05.09.2017 Author: Gordon Duff
The Unseen Victims of
America’s War Machine
Column: Politics
Region: USA in the
World
How many more lives will
America’s wars claim?
When the war drums begin,
the first victim is reason, this is no secret at all. I recently met with a
group of Russian war veterans about this issue, how those who fight wars are
victims just like the armies of refugees and the dead strewn across the
landscape, now called “collateral damage” that may well represent a countless
multitude.
Do remember, the Vietnam
War was stopped, not by “peaceniks” but by combat veterans who hit the streets,
people like John Kerry or, to a lesser extent, me. That these movements survive
in a small way, in reality dissent has been criminalized in a world of fake
information and even more fake leadership.
America marched to
eternal war after 9/11 despite the fact that any reasonable and informed
individual minimally has to brand Saudi Arabia, not “al Qaeda” as the
perpetrator. I would go further and say that the partnership we saw in Syria
between Saudi Arabia and Israel began well before 2001, but that would make me
a conspiracy theorist, and in a time of fake everything, that must be worse
somehow, though the difference is increasingly hard to understand.
Let’s remember, it was
Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, based in Peshawar, Pakistan during the 1980s,
that received American Raytheon Stinger missiles to shoot down Russian
helicopters in Afghanistan.
Wasn’t it the same al
Qaeda, under the name “Jabat al Nusra” that received the same Raytheon Stinger
missiles from the CIA to shoot down Russian helicopters in Syria, until a few
weeks ago when we were told that the CIA was asked to stop supporting al Qaeda?
Perhaps we might just
want to consider that the War on Terror may well have been based on
“alternative facts.”
In a world where America
openly supplies al Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction, where Israel and
Saudi Arabia fight side by side, and where “alternative facts” are used to
support government policies, dissent itself is now a form of terrorism.
Military veterans aren’t
all equal. Just visit Washington DC or towns like Annapolis, Maryland. There
the strutting peacocks in uniform have profited greatly from war, wars they
risked nothing fighting, wars they were paid to support and defend, not the
nation, the United States mind you, but war itself, the business, the racket,
the game.
There are real veterans
out there, from every nation, tossed on the scrap heap of history when they are
used up. One nation above all abuses its combat veterans, consigning them to
misery and death, more than any other. That nation is the United States.
What if I told you
America has lost half a million dead, military casualties of the bogus War on
Terror? We all know that many Syrians have died, or so we are told by CIA
backed propaganda organizations like the White Helmets and Syrian Human Rights
Observatory.
What if I told you that
America’s real dirty little secret is that so many of America’s military have
died from Gulf War Syndrome, suicide and a pattern of unimaginably bad medical
care that this in itself may well constitute a war crime?
Why don’t the numbers
come out you ask? The answer is simple, collecting data on the endless number
of American military victims of America’s wars is a crime. Records aren’t kept,
statistics are forbidden because, if a problem is unproven, it doesn’t exist.
This is a big game in
Washington, America’s injustice to women and minorities, particularly the
pattern of victimization of the poor by the criminal justice system can’t be
addressed because there are prohibitions against documenting injustice in
America.
I recently went over this
with a member of the US Civil Rights Commission, quickly assessing that their
pattern of failures has predictable roots, nothing in the US is counted, no
records are kept, dead military veterans, jailed mothers with small children,
those who committed minor drug offenses but serve decades in prison, no, this
is only a small part of it, but today we are going to talk about the military,
where I have my expertise.
In 1970, I returned from
Vietnam and began medical treatment in the huge government system run by the
Veterans Administration. My own injuries seemed minor as I entered the filthy
hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan where amputees lived on gurneys all over the
building, stored in kitchen areas, storage closets, overflowing urine bags, the
stench of gangrene, the moaning of endless pain and hopelessness.
This is what was really
there, I saw it, I remember every minute of it. In 1938, American author and
screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, wrote an anti-war novel called Johnny Got His Gun.
Trumbo was later blacklisted as a Russian sympathizer and banned from writing
though, secretly supported by actor Kirk Douglas, Trumbo penned the screenplay
of the academy award winning film, Spartacus.
Trumbo’s novel was about
the Veterans Administration health care system and how a severely disfigured
combat veteran of World War I was hidden for years in a storage closet where he
was attacked by rats. Employees who went to his aid were threatened and
silenced, just like today.
In 1938, disabled
veterans were an inconvenience. They still are, except at election time when
each new candidate promises to address the wrongdoing of their predecessor and,
of course, in the end, nothing whatsoever changes.
The Trumbo novel,
fiction, is almost identical to the scandal at the massive Walter Reed complex
where members of congress receive their medical care. The rundown and rat
infested buildings at Walter Reed, during the Bush 43 administration, were used
to store disabled military, until the Washington Post found out about it
anyway.
In a facility where there
are luxury suites for members of congress to receive the most expensive medical
care in the world, free of charge, paid for by American taxpayers, disabled
combat veterans lived in filth, in many cases medical treatment withheld until
they agreed to sign away their rights to disability pension benefits. As
American humorist Jim W. Dean so often says, “You just can’t make this stuff
up.”
My own experiences go
back to Vietnam, this was my war. Few are aware that Democratic Senator Phil
Hart pushed to have Marines retasked from amphibious assault efforts which were
producing casualties 400% of World War II levels. I served with one of those
units.
When veterans returned
from Vietnam, the suicides began, PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it
would be eventually called. The same was true of other wars but no one counted
them either, the suicide deaths eventually hit the hundreds of thousands for
Vietnam. For other wars the numbers may have been higher, but then we will
never know as no one counted. They still don’t.
Then there is that other
thing, “Agent Orange,” the defoliant used across Vietnam that was laced with
dioxin, a powerful carcinogen. Chemical companies were sued for this decades
ago, billions were paid out, almost all to lawyers. Veterans received nothing.
How many died from Agent Orange?
The number runs between
700,000 and 1.1 million. Vietnamese have died by the millions and are still
dying but we can’t talk about that either.
The number who died of Gulf
War Syndrome is certainly in the tens of thousands and those who investigated
where harassed and threated by military intelligence operatives, something
Veterans Today carefully documented. It is also said, albeit not so publicly,
that many have died of diseases like multiple myeloma. The cause of that
disorder is exposure to ionizing radiation from things like partially depleted
uranium projectiles or the suspected clandestine use of prohibited fission
based weapons.
When illegal weapons are
used, nuclear, biological or chemical, the military veterans who become victims
are forced to die from the disease of official denial and anyone who thinks
nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals aren’t deployed against targets in
the Middle East is a fool.
There are two basic
business units for what is now called the Department of Veterans Affairs. One
unit denies claims, loses paperwork and has built the largest “Skinner Box” in
history to force the sick and disabled to simply “go away.”
All processes from applications
for pensions to seeking medical care itself is made as frustrating and
burdensome as possible. Even a phone call can lead to long and pointless
recorded announcements, which lead to more of the same and, eventually, systems
that either hang up the phone or route calls to recording devices that are
often never checked.
The other is “medical
mistreatment.” Here, the world’s largest and most expensive health care system,
yes, it is really that big, shuffles millions of patients in and out without
treatment plans, testing or follow up care. Care is rationed with waiting lists
for things like expensive dental work or knee replacement surgery taking more
than a decade.
Patients who can’t walk
because of easily treatable conditions are given canes or wheel chairs and sent
away. Tests when conducted are often never reviewed and there is no accounting
of any kind. No professional license is needed because federal government
facilities are above state law and there are no national regulatory agencies
for health care professionals. Yes, you can lose a license to practice for very
serious violations and work for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The number of instances
of patient abuse, even killings, is insanely high but also quickly suppressed.
Veterans service organizations, who help “police” this system are generously
paid off and remain silent, more a part of the problem themselves, even more
than this corrupt bureaucracy.
What is really being
hidden is the cost of America’s wars. You see, the new professional military
that Nixon gave the US after Vietnam is a “garrison army,” not a combat army.
Troops who fight year after year, even in air conditioned comfort, we are told,
paid 20 times, corrected for inflation, what was paid to those who fought in
Vietnam, eventually become institutionalized and unable to maintain normal
employment.
When, because of physical
or psychological conditions which will invariably result from multiple
deployments manifest, these soldiers are more often forced out, charged with an
offense of some kind, or disallowed from continuing service and receiving a
retirement pension. This places those who qualify, and not all qualify, in a
medical system designed to make dying seem attractive.
Were one a conspiracy
theorist, one might well postulate that using ISIS or similar organizations to
fight America’s wars could be a money saving ploy. Certainly Israel provides
far better medical care to al Qaeda and ISIS fighters than America does to her
own troops. Instead of killing them off after they are no longer needed, with
poor medical care, America can just start bombing them. America’s governmental
bureaucracy offers both “fake” medical care and “fake” bombing and accepts each
as business as usual.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam
War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with
governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of
the board of Veterans
Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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