Veterans for Common Sense

March 7, 2008 – The Pentagon is slated to release a suspected toxicant in Crystal City, Virginia this week, ostensibly to test air sensors.

The operation is just the latest example of the Defense Department´s long history of using service members and civilians as human test subjects, often without their consent or awareness.

Gas chambers in Maryland

Wray C. Forrest learned about the US military´s human-testing program the hard way. In 1973, the Army sent then 23-year-old Forrest to its Edgewood Arsenal chemical-research center in Maryland, promising patriotic service and a four-day work week.

Instead, he became one of roughly 6,720 soldiers used as Edgewood Arsenal test subjects between 1950-1975.

Forrest was given a new identity at Edgewood: Research Subject #6692. He says, “That was the number assigned to me … similar to the numbers assigned to the Jews in the concentration/death camps in Germany during WWII.”

The US military tested heart drugs on Forrest, which he says were administered by IV and various types of injections. Forrest was also exposed to “contaminated drinking water, food, and various ground contaminates that permeate Edgewood Arsenal. BZ [a chemical incapacitating agent], napalm, mustard agents, and any number of other contaminates in the ground and drinking water there, from previous testing done there by the military.”

A total of 254 different chemicals were researched on soldiers at Edgewood, and Forrest notes, “We were never informed as to exactly what we were being given. We also did not sign any informed consent prior to the testing. This was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention rules for the use of humans in chemical and drug experiments/research.”

The Edgewood Arsenal facility played a role in WWII human subject testing as well. Roughly 4,000 US soldiers were used as human guinea pigs in chemical research which often took place in gas chambers.

US Navy member Nat Schnurman, for example, was sent to an Edgewood gas chamber six times one week in 1942. As The Detroit Free Press reported: “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.”

A pattern of abuse and neglect

If the sagas of Forrest and Schnurman were isolated, they would represent a disgraceful yet closed chapter of US military history. Unfortunately, the Pentagon´s human-testing program has extended far beyond Edgewood Arsenal.

Human Experimentation , a 1994 report from the congressional General Accounting Office (GAO), lays out the Defense Department´s sordid history in detail.

Between 1949 and 1969, for example, the Army sprayed bacterial tracers or simulants on unsuspecting populations in hundreds of biological warfare tests. According to the GAO: “Some of the tests involved spraying large areas, such as the cities of St. Louis and San Francisco, and others involved spraying more focused areas, such as the New York City subway system and Washington National Airport.”

No coherent attempt was made to warn those affected or to offer follow-up medical care.

Between 1952-1975, the CIA tested LSD and other psychochemical agents on “an undetermined number of people without their knowledge or consent.”

No coherent attempt was made to offer follow-up information or care.

Over 235 atmospheric nuclear tests and experiments were conducted on roughly 210,000 personnel affiliated to the US Defense Department from 1945-1962. A further 199,000 “were exposed to radiation through work.”

No coherent attempt was made to warn those affected or to offer follow-up medical care.

One of the best known examples of US military human-testing is Project 112, whereby the Pentagon used biological/chemical agents on 5,842 service members in secret trials conducted over a ten-year period (1962-73).

Project 112, and the affiliated Project SHAD, tested everything from Sarin nerve agent to an E. coli simulant aboard Navy ships and in land trials. Tests were conducted in six states (Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Utah) Canada and Britain and often without the consent or awareness of those exposed.

Only in 2003, after crucial documents slowly became declassified, did the veterans´ health complaints start to be acknowledged. By then, over 750 Project 112 veterans were already dead.

The Veterans´ Administration still had not notified more than 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of those used in Project 112/SHAD human testing by 2004. The Defense Department was blamed for foot-dragging in identifying the potentially affected service members and civilians.

The battle to receive care

Wray Forrest knows firsthand about fighting official neglect and denial over human-testing. When his health started to deteriorate, Forrest was forbidden to get medical support: “We could not tell what we were exposed to due to the classification of the project, nor could we seek medical help due to the alleged non-disclosure papers we signed.”

Forrest was discharged from the military in 1982 for health reasons (deemed “unsuitable for service”). He was still unable to talk to anyone about Edgewood Arsenal, so kept his “agreed silence, and took what the military dished out calling me, UNSUITABLE.”

In July 2006, the Veterans´ Administration (VA) released a document on health care eligibility listing Edgewood Arsenal survivors as a Category 6 disability rating, which meant that affected veterans would be eligible for clinical evaluation and “necessary treatment of conditions related to exposure without copays.” But when Forrest called the VA to seek help, he was told that the publication was an error and in fact Edgewood Arsenal veterans have no VA health care eligibility.

“How sweet, they have killed us, buried us, and now they want us to go away,” he concluded.

Forrest is not the only veteran subjected to human-testing who has fought to receive care. Even in well-documented and recent cases, compensation is elusive.

In December 2007, for example, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the widows of five veterans who died after being enrolled in fraudulent drug studies at the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany, NY.

Stratton had been plagued by allegations of research violations from the early 1990s. Then in 1999, the facility hired Paul Kornak to be its Research Coordinator, despite the fact that Kornak had forged his credentials, falsified his college transcript and been arrested in Pennsylvania years earlier for related fraud. Apparently, background checks for health professionals were minimal at Stratton VA Medical Center.

From 1999-2003, Kornak falsified veterans´ medical records at Stratton, inappropriately enrolling them in studies for drug marketability. In 2001, for example, Stratton tested a powerful three-drug chemotherapy combination on Carl M. Steubing, a 78-year-old Battle of the Bulge veteran, despite his previous bout with cancer and poor kidney function.

Steubing died in early 2002. His widow still wonders if the fraudulent human-test studies at Stratton cost her husband his life.

In court, the five widows´ lawyer argued that Stratton “committed every kind of research ethics violation imaginable,” adding “when you use individuals, humans, as guinea pigs, you do them harm.”

The US government responded by saying there was no way to prove the veterans had experienced pain or died early as a result of the corrupt drug experiments.

Case closed.

Open-air testing

If veterans with solid proof of having been used as test subjects cannot receive compensation, the possibilities are miniscule for service members and civilians used in trials without their consent or awareness.

Open-air testing of chemical and biological (CB) agents is one such case.

After 6,000 sheep died following the apparent release of a nerve agent at an Army facility in Utah in 1969, open-air testing was officially said to have ended in the US.

But the Defense Department´s April 2007 report to Congress on “Chemical and Biological Defense” strongly suggests an imminent resumption.

According to Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, at least three passages of the Pentagon´s 2007 report indicate a planned continuance of open-air testing.

While one section of the document, for example, mentions the use of “live-CB-agent full system test chambers,” another passage (page 67) reads:

“More than thirty years have passed since outdoor live agent chemical tests were banned in the United States, and the last outdoor test with live chemical agent was performed, so much of the infrastructure for the field testing of chemical detectors no longer exists or is seriously outdated. The currently budgeted improvements in the T&E infrastructure will greatly enhance both the developmental and operational field testing of full systems, with better simulated representation of threats and characterization of system response.”

As Dr. Boyle notes, both “test chambers” and “field testing” are mentioned in the report.

In addition, the passage says that improvements in the T&E (testing and evaluation) infrastructure and “better simulated representation of threats” are going to be carried out using “full systems” rather than simulants.

Dr. Boyle says, “It is clear they will be engaging in ´Field Trials´ (not in test chambers) of ´full systems,´ which means ´live CB agents,´ not simulants.”

Another troublesome passage from the Defense Department´s April 2007 report (page 65) is:

“Current T&E shortfalls lie in the full systems and platform test chambers and supporting instrumentation and fixtures. These test fixtures must be able to introduce and adequately control live CB agent challenges and provide a range of environmental and challenge conditions to simulate evolving threats, while performing end-to-end systems operations of CBD equipment.”

Dr. Boyle points out that the passage says “full systems” rather than “simulants,” and it makes a distinction between “test fixtures” and “test chambers.” He adds that talking about “´a range of environmental and challenge conditions´ in a test chamber” is nonsensical. “A test chamber does not have a ´range of environmental and challenge conditions.´”

“What they are talking about here,” Dr. Boyle concludes, “is testing live CB (chemical and biological) agents in Field Tests – open-air testing, where there will be a ´range of environmental and challenge conditions´ to confront, test and verify.”

Gassing Crystal City

In May 2007, just one month after the Defense Department´s controversial report to Congress, the Pentagon quietly announced it would release “a dust simulating a biological attack in the Pentagon South Parking Lot.” The stated purpose was to study “the subsequent clean-up of roadways, people and equipment after the release.”

The announcement cryptically described the “dust” as containing “a harmless inert bacterium found in soil, water and air.”

Kirt P. Love, Director of the Desert Storm Battle Registry (DSBR), a Gulf War veterans´ group dealing with the exposures of the 1991 conflict, repeatedly phoned the Pentagon to clarify exactly what “dust” would be used in the imminent open-air test.

He soon found, however, that “the departments involved were not communicating with each other … only the people who handled the agent knew anything.”

Love described the situation as “disquieting” and said, “I thought this was very unfair to the Pentagon Police and other innocent bystanders who didn’t need to be kept in the dark about this. How could they conduct an open air test of a microbe and not tell people what it was up front?”

Eventually, Love´s phone calls paid off. A Pentagon representative told him the substance to be tested was Bacillus Subtilis, which intriguingly, was also used during the US military´s Project SHAD human testing in the 1960s-70s.

The Pentagon´s announcement was correct in saying that Bacillus Subtilis is found in soil. It failed to mention, however, that the bacterium has been linked to pulmonary disease and irreversible lung damage.

The Defense Department quietly carried out its Bacillus Subtilis release in early June 2007. A Pentagon spokesperson would not confirm if the roughly 50 test subjects and numerous bystanders had been informed about the possible health risks.

And the open air tests continue.

In the next few days, the Pentagon is slated to release perfluorocarbon tracers and sulfur hexafluoride in Crystal City, Virginia.

Dubbed “Urban Shield: Crystal City Urban Transport Study,” the operation will test the effectiveness of the city´s chemical sensors, and according to The Examiner newspaper, “the data will help the Pentagon and Arlington shape their lockdown policies for chemical and biological attacks or accidents.” Lockdown policies.

According to a Pentagon press release from late February 2008, the study “will involve releasing a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and inert tracer gas that poses no health or safety hazards to people or the environment.”

But it´s not quite that simple. Sulfur hexafluoride is a suspected respiratory toxicant ; as such, exposure in certain amounts may be harmful for those with asthma, emphysema and other respiratory issues. It also is a suspected neurotoxicant, with potential untold consequences for the nervous systems of those vulnerable.

That part is left out of the Pentagon´s press release.

Crystal City is one of the “urban villages” of Arlington County, Virginia. It features upscale offices and residential areas – in other words a lot of civilians. You would think that if the Pentagon is releasing suspected toxicants into such a compressed urban area there would be more warning about potential health risks.

Yet repeated phone calls to the Pentagon yesterday yielded no results. The Force Protection Agency seemed unaware of the upcoming test and the press office was of no help either. No one could – or would – answer basic questions such as how many people could be exposed in the open-air test, if any attempt had been made to brief citizens on potential health risks or if there would be any medical follow-up provided.

Perfectly legal

The Pentagon´s laissez faire approach to these open-air tests raises questions about the possibilities for further testing on the general US population.

There is a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the United States Code (the aggregation of US general and permanent laws). Specifically, Section 1520a lists the following cases in which the Secretary of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on humans if informed consent has been obtained:

(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.

(2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against toxic chemicals or biological weapons and agents.

(3) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related to riot control.

In other words, there are many circumstances under which the Secretary of Defense can test chemical or biological agents on human beings, but at least informed consent has to be obtained in advance.

Or does it. Section 1515, another part of Chapter 32, is entitled “Suspension; Presidential authorization” and says:

After November 19, 1969, the operation of this chapter, or any portion thereof, may be suspended by the President during the period of any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.

Essentially, if the President or Congress decides that we are at war then the Secretary of Defense does not need anybody´s consent to test chemical or biological agents on human beings. Gives one pause during these days of a perpetual “war on terror.”

Ominously, in June 2007, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell gained White House approval to update a 1981 presidential order on how US spy agencies operate. Potentially up for review in the highly secretive overhaul, referred to as Order 12333, is the topic of human experimentation.

A surge in US WMD spending

The Bush administration has quietly channeled tens of billions of dollars into chemical and biological weapons. Bush´s 2007 budget, for example, earmarked almost $2 billion for biodefense research and development via the National Institutes of Health alone.

Research aims are often dubious. In October 2005, for example, US scientists resurrected the 1918 Spanish flu, a virus which had killed almost 50 million people. And a virologist in St. Louis has been working on a more lethal form of mousepox (related to smallpox) just to try stopping the virus once it has been created.

Since the R&D is top secret and oversight limited, the public is rarely aware of escalating dangers. As of August 2007, for example, biological weapons laboratories across the country had reported 36 lost shipments and accidents for that year, almost double the number for all of 2004.

In addition to challenging international non-proliferation agreements and risking a global arms race, the Bush administration´s surge in chemical and biological weapons spending raises questions over what deadly weapons may have been tested on populations abroad. And what may be tested domestically, with or without the public´s consent.

For Wray Forrest, the battle for government accountability continues: “On September 29, 2006, Congress passed a bill that will inform veterans exactly what they were exposed to, within the next two or three years. I can just see it now: They visit my grave site and post it on my tomb stone, in order to inform me of what I was exposed to and just what exposure caused me to die.”

March 7, 2008 – As the war in Iraq slides into its sixth year a few days from now, a cottage industry has grown up to determine how much the conflict has actually cost.

Last week, Senate Democrats carried out a feckless debate over still another bill to bring the troops home. This time, they said the nation’s troubled economy left Bush no choice but to stop spending billions in Iraq. The proposal died quickly under the threat of another veto.

This week, two economists, from Harvard and Columbia, are publishing a book titled “The Three-Trillion Dollar War.” That is near the upper end of the estimates of the war’s cost. The Congressional Budget Office says that number is bloated.

At the low end of the scale, the Department of Defense says it has spent $396 billion as of November 2007. Last month, the Congressional Research Service noted that the Pentagon hadn’t counted more than $200 billion in approved but unspent funds, or money spent by other agencies.

How much has the Bush administration spent on the war? What will it cost in total if the next president begins bringing the troops home shortly after taking office next year? It all depends on what you count. The two authors blame the war, in part, for the rise in oil prices and add that to the cost. Some analysts add the lost dollars that might have flowed into the economy, had all of that money been spent in the United States. (In truth, much of the money spent for equipment is spent in the United States.)

Without larding on rank speculation, here are numbers that seem undebatable. Nonpartisan congressional analysts estimate that Iraq war’s direct cost will reach $1.2 trillion if the next president begins rapidly withdrawing troops, leaving only 30,000 in Iraq two years from now. Here’s what needs to be added:

Almost every dollar spent on the war is borrowed. The Congressional Budget office says, under the quick withdrawal scenario, interest payments through 2017 will total $590 billion.

“Resetting” the military — replacing worn and damaged equipment and rebuilding the force — is an unavoidable expense. Last year, the Pentagon asked for $46 billion in “reset” funds. Most analysts believe the costs will reach at least $100 billion more.

Finally comes the cost of veterans’ health care in the months and years ahead. So far at least 60,000 Iraq war veterans have been wounded or received mental health care. Each totally disabled veteran is eligible to receive $1.4 million in lifetime disability payments if he lives an additional 50 years. Estimates of the total cost range from $200 billion to $650 billion, a number put out by a group of physicians a few weeks ago. Let’s go with the low number.

With all of that, the Iraq war will cost at least $2.1 trillion — and probably much more.

Billion, trillion … zillion. At these levels, a fictitious number seems to hold almost as much meaning as a real one. So writers and analysts try to make sense of the sums by showing what all that money could buy. One blogger noted that “you could buy 480 million Ferrari 612s,” at $268,000 a copy. That was a year ago, when the war-cost estimates costs totaled only about $1.2 trillion.

The two authors, Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia and Linda Bilmes of Harvard, note that, for less than the cost of the war, the nation could balance the Social Security system for at least 75 years.

Here’s another way to spend $2.1 trillion over 10 years: Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax. Provide preschool for every child in the United States. Give every schoolteacher in the nation a $20,000 raise. Double the research budgets for cancer, heart disease and stroke.

In the end, however, all of this number gaming is meaningless. To fight the war, Bush has not taken money intended for other purposes. He is spending money the nation doesn’t have. Almost every dollar spent on the war is another dollar added to the national debt.

Some in the Bush administration argue that war spending stimulates the economy, giving some balance to the equation. But if that were so, why did administration find it necessary to enact a $168 billion stimulus plan a few weeks ago — even as it spends $15 billion a month on the war?

As Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s former chief economic adviser, puts it: “Taking resources that could be used to build homes, manufacture appliances, or invent and develop new technologies and using them instead to make things that get blown up is not good for an economy.”

March 7, 2008 – Secretary of the Army Pete Geren will be asked today to convene a panel of officers to investigate “Army policies and practices which permit the deployment of medically unfit soldiers.”

Spec. Bryan Currie, 21, of Charleston, S.C., will ask Geren to convene a Court of Inquiry — a rarely used administrative fact-finding process — to investigate top generals at Fort Carson; Fort Drum, N.Y.; and Fort Hood, Texas.

A Court of Inquiry is composed of at least three high-ranking military officers and can subpoena civilians. Geren can refuse the request.

“It’s very important for the Army and very important for my clients. This is an investigation that is long overdue,” said Louis Font, a Boston attorney who represents Currie and Spec. Alex Lotero, 21, a Fort Carson soldier from Miami.

The request says the Court of Inquiry should “investigate the extent to which the (generals) have been derelict in failing to provide for the health and welfare of wounded soldiers.”

Font and Citizen Soldier, a veterans advocacy group, plan a news conference today in Watertown, N.Y. Copies of the request will be provided to the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, Font said.

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, commander of Fort Carson since September 2007, said: “We have caring and competent commanders who make these decisions every day. I’m confident in our Soldier Readiness Processing site here at Fort Carson.”

“Not full-mission capable”

The request for the Court of Inquiry says the panel should be assembled on behalf of Currie and four Fort Carson soldiers. They include:

• Lotero, a soldier diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder “who was subjected to ridicule and threats for seeking medical attention.”

He said his commanders took his medications away from him, saying it was for his own safety.

• Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, who had a severe foot injury and was deployed to Kuwait. A physician in Kuwait urged in an e-mail to the brigade surgeon that Nelson be sent back to the United States: “This soldier should NOT have even left CONUS (the U.S.). . . . In his current state, he is not full-mission capable, and in his current condition is a risk to further injury to himself, others and his unit.”

• An unnamed Fort Carson soldier who was deployed from Cedar Springs psychiatric hospital in Colorado Springs before he could finish a 28-day treatment program for alcoholism. An Army e-mail, dated Dec. 14, 2007, shows the soldier was taking psychiatric medications, pending a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, “but that information was not passed on” before he was discharged.

• Staff Sgt. Chad Barrett, 35, a Fort Carson soldier from Saltville, Va., who died in Iraq on Feb. 2. The Army is investigating the cause of his death.

“He allegedly was found not deployable by military medical personnel, but he was deployed anyway and reportedly committed suicide in Iraq in February 2008,” the request says.

Barrett’s wife, Shelby, who lives in Fountain, said Thursday that she does not believe her husband killed himself. She said she believes he died of a heart-related ailment, a condition that runs in his family.

Before he was deployed on Christmas Day 2007, Chad Barrett was undergoing a medical evaluation board for issues related to post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from two previous tours, his wife said. He had a permanent profile — meaning he did not meet retention standards — but he asked Fort Carson to halt the medical board process so he could deploy, she said.

After an evaluation by a psychiatrist, he was sent to Iraq on the condition that he work in a light-duty job. He worked as a radio operator, she said, but was taking Klonopin for anxiety, Pamelor for severe migraines, and Lunesta and Ambien to help him sleep.

Barrett said she believes her husband was under stress because five soldiers in his unit were killed days earlier and that he worried about her being alone as well as his extended family. All of that, she said, could have brought on heart failure.

“I don’t want someone using my husband’s name as a way of furthering their cause,” Barrett said. “If that is what’s necessary, I will personally do that myself.”

Soldier will turn himself in

Currie said he served with the 10th Mountain Division for 10 months in Afghanistan. He was driving a vehicle that was blown up by a roadside bomb and suffered combat-related injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

He returned with his unit to Fort Polk, La., but he said his commanders harassed him for being injured.

“I suffer from physical injuries incurred in combat. Military medical personnel found that I am not deployable. My commanders, however, disregarded the medical findings,” Currie says in the request. “Also, I sought medical attention for PTSD but was rebuffed.”

Currie left Fort Polk, La., and is considered to be AWOL from the Army. He plans to turn himself in today at Fort Drum, where the general who commands the 10th Mountain Division is stationed.

Lotero had received a 30 percent disability rating at Fort Carson for PTSD and traumatic brain injury. In June, three weeks before he was to leave the Army with a medical retirement, he deserted because he said harsh treatment from commanders made him feel as if he would harm himself or others.

He was apprehended in Florida on Feb. 1 and spent 29 days in jail. He’s now back at Fort Carson in a Warrior Transition Unit. He will undergo a new medical board process after his legal issues are settled.

March 6, 2008 – A certain reverence is required just to approach the book’s title: “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” by noted economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. I can see why they understated it.
The pulse of outrage beats behind the cold calculations in this concise volume, newly published by Norton. We’re not just “losing” this tragic, arrogantly unplanned war in the conventional sense of failing to subdue our enemies — we’re committing slow socioeconomic suicide with its open-ended pursuit, losing, as we plunge recklessly into debt over it, our options, our ability to choose. We’re losing the future.
“Because of the war, the national deficit is $2 trillion higher,” Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, told me. “At 5 percent interest, that’s $100 billion a year, year after year after year — forever!”
Such numbers are beyond the scope of the human imagination. To begin putting the war into financial perspective, Stiglitz suggested that we need a new unit of account: “Think of what things would cost in terms of hours, days, weeks of fighting.”
For instance, he said, “Three years ago we had a financial crisis with the Social Security system. For one-sixth of an Iraq war, you could have fixed Social Security for the next 50 to 75 years.”
Or how about health insurance for children? Remember when President Bush vetoed a bill to expand it? “We’re talking about days of fighting in Iraq,” Stiglitz said.
Or, hmm, what about the fact that suddenly one of every 150 children is being diagnosed with autism? The cost of serious research on this issue? “Four hours of an Iraq war!”
(Note: The American Friends Service Committee has a Web page devoted to the Iraq war as a unit of account, at afsc.org/cost/banners.htm.)
Before we begin a serious waltz with the current war numbers that Stiglitz and Bilmes force us to confront in their book, let’s ponder some far easier stats. Remember Gulf War I? We drove Saddam out of Kuwait, racking up huge kills in the process and sustaining a mere 148 of our own dead and another 467 injured. Combat operations lasted a month. What’s more, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait paid for most of it — it was practically a free war.
Except, as Stiglitz and Bilmes point out, in the aftermath of this quickie, yellow-ribbon-festooned war, vets started getting sick — started dying — of mysterious maladies that came to be called Gulf War Syndrome. Some 17 years later, “the United States still spends over $4.3 billion each year paying compensation, pension and disability benefits to more than 200,000 veterans of the Gulf War,” they write. “We have already spent over $50 billion in Gulf War I disability benefits.”
Almost two decades later, our tax dollars are still disappearing down the gaping maw of this monthlong war. Now, consider that the current Iraq war is five years old this month and counting (John McCain is ready to go at it for another hundred), and we’ve been in Afghanistan so far for six and a half years. The secret and terrible costs of these wars are growing, growing, growing; and they are exponentially greater than the still enormously expensive, and forgotten, Gulf War I.
Just the cost of care for physically and emotionally injured vets for these two protracted wars — in which our GIs are being forced to return for two, three and even more tours of duty — will run, the authors estimate, to more than $700 billion. And, they note, the care the government refuses to pay for doesn’t simply disappear as a cost. It falls on the families themselves. Someone pays it, so it’s part of the total.
Stiglitz and Bilmes do more than ferret out the operational, medical and other war costs hidden in various parts of the national budget. When they also factor in reasonable estimates of the macroeconomic costs (including interest on our staggering debt, the war-triggered increases in the price of oil), they are forced to add another $2 trillion to the cost of the war.
When they press on with their analysis and begin calculating the global costs as well — including such arcane and disconcerting calculations as the value of an Iraqi life figured, in terms of lost income generation, at 7 percent of an American life — suddenly there’s another $6 trillion. Add it up, if you dare, and you wind up in the neighborhood of $11 trillion. Helluva neighborhood.
But there’s more to the book than numbers. The authors are clearly aware that to a certain extent they are calculating the incalculable: the value of our lost national credibility (“We have become toxic”); the value of human life; the value of shattered hopes. For instance, “The majority of Iraqi children are not attending school,” they note at one point.
The authors move on, but this is where I’ll stop. If we truly face up to what we’ve done, we’ll never go to war again.

March 6, 2008 – There was a time, back in the 1950s, when they were in the Navy together, that Tony Flaherty and Wacko Hurley were the best of friends.

When they got back to South Boston, the place where they were born and where they remain, they drank together at the old Chiefs club, a sailors’ hangout on Summer Street.

When Flaherty got married at St. Augustine’s, Hurley stood at the altar with him, his best man. When Flaherty’s first child was born, Hurley was godfather.

But something happened. Wacko Hurley went back to civilian life. Tony Flaherty, a career Navy man, went off to war, this time in Vietnam, and he came back a changed man. One day, he was walking down a dirt road, as a gaggle of Vietnamese kids straggled by, fleeing a village destroyed by American fire.

“One of the kids, a boy, had lost a leg,” Tony Flaherty was saying, sitting in his apartment on East Broadway. “I had an epiphany that day.”

Flaherty, a military man his entire adult life, had become suddenly, implacably opposed to war. Not long after, they airlifted him out of Nam. He left the Navy with the rank of lieutenant and something called post traumatic stress disorder. “I went cuckoo,” he said.

He came back to Southie and tried to pick up the pieces. But he kept picking up a bottle. Eventually he got sober and with a clear head became even more opposed to war, more convinced of its folly, furious over the fact that the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful mostly stayed home while others fight the wars started by the rich and powerful. He worked for a program that got veterans housing and help for substance-abuse problems.

He joined a national organization called Veterans for Peace and, closer to home, a group called South Boston Residents for Peace. Five years ago, as US forces prepared to invade Iraq, Flaherty and his friends asked to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Southie. He found himself seeking the permission of his old pal Wacko Hurley, the longtime parade organizer.

Wacko told them to get lost.

“He called us commies,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty’s group again asked for permission to march in next week’s parade. Not long ago, Wacko Hurley walked into a community meeting and handed them a one-sentence letter saying their application had been denied. There was no reason given.

Hurley told me the reason was obvious.

“This year’s parade is dedicated to supporting the troops in Iraq,” Hurley said. Having Flaherty’s crew in the parade, Wacko maintains, would be provocative and disrespectful.

“That’s baloney,” Tony Flaherty said. “These guys can’t tolerate dissent. This isn’t about supporting the troops. This is about glorifying war. A lot of the guys who do the most talking, they didn’t see much action. They say they support the troops. We support the troops, too. We want to bring them home and help them when they come home.”

There is a blue bumper sticker on Tony Flaherty’s door. There can’t be many of them in Southie. It says, “Out of Iraq now.” His neighbor’s door is festooned with St. Patrick’s Day decorations.

Flaherty’s living room wall is lined with Navy memorabilia. There is a commendation for valor he received in Vietnam. “It meant something once,” he said, almost to himself, touching the frame.

Flaherty’s second-floor window offers a commanding view of the parade route. But he won’t be watching.

“Peace is a dirty word,” Tony Flaherty said, looking out the window. “This has split the country right down the middle. It’s brother against brother.”

Wacko Hurley said he still says hi to Flaherty when he sees him. “He was my friend,” Hurley said. “He still is.”

But it’s different now. Hurley calls him Anthony. And Flaherty calls him John.

Wacko and Tony are no more, their friendship a casualty of war, a war that stretches from Baghdad all the way down Broadway in South Boston.

March 6, 2008 – The lead plaintiff in a warrantless wiretapping lawsuit against AT&T is talking publicly about the case. Congress may grant AT&T and other firms retroactive legal immunity. That could end a flurry of lawsuits opposing the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping program.

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March 6, 2008 – FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators yesterday that agents improperly used a type of administrative subpoena to obtain personal data about Americans until internal reforms were enacted last year.

Mueller said a forthcoming report from the Justice Department’s inspector general will find that abuses recurred in the agency’s use of national security letters in 2006, echoing similar problems to those identified in earlier audits.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported a year ago that the FBI used such letters — which are not subject to a court’s review — to improperly obtain telephone logs, banking records and other personal records of thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005. An internal FBI audit also found that the bureau potentially violated laws or agency rules more than 1,000 times in such cases.

Mueller testified that a follow-up report from Fine’s office, due to be released this month, will “identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March.” But Mueller emphasized that the time frame in the report “predates the reforms we now have in place” to avoid further abuses.

“We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people,” Mueller said.

At yesterday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) condemned the FBI’s “widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters,” and urged Mueller to be more attentive to the problem.

“Everybody wants to stop terrorists,” Leahy said. “But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected.”

A year ago, lawmakers of both parties called for limits on the FBI’s use of the security letters, which demand consumer information from banks, credit card companies and other institutions without a warrant as part of investigations into suspected terrorism and espionage. Congress has not followed through with legislation, however, and Mueller sought to assure lawmakers that internal changes will solve the problems. He said new FBI procedures will “minimize the chance of future lapses,” including the creation of a compliance office tasked with monitoring the use of security letters.

But Michael German, a former FBI agent who is national security policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that “it’s becoming more and more obvious that outside oversight is essential since the Bureau’s learning curve is sadly unimpressive.”

“Instituting judicial oversight would guarantee that someone would be looking over the shoulder of agents using a tool as invasive as an NSL,” German said. The ACLU and other civil liberties groups say the government’s use of security letters should be significantly narrowed or brought under court supervision.

Under questioning from Leahy about the Bush administration’s controversial use of harsh techniques for interrogating suspected terrorists, Mueller defended the FBI’s practice of using “noncoercive” techniques on criminal and terrorism suspects, saying they are “effective and sufficient and appropriate.”

Mueller said the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit has found that building trust with prisoners is “particularly effective.” He pointed to the FBI’s interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which yielded crucial details about the former Iraqi government’s actions and motivations.

“Our techniques and the experts that we have . . . believe that our techniques are effective, and are sufficient and appropriate to our mission,” Mueller said. “And those techniques are founded on a desire to develop a rapport and a relationship.”

President Bush is expected to veto a bill this week that would bar the CIA from using harsh techniques, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning.

March 6, 2008 – Fort Carson, CO — A month-long investigation by Fort Carson’s inspector general has found that screening processes for soldiers returning to war are sound, according to Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, commanding general at Fort Carson.

The investigation found that a lag in paperwork prompted Fort Carson in January to report that 79 soldiers who were deemed medical “no-gos” at a screening site were deployed, though the actual number was much lower.

The inspector general’s report focused on the base’s Soldier Readiness Processing (SRP) site and did not address decisions by commanders to send injured troops, called “borderline” by a brigade surgeon, into war zones.

“The process of the SRP works fine, and the commander is the one who makes the decision on whether the soldier deploys or not,” Graham said. “I’m convinced that the process is good.”

Graham said Wednesday that the actual number of soldiers who had medical “no-gos” at the SRP site is 36; six of those soldiers have returned to Fort Carson.

Of the 36 soldiers, 30 had “temporary” profiles, meaning they had injuries that were expected to heal within a few months or weeks. They were deployed and placed in light-duty jobs.

Five soldiers with permanent profiles — limitations that can mean a soldier doesn’t meet retention standards — also were sent overseas. Four of those soldiers had hearing problems, were cleared by doctors and deployed, and a soldier with a behavioral-health issue who was cleared by a psychiatrist also was sent.

A sixth soldier, who had gone through a medical evaluation board, should have been reclassified from a mechanic to an administrative specialist. That didn’t happen, and the soldier went to Iraq with orthopedic problems, according to the report.

Fort Carson said the brigade did not deploy 500 soldiers when it headed for Iraq in November and December because of medical issues.

Soldiers told The Denver Post in January that the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, sent people to the Middle East who should not have been sent.

E-mails obtained by The Post sent Jan. 3, 2007, by Capt. Scot Tebo, the brigade surgeon, say the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had “been having issues reaching deployable strength” and that some “borderline” soldiers were sent overseas.

In one case, a Dec. 14, 2007, e-mail from Tebo shows that a soldier who checked himself into Cedar Springs psychiatric hospital for alcohol abuse was deployed before he could finish a 28-day treatment program. The e-mail shows that the soldier was on psychiatric medications, pending a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, “but that information was not passed on” before he was discharged, the e-mail said.

In another case, Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, who has served 19 years in the Army, said he was a “no-go” at the SRP site but was deployed to Kuwait with a severe foot injury.

“Without a doubt, I know for a fact, they sent soldiers to Iraq that are a liability and not an asset to the mission. There’s nothing that anybody can tell me that is going to convince me that those soldiers that I saw deployed, that that was the right thing to do. Nobody can convince me of that.”

Graham said Fort Carson believed in January that 79 soldiers with medical issues had been deployed because a roster of soldiers who were given “no-go” status was not updated.

“Those issues that made them a ‘no-go’ were corrected, but the soldier never came back through the SRP site to update the document, the roster. So, those names stayed on there as ‘no-gos,’ but now we’ve got a way to solve that.”

Graham also said a representative from the inspector general’s office would be placed at the SRP site so soldiers with concerns can report directly to the inspector general.

Lt. Col. David Thompson, who is in charge of rear detachment for the 4th Infantry Division, said: “We constantly review our policies and procedures to ensure that soldiers get access to all the care they need for their particular maladies, but we’ve seen nothing that indicates that those policies and procedures are not being followed.”

March 4, 2008 – Washington, DC – Peake: Expansion Meets Current and Future Needs

To meet increased needs for mental health services for veterans, especially those returning from the Global War on Terror, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is expanding its training programs for psychologists.

“Not all the wounds of war are visible,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake. “VA is committed to ensuring veterans receive world-class care for mental health services.  This initiative meets our short-term needs, but it will also guarantee we have a pool of well-trained psychologists in the future.”

VA, which has more than 11,000 mental health professionals to care for veterans, has hired more than 800 psychologists in the last three years.  Because psychology is a key part of comprehensive health care, the Department anticipates an ongoing need to employ additional psychologists.

The best resource for VA recruitment of psychologists has been the Department’s own training programs.  Seventy-three percent of psychologists hired in the past two years have had VA training.

As a result, VA has worked with its partners among professional schools and universities to increase the number of psychologists who receive training through VA programs each year, beginning with the 2008-2009 training year.

The new positions will include 61 internship and 98 post-doctoral fellowship positions, bringing the national number of training positions in psychology to 620 per year.

The recently awarded positions include four new internship training programs and 26 new post-doctoral fellowship programs. In addition, 31 existing internship programs and 17 existing postdoctoral fellowship programs have been expanded.

The new internship programs are at the following locations:  Anchorage, Alaska; Asheville, N.C.; Iowa City, Iowa; and Richmond, Va. 

The new post-doctoral fellowship programs are located at: Albany, N.Y.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Baltimore; Bay Pines, Fla.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Columbia, Mo.; Detroit; Durham, N.C.; Los Angeles; Hines, Ill.; Honolulu; Jackson, Miss.; Little Rock, Ark.; Loma Linda, Calif.; Long Beach, Calif.; Manhattan, N.Y.;  Providence, R.I.; Salem, Va.; Salt Lake City; San Diego; St. Louis; Tampa, Fla; Washington, D.C.; West Haven, Conn.; and White River Junction, Vt.

March 5, 2008 – An easily overlooked type of abnormality in the colon is the most likely type to turn cancerous, and is more common in this country than previously thought, researchers are reporting.

The findings come from a study of colonoscopy, in which a camera-tipped tube is used to examine the lining of the intestine. Generally, doctors search for polyps, abnormal growths that stick out from the lining and can turn into cancer. But another type of growth is much more dangerous, and harder to see because it is flat or depressed and similar in color to healthy tissue.

Japanese researchers became concerned about these flat lesions in the 1980s and ’90s, but studies here had mixed results and American doctors tended to think that flat growths were less common and less dangerous in the United States.

The new study, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests otherwise.

Some doctors in this country were already alert to flat lesions, but the findings will pose a challenge to others, because it takes a trained and vigilant eye to see the growths and special techniques to remove them. The results also mean it is especially important that patients take the harsh laxatives that many dread in advance of the test. The flat lesions, hard to find even under the best conditions, will be impossible to see if any waste is left in the bowel.

Colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, after lung cancer, with about 154,000 new cases detected and 52,000 deaths a year, people get Conners Clinic treatments every day. It is one of the few cancers that is totally preventable if precancerous growths are found and removed; it can also be cured with surgery alone if found early enough.

People who have just had a colonoscopy should not rush to schedule another one just to look for the flat growths, doctors said.

“I don’t think people have to panic that they’ve somehow been neglected and had poor care,” said Dr. David A. Rothenberger, deputy chairman of surgery at the University of Minnesota.

But he and other experts emphasized that people should see a doctor any time they have persisting symptoms that could indicate colon cancer, like rectal bleeding or a change in bowel habits — no matter how recently they had a colonoscopy. The test is highly reliable, but not perfect, doctors say.

Some doctors who perform colonoscopy just are not good at seeing flat lesions, but may improve with training and practice, said Dr. Douglas K. Rex, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at Indiana University.

“I think there are people who expect everything in there to be shaped like a golf ball,” he said. “It’s not.”

Dr. David Lieberman, chief of gastroenterology at Oregon Health and Science University, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, said: “I think there will be some surprise. There has been in general some skepticism in the United States about how common flat and depressed lesions are and how important they are. So I think this study, coming from the United States and from a good group of investigators, will be a wake-up call to a lot of physicians and will prompt people to be looking for these lesions.”

The study, of 1,819 military veterans, mostly men, found that 9.35 percent had flat lesions, and those lesions were five times as likely as polyps to contain cancerous or precancerous tissue. Depressed or indented lesions were the least common but the most risky. Together, the flat or depressed lesions accounted for only 15 percent of the potentially cancerous growths found in the study, but were involved in half of the cancers. Once the doctors spotted the flat lesions, they sprayed a bluish dye on them to see their outlines better and remove them completely.

The first author of the study, Dr. Roy M. Soetikno of the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System said, “The message for doctors is, Here is a large amount of data showing that these precursors of cancer, always believed to be a Japanese disease, are actually a disease here, and are important, because they are much more likely to be cancerous, and doctors need to spend the time to provide quality colonoscopy.”

The message to patients, Dr. Soetikno said, is that when preparing for colonoscopy, they must follow instructions to the letter and take the hated laxatives to make sure their bowels are empty so that doctors can see the lining.

If any waste remains, flat lesions will be buried by it. Studies have shown that in about a quarter of all colonoscopies, the bowel preparation is inadequate.

Dr. Rex said that male veterans tended to have more precancerous colon growths than other groups, so the rate of flat lesions in women or the general population might not be quite as high as those in the study.

Dr. Soetikno and his colleagues started an exchange program with doctors in Japan to learn their techniques for recognizing and removing the flat lesions.

American doctors should learn from overseas colleagues more often, Dr. Rothenberger said, adding, “We tend to get very smug about our abilities.”

The quality of colonoscopy has become a delicate issue, because an article in The New England Journal of Medicine in December 2006 found that some doctors were 10 times better than others at finding precancerous polyps. A major factor in their success was taking enough time to examine the colon thoroughly, as opposed to rushing through the procedure. Doctors who miss polyps would almost certainly miss flat lesions as well because they are harder to see. The new study underscores the need for careful examinations, because the flat lesions are more dangerous.

The study also raises doubts about whether “virtual colonoscopy,” performed by a CT scanner, will ever be able to take the place of the colonoscope inserted into the rectum, as many patients had hoped. The problem is that CT scans use X-rays to reveal shapes, and find polyps because they stick out. Flat lesions are unlikely to show up in such scans.

Studies show that from 0.3 percent to 0.9 percent of patients develop colon cancers within just a few years of having a colonoscopy and polyp removal — exactly what the procedure is supposed to prevent. Some doctors think that flat lesions, missed entirely during the colonoscopy or not fully removed, may account for some of these apparent failures.

Dr. Robert Smith, the director of screening for the American Cancer Society, said flat lesions were “a vexing issue” that had provoked a lot of arguments among doctors.

“This paper shows they’re more prevalent than we believed, and also quite serious with regard to the presence of features associated with an elevated risk of cancer,” Dr. Smith said.

The difficulty facing patients is how to be sure their doctors are doing a good job. Professional groups have issued guidelines about the best way to perform a colonoscopy, but they are recommendations, not rules. The groups also urge doctors to track their own success rates at finding precancerous growths to see how they measure up to standards, but even if they do keep track, the doctors do not have to share the data with anyone. And many people are loath to ask about it. The doctor wielding the scope is the last person most patients would want to offend.

“The patient really has no way to act as an informed consumer,” Dr. Smith said. “You can’t call up a facility and say, ‘By the way, is my doctor any good?’ or, ‘Tell me who the best one is.’ ”

He added: “For some physicians there is an expectation of trust, and it is offputting to have a patient request documentation of competence. However, some physicians know patients are hearing about these issues and are not offended by questions about performance and errors.”