Veterans for Common Sense

More than 1,200 who had anthrax vaccine now sick

More than 1,200 military personnel who received the anthrax vaccine before going to Iraq have developed serious illnesses, according to an Army report released last month, though local military officials contend the shots still are safe and necessary.

Since 1991 and the first Gulf War, the Defense Department has required service members to be immunized against such childhood diseases as Typhoid and Hepatitis A as well as against biological agents such as anthrax, when deploying to Korea or the Middle East.

But with Army officials reporting 1,200 illnesses and several thousand more queries about potential side effects, the Defense Department has started allowing troops deploying overseas to opt out of receiving the anthrax vaccine without penalty, according to the Army and Air Force.

Maj. Brian Blalock, public health flight commander at Nellis Air Force Base, said the anthrax shot is no longer mandatory for service members who are willing to sign a waiver releasing the military from liability. Still, the majority of service members elect to have the shot, he said.

“We’ve really not seen a big problem with anthrax — nothing outside of the normal range of side effects,” Blalock said.

Roughly 30 percent of men, and 60 percent of women, who receive the anthrax vaccine have some sort of minor reaction, such as swelling or a small lump at the injection spot, Blalock said.

But the illnesses reported by the Army have been more severe. Initial symptoms of the reported cases included minor diarrhea, cramping and fever to more intense problems like sleep and memory loss, chronic fatigue, headaches and chest pains.

Local numbers for service members affected are not available.

The national cases have been handled by the Vaccine Healthcare Centers, which are located at several U.S. military bases, but are overseen by the vaccination program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.

Despite the illnesses, Walter Reed officials contend that more than 1.3 million military and civilian personnel have received the vaccine since 1998 when the military began requiring members to receive a series of six shots to guard them against the anthrax virus.

The hospital contends anthrax vaccinations are safe and more necessary than ever, especially considering the threat of anthrax contamination that hit several post offices and office buildings following Sept. 11.

“We’re living in a completely different era. There are terrorists who are intent on using biological agents and there are countries that certainly have the capability,” Blalock said.

The military shut down the anthrax vaccination program temporarily prior to 1998 citing concerns about outdated versions of the shot. The necessity of the shot has been a hot point of debate in Washington and among soldiers’ advocacy groups that contend illnesses from the vaccine have put some members out of the service.

Medical officials hope that educating service members about the benefits of getting the shots will encourage “across the board” compliance. They contend there is insufficient information to quantify the seriousness of illnesses resulting from the anthrax vaccine.

The Nevada National Guard, which routinely deploys members to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight the global war on terror, still requires the anthrax shot for soldiers and airmen going there or to Korea.

Spokeswoman Lt. April Conway said there have been no reported cases of adverse reactions to the shots among Guard members, but there have been some members who refused to have the vaccine.

“A couple years ago we had a few people who asked not to do it,” Conway said. “Their positions were filled by volunteers who were willing.”

Though military budget concerns may force the closure of the Vaccine Healthcare Centers which oversees assessment and treatment of anthrax-based problems, Congress and the Food and Drug Administration have approved an emergency use authorization to fund more of the anthrax vaccine.

Citing a renewed threat of anthrax poisoning to U.S. forces overseas, the Pentagon announced last month it would resume providing mass anthrax vaccinations for service members deploying to Korea or Southwest Asia.

While the debate about the seriousness of anthrax-related illnesses is likely to get bogged down in the same discussion over such war-related illnesses as Gulf War Syndrome, Blalock is among those who believe the benefits far outweigh the cost.

“There are a lot of diseases out there — very lethal, very deadly,” Blalock said. “It really comes down to people making the best choice.”

The House handed President Bush the first defeat in his effort to preserve the broad powers of the USA Patriot Act, voting yesterday to curtail the FBI’s ability to seize library and bookstore records for terrorism investigations.

Bush has threatened to veto any measure that weakens those powers. The surprise 238 to 187 rebuke to the White House was produced when a handful of conservative Republicans, worried about government intrusion, joined with Democrats who are concerned about personal privacy.

One provision of the Patriot Act makes it possible for the FBI to obtain a wide variety of personal records about a suspected terrorist — including library transactions — with an order from a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, where the government must meet a lower threshold of proof than in criminal courts.

Under the House change, officials would have to get search warrants from a judge or subpoenas from a grand jury to seize records about a suspect’s reading habits.

Some libraries have said they are disposing of patrons’ records more quickly because of the provision, which opponents view as a license for fishing expeditions.

House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (Ohio), one of three House Republicans who opposed the Patriot Act when it was enacted in 2001, voted yesterday to curtail agents’ power to seize the records.

“Everybody’s against terrorism, but there has to be reason in the way that we fight it,” Ney said. “The government doesn’t need to be sifting through library records. I talked to my libraries, and they felt very strongly about this.”

The Justice Department said in a letter to Congress this week that the provision has been used only 35 times and has never been used to obtain bookstore, library, medical or gun-sale records. It has been used to obtain records of hotel stays, driver’s licenses, apartment leases and credit cards, the letter said.

“Bookstores and libraries should not be carved out as safe havens for terrorists and spies, who have, in fact, used public libraries to do research and communicate with their co-conspirators,” Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella said in the letter.

The vote — on an amendment to limit spending in a huge bill covering appropriations for science as well as the departments of Justice, State and Commerce — came as Bush is traveling the country to build support for reauthorizing 15 provisions of the Patriot Act that are scheduled to expire at year’s end.

House Republican leadership aides said they plan to have the provision removed when a conference committee meets to work out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. “The administration has threatened to veto the bill over this extraneous rider, and there are too many important initiatives in the bill for that to happen,” said Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield.

Last year, the House leadership barely staved off the amendment with a 210 to 210 tie, engineered by holding the vote open to pressure some Republicans to switch their votes.

Democrats contend that the reversal is the first sign of growing wariness about some of the more intrusive elements of the Patriot Act, which was passed just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The American Civil Liberties Union called the vote a rare victory for civil liberties.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a leader in the drive to curtail the act’s reach, said in an interview that the original measure had passed “in an atmosphere of panic” and that a wide spectrum of lawmakers is beginning to conclude it went too far.

“If some terrorist checks out a book about how to make an atomic bomb, that might be legitimate for the government to know, and they can get a search warrant or a subpoena the way we’ve done it throughout American history,” Nadler said. “Otherwise, what you’re reading is none of the government’s business.”

House Republican leaders are not accustomed to losing, and they did not hide their anger about the result. One aide to a House leader referred to the victorious coalition as “the crazies on the left and the crazies on the right, meeting in the middle.”

Justice Department spokesman Kevin Madden issued a statement reiterating the administration’s insistence that the provision is vital. The statement said the section “provides national security investigators with an important tool for investigating and intercepting terrorism while at the same time establishing robust safeguards to protect law-abiding Americans.”

The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Bernard Sanders (Vt.), a socialist who is the chamber’s lone independent. He said the measure, which he originally introduced as the Freedom to Read Protection Act, “simply restores the checks and balances that protect innocent Americans under the Constitution.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the amendment a “message to the world.” Only one voting Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren (Okla.), opposed it.

The measure was supported by 38 Republicans and opposed by 186. Among the Republicans who voted for it were Reps. Jack Kingston (Ga.), Ron Paul (Tex.), C.L. “Butch” Otter (Idaho) and Ray LaHood (Ill.).

Concerned about depleted uranium and what they say are increasing cancer rates, Iraqi officials are receiving training from U.N. experts on techniques to measure radiation levels according to international standards, a U.N. official Tuesday.

    Pekka Haavisto, chairman of the U.N. Environment Program’s Iraq Task Force, said the Iraqis were especially concerned about the southern city of Basra and the surrounding area. He said the Iraqi government approached UNEP for help.

    “They did their own studies and found that the cancer risk has increased by two to three times since the 1991 Gulf War,” Haavisto told The Associated Press. “These are local studies and have not been internationally verified so it is difficult to say if the picture is so black.”

    Depleted uranium is a heavy metal used in armor-piercing weapons. The Pentagon maintains that depleted uranium is safe and is about 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium.

    The British government has given UNEP detailed information on locations where it used 1.9 tones of depleted uranium in the south of Iraq, but UNEP says the U.S. government hasn’t come forward with the same information despite U.N. requests.

    UNEP is instructing 16 officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Environment, including both vice-ministers, in how to detect depleted uranium.

    “The UNEP is currently providing training and equipment to Iraqi scientists to measure Beta and Gamma radiation from depleted uranium sources,” Haavisto said.

    He said UNEP has carried out studies on depleted uranium found in munitions used in Kosovo and the Balkan wars but “due to the security situation in Iraq, we are training Iraqis to conduct the studies themselves.”

    Haavisto said the UNEP is concerned that “there has been no proper clean up in Iraq since wars in 2003 and 1991. There is still depleted uranium and other chemicals on the ground. Looting has contributed to the problem,” he said.

    “Usually hazardous materials must be cleaned up as rapidly as possible,” he added.

    He said the UNEP had several other concerns about Iraq, such as the presence of toxic materials, heavy metals and oil spills that present environmental and health hazards.

    UNEP’s studies in the Balkans called for monitoring depleted uranium affected areas, cleanup efforts and clearly marking affected sites.

    It concluded that that localized contamination can be detected at contaminated sites and so precaution is needed, while in general, levels are so low that they do not pose an immediate threat to human health and the environment.

    But the Balkans studies also identified a number of uncertainties requiring further investigation, according to UNEP. These include the extent to which depleted uranium on the ground can filter through the soil and eventually contaminate groundwater, and the possibility that depleted uranium dust could later be re-suspended in the air by wind or human activity, with the risk that it could be breathed in.

    UNEP is also involved in environmental management of the Iraqi marshlands.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration on Tuesday threatened a veto of a massive spending bill for law enforcement, space programs and other federal programs if it weakens the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act, the White House said.

“If any amendment that would weaken the USA Patriot Act were included in a bill presented to the president for his signature, the president’s senior advisors would recommend a veto,” according to a statement released by the Office of Management and Budget, which reviews all pending legislation.

On Wednesday, Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, is expected to offer a measure limiting the Patriot Act by ending law enforcement’s easy access to records on citizens’ reading habits at libraries and bookstore purchases without a traditional search warrant.

The amendment would be attached to a bill providing $57.5 billion in funding in fiscal 2006, beginning Oct. 1, for the Justice Department, NASA, the Commerce Department and other agencies. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass the legislation on Wednesday. Senate action is expected later this summer.

The USA Patriot Act is a post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism law that critics say erodes civil liberties.

Last summer, Sanders proposed a similar measure. He lost on a tie vote of 210-210 and only after House Republican leaders extended the time allowed for the vote to defeat it.

Sanders said on Tuesday his amendment would “prohibit the FBI from spying on the reading habits of innocent Americans” by making it tougher for law enforcement to get a judge’s approval to review records.

“I urge my fellow members of Congress to stand up to the president and defend our basic constitutional rights,” Sanders said in a statement.

The Bush administration said congressional oversight committees should consider any such changes to the Patriot Act, instead of it being amended by an annual appropriations bill.

A spokeswoman for Sanders said the congressman has dropped from this year’s amendment references to protections for Internet reading. She said the revision could mean that “some people could be less hesitant” to support Sanders’ amendment when it comes up for a vote on Wednesday.

BAGHDAD — When three Minnesota National Guardsmen died in a roadside bombing in February, their home towns grieved in the usual way. Flags flew at half-staff. Streets were renamed in honor of the fallen. And neighbors spoke of a war brought home in painful relief.

But the soldiers who were left behind — a company of about 150 builders, farmers, policemen and students — still had 10 months remaining on their year-long deployment. And haunted by the deaths of men some had known since childhood, they had to find a way to carry on. So before the unit even held a memorial service, the commanding officer called in the specialists: a combat stress control team from the Army’s 55th Medical Company out of Indianapolis, whose slogan is “serving the best by controlling the stress.”

A group of trained therapists, led by a lieutenant colonel who is also a clinical psychologist, debriefed each soldier individually, and encouraged them in group sessions to share their feelings about the incident and their memories of the dead.

“They showed us it’s okay to actually talk about this, to not just clam up,” said Capt. Troy Fink, 35, the commanding officer and only full-time soldier in Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 151st Field Artillery Regiment, which is based in Morris, Minn. “I’ve still got some guys who hurt pretty bad. I hurt some days. It’s important to maintain that certain image in front of my soldiers, but sometimes we all need a release.”

From the shell shock first diagnosed among trench warriors in World War I to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that afflicts thousands of Vietnam and Persian Gulf War veterans, the toll modern warfare has taken on the psyche of combatants has been well documented. An estimated one in six troops returning from duty in Iraq experienced symptoms of major depression, anxiety or PTSD, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study published last year.

Now, the U.S. military has intensified efforts to mitigate the impact of traumatic experiences on the mental health of its troops.

Combat stress control teams are deployed at six U.S. bases across Iraq, tasked with identifying front-line soldiers suffering from early symptoms of PTSD, a condition that causes a range of psychiatric and physical symptoms, from violent flashbacks to difficulty sleeping. The battalion’s headquarters in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone serves as an oasis for overwhelmed fighters, who are pulled out of the field for three to seven days of counseling, classes on psychological disorders and relaxing by the pool at one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

“In Vietnam there was no preventative aspect of dealing with these things. People had to keep moving and do their job. Then they got back and everything hit them all at once,” said Capt. Anthony Bruni, 33, a reservist with the 55th Medical Company, who has a private therapy practice in Pittsburgh. “It’s still the nature of the business that they have to return to work, but we try to validate their feelings and reactions — to let them know it’s normal to be affected by what they do and see.”

The initiative also challenges stereotypically stoic, grin-and-bear-it soldiers by encouraging them to seek out help in an attempt to ward off more serious problems down the road.

“Everyone in the Army is macho. Everyone’s familiar with the story of General Patton slapping the soldier in the hospital for being a coward and not wanting to go back to the front lines,” said Capt. Paul Judge, whose Delta Company, Task Force 4-64 guards the checkpoint on Baghdad’s 14th of July Bridge that has come under frequent attack. “But at the same time, there is a balance. If you don’t get some of these things out, they just keep building up.”

On a recent afternoon at the 55th Medical Battalion’s headquarters — a former Hussein guesthouse with a sandy volleyball court in the front yard, high-speed Internet connections and a vast library of movies and books — seven soldiers on leave from their units sat in a dimly lit room for lectures on relaxation techniques, PTSD and conflict resolution.

Blow Pops and lemon-flavored Girl Scout cookies were scattered on tables. A reporter was permitted to attend on the condition that none of the patients be directly interviewed or identified. At one point during a talk about sleep, the soldiers spread out on the floor for deep-breathing exercises that left many in the room snoring.

Down the hall, Lt. Andrea Patrick explained a board game she designed called Combat Stress Monopoly.” Players draw cards printed with questions about what they had learned in their classes and land on spaces marked with such directions as “You survive an attack, move one space ahead,” or “You have an argument with your family member on the phone, lose a turn.”

“We put it in a game format to test what they have learned while they are here,” she said. “It’s useful and also fun.”

But, later, the discussions of soldiers’ combat experiences were pointed and raw.

“How many of you have experienced flashbacks?” asked Sgt. Kara Loveland, 24, from Janesville, Wis., as she handed out a sheet labeled My Symptoms that asked soldiers to rate the frequency and severity of such occurrences as nightmares or angry outbursts.

“This is my second deployment, and I only had nine months in between,” said an Army medic. “When I try to sleep, I’ve got to go through the battles all over again, running out to pick up my fellow soldiers with rounds flying around. You don’t have time to clean your mind and you’re right back out there. And as soon as a dead person comes into the aid station all demolished, it all comes back.”

“What does your commanding officer tell you when something like that happens?” Loveland asked.

“They don’t care,” the medic said. “You go outside, drink a few [non-alcoholic] beers, smoke a few cigarettes and roll on.”

“You have to talk yourself down. Find a safe haven for yourself or else you’ll just keep going for hours and hours,” Loveland told him. “Think about what your flashback is trying to tell you. Distract yourself.”

Lt. Col. Kathy T. Platoni, a psychologist from Beaver Creak, Ohio, said that unit commanders often resisted allowing their soldiers time away from training for stress treatment.

“Our main purpose is to help people get back to the field, and we get more than 90 percent of them back out so they can do their jobs,” she said. “But sometimes the command just doesn’t support it. You schedule something and no one shows up. It’s not always easy, but you just have to fight your way in.”

Fink, the Minnesota National Guard captain, said he recognized the need to comfort his unit immediately after his soldiers were killed. Less than four months ago, they were driving through Baghdad in a convoy when a Humvee driver lost control of his vehicle and it flipped.

As a helicopter was evacuating the wounded, an explosion tore through soldiers standing nearby. The three who died — Sgt. Jesse Lhotka, Staff Sgt. David Day, and Lt. Jason Timmerman — were in their early twenties and had each been married less than a year.

“We are a tightknit group. We all come from the same part of the state, a lot of us work together or went to school together,” Firk said. “It really is like a family. That’s what it is. Which is why they took this so hard.”

Staff Sgt. Ryan Erp, 24, who was monitoring the radios at the base when he heard the blast, said it did not sink in until the damaged vehicles returned on tow trucks. “I saw the Humvee and realized they were not coming back,” he said.

Two days later he sat in a session with other soldiers and two combat stress specialists.

“They asked us to talk about what we remembered about the guys,” he said. “Jesse and I graduated from high school together. I met Sgt. Day over here, but we lived only 10 miles apart back home. He got to be a good friend. I told them how every time he’d tell a joke, he’d screw it up and say ‘Ah, you had to be there.’ ”

Spec. Jacob Veldhouse said the hardest part was knowing that he could have died. Five minutes before the explosion, Timmerman had asked him to take over his spot in the gun turret of an armored Humvee. When the bomb detonated, Timmerman was standing on the ground exposed, while Veldhouse was hit with just a pea-size piece of shrapnel.

“I think about that day every day,” said Veldhouse, 22. “Yes, talking about it helps. But you don’t really get over it. It’s not like it will ever go away.”

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Iraq War Causes Sharp Drop in Military Academy Applications

WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters) – Applications from high school students to each of the three prestigious U.S. military academies dropped this year, officials said on Monday, at the same time the Army is struggling to sign up new recruits.

This drop in applications represented the latest sign that the all-volunteer military is having difficulty attracting people during an Iraq war that is producing a steady flow of U.S. casualties, defense analysts said. Applications to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, which produces junior officers for the Army, declined 9.3 percent this year compared to last year, the academy said. The Army provides most of the ground troops in Iraq, and has born the brunt of the military’s recruiting problems. But the decline was even steeper at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, where applications were down 20 percent from a year ago, and at the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colorado, where they were off 22.7 percent. The Naval Academy mints junior officers for the Marine Corps and Navy. The Air Force Academy produces them for the Air Force. Lexington Institute defense analyst Loren Thompson cited three factors in the drop in applications. “First of all, the economy is recovering, and so military careers look relatively less appealing,” Thompson said. “Second, the Iraq war is creating a very powerful negative impact on the propensity of people to sign up and serve. And third, the wave of patriotism that followed 9/11 has largely dissipated after two years of fighting in Iraq,” Thompson added, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ‘NO HARD FACTS’ West Point spokesman Mike D’Aquino said it would be speculation to blame the war for the decline in applications. “There’s really no hard facts to make that conclusion,” D’Aquino said. Meade Warthen, an Air Force Academy spokesman, agreed, saying: “We just don’t know, and we wouldn’t want to speculate. I could come up with a hundred reasons and so could anybody else.” Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers said that in contrast to the military academies, application volume appears to have increased this year at most colleges and universities. Attending one of the academies, all possessing strong academic reputations, involves at least a nine-year commitment to the military. Those who attend the four-year institutions get free tuition, room and board, and commit to at least five years of active-duty service after graduating. Applications declined from 11,881 last year to 10,774 this year at West Point and from 12,430 last year to 9,604 this year at the Air Force Academy, the schools said. The Naval Academy released figures as of Jan. 31, the deadline for applications, showing them falling from 13,922 at the same time last year to 11,140 this year. D’Aquino said this year’s drop left West Point at about the level of applications it was receiving before the 2001 attacks, adding that there has been no decline in the quality of the incoming class compared to previous classes. “We’re still getting a big pool of qualified applicants, good applicants,” D’Aquino said. The Air Force Academy, rocked by a recent sexual assault scandal and currently the subject of an investigation into allegations of religious bias, said its applications also had receded to levels predating the 2001 attacks. Warthen said last year’s number of applications was the highest since the class that entered in 1988.