. John Hogan returned to Bountiful, Utah, as a family doctor. Thomas Mullen was an engineer at B.F. Goodrich. Cason Callaway Jr. became a respected businessman and philanthropist in Pine Mountain, Ga.

The veterans of 1st Chemical grew comfortably into middle age, gradually putting their war service behind them, or so they thought.

Cold War changes

As the Cold War shifted the focus of military research, Edgewood also evolved.

From 1950 well into the 1970s, Edgewood scientists -- concerned that the communists were developing truth serums -- began their own research into mind control. (Can you say: KILLOLOGY?) They began testing the effects of LSD and other hallucinogens on U.S. servicemen and civilians, often without their consent. It was not until the early 1970s that the military's treatment of its servicemen was seriously scrutinized as evidence also emerged that Americans were being mistreated in a variety government research -- from bacteria injected into children at an Ohio orphanage; to radiation exposure on prison inmates; to the Tuskegee Experiment, in which government researchers declined to treat 400 impoverished black men for syphilis so the scientists could monitor the course of the illness.

Like the World War II chemical program before them, the studies marked an unsettling shift in scientific research. With each new experiment, wrote medical ethicist David Rothman, clinical investigations were being designed "to benefit not the research subjects, but others." (Justification)

Yet while dozens of government abuses were exposed, the World War II chemical tests remained shrouded in the decades-old vow of secrecy.

In the 1970s, a few Army and Navy veterans claimed illnesses they traced to chemical testing. But one by one, the Defense Department thwarted the claims by simply denying the experiments took place.

Most veterans accepted the rejections and faded away.

Nat Schnurman plowed on.

Finally, some answers

Schnurman, who lives on a bluff above the James River outside Richmond, Va., was sitting with his wife in his doctor's office one day in 1975, wondering why his body seemed to be breaking down at age 50. He had lung disease, hearing loss and vision problems. He had chronic pain in his legs, chest and stomach. After undergoing medical examinations for decades, he was at a loss to explain his faltering health.

His doctor, who by coincidence had once trained at Edgewood, asked Schnurman if he had ever worked with chemicals.

"No," Schnurman replied.

"Were you ever in the service?"

"Yes."

"Were you ever in any..." and here the doctor paused, "special programs?"

Joy Schnurman, who until then had known nothing of her husband's participation in mustard gas testing, recalls vividly what happened next.

"Nat just turned white as a sheet," she said. "And then the tears came and came, and out came the story."

Schnurman joined the Navy at 17 and was sent to Bainbridge Naval Training Center in Maryland, where volunteers were being recruited to test "summer clothing."

He was sent to a gas chamber at Edgewood six times in seven days. On his last visit, a blend of mustard gas and lewisite was piped in. Schnurman was overcome with toxins, vomited into his mask and begged for release. The request was denied. His next memory is of coming to on a snowbank outside the chamber.

He completed his Naval service, but his health steadily grew worse. He told no one of the tests at Edgewood until that 1975 doctor's visit.

Schnurman filed for benefits from the VA and spent the next 17 years pursuing records that would support his claim. Blocked at every turn by a bureaucracy that denied access to his files -- that denied in fact that he was ever at Edgewood -- Schnurman eventually collected box loads of documents.  (And nowhere to take them...everything continues to be recycled right back to the abusers!)

His cause also benefited from renewed attention to chemical warfare in the late 1980s, most notably by Iraq's use of mustard gas on its own Kurdish population and in its war with Iran. In 1989, an Australian documentary, "Keen as Mustard," exposed how the Australian government denied the claims of its World War II soldiers because it did not want to reveal its role in human testing. That same year, a Canadian journalist exposed Canada's World War II program. In July 1990, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published the first of many stories on U.S. chemical gas veterans.

Around the same time, Schnurman's story caught the interest of producers at "60 Minutes" and Porter Goss, a Florida congressman. Goss, who is now CIA director, lobbied colleagues in Congress to compensate Schnurman and other World War II chemical volunteers for their illnesses.

But not until June 11, 1991, days before a "60 Minutes" expose on Schnurman's saga, did the Pentagon acknowledge the WWII program for the first time. The VA immediately announced it would compensate veterans who took part in chamber or field tests, or who were exposed to high levels of toxins in the production or transport of chemicals, for any of seven illnesses. (Ah! The Power of the Press really can exist!)

VA promises action

Because the military destroyed or hid many records relating to chemical testing, the VA also said it would relax the evidence required to prove an illness was linked to service. Under the new rules, veterans exposed to poisonous gases would only have to show they later suffered from laryngitis, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, asthma or some eye diseases to win benefits.

The VA asked a committee of the National Academy of Sciences to see if any other diseases could be linked to the chemicals. Jay Katz, a Yale University law professor and ethicist, urged the committee to look beyond the medical literature and demand that the military track down every veteran, or his family, and warn them of the health risks. "The soldiers who 'volunteered' for these experiments had every expectation that they would be treated fairly by their officers and surely by the physicians," he wrote. "As doctors, we ask our patients to trust us, and this trust was manipulated, exploited and betrayed...You have no choice but to recommend that [the volunteers] be apprised of what had been done to
them. Doing otherwise is an abdication of medical responsibility."

In January 1993, the committee issued "Veterans at Risk," a chronicle of the mistreatment of World War II chemical volunteers. The servicemen, the committee found, were recruited "through lies and half-truths."

"Most appalling," the committee wrote, "was the fact that no follow-up medical care or monitoring was provided for any of the World War II human subjects," for thousands of chemical warfare production workers or for the hundreds of military personnel who survived a mustard gas ship explosion in Bari, Italy, in 1943.

The committee urged the VA to identify "each human subject in the WWII testing program's chamber and field tests," as well as chemical production workers so they could "be medically evaluated and followed by the VA."

Even for dead veterans, "their surviving family members deserve to know about the testing programs, the exposures and the potential results of those exposures," the committee said.

The report also added to the list of diseases linked to testing: respiratory cancers, skin cancer, a variety of skin abnormalities, leukemia, chronic pulmonary disease, sexual dysfunction, and mood and anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The report dismissed the argument that the exigencies of war justified the tactics used to recruit volunteers. The military's use of its own personnel in LSD and radiation programs "demonstrated a well-ingrained pattern of abuse and neglect," the panel concluded. (They knew, then, and STILL they have done nothing to reign in the UGLY animal of ABUSE!) 

Upon the report's release, the Defense Department quickly accepted the recommendations, apologized, and pledged to help the VA find the men.

"The years of silent suffering have ended for these WWII veterans who participated in secret testing during their military service," declared Anthony Principi, then acting VA secretary.

The VA announced it already was taking steps to find veterans involved in the tests and grant them the benefits they deserved. The agency directed its regional offices to track Navy and Army claims involving chemical exposure. "This log should be kept current and available for random review," the directive said.

The VA asked the Defense Department for any rosters of servicemen involved in the tests. Once the names were gathered, the VA pledged to collaborate with the Internal Revenue Service and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to obtain current addresses for the veterans so they could be contacted directly. Valid claims could fetch up to $1,730 a month in disability, as well as free medical care. Widows also could qualify.

By early 1993, government assurances were plentiful and upbeat. (TRUST...US! And US Victims do...but, will Iraqi VICTIMS??)

"Be assured this will not be treated as business as usual," President Bill Clinton declared in February 1993.

Nobody really knew how many WWII gas veterans and chemical workers were still alive.

"It may be in the tens of thousands," Goss told a House subcommittee. "That is an astonishing number of people to have gone through a process, which we have, as a government, officially denied ever happened."

But for many of the soldiers in the 1st Chemical Casual Company, the assurances were too late.

Albert Pike, who owned a medical supply store in Akron, Ohio, died of lung cancer and respiratory failure on May 8, 1990, 13 months before the military came clean.

He received no benefits for those diseases.

Pike, however, had received compensation for mustard burns shortly after the war. On Jan. 30, 1946, one day after he was honorably discharged, the VA awarded Pike a monthly disability pension of $11.50 for the burns.

During the long illnesses that killed him at age 67, Pike never contacted the VA to file a new claim. And for many years after "Veterans at Risk" was published, his family never heard from the government. But in 1998, his children said, Pike's widow received a letter from the military inquiring about his health. The answer was in Pike's VA file, if anyone had bothered to look. The VA had paid $450 for Pike's burial. It classified his death as "non-service related."

His widow was given a flag.

Contact DAVID ZEMAN at 313-222-6593 or zeman@freepress.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

PART III:


Servicemen got runaround, even for valid claims

November 12, 2004

BY DAVID ZEMAN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

On the morning of March 10, 1993, as a blizzard barreled toward the East Coast, two senior officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs sat before a congressional panel and explained how the VA planned to track down thousands of World War II veterans exposed to hazardous chemicals.

"There is no doubt this is a dangerous occupational exposure," Dr. Susan Mather told the House subcommittee. "So we will get their current names and addresses from IRS and then we will notify them directly of their exposure and ask them to come in."

Nearly two years had passed since the Pentagon first acknowledged that it deliberately injured at least 4,000 soldiers and sailors in secret chemical tests during World War II. The Pentagon pledged to search for lists of these veterans for the VA.

Sitting below crystal chandeliers and a 30-foot arched ceiling accented with gold trim, Mather, a VA assistant chief of environmental medicine and public health, and John Vogel, deputy undersecretary for benefits, assured the congressmen the VA would actively pursue the men. "One cannot lose sight of the fact that medical care may be needed for these people," Vogel said.

Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., pressed the point: "You are not waiting; you are not sitting back, basically, and waiting for claims to be filed by them?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Vogel said.

Starting the fight

Just north of Washington, a veteran of the 1st Chemical Casual Company, wracked with skin cancer, felt the jolt of history.

Lee Landauer picked up his newspaper in suburban Baltimore one morning and learned -- for the first time, he said -- that the military misled his unit about the dangers of the chemical tests; that the poisons used on him in 1943 could kill him 50 years later. He learned something else, too: Washington stood ready to help.

Landauer felt liberated. The secret was out; his sacrifice acknowledged. And, for the first time in a decade, the cancer that had picked at his face, arms, neck, back and chest could be explained.

"They made it sound like the government wanted to see me," Landauer said.

He pulled on his jacket and headed downtown to file a claim.

For the aging warriors of the 1st Chemical Casual Company, the flurry of attention the World War II program received in Washington in the early 1990s produced a rush of memories, and a disturbing new lens through which to view them.

As young recruits in 1943, they were locked in gas chambers with mustard, lewisite and other poisons to test protective clothing. They were told to keep quiet about the tests, to accept the nausea and burns to their skin, eyes or throat. In return, they were offered extended furloughs and the promise that their scars would heal, that the pain was temporary.

Patriots to the bone, the men of 1st Chemical had respected their oaths, even as their bodies began to falter and their suspicions rose about the chambers they once had entered so willingly. One study showed that a majority of servicemen sworn to secrecy kept their pledge even 50 years later, still believing they'd be sent to Leavenworth if they talked.

But now with the secret finally, wonderfully, cathartically, out, it was time to rethink old assumptions. Did years of sun cause their skin cancer, as they always had believed? Did cigarettes cause their emphysema? Was it their two months at Edgewood or a lifetime of lab work that made them sniffle and hack all winter?

Entering a gas chamber with their buddies seemed like such a small sacrifice when they were recruits. A half-century later, the experiments began to take on a more menacing cast.

"Someone once asked him why he did it," Elsie Weaver said of her husband, William, who suspected he had health problems linked to the testing and died in 1988. "He said, 'Well, I was 18. When you're 18, you don't think you'll be dying of anything the government is going to give you.' "

It is difficult to say how many of the 100 soldiers from the 1st Chemical unit were still alive when the government finally owned up to the experiments in 1991. Many had died obscurely years earlier, their lives -- and deaths -- a mystery to a government that now vowed to find them.

But that was in the past. Whatever Washington's mistakes, it now professed a commitment to locate chemical test veterans, wherever they lived.

"The years of silent suffering have ended for these WWII veterans who participated in secret testing during their military service," Anthony Principi, then-acting-secretary of Veterans Affairs, declared in 1993.

"Be assured," echoed President Bill Clinton, "this will not be treated as business as usual."

It was time to take care of these men.

Up stepped Alfred Strauss.

A contrary diagnosis

In June 1993, at age 80, Strauss wrote to the VA from his Century Village apartment in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

The retired chemist's medical records showed he suffered from several ailments linked to World War II testing: emphysema, chronic coughing and congestion, chronic obstructive lung disease and bronchitis. He just could not seem to catch his breath.

The VA sent Strauss to be examined by Ft. Lauderdale doctor Edward Michaelson.

In a Nov. 12, 1993, report, the doctor pinned Strauss' ailments on his weight -- he was 5 feet 9 1/2 , 202 pounds -- and a prior smoking habit. Inaccurately noting that Strauss had no history of bronchitis or emphysema, the doctor wrote, "It does not appear as if any exposure to inhaled irritant chemicals or fumes have contributed to his mild to moderate respiratory problem."

Perhaps the doctor was right. It was difficult to say, 50 years later, whether chemicals or nicotine caused Strauss' breathing problems. But the VA's stated policy was to resolve such conflicts in favor of the veteran. The VA had relaxed its requirements for granting mustard gas claims because the military's own policies -- the decades of secrecy, the reluctance to include chemical records in personnel files -- made it more difficult for veterans to prove their claims. The VA nonetheless rejected Strauss' claim, relying on the doctor's report. Reached recently at his Florida office, Michaelson said federal privacy law prevents him from discussing individual patients. He said, however, that linking a patient's lung disease to past chemical exposure is a complex task, requiring doctors to consider all aspects of a patient's history as well as the chemical involved.

"Just because someone was exposed to something doesn't mean they suffered any permanent impairment related to that exposure," he said. "The answer you're looking for is not a simple answer."

VA officials declined to comment on the specifics of Strauss' claim.

But Principi -- who was not at the VA when Strauss' claim was rejected -- told the Free Press last month such cases are troubling, if true.

If the chemical test veterans are being forced to prove their ailments were caused by the experiments, VA officials "are not applying the presumption correctly," Principi said. "If it's clear from the medical evaluation that you have a certain disease and there is clear, concrete evidence that you were exposed to mustard gas during some period of time, then you're deserving of compensation. I mean it's as simple to me as that."

Alfred Strauss did not appeal, and he never heard from the VA again. He died in 1999. "He got zero compensation," said Nellie Strauss, his 92-year-old widow.

False hopes

Around the time Strauss wrote to the VA from Florida, Sidney Wolfson of Farmington received an excited phone call from his brother.

"Sid," his brother Chuck said, "I've got something I'm sure you will be interested in." It was a newspaper article from Washington, perhaps the same one that Landauer had scanned in Maryland, or that had prompted Strauss to write from south Florida. Wolfson recalls reading the article and feeling relieved. "It was the first time I understood I was able to talk about it," Wolfson said. "It made me feel a little better."

He felt sure the VA would embrace his claim.

His medical file showed treatment for asthma, emphysema, bronchitis, lung disease, depression, anxiety and sexual dysfunction -- all linked to chemical testing at Edgewood.

Unlike most veterans, Wolfson maintained a meticulous record of his Army service. He had kept a photograph of his Edgewood unit, and a 1944 commendation from the Chemical Warfare Service thanking the men for enduring "pain, discomfort, and possible permanent injury" through "exposure to chemical agents."

In a shaky scrawl, Wolfson filled out a VA request for compensation, saying he had never sought benefits before, but his faltering condition and his wife Florence's deteriorating health made it difficult for him to earn extra money preparing taxes for other retirees. "Hopefully, I will be entitled to 'some' compensation which will benefit our late years," he wrote.

But like Strauss in Florida, Wolfson's VA exam sealed his fate. He was sent to a VA-approved osteopath, who concluded that Wolfson was free of every disease linked to chemical testing.

Lung disease, asthma, bronchitis, emphysema -- all gone. Even the scarring on his arms from mustard patch tests was no longer visible, the doctor said -- despite clear evidence of arm burns, visible today.

The VA officially denied Wolfson's claim seven months later. In its rejection letter, the VA found, among other things, that he produced "no record of exposure to mustard gas in service." This, despite the fact that his name and service number appear on the roster and commendation order of chemical test volunteers in his VA and military files.

"You have the right to appeal this decision," the VA wrote in March 1994.

But Wolfson said he felt defeated. He accepted the ruling and moved on.

Retreat and surrender

Why did the men of 1st Chemical give up? Why would soldiers, some of whom risked their lives overseas, surrender so meekly to a rejection letter? (Could it be that they have learned the lesson well and refuse to be VICTIMIZED again??)

A few said they felt guilty seeking benefits for injuries suffered outside of combat. Others were dispirited from past VA skirmishes. Indeed, the files of several 1st Chemical soldiers show how they were forced to haggle with the VA for even minor benefits immediately after the war. Others received stern letters ordering them to return "overpayments" of as little as $17 in pay after their discharge.

John L. Hannon, a 1st Chemical volunteer from Delaware, was repeatedly denied benefits after the war for injuries common among chemical test veterans -- blurred vision, conjunctivitis, congestion, breathing problems and anxiety.

In 1999, Hannon again sought benefits, this time for anxiety, nose and eye problems. In denying his claim in 2000, the VA wrote, "[T]he evidence does not show full body exposure to mustard gas during active military service."

In fact, Hannon's file meticulously records his exposure. (Facts don't matter...they just get in the way of 'official' foregone conclusions.)

"This man volunteered and participated in tests conducted by the Medical Division," states an Edgewood record in his VA file. Hannon suffered "2 plus erythema [blisters] on hands" after being "exposed to H [mustard] vapor in the chamber." The chemicals' toxicity produced "slight systemic effects."

Hannon, too, declined to appeal.

As the 1990s rolled on, illness and death took a firmer hold on the men of 1st Chemical.

That is not unexpected in men reaching their 80s. But it was the way they were faltering -- from cancers, skin and respiratory diseases -- that raised questions about the legacy of Edgewood.

•1994: John Hogan, a physician in Utah, went to his grave believing the chronic pain on his leg could be traced to a frayed Army uniform that allowed chemicals to burn his skin. "It would flare up and be burning and red and itchy; he just knew it was from the mustard gas," said his wife Valera. "He'd say, 'If that thing didn't have holes in it, I'd have been all right.' "

•1995: John Berzellini, an asthmatic locked in a chamber for hours as his mask filled with mucus and drool, died of heart failure in Maryland. The skin on his hands was as delicate as crepe paper. And every winter he was bedridden for weeks with what his wife Irene called "a bronchial thing."

•1997: Francis Earnshaw, the West Virginia recruit sent home for "nerves" only to have his disability claim rejected, died in Ohio. Mary Jo, his wife of 50 years, did not learn the details of his Edgewood training until recently, when contacted by a reporter. "He was a guinea pig," she declared.

•1998: Paul Walters, a Missouri jeweler, died of leukemia, without ever telling doctors about Edgewood's chambers.

•1999: Zenon Siepkowski died after a battle with leukemia and respiratory disease.

Five veterans. Five deaths. None sought benefits for the illnesses that tormented them.

After Siepkowski's death, though, his family did apply for burial benefits.

The request was rejected -- the VA declared his respiratory problems were unrelated to his service.

"We never followed up on that," said his son Richard. "It wasn't worth it."

Some Pentagon assistance

But as the men of 1st Chemical faded, a small team of Pentagon workers was aggressively attacking its mission, combing through archives and remote warehouses -- three, four or five times -- to find the names of soldiers, sailors or other Americans exposed to chemicals.

The obstacles were daunting. Many Army and Navy chemical rosters had long since vanished, or contained only last names. More critically, millions of World War II Army files perished in a 1973 fire at a St. Louis, Mo., records center, leaving Pentagon sleuths to search elsewhere.

Martha Hamed, a Pentagon supervisor assigned to the project, recalls spending winter days in the mid-1990s shivering in an unheated Utah warehouse, dragging boxes of veterans' records to a sunny spot on the floor to keep warm.

Col. Fred Kolbrener, a now-retired project leader, said, "We literally went down a shelf -- 'You've got this shelf, I've got that one' -- and we just read everything on that shelf. If we found anything at all that might have names in it, we grabbed it."

Pentagon workers sometimes called veterans directly to ensure they had the right man. "A lot of us were personally invested in it," said Hamed, whose father fought in World War II. Veterans "would call the office and say, 'I'm dying, can you help me?' It was heartbreaking. So we were on a mission. We tried to leave no stone unturned."

From 1994 through 1997, the Pentagon compiled roughly 6,500 names -- forwarding lists to the VA as they were gathered. "A couple times a month we'd be dropping stuff off at their offices," Kolbrener said. The Pentagon even sent new commendations to some 772 chemical volunteers.

Officials at the Institute of Medicine, the scientific body that helped analyze the World War II program in 1993, said in an Aug. 2, 1995, internal memo: "Once the DOD decides to investigate fully, the amount they can accomplish is amazing."

"Unfortunately," the memo added, "Col. Kolbrener has reported that the VA has not responded very quickly once it is proven that a given individual was, in fact, exposed."

Indeed, while the Pentagon searched for veterans' names into 1997, the VA had quietly stopped tracking mustard gas claims three years earlier, when media and congressional attention began to wane. (There's a LESSON to be learned, here!)

The Free Press discovered the VA failed to directly notify any veterans or chemical workers of the health risks posed by the tests or their eligibility for benefits. No letters, no phone calls. The agency did not even run Pentagon lists through Internal Revenue Service computers or other government agencies to find current addresses for the chemical veterans, as it had promised Congress.

Even today, the VA cannot produce records on chemical claims after 1994. What records they have show the agency processed slightly more than 2,000 claims by September 1994, granting benefits to 193 people -- less than 10 percent.

Who filed claims? Some were guinea pigs at places like Edgewood. Others helped make or transport chemical weapons for the military. Still others were ordinary enlisted men who may have mistaken the routine training exercises of their war years for true chemical tests.

Different people. Different circumstances. One common trait: They approached the VA. The VA didn't go to them.

And the men of 1st Chemical? They are still not officially acknowledged. The government database on the test program does not list the unit among those that participated in chemical experiments.

Kolbrener, now a security analyst with Virginia-based Xacta Corp., said last week he had no idea the VA had not searched for the people identified by his team. "I would think that that's why we were doing it," Kolbrener said.

The VA officials who testified to Congress in 1993 cannot, or will not, explain now what went wrong.

"I really don't know," Mather said. "At that time, outreach was very much the responsibility of veterans benefits, and Mr. Vogel was the undersecretary for benefits."

Vogel, who left the VA, refused comment. He referred questions to Quentin Kinderman, his assistant policy director. Now retired, Kinderman said, "I'm not sure I can really answer that. It really surprises me we would have dropped the issue at that time without doing something."

Those answers stunned Jim Slattery, the Kansas congressman who chaired the 1993 hearing.

"When government officials from the executive branch come before a committee in Congress and make a commitment, that's a sacred commitment and it must be honored," said Slattery, now a Washington attorney. "It's very disappointing." (But...as 1185's demise demonstrates, this isn't the first or only time...they need to LEARN the LESSON!)

Principi, the VA secretary, said he was unaware of any problems with the chemical program until the Free Press raised questions about it in the summer. He noted he left the agency in January 1993, when Clinton took office, and did not return until 2000.

"Quite honestly, you hate to learn about these things from others, that veterans have not been receiving their benefits," Principi said. "But the important thing to me is when a problem has been identified, to try to fix it, to try to help people. They served their nation honorably" so the VA must "do what we can to provide health care and compensation to them. That's always been my bottom line and still is my bottom line ... If more needs to be done, it will be done."

Harold Gracey, chief of staff to VA Director Jesse Brown during the Clinton years, said he, too, was unaware there were concerns about mustard-gas claims.

"I can't imagine that there was a lack of follow-through," said Gracey, an executive at a technology firm near Washington. The VA's only direct contact with mustard-gas volunteers came in a 1996 study on the psychological trauma faced by chemical volunteers. The study found that chemical volunteers had a higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder than even World War II combat veterans. About four in 10 World War II guinea pigs interviewed in the study had some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder more than a half-century later.

VA researchers sought out 500 mustard-gas veterans, eventually interviewing 363 by phone. To make the veterans feel comfortable answering questions, the researchers promised they would not share their conversations with other VA offices.

Dr. Paula Schnurr, deputy director of the VA's post-traumatic stress research center, said the study cost $230,000. VA officials concede they could have used the same methods to search for the roughly 4,000 men used in chamber and field tests during the war. Assuming half of those men were alive in 1996, it would have cost the VA less than $1 million to find them and gauge their eligibility for benefits. (What...and ADMIT to WRONG doing?)

Principi, a combat-decorated Vietnam veteran, said last month it was not too late to act.

"If the VA promised to do a direct mailing and we did not do a direct mailing, having had their location and their addresses, then I would say we did let them down," he said. "If we did not, if my successor did not, whomever, me or anybody else, then I say we need to go back and take another look and see what should be done."

Tied up in red tape

Last summer, Lee Landauer, the veteran with skin cancer from Baltimore, offered a visitor a glimpse of his ravaged body. He has scabs on his nose, cheeks, forearms and elbows. He removed a pink golf shirt to reveal craters where lesions had been surgically scooped out.

Ten years had passed since Landauer drove into Baltimore to file a claim.

That visit was brief and crushing.

"They didn't ask me one question," he said. "The guy didn't take any notes; he didn't interview me. I thought he would keep me there and talk to me for an hour or so, maybe give me a physical exam, or even a flu shot.

"But when I get there, they didn't ask me squat. They didn't want to see me, really."

Still, he filled out the paperwork, forwarded his medical records -- and waited.

Nearly a year later, Landauer was still waiting.  (TIME is a very effective WEAPON!)

"I have been trying since last December 1994 to get into the VA for my skin cancer," he wrote the VA in September 1995. "Anything you could do to speed up this process would be greatly appreciated."

In November 1995, the VA rejected his claim, saying he presented "no record of squamous cell carcinoma," the type of skin cancer linked to the World War II tests.

Actually, Landauer's medical records show "squamous cell carcinoma" dating to 1978 -- as well as bronchitis, emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, all of them linked to chemicals. And yet, like so many of his Edgewood mates, Landauer shrugged and accepted it.

Landauer, 82, and his wife, Sheila, now live in a retirement condo in Sun City West, Ariz. In recent years, he worked as a grocery bagger at an Albertson's near his home -- the couple needed the medical coverage.

That coverage was tested last March when Landauer was hospitalized with pneumonia. Sheila, the determined advocate he will never be, had had enough. "You've got to go to the VA to get some medical care," she said. (There is a woman behind every successful EXPOSURE of ABUSE in the military...starting with TAILHOOK! As the Air Force Academy RAPE scandal shows...exposure isn't enough. ABUSE has to be Recognized, Challenged and Checked...by someone other than it's VICTIMS!)

So in June, Lee Landauer took one last shot with the VA. Sheila drove him to the agency's sprawling complex in downtown Phoenix, and he once again filled out paperwork for disability. The couple were told not to expect a decision until year's end.

Because Landauer had been on medical leave from his grocery job, he was allowed to see VA doctors while he awaited the agency's decision.

As autumn arrived, Sheila Landauer was nearly frantic. Her husband had received his last disability check -- for $85 -- from his grocery job, and his medical insurance was set to expire in the spring. They had taken to accepting financial help from their children.

"After March, it's over," Sheila said in October. "Everything is over."

But then last week, the Landauers' fortunes began to shift.

On Nov. 1 -- 10 days after the Free Press sent the VA a summary of Landauer's case -- the agency granted his disability claim for lung disease and bronchitis. The VA said he would now receive $817 a month and continuing medical care, making him the first soldier from 1st Chemical to be so compensated. The ex-platoon sergeant allowed himself a smile. For one exhilarating moment, it didn't matter that the VA had rejected essentially the same request 10 years earlier. It didn't matter that the VA has still not addressed his strongest claim: for the cancer that was eating at his face and torso. That was for another day. For now, he said, "I am tickled to death."

Sheila Landauer clutched the letter and wept.

Haunting reminders

Edgewood Arsenal does not look terribly different today from the morning in September 1943 when the men of 1st Chemical arrived as young recruits. The grounds are still sprinkled with meadows and stables. Eagles still fly overhead.

Although the grass is not always scrupulously tended, the squat, white structures remain. Some chemical plants have been converted into administrative buildings; others stand as rusty hulks, their beams and the earth beneath them too toxic to be disturbed.

Reminders are everywhere of Edgewood's pedigree.

Edgewood has been on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list for years. Storage yards still hold 1-ton mustard containers. Its grounds and surface water have tested positive for laboratory waste, PCBs, radiological compounds, napalm, nerve agent, white phosphorus, munitions and traces of mustard.

And Edgewood remains a home to chemical research.

Sixty years later, many of the same challenges exist for military scientists. The protective masks used by the military still fail too often. And scientists are still searching for a surefire antidote to mustard gas -- though they now use real guinea pigs in lab tests. (Really? It's doubtful that the VICTIMS of Lariam will believe that one!)

Meanwhile, veterans filing claims are urged patience. The VA is attempting to reduce a backlog of more than 300,000 disability claims as it deals with budget cuts.

But the VA secretary remains full of promise.

Last month, during a speech at a Texas convention of former prisoners of war, Principi announced to a crowd of cheering vets that they now were entitled to medical benefits for heart disease or stroke -- without being forced to prove their captivity caused their illness.

He praised the veterans' courage and patriotism.

"This is an issue," he said, "that has been studied and debated too long."

Contact DAVID ZEMAN at 313-222-6593 or zeman@freepress.com

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)




2) - Vietnam War...Agent Orange 'SAMPLE':

Hello to All:

I have been asked by some people to tell my story and I do so with tears in my eyes. It is quite long, how Agent Orange has affected and destroyed my life. Please allow me to share this with you.

Hugs and Smiles, Jennie

I am the widow of M/Sgt.Gerald H. Le Fevre USAF retired. My husband served in Vietnam at Nha Trang AFB with the 15th Special Operations Squadron, an Air Commando Unit, from 1968 to 1969. He was an airborne radio operator on C-130 aircraft that also flew supply runs throughout all four corps of Vietnam.
These aircraft transported Agent Orange at least twice a month which my husband helped load and unload with his bare hands. He wrote to me from Nam stating that skin was peeling off his hands in layers and he did not know why. He stated the doctor said it was jungle rot and my husband joked asked me if I was still interested in him, that he was a rotting old man of thirty-five.
 
My husband’s radio position was in the cargo section of the aircraft. The planes flew in and out of bases that had been sprayed including his own base. These aircraft flew at low level through mists of Agent Orange, flying with the cargo doors wide open and the mist drifted into the aircraft on many occasions.

In May of 1989, fifteen years after his retirement from the Air Force, Jerry was diagnosed with inoperable cancer of the lungs, liver, stomach, pancreas, lymph nodes, peritoneum, bone, diaphragm, and omentum. The diagnosis of his cancer was adenocarcinoma of an unknown primary, the doctor was never able to identify the original site of the cancer.

At time of death, Jerry was also diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, degenerative joint disease, obstructive jaundice, anemia, cardiopulmonary arrest, congestive heart failure, emphysema, fibrous lungs, and extragondal germ cell tumor syndrome. His chest x-rays revealed abnormal status of the lungs showing ventilation perfusion defects involving greater than 50 percent of his lungs.
 
He also had the onset of peripheral neuropathy which was never diagnosed and he also had body rash. At time of death, he also had kidney failure, pneumonia in both lungs, respiratory failure and pulmonary emboli.
His death certificate states, manner of death, as NATURAL.

How can that be? They could have at least stated Pending or Other, all of the things wrong with him was not
natural by any stretch of the imagination. He was in the military hospital at Andrews AFB, MD for seven months. He died on December 10th 1989 at the age of 56.

My fight with the government was to begin before my husband was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Two days after his death, the children and I went to the funeral home to choose a casket. The funeral director asked us to come into his office so we could hear the arrangements with Arlington National Cemetery regarding funeral services in the chapel and burial at Arlington. The funeral director turned on the speakers so we could hear the two way conversations, everything was arranged. So I thought.

Jerry was to be buried three days later. Two days before his burial, I received a telephone call from Arlington. They asked if the children and I had any remarks that we would like the chaplain to say about my husband. They requested that we keep our remarks brief as they did not want the grave site services to be too long because of the cold weather.

I couldn’t believe my ears, what was he saying, grave site services. He stated there would be no services in the chapel. I proceeded to tell the officer my husband was entitled to chapel services and that I had heard it being discussed with my own ears and I would settle for nothing less. After much haggling and screaming on my part, two hours later they called back and said there would be chapel services after all.

It gave me great pleasure to royally chew out the LtCol who was giving me such a hard time. I am a USAF veteran of the Korean war, even though it was a sad time that day, it was a great morale booster to be able to tell that officer off and tell him I knew what my husband’s and my rights were.
 
My husband was a highly decorated serviceman with the Distinguished Flying Cross and Five Air Medals among many others, and to tell me he was not entitled to chapel services, no way. I literally flew into a rage.
 
After Jerry’s death, I put in a claim through the DAV stating that I believed his death was caused from his exposure to Agent Orange. For a year and a half I heard nothing from the VA, there was a moratorium on Agent Orange claims at that time but they never notified me as such. Then I received a letter from the VA stating that I was denied any accrued benefits under my husband’s disability claim which he had submitted while he was in the hospital. I found out later that the VA had not even reviewed my husband’s medical
records before denying me anything.
 
I checked with the hospital at Andrews AFB and found out the VA had requested the medical records one week after they had sent me the letter of denial. It appears that the VA’s left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

I later received a letter that my claim for service connected death had also been denied. I requested a hearing, I wanted to have my say. I waited another year and a half before I got a hearing date. The DAV, on many occasions, had refused to return my calls of inquiry. My claim was denied again after the hearing.
 
The reason for denial was my husband’s doctor had classified my husband’s cancer of an unknown primary. Plus the pathologist who did the autopsy stated he Presumed that my husband’s cancer was of gastric origin. Thus in the VA’s eyes, even though Jerry had cancer of the lungs, which is on the VA’s list, they stated I had to prove it began in the lungs. The VA concluded Jerry’s death was not due to his exposure to Agent Orange. I was at a stand still.

Later my claim was put on the docket for the Board of Veterans Appeals. Soon after that I made a great discovery, In going through some of Jerry’s active duty medical records. I discovered that during an annual flight physical seven months prior to his retirement, a doctor states Jerry has fibronodular changes in both of his lungs. This is the same flight surgeon who gave Jerry his retirement physical later and who also states that both lungs are abnormal.
 
Did the doctor tell Jerry this, I don’t know, did Jerry ever tell me about it, no, was there ever a follow-up, no but the doctor did classify Jerry as healthy to retire from the AF. Very strange in my opinion.
 
In my opinion, he should have been medically retired but that was not the case I was sure I had my evidence that the cancer began in the lungs. I did a lot of medical research on my own and found the active duty lung condition my husband had, results in lung cancer. The whole time the VA and the DAV had the information about the active duty lung condition and never revealed it to me, they remained silent on the issue from the very beginning of the claim.
 
I requested that my claim be withdrawn from the Board of Veterans Appeals and requested another hearing to present this new evidence. I knew that the claim would be sitting at the Board of Veterans Appeals for at least five years or more and I was tired of waiting. The evidence would no longer be under Agent Orange, but under a service-connected lung condition that resulted in his death. It took another year and a half to get a hearing date. and at the same time the DAV, once again, was not returning my calls of inquiry.

When I went to talk to the DAV about my discovery and asked why they had not told me about this information, they became very angry and hostile. They suggested that if I was so unhappy with their representation, I could change power of attorney to another service organization if I wished. I still retained them in spite of what they said. I was frustrated and upset with the DAV, they were supposed to be helping me.

At my hearing, the first words out of the DAV service rep’s mouth to the hearing officer was“: Please consider this claim under Agent Orange”. I became enraged. I stated this claim had been denied several times under Agent Orange and that this hearing was to present evidence for a service connected lung condition which resulted in my husband’s death. It was not to be under Agent Orange.

At the end of the hearing, the hearing officer stated she would consider it under Agent Orange, I became enraged again and stated that a service connected lung condition was the issue at hand, not Agent Orange. In my opinion, It didn't matter which one caused it, he still died as a result of it or maybe both.

One year and three days later, {yes they took that long] the claim was denied again because the VA had sent all the medical records to one of their own VA doctors, whorelied only on the autopsy report. That had stated cancer Presumably of gastric origin. I felt that the new evidence I had presented had not even been considered at all.  

I had been advised by the National Veterans Legal Service Project that if my claim was denied this time, they would take it over. In September of 1998, I gave them my power of attorney and they requested a copy of my file from the VA. They are still waiting for that copy and here it is into March of 1999.


They now have received the file and have told me that I need a letter from a doctor stating my husband ‘s cancer was caused from Agent Orange or that he had a condition while on active duty that resulted in his death., They know that is impossible because there is no doctor that will go against another doctor's opinion, so my claim is in limbo and will probably be denied again.
 
In Vietnam, Jerry’s nickname was Lucky Pierre. Jerry served in both the Korean and Vietnam war, he thought he had survived both wars. But he did not survive Vietnam, he was not so lucky after all. This is the treatment he receives for serving his country proudly for 23 years. This is the treatment his widow receives as well.
 
I am still fighting, will not give up and I have been at this for ten years, and not any further than when I was when I first stated this claim.
 
In 1982, seven years after his retirement, my husband was asked to take part in the Air Force Ranch Hand Study, which he did. Three months after he took part, he received a letter from them stating he had been erroneously chosen, both of us laughed and we totally forgot it. But at the time my husband stated to me “Honey, maybe they found something wrong with me and do not want me in the study”.
 
How right he was. Some time after his death, I sent for his medical records from the study, they even tried to exclude all of the lab tests and results until I insisted I have them. I found in the records that he had given permission to photograph his body if they so desired.
 
It also stated they could alter anything on the photograph that they saw fit. What kind of study is that???? How could that be a truthful study if they saw something they didn’t like, they could alter or erase it. Did he know what he was signing, I don’t know, they probably shoved it under his nose and said sign here.
 
The study showed he had damage to his lungs, he tired easily and some other health problems, he was classified by them as a healthy white male. I later wrote to them and asked why he was dropped from the study but only received a vague answer. I also found out that he was not erroneously chosen as they had stated, he met their criteria perfectly.  The qualifications to be in the study, as I was to discover later, was that the veteran had to be a Ranch Hand or a crew member on C-130 aircraft, my husband was the latter. I often wondered why C-130 crew members were considered to be in the study. Now I know.
 
They did not spray Agent Orange but they transported it and handled it, just as exposed as the Ranch Hand people, if not more so. To this day. I believe they did not want him in their study because of his health problems and that they only wanted healthy men and did not want him as a stat on their records. I still believe this even now. He died eight years later, I believe they could have saved his life if they had allowed him to remain in the study.

To gain more information and insight about my husband’s Agent Orange exposure, I wrote to one of his former crew member, a load master, and he stated to me that the Ranch Hand Study people had come to his home to interview him, he never heard from them again because he believed he had too many health problems and presumed they did not want him in their study., he has since passed away from a lung condition. My husband had stated to me in better and happier times, that if he ever developed cancer, he would take his own life. One weekend, when he was home on pass from the hospital, he asked me where was his over/under shotgun. I replied, in a safe place. I had taken it to a neighbor for safe keeping. "End of conversation."
 
He also stated only once in the latter part of his illness,” DO YOU THINK AGENT ORANGE DID THIS TO ME”, I promised him I would check into it.

Did it cause his death, YOU BET IT DID.

And I will never forgive my Government for it.

A footnote:

All of the graves at Arlington around my husband’s grave have beautiful green grass, the grass on my husband’s grave grows in patches and is most times brown and ugly.  I have noticed in the past ten years his grave has been re-sodded five different times. Could it be that the dioxin in his body is eating through the casket and casket liner and eating the grass right off his grave?

He must be saying "You may have killed me in Vietnam and you are trying to kill my widow with stress but the grass on my grave says I am still here and telling the world what was done to me.

Hugs and Smiles, Jennie

More about Jennie can be found at: http://www.homestead.com/quilt_of_tears/files/story.htm AND
http://www.homestead.com/quilt_of_tears/




3) Gulf War I...'SAMPLE'

Honorable Veterans,

I write in hopes you can assist me. I served in the Gulf War assigned to 602nd Mt. Co. 169th Mt Btln 13 Coscom, detached to 553rd Support Command in support of 3rd A.C.R.

During my tour I served in Khafji, Riyadh, Dhahra, Cement City, Operation Black Jack and Operation Orange. After returning from the Gulf War I began experiencing multiple medical problems they were not unbearable at the time but I did note them on my out processing physical.

As time went on the problems I experience became worse and was encouraged to file in the Gulf War registry. I went to the Temple, TX V.A. for examination in 1995. The doctor diagnosed me with arthragelia, chronic fatigue, chronic, headaches, possible PTSD. The doctor advised me to schedule an appointment with the maroon team and file a claim for disability.

I went to the Texas Veterans Commission for assistance and filed a claim through them. I was a member of the Copperas Cove TX VFW post 8577 the quartermaster advised me to check on my claim. I called and they said they never received a claim on me. I then filed a claim through VFW post 8577. I was working on Fort Hood at the time and was asked to be examined by the CCEP program at Darnel Army Hospital. I filled out several questionnaires and was examined by army doctors.

I don't recall what they diagnosed me with but they sent me to occupational therapy and they wanted to stick braces on my arms and legs. I started treatment with them but found no  relief. I went back to the VA for treatment. I have seen several different doctor every appointment. I've gone to some, so foreign, that I can't understand and they have a hard time understanding me. They have each given me different tests and
medications but never told me what's wrong with me. Most of the medications I was prescribed had some really bad side effects to them and along with the pains I experience have made it very difficult to work.

I called the Waco Regional Office to check on my claim and once again they said they did not receive it. I went back to post 8577 and they filled out the paperwork again placed in an envelope, put a stamp on it and handed it to me to mail. I called to check on my claim a few weeks later and they received it and it was in adjudication. For three years they told me this so I wrote a letter to Congressman Chet Edwards. He checked in to it and two weeks later they said I have been granted 30% service connected disability for PTSD but my other claims for joint pains, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches and respiratory problems were denied.

I've been to the Temple, VA Emergency Room several times because these problems became unbearable and was admitted to the psychiatric ward in the Waco, VA as they had concluded the pains I have are all in
my head and I suffer depression.

I use to drink whenever I got off work to numb my pain and thought it was becoming a problem so I went into the SATP program in the Temple VA domicile. While there I had to have surgery on my ear which required stitches. I woke the next morning and there was blood all over my head, neck and pillow. I went down stairs and asked the attending nurse to look at my ear to see if it was still bleeding. She said it wasn't her job and I should go to sick-call when it opened.

Also while in the domicile my wife, Jackie, and my nine year old son, Joshua, were having lunch in the cafeteria and a man cam in and shot three men right next to us my son found himself starring down a gun barrel as the man turned to find his next target.

I grabbed my son and pulled him to the floor and sheltered him. I reached back for my wife to pull her to the
floor as she was unaware what was going on because she has gone blind from diebeties. I yelled to her to get down a someone's shooting and crawled both of them to the outside exit. We were granted passes as the police investigated. My family and I went to my wife's parents to stay for a few days and while we there my wife and son began having nightmares.

I returned to continue my treatment and was told my councilor was relieved because he defended me while in conference with the treatment team who wanted to kick me out for staying with my family an extra day in which I called and told them where I was and what my intentions were.

My wife and son were both diagnosed at Scott and White hospital with PTSD after that incident. I was then referred to the PTSD program were I was examined and diagnosed with PTSD and placed in the program. After attending one meeting I was told that the program was being discontinued there and moved to Austin, TX. Come to find out a year later only a few doctors were transferred and the program was still available. When inquiring if I could attend they said I have to be referred by a doctor.

I was then referred to the Vocational rehabilitation program because I am unable to do my previous occupation due to my joint pains. I enrolled in college and continued to experience extreme head pain, dizzy spells, blurred vision and panic attacks from being enclosed with groups of people, being afraid that something was going to happen again. I went to the VA with these problems and the nurse practitioner gave me a booster shot of Gabepentin some medication and told me to go home and rest. I stayed down for about a week and a half until I was able to get around. I had missed to many days of school and was dropped.

The VA sent me a letter saying I now owe them $638.00 because I was overpaid. My wife called the regional office when the check came in because I had to drop my classes and they said I was entitled to the
money. The VA. said I could file for a hardship waiver so I did due to the only income in our family is my wife's SSI which is $600.00 and my disability. After our bills it leaves us at a negative balance a lot of times. The VA denied my waiver reason being, because of my age I may be get a job in the future.

I filed for an increase on my disability due to my increased health problems. After a few months I wrote Congressman Chet Edwards to inquire on my claim and was sent a letter from the VA denying my claim but advising me to apply for non-service connected disability. All of my health problems developed during the Gulf War and many soldiers in my company became ill there. It was like basic training after all the shots they gave us. Soldiers had severe flu like symptoms.

What I don't understand is why the postmen that were in contact with those chemicals have the same health
problems I have and are acknowledged but everyone denies I have had any contact with chemicals. I don’t drive and can’t get around much. I have written this letter as briefly as possible but I think you can see how my life has been in a scramble over the years trying to get help.

My son was born three months premature with a hole in his heart and two hernias, a seizure disorder and asthma. I’m real proud of my son as he's suffering through a lot of medical problems, which are in my opinion a result of all the chemicals I had been exposed to. When the studies of theses things happening to Gulf War children started everything was in direct link to chemical exposure but as time went on DOD manipulated numbers by gathering not military children with birth disorders and wrote a report stating that these problems were common with all children not just service connected children.

My son's medical problems are also unexplainable by his doctors. I think its important to know that I have been to several doctors other than the VA and they have checked me for every disease known to man (with negative results). They recognize the symptoms but can't diagnose.

Of course the VA has a directive to place a diagnoses to resolve the unexplained illnesses. They have wasted money doing the same tests over and over. I think I’ve been tested for hepatitis 15 times. Those doctors do not communicate or take the time to look at my records to see what tests have been done, so I’m caught in this revolving door and can't get out.

After Chet Edwards inquired the last time, the VA. psychiatrist called me and set an appointment for the 24th of this month. They still want to say this is all in my head. My body is in a lot of pain and they want to pick my brain. I can except that I do have some mental issues to overcome (doesn’t everyone) but when I cant lift my arms and legs without pain shooting up and down them I think its a little more than a mental
condition!

I'm sorry...I don’t mean to be so ugly. I was involved in a lot of sports growing up; baseball, softball, soccer, football, Boy Scouts etc... I even played softball for the Army, now I cant even play with my son who is in to soccer right now. I still go out and show him the tricks of the game but I sure would like to get down and dirty with him.

David A. Vaughn - U.S. Army

Can YOU tell me...WHY??? do any U.S. Military Veterans have to write letters like THIS???

Kevin Shores, USN, is again seeking to answer that question and he has sent the following, for your consideration........

To whom it may concern and those who may be helped:
 
Subj.: GULF WAR ILLNESS AWARENESS RIDE 2004  (May 5th)
 
Since the hostilities in the Middle East, there are Hundreds of Thousands of Veterans that are sick and dying from numerous strange aliments.  Many have labeled these illnesses under the umbrella term GULF WAR ILLNESS.  Most of them to this date have still not received adequate treatment or compensation.  Thousands have DIED.  While funding for Veterans returning from fighting the war is cut, billions of dollars are being given to rebuild the aftermath of war.  Is this country not obligated to these suffering veterans to do whatever it will take to honor them for what they have sacrificed?
 
I would like to change this and I ask for your help.
 
On Veterans Day at 2:30, November 11th, 2003 I, Kevin R. Shores would like your support at the Moorhead VFW Post 1223.  There I will be officially announcing to the general public my intentions to once again ride my motorized wheelchair from Moorhead to the capitol in St. Paul during the spring of 2004.  I am willing to endure this ride again to bring forth the many issues of veterans-particularly the alleged Gulf War Illness.  The suffering has to stop, and accountability needs to return to Washington D.C. Details of the ride will be shared; A web page and contact list currently under construction at this time and will be released shortly.  Since this involves planning and support, those wanting and willing to help in any way possible are welcome.  Veterans are strongly recommended to come.
 
Please feel free and I encourage you to pass this information on.
Invite the media.
 
With hope of your support
Miigwetch  (Thank You)
 
Kevin Richard Shores
P.O. Box 685
Moorhead MN 56561-0685
email: kevin@GWIAR2004.com
GWIAR2004.com and read more about Kevin's earlier endeavor on MAMMA's Gulf War Veterans Page
HAVE YOU THANKED A VETERAN?
Now is the time





     Today, the committee is discussing the Department of Defense’s failure to obey the letter of the law in PL 105-85.  The Gulf War Veteran Community pushed and fought for this public law, in order, that the next group of soldiers would have more complete records, medical
exams, and blood work to document before, during, and after a conflict their medical status.  It is obvious that this is one very important data collection that was not done for Gulf War 1 and that with the lack of protection of offical CENTCOM and command logs, that have been
reported as lost along with immunization records, have prevented those veterans of Gulf War 1 from being able to prove exposures and therefore lack the data to prove their Veterans Affairs claims for service connection and disability.

This tradegy has created a huge problem for the Veterans Affairs in caring for the veterans of Gulf War 1 and has left this previous Gulf War Veterans community battling for 12 years to get the acknowledgement, compensation and care due to them.  The ultimate cost is a large group
of veterans left battling their own government for the ground truth and acknowledgement of their sufferring for over twelve years and the feeling of betrayal and distrust has rooted itself strongly into this group and their extended family members.  Military families for years have
been the breeding ground for future soldiers and it seems that all have underestimated that untold cost of betrayal and breaking of the trust to our nation’s defense

Repeatedly, we are told that the human assets are “the most important asset that the military posesses” but repeatedly we see more attention paid to the machinery of war,  to foreign aid, and to other national priorities.  Repeatedly, we see that the Department of Defense does not
stand by its word, to the committment to the troops, to its accountability and responsibility to the Congress, to the people of America, but most of all to its individual troops.  Their actions not to fully implement PL 105-85 and go beyond the words of the law, shows their lack of caring for the human beings that do the work and place their lives in jeopardy for this nation.

It is imperative for them to get it right and yet they have failed medically to get a full snapshot of each soldier deployed to have the baseline data that is needed in order to evaluate the troops after the war for any harmful effects.  Would you want to fly a plane that had not had proper maintenance or preflight checks?

Their Liberal interpertation of the law must be punished and swift decisive corrective actions must be taken immediately.  It may be too late for those troops now with boots in the sand but the activation of more troops and call up of more reserves and guard units is continuing so it is not too late for follow on units!

Obviously, they did not learn the lessons of the recent past(Gulf War 90-91), much less of history(Mustard Gas veterans, atomic veterans, and Agent Orange veterans).  It is indeed a tradegy that we have so many technological advantages that have not been utilized in documenting the medical status of each soldier.  I hope that when the soldiers return that the standard tactic of blaming PTSD or stress will NEVER be allowed to block soldiers from getting fast answers to what is happening to their health.  The DOD has to be put on record now that they failed a critical step and therefore, the benefit of doubt now goes to the soldiers and to the veterans.

The DOD, by their very actions have shown they want to avoid having a full data base yet again.  The notorious three monkey syndrome has occurred yet again and they have been caught red handed.  Yes one has to ask why, they did this deliberate misinterpertation of the law but we need to not forget that the effect is primarily  yet again on the troops’health and follow on care and compensation.  So, Congress must act now and implement a bill, one that is a blanket coverage of the veterans of Gulf War 90-91 and protect this group of soldiers currently with their boots in the sand and their lives in the line of fire.  This idea of a blanket disability was first discussed, I believe, in Senate hearings in 1997 but has yet to be brought up for action.  The time is now for action.

No other action could speak so clearly of this nations committment to its troops and veterans in this eleventh hour of the eleventh day.  I urge you to consider that action as a PRIORITY.  Service connect by law the Gulf War veterans of 90-91 and create a blanket bill/law to acknowledge finally the sacrifices already made and speak loudly to your troops now at risk!  This must be a priority finally!


Concurrently, actions to find the answer to why DOD ignored the letter of the law must be accomplished and corrective action taken.  Some type of penalty must be done now.  The DOD must be held to the highest standards and punishment taken for the derogation of duty that has occurred.  And Effective and non interpretable efforts to safeguard and protect DOD data and logs on current exposures must be taken immediately.

There has to be accountability for this neglect of their most solemn duty to uphold the law, much less their responsibility for the health of their and America’s soldiers.

Actions needed now are clear.  They are:

1.  A bill must be introduced now to offer blanket coverage and service connection for Gulf War Veterans of 90-91 to reestablish the faith and finally acknowledge them totally without continuing raping them with study after study that can not correct the damage already done!
- This bill must extend and cover the current force that currently have their lives at risk.
- This bill must not have any imposed time barrier.
- This bill must include firm guidelines and compliance and penalities established to protect current records of exposures that may will be happenning now.

2.  A bill must be introduced that identifies and spells out the responsible office/person and the penalty for noncompliance.  This has to occur to show that the Congress stands by its words.

3.  There also needs to be a bill that addresses follow up for any government funded study, the bill would spell out clearly who is responsible for implementing the reccommendations of each federally funded study.  The implementation of reccommendations of any federally funded study must also have a means of continued oversight by the congressional committee of jurisdiction.  Without this we have left out the most important item of action, follow through to corrective implementation and have thus wasted taxpayer dollars by never correcting a failed or broken system.  And the system can never hope to correct its problems alone.

4.  A new question that might be considered is the use of an independent board to review and report compliance to the issues of military force medical protection.  This would provide quality assurrance of compliance with the law.

An important fact that has been overlooked is that each civilian and military hospital must be accredited by the JCAH  (Joint Commission of Hospital Accreditation).  This function of the JCAH could easily be broadened to assure troops receive Medical Physical Exams and
Laboratory (blood and urine)   work prior to and after deployment.  This action would take coordination with the JCAH to immediately include this function for all military hospitals, medical facilities, and clinics.

It is important to note that if hospitals do not meet standards they are notified and a deadline is set for corrective action and follow up.  There are penalities in place by the JCAH for noncompliance.  At least this is a possible regulatory board already in place that could help in this situation as an outside independent ongoing audit for compliance.

5.  Each level of command and each commander at each level holds accountability for protecting and maintaining the health and well being of their troops.  In this instance, the leadership of the DOD Medical Force Protection failed in their duties in fulfilling the letter of the law.  Under UCMJ, this would fall under dereliction of duty and failure to comply.  The question is:  Will punitive action be taken finally to show that the DOD is not above or exempt from the laws of the land.

6.  Every unit of the military when deployed goes through predeployment mobility processing.  Immediate action of starting to have medical exams done in those mobility lines and also blood draw, hair sampling, and  urine collection stations have to be implement now. It is inconceivable that in the mobility line we pay attention to VGLI paperwork, immunization update, wills and power of attorney, and all the rest without paying attention to the most important item ---get the baseline medical-physical exxam and blood, urine, and hair samples.  If need be local physicians can be asked to assist and other medical personnel, it would certainly show the American spirit of supporting the troops.

7.  This committee must also take firm action by going out now on Congressional trips to the field to the troops deployment processing to collect onsite evaluations to see that the letter of the law is carried out.  Again, a great way to show in fact and deed to the troops your
committment. 

Also a GAO study is needed as a priority to document officially the lack of DOD’s compliance with the law in records to reviewing now and documenting their failure with forces now in conflict.

8.  Funds for VA need to be made mandatory not discretionary and increased in recognition of the Priority due to the Veterans for follow on care and compensation.  The Budget, Authorization, and Appropriations need to be put in place Immediately.  It is riduculous to have the checkbook open for the war and then following the war to slam the checkbook closed in the face of the veterans that have Earned this care and compensation through their sacrifices.  Make this a priority loud and clear.

As a retired Gulf War Veteran field grade(Major), retired nurse with advanced education (MSN) that over the past 12 years have dedicated myself to  getting this situation resolved, I can tell you the physicians and medical support personnel want this situation to be corrected now, they do not want to be seen yet again as failing the troops due to ineffective leadership.  Give them the support they need now from the highest level of government.

Thank you, for the opportunity to submit testimony for the record for the hearing ---March 25,2003 under Representative Chris Shays, Committee chairman for the Government Reform--National Security Subcommittee.  I look forward to testifying in person at your next
hearing.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


4) Gulf War II...'SAMPLE'

Be sure to visit the Lariam Action USA site at:  http://www.lariaminfo.homestead.com  and THINK!

The severe psychiatric effects of 'Lariam' have been documented extensively in medical journals around the world since at least 1987! Yet the military continues to dispense it (routinely and without 'warnings') and 'downplay' (LIE!) about the frequency and severity of adverse reactions.

It's known that the military attempted a similar foray with LSD...how many other drugs did they 'test' and distribute to our men and women, in uniform (their pool of 'guinea pigs'), would fit into this same 'catagory' of dangerous drugs?
 
The more that is learned about this topic...the more convincing it becomes that this is the 'missing link' and/or the KEY piece to the 'puzzle' of WHY the military is so obsessed by their determination to 'cover up' (at ALL costs and no matter how 'ludicrous') their 'Homicide Problem'!

Consider the implications and ramifications IF....
- the military...illegally and without consent...TESTS drugs on service members.
- the military...illegally...falsifies 'test results', minimizing dangerous 'side effects'.
- the military...illegally...seeks to 'profit' from having drugs, they developed, approved for 'Public' distribution and consumption.
- the military has become a POWERFUL...DRUG cartel!
- the military is aware that their 'Mind Manipulation' programs maximize the potential for psychotic episodes.
- the military 'labels' EVERY violent death: "SELF-inflicted" to avoid the scrutiny of an 'investigation'...out of FEAR that the 'cause' was the result of: a) a 'drug induced' 'Suicide' or b) a 'drug induced' 'HOMICIDE'!
- the military's 'SELF' protection strategy sends out the message; "You can get away with MURDER in the military" and affords ALL murders (for whatever reason) an automatic KILL with immunity opportunity!
 
The testimony of Charlene Anderson, cousin of John Allen Muhammad (the DC Sniper), includes the phrases....
- "...a normally well-dressed Army veteran, looked unusually disheveled during the visit."
- "...claimed he was on a covert military operation..." and
- "...told her he was on an undercover mission to recover plastic explosives that had disappeared from the military."
Don't phrases like these set off little 'red flags' that make your mind scream LARIAM (or something like it)? Wouldn't that make this a Public Trust (at risk) 'issue' that belongs in Public Hearings?
 
Those who control the most POWERFUL military in the world are 'out of control'! Worse...they are MASTERS of 'Mind Manipulation'...having practically written the book on it (the 'draft' came out of Quantico in the 70's)! How else do you account for the FACT that they managed to take ALL of us into a 'questionable' WAR?
 
Is the 'media' culpable? YES!

In fact (truth be told), given the 'nature' of the 'campaign' that Amnesty International (AI) has going in the UK...the US media's 'distorted' ethics (ie...adhering to the oblation of presenting BOTH sides in an objective manner no longer fits into the 'FAIR' category, when one side of the 'issue' LIES, hides behind a uniform and a flag and intimates that anyone questioning THEM isn't patriotic!), when dealing with military 'issues', may be the reason for WHY AI shies away from US involvement!

To read a couple of examples....go to Page 4 News. to read...the Sunday, November 23, 2003, edition of The Seattle Times: article by Lisa Falkenberg...Army misreads Green Beret's disease as well as Mad Cow Disease (BSE) and Vaccinations by Dawn Richardson.

The US Media has to start 'connecting the dots' on the LONG history of military INJUSTICE! Until they return to their professed purpose of being the Public's WATCHDOG, the 'risks' for ALL of us will..."just go on and on, my friends! "
 
It took YEARS to recognize the 'subtle' difference between the phrases: a) ONE for all and b) ALL for one! Let's HOPE that it doesn't take years for the media to realize that, 'subtle' as it may be, there is a MAJOR difference between the phrases: a) working on Human Interest 'stories' for the Public's consumption and b) working on 'stories' in the Public's Interests before they are consumed!



BAGHDAD, Iraq — Tahsin Ali Hussein al-Ruba'i knew that danger waited in the darkened streets, where American soldiers suspicious of every approaching vehicle lurked near poorly marked checkpoints.

The 32-year-old knew the danger because he made his living earning $3 to $4 a day driving his orange-and-white 1983 Volkswagen Passat in the streets of Baghdad. But on July 1, 2003, his infant daughter, Tabarek, had the flu, and he decided to risk driving to his in-laws so he could pick her up and take her to a hospital.

As his taxi neared the working-class Cairo Street neighborhood, American soldiers spread several Humvees across an eight-lane boulevard, preparing to stop oncoming vehicles. Fearing someone would be shot because the makeshift checkpoint had no signs, cones or lights, a man selling kabobs along the road 50 yards away started waving and yelling at unsuspecting motorists.

Al-Ruba'i apparently never got the warning.

Soldiers opened fire with rifles and mounted machine guns, riddling his taxi with bullet holes and killing him, witnesses said.

"They (the soldiers) were the reason for what happened. They didn't point to him and tell him to stop," said the kabob vendor, Taha Mehdi al-Jabouri.  "They treat us in a savage way."

The family filed a civil claim asking for $2,500 from the American military, but the claim was denied.

The case is among 4,611 never-before-released civil claims from Iraq — hundreds alleging abuse and misconduct by American military personnel — on a computer database obtained by the Dayton Daily News through the federal Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Army tort claims database is the most comprehensive public record released to date of alleged acts against Iraqi civilians by American forces, which do not otherwise systematically track civilian casualties.

The records provide a previously unseen portrait of the toll the war has had on civilians in Iraq, and the kinds of incidents described in the records have fueled the growing insurgency and hatred toward the American-led coalition.

About 78 percent of the claims are for incidents that occurred after President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 2, 2003.

"When we first got there, the Iraqis were glad to see us. I believe things changed because there was disrespect to the people," said Elizabeth Wisdorf of Colorado Springs, Colo., who served for nearly a year in Iraq as a member of the Colorado National Guard's 220th Military Police Company. "There were a lot of accidents, a lot of deaths."

At least 16 death claims specifically identify 20 children as victims, most from bombings or shootings, and another 193 claims allege 171 sons or daughters were killed without providing an age.

Incidents such as these have turned many Iraqis, such as the family of Samir Shleman Chaman, against the American occupation. Chaman, a house painter, was killed when a tank crushed his car as he was returning from a painting job — one of at least 150 Iraqis allegedly killed or injured in encounters with military vehicles.

"Our point of view toward the Americans has changed. You can feel the fury inside you," said Amir Shleman, Chaman's brother. "If they treated people like human beings, no one would take up weapons against them."

Like other Iraqis, Shleman's grieving family became more outraged at how the military handled their claim for compensation.

Chaman was a husband and father of a 7-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. The day after he was killed, the family said, soldiers left $2,000 near the pillow of his widow — money the family was told was for funeral expenses.

When they filed a claim through an Iraqi attorney for compensation for the children, they encountered months of delays and confusion before finally receiving a letter on Sept. 7, 2004.

"The evidence does not prove that the death of your husband or damages to your vehicle were due to the negligent or wrongful acts of the United States Armed Forces," the letter reads.

The claim was denied.

"I think it is despicable how we are treating the innocent people or their families after there is a tragedy," said Ivan Medina of Middletown, N.Y., who served as an assistant chaplain for the Army's 10th engineer battalion in Iraq. "We do nothing for them after these terrible things happen. These are innocent people, not soldiers fighting a battle."

Army Lt. Col. Charlotte Herring said the Army, which handles civil claims for all three services in Iraq, has given out $8.2 million since June 2003 and budgeted $10 million in fiscal year 2005 to help the Iraqi people deal with losses suffered because of the war. Considering the dangerous conditions in Iraq, she said, the system is "working famously." She blamed some of the problems on the realities of war and predicted improvements as hostilities subside.

Through the claims system, "the local commander can try to keep good will and come and amend a somewhat tragic situation," said Marine Reserve Capt. Sean Dunn, who worked as a platoon commander and supervised claims payments in Iraq. "You're also trying to keep the neighborhood from going nuts and attacking other people."

Proving whether the claims were valid, he said, often was a difficult and time-consuming job.

"There were blatantly fraudulent claims," he said. "As soon as they realized there was money being paid, they were beating down the door wanting money for all kinds of crazy things with no evidence whatsoever."

Soldiers who served in Iraq said innocent civilians sometimes become victims because soldiers are forced to react to situations without knowing whether they will encounter a roadside bomb, an attacker dressed like a civilian or a motorist who steers into a convoy or absent-mindedly runs through a checkpoint.

Spc. Charles Bradford, 29, who went to elementary school in Dayton while his father was in the Air Force, earned a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound and survived two roadside bombs and eight rocket-propelled grenade attacks. He is regularly hit with stones when he rides the "gunning" position through the hatch of his Humvee. But he said he has fired his rifle only once since coming to Iraq in March.

"I give these people a chance regardless of the stuff I've been through," he said. "Every day I go out of the (base), I pray I don't have to kill anyone."

Spc. Grant Horn, 23, of Quakertown, Penn., was recently about 50 feet from a car bomb explosion that left him shaken and with cuts on his face. He has not fired at anyone, he said, but he knows that with the city's dangerous streets comes the possibility of wounding a civilian.

"You don't want to do it, but if it happened I would be glad I was alive," he said. "It's better to be safe than sorry."

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, a Department of Defense consultant who once headed the strategy department at the National War College, said the fear, hatred and corresponding acts of violence are byproducts of lengthy occupations.

"It feeds on itself because people are angry," said Gardiner, who was assigned to strategy and prisoner of war recovery from Thailand during the Vietnam War. "It frightens soldiers more. They feel less secure. They react more strongly, which creates more anger, which causes people to be more afraid, which (makes soldiers) pull the trigger faster.

"Once you start down this slippery slope, I don't know that anybody knows how to stop it."

'Legitimate targets'

Claims in the Army database seek compensation for at least 437 Iraqi deaths and 468 injuries.

However, the actual number of casualties is unknown. The database recorded only a portion of the total deaths and injuries because not all alleged acts by American personnel resulted in claims. In addition, difficult conditions in parts of Iraq prevented up to 70 percent of the claims committees there from accessing the database, Herring said. She estimated that the Army has received as many as 18,000 claims in the last year alone.

Victims and their families filed claims for homes destroyed in bombings, confiscated property, and injuries and deaths from shootings and bombings, according to the database. In 29 cases, Iraqis claimed the military left so-called "unexploded ordnance" that later detonated, killing 14 and injuring 25 innocent people.

The victims in at least six Iraqi claims were allegedly hit by warning shots that went awry.

In an April 8, 2004, incident in Balad Ruz, a soldier fired a .50-caliber machine gun into the air to disperse a crowd of about 100 civilian demonstrators, according to an Army account of the incident. The soldier ducked to avoid being hit by rocks being thrown by the crowd, and the gun accidentally discharged twice, killing an 11-year-old boy named Mustafa Nadig, the account says.

"The U.S. soldier who shot the 11-year-old boy was seen by (a military officer) with his hands up in the air giving the three-fingered `hang loose/surfs up' sign as the soldier was driving away," the Army records say.

"It appears probable that U.S. forces facilitated the death of a civilian boy," the records say, adding that a $2,500 payment to the family was approved by a general.

In two other warning-shot cases, the victims were described as deaf.

Victims in at least two other cases were identified as bus passengers, one whose arm was amputated after a Marine allegedly fired "a warning shot" into the bus. The other, described in Army records as an "innocent passenger," was killed after a soldier from the 194th Military Police Company fired into a bus.

The victim in a sixth claim was identified as a 13-year-old boy hit by a "ricochet bullet fired as a warning shot" that entered his thigh and fractured his femur. Army records say that the boy required a year to recover and that there were "some minor residual issues such as a slightly shorter leg."

In a separate case, Army records show, a soldier from the 220th Military Police Brigade fired at the tires of a driver who was fleeing soldiers in Scania, "accidentally shooting the deceased in the chest, killing him," according to Army records.

The soldier in that case was never prosecuted, an Army spokesman said.

Under Section 2 of Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17, which will remain in effect until the "last coalition element leaves Iraq," coalition forces are immune from civil lawsuits and criminal charges. The immunity leaves Iraqis with a single option: filing for compensation under the Foreign Claims Act with the United States Armed Services, the same entity they are accusing of wrongdoing.

Other countries do not grant such immunity to American soldiers.

After Spc. Christopher McCarthy was convicted of killing bar hostess Kim Sung-hi in Korea in 2000, the victim's family not only got a $154,000 payment from the Army, but also received a civil judgment from the South Korean court.

"We just rounded up what we could and sent it (the money) over there," McCarthy's mother, Susan McCarthy, recalled.

More than 1,000 claims involved vehicle accidents — by far the largest category of claims recorded in the database. At least 160 of those involved tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles, resulting in at least seven deaths and 16 injuries.

More than 400 claims involved destruction of crops, trees, livestock or water sources — property essential to the survival of Iraqi citizens.

A Daily News analysis of the roughly 4,600 claims in Iraq shows just one in four resulted in some type of payment. Of the 51,018 Army claims filed in other countries during that same period, one in two resulted in a payment.

Lt. Col. Herring, the chief of the U.S. Army's Foreign Torts Branch, said the database is incomplete. In fiscal year 2004 the Army paid 11,000 claims and denied 3,000, she said. Prior to this past June, however, the Army did not track how many claims were denied.

According to the database, the average payment for a death in Iraq was $3,421, less than 1/20th of the average payment for a claim filed anywhere else.

On May 12, 2003, an Iraqi man died when a tire fell from a U.S. Army vehicle in Tikrit, and his widow received $5,000, according to Army records. On April 24, 1999, in Bath County, Ky., a female motorist suffered neck and back injuries after a tire fell from a military vehicle, and she got $50,000, or 10 times what the Iraq widow received for losing her husband under nearly identical circumstances.

The Army paid $5,000 — the same amount given the Iraq widow — to a woman who got a staple stuck in her finger at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico.

In addition to the formal claims system in Iraq, Iraqis were sometimes given $2,500 in so-called solatia or sympathy payments without any paperwork at all, said attorney Jack Bournazian, who held seminars to show Iraqi attorneys how to file civil claims.

The payments, military officials said, were frequently given out as a way of defusing animosity toward American forces and improving relations in a community.

Attorneys and representatives of human rights groups said the process used in Iraq to settle civil claims is subjective, left to the whim of individual commanders or claims officers who often make their decisions based on little investigation.

"People were told if you want to settle on the spot, we'll give you a certain amount of money," said Gael Murphy, a board member of Occupation Watch, which collected information on incidents involving Iraqi civilians. "Otherwise, your claim has to go to Washington."

The military does not pay claims for incidents deemed to be caused by "combat operations," which could include checkpoint shootings and other incidents involving innocent civilians.

The military originally told the family of Mazen Nouradin, a husband and father of two young daughters, that he was shot while riding in a car with people firing on coalition forces.

Nouradin, a 36-year-old pharmaceutical salesman and veterinarian who had worked as a translator for U.S. forces, was shot dead June 28, 2003, as he waited for a ride to work in front of his home in a middle-class section of Baghdad, according to the family and records filed by an American attorney.

His father said he came out of the house immediately after hearing gunshots and found his son's body on the sidewalk.

"I saw the American soldiers standing around him," he said. "I got sick and started to throw up."

Witnesses said Nouradin was shot after the occupants in two cars began firing at a convoy of U.S. soldiers, who returned fire.

In later correspondence, the military, which eventually paid the family $2,500, dropped the allegation that Nouradin was in a car with gunmen, saying only that he was "killed during an exchange of gunfire between Iraqi civilians and members of the coalition forces."

The military, however, still refused to pay additional damages, insisting the death was the result of "combat activities" and not subject to compensation.

In response to a man who claimed that his two brothers were killed and his parents injured on March 29, 2003, when coalition forces bombed the Al Tajiya area of Babel city, the military wrote: "Coalition forces dropped ordnance during Operation Iraqi Freedom on legitimate targets. Your family was in an area that was being legitimately targeted and therefore regrettably harmed."

'Cannot put a price on it'

Like thousands of other civil claims, the description provided for claim number 04I1AT189 gives no indication of the impact to the victims or to the U.S.-led coalition's effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

The only description of the incident leading to Claim 04I1AT189, which asks for $25,000, reads: "U.S. forces confiscated a knife and Iraqi government dump truck," a seemingly routine description of a routine claim — one of hundreds claiming property was seized or damaged.

The incident began with a noon raid on May 18, 2003, at the home of Najedh Abdel Sadeh al-Fatlawi, a 60-year-old retired hospital administrator and father of five sons and two daughters.

"They put the women in the front room," he recalled during an interview at his home, adding that they put plastic handcuffs on him and four of his sons.

The soldiers refused his offer for keys to other rooms and cabinets, he said, and instead broke interior doors and closets.

In one cabinet, he said, they found an antique Arab dagger more than 100 years old with a handle of dark gray "very precious stone." The dagger had belonged to al-Fatlawi's grandfather, who gave it to his father, who eventually gave it to al-Fatlawi, he said.

"When I was a child, it was always in our house," he said. "You cannot put a price on it."

A soldier put the dagger in a plastic bag and carried it away without providing a receipt, al-Fatlawi said. Along with the dagger, he said, soldiers seized two rifles and a licensed pistol, a government truck and about $172 in cash.

After the last of his four sons was released three weeks later, al-Fatawi said, he tried to file a complaint at the convention center in the heavily guarded Green Zone of Baghdad, which houses the headquarters for the American-led coalition. He said he was told to go to an Army base on the southern edge of the city, and later sent somewhere else.

"After one year, they had lost all my files," he said.

Losing files is not uncommon in Iraq. Records from an Aug. 21, 2003, claim involving an automobile accident that killed one man and severely injured six others says that a military officer conducted an investigation but that the officer "lost the investigation."

Iraqi attorney Mohammed al-Saadi said one base lost 60 claims files when offices were moved, and the Army asked all the families to resubmit the claims.

A July 1, 2004, letter al-Fatlawi has from Chief Warrant Officer Anton Streeter of the Foreign Claims Commission says, "Allow me to express my sympathy for the confiscation of your personal property."

The letter offered $1,000.

"I thought they would change people again and lose my file again, so I took the $1,000," said al-Fatlawi, adding he never saw the dagger again.

Two of his sons — one in high school and the other in college — failed their exams, in part because of the stress suffered from the raid and its aftermath, al-Fatlawi said, adding that he has suffered from hypertension since the raid. His son, who was responsible for watching the government-owned truck, might have to pay for it, he said.

"In the beginning, we thought they were liberators for the Iraqi people, and we were happy," al-Fatlawi said. "We thought there would be justice in Iraq after 35 years of injustice.

"Now there is no justice. Nothing has changed except for the faces."

Checkpoints: Clash of cultures

If there is a place that most exemplifies the problems plaguing the American-led occupation, it is the traffic-control checkpoints. Often little more than a group of Humvees in the middle of a road, checkpoints are used to secure an area or conduct spot searches of cars.

In 114 claims, the incident was described as happening at a checkpoint. The claims allege 39 shootings that left 12 dead and 28 injured.

Human rights groups say checkpoints are safer since early in the war, but problems persist.

Between Nov. 12, 2003, and Jan. 1, 2004, five people were shot at checkpoints in Mosul — three of them during an 11-day period. Another claim in Mosul, occurring during the same period, alleges someone was "shot in the leg while driving by U.S. forces."

Medina, the former assistant Army chaplain in Iraq, said many checkpoints were poorly marked and manned by soldiers who didn't understand the culture or have translators who could help them communicate with Iraqi citizens.

"Our soldiers would put their hands up as a sign to stop at the (checkpoints), but we didn't do our homework on how to deal with the Iraqi people," he said. "To them, putting your hand up was a gesture or greeting, so they would just keep approaching the soldiers in their cars.

"And a lot of soldiers would just open fire, and they killed a lot of innocent people. We just didn't do enough to study the culture of Iraqis."

Medina, whose twin brother was killed in Iraq last November, said soldiers sometimes were ordered to open fire on any vehicle that didn't stop.

"In one case, there was a father, mother and three children," said Medina, whose unit arrived shortly after the shooting. "They were shot many times. The car was full of blood. There was one kid alive. He was alive for a few hours before being pronounced dead in the hospital a few hours later.... It was horrible."

Kelly Dougherty and Elizabeth Wisdorf, two members of a Colorado National Guard unit, said soldiers manning checkpoints from their unit were ordered by commanders to take money and other property from Iraqis.

"We would take things from them; we would take money in the beginning, which made no sense to me because we just overthrew their government, and they didn't have banks to put their money in, so they would carry it with them," Wisdorf said. "Our chain of command told us to do that because they felt the Iraqis ... they were terrorists."

Wisdorf said units frequently had no translators to help soldiers explain to bewildered and sometimes angry drivers what was happening.

"We had no way of communicating with the Iraqis," Wisdorf said. "Guns pointed was as much communication as we had with these people."

Both former soldiers were medics who had a few months each of law-enforcement training years earlier, and they didn't learn they were going to serve as military police officers in Iraq until just before they left to go overseas.

"It was hard for me because I didn't have a military police background," Dougherty said.

Hassan Rahim, a customs judge for nearly 40 years in Iraq, was shot July 1, 2003, after driving under an overpass where U.S. troops were manning a checkpoint, according to witnesses, the family and documents prepared by their attorney.

"The cars were passing by, and suddenly the shooting started," said Mohammed Abbas, 43, who witnessed the shooting from a small bakery nearby. The judge was driving to a produce market with his son when they heard shots and began to slow down. As Rahim started to make a left turn, he was struck in the back and killed. Witnesses said the shots came from an American armored vehicle that was standing guard on a traffic circle that leads to the 14th of July Bridge into the Green Zone.

"The son got out of the car and started to yell," Abbas said. "His son was crying and shouting. He said, 'My father is shot.'"

The Army denied the family's claim for $86,775.

"I told them I don't want compensation," said the son, Maher Hassan Rahim, 35. "But (by making the claim) we were trying to tell them that the value of the blood of an Iraqi person is not so cheap."

'Climate of impunity'

Hundreds of claims allege improper conduct by military personnel, yet there is little evidence in a number of cases that the military conducted thorough investigations into the allegations.

Only hours after a June 18, 2003, shooting into a crowd of demonstrators that left two people dead in Baghdad, the military publicly exonerated the soldiers in a press release issued by the United States Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. The press release says that members of the 204th Military Police Company responded "in self-defense" to a demonstration that had occurred earlier that day.

The Army also denied a civil claim filed by the family of one of the dead demonstrators, Jafar Mola, saying the death was "a result of combat operations."

The Daily News' analysis of the database found 259 claims describing shootings that left at least 128 dead and 172 injured. The actual number of shooting incidents is undoubtedly several times higher because all claims were not entered into the database.

Coalition forces are only subject to the justice of their own countries. In the case of American soldiers, who are subject to the military's separate justice system, their own commanders often decide whether they have committed crimes.

Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, said that by September 2003, his group had found credible allegations in 94 death cases in Baghdad alone. Yet at that time, the Army acknowledged only five criminal investigations into the actions of soldiers in all of Iraq.

"We concluded that there was this climate of impunity where soldiers feel like they can pull the trigger, and without any sense that they could be held responsible for their actions, they're much more likely to resort more quickly to lethal force," Abrahams said.

The military has court-martialed personnel for acts in Iraq. One case in the database shows the Army paid a $50 claim to an Iraqi who was kidnapped and robbed by a sergeant and a private with the 19th Quartermaster Company of Fort Story, Va. Both soldiers were court-martialed and sentenced to jail.

Army officials wouldn't say how many investigations and courts-martial have been conducted, even though courts-martial generally are open to the public. Capt. Regen Wilson, a spokesman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, said since March 2003 that office has conducted nine investigations of possible criminal wrongdoing in all of southwest Asia, which includes Iraq. Six of those investigations are still open, he said.

Les Nott, whose son was killed in an incident that also left an Iraqi detainee dead and three other Iraqis wounded, said it was obvious to him that the military had no interest in conducting a thorough investigation.

"I believe that their motivation was to cover this up," said Nott, who retired from the Army after 23 years and now lives in Cheyenne, Wy.

On the night of July 30, 2003, 24-year-old 1st Lt. Leif E. Nott led a patrol to investigate shots fired near their military compound in Balad Ruz, according Army Sgt. Mickey Anderson and Army records of the incident. The shots turned out to be a few participants at a large wedding party firing in the air to celebrate, according to Anderson and the records.

Anderson said the 200 to 300 Iraqis at the party welcomed the soldiers, offering them cake and juice. As a precaution, the soldiers put plastic handcuffs on the groom, the best man and the father of one of the men, and confiscated an assault rifle.

None of the three men was considered dangerous, Anderson said, and they likely would have been released after a routine questioning.

"We just wanted to let them know you can't do that any more," he said.

The soldiers were loading the detainees in a Bradley Fighting Vehicles when a commander radioed to order the armored vehicles to go somewhere else, leaving the soldiers to escort the detainees on foot and without a radio to communicate with the compound, Anderson said.

According to Anderson and Army records, as the patrol walked under streetlights about 200 yards from the compound, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle position near the entrance opened fire, triggering more fire from other soldiers in the compound.

"The next thing I knew I was on the ground, and my leg was blown to pieces," Anderson said. "Other people were screaming and moaning."

Anderson, Nott, an Army medic, the patrol's Iraqi translator and the three Iraqi detainees were all hit by gunfire.

The Bradleys that opened fired drove to where Anderson lay, he said, and as he crawled up on one of them to stop the shooting, he was shot three more times at close range by an American soldier who apparently stuck his 9mm pistol out of the armored vehicle without looking at who was there.

Nott and one of the detainees, identified in claims records as Abu Hassan, later died. Hassan's widow, who was left with nine children to support, received $2,500 for her civil claim, according to the records, which clearly identify the incident as "friendly fire" and "not in response to enemy activity."

"Give her the money. Please. She's very patient — been given the run around for eight months," says a hand-written note from a military captain included in the Army records.

The Army told a different story to Nott's family and to the public.

After his death, Nott was promoted to captain and awarded a Bronze Star, and the citation for the medal says he "responded to a unprovoked attack on his troop headquarters." That same account was repeated in a newspaper story.

Les Nott said the family didn't learn the truth until a member of his son's unit spoke to them at the funeral. Later, he said, he, his wife and his son's widow traveled to Fort Hood, Texas, to personally talk to members of the unit to find out what happened — a trip he paid for himself.

"I shouldn't have to travel from Wyoming to Texas to find out how my kid died," Nott said.

While at Fort Hood, Nott said, he obtained a lengthy report on the investigation into the incident. Anderson said he wasn't asked to give an official statement until 14 months later, after a journalist in Washington, D.C., began asking questions.

"The report was a joke," Nott said. "Nobody wanted this to happen, but it did happen. And after they had to deal with it, there was one driving factor and one driving factor only: to make sure that nobody gets blamed."

A one-paragraph press release provided last week by Fort Hood officials says one soldier was killed and two wounded "during an attack." Fort Hood spokesman Maj. Matt Garner said he was very familiar with the shooting, but when asked for more information, he said, "I'm not going to give you a statement. No."

Garner referred questions to Army headquarters. The Daily News contacted three different officials at Army headquarters at the Pentagon and left messages for a fourth official. None would discuss the case, but one faxed a press release that alleges that Lt. Nott "died of wounds received from hostile fire."

Both Nott and Anderson agreed that the shooting of the detainees could be part of the reason the Army is trying to cover up what happened.

"They told us hostile fire, and they'll still tell you that if you ask them," Nott said, adding that someone should be held accountable for what happened.

"This isn't the Army I was a part of for 23 years."

Fueling hatred

For many Iraqis, the hundreds of incidents described in the claims and others never recorded in the database have turned them against the American-led occupation.

Military personnel, attorneys, human rights experts and Iraqis believe the incidents are fueling the growing insurgency. And, they said, as intensity of the insurgency increases, soldiers become even more apprehensive, creating an atmosphere for more allegations of abuse and misconduct.

"If I could give you the clue for which reason the Americans lost this war —because for me the war is lost — it's because of the behavior of the soldiers," said Marc Henzelin, a Swiss attorney who has worked with the Red Cross and is one of four attorneys identified on the database as having filed claims in Iraq.

Like many Iraqis, Wafa Abdel Latif al-Mukhtar and her family thought things would get better when the Americans came. Children like her 12-year-old son, Mohammed Subhi al-Qubaisi, idolized the American soldiers.

"In the beginning, the children saw the Americans and their weapons and gear and binoculars and wanted to follow them and look at them," the 45-year-old woman recalled during an interview in her home.

On a warm night in June 2003, the family's opinions about the Americans changed.

On that night, her son Mohammad decided to sleep on the roof of his home with his twin brother, something many Iraqis do to escape the hot summer nights. Al-Mukhtar said she and her family were unaware that soldiers were searching a house across a vacant lot about 70 yards away.

One of the soldiers, according to the family, spotted the 12-year-old on the roof and fired, hitting him in the chest.

"I was downstairs in my room when I heard the sounds of bullets," his mother recalled during an interview in her home. "Then I heard the boys yelling."

A neighbor, she said, helped carry her wounded son downstairs.

"The kitchen was full of blood," she recalled.

Minutes later, soldiers broke down the door of her kitchen and pointed guns at the people who had gathered in the room with her bleeding son.

"I tried to explain to them why this boy was bleeding and he (a soldier) kicked me and said, `Shut up, don't say anything,' " she said.

The soldiers searched the house and found an assault rifle, a type of weapon many Iraqis keep in their homes, and they refused to allow neighbors to take the boy to the hospital, citing the 11 p.m. curfew, the mother said. Later, a doctor from the neighborhood came and pronounced the boy dead, she said.

Two weeks after Mohammad was killed, two others were killed by American soldiers while sleeping on a rooftop in Baghdad, according to a $2 million claim filed by a brother of one of the alleged victims.

"Everyone thought the whole situation would be better, but it seems it's the opposite," Al-Mukhtar said, adding that the opinion of Mohammad's twin bother, Mustafa, also changed about the American soldiers. "Now, Mustafa said that when he sees them he wants to be the first to kill them," she said. "The Americans think the Iraqis are not human."

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