Joseph Hickman - The burn pits : the poisoning of Americas soldiers

Copyright 2016 by Joseph Hickman

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

ISBN: 978-1-5107-0573-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0577-7

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to all the military service members and veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Contents

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Foreword

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By Jesse Ventura

Its no secret what a disaster our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been. The Islamic State is a whole lot more of a problem than Saddam Hussein ever was, and the Taliban sure as hell hasnt gone away. Lets face it, George Bush and Dick Cheney were the worst administration in the United States history. They ruined the economy, they got us into two wars, and they left things a complete mess that Barack Obama inherited.

But just when you thought the story couldnt get any worse, along comes The Burn Pits . This is a book that will not only make your blood boil, itll coagulate. I mean, blood-curdling isnt a strong enough metaphor. Its not bad enough that, since the Iraq War began in 2003, almost 5,000 American troops have died and 32,000 more officially wounded (some estimates place that figure at more than 100,000). Or that more than 2,300 U.S. military deaths have occurred in Afghanistan. Or that an estimated 320,000 veterans have brain injuries, and the suicide rate among vets is escalating by the day.

Its not bad enough that the entire fiasco in Iraq was based on a liethat Saddam was supposedly just itching to use an arsenal of WMDs unless we moved on him fast. Youll learn in this book that Iraq did once use chemical and biological weapons, against Iran and then the Kurds but the Bush-Cheney people had their reasons for erasing that memory and claiming instead that the threat was new.

Why? Because the terrible truth is, those Iraqi leftovers that ended up in the dump were responsible for poisoning our own soldiers . And American contractors were the ones who spewed it into the air. The top military brass knew about this health disaster, and looked the other way. It didnt seem to be cost-effective to do anything else so burn, baby, burn.

I dont want to give away the whole story, because it should unfold slowly and infuriatingly, as it did for me. The author, Former Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman, was a loyal member of our armed forces for 20 years. In service to our country, he earned more than 20 commendations and awards. Well, hes recently done his patriotic duty by exposing the murders of three detainees in U.S. custody at Guantnamo, where Hickman served in 2006. Now with The Burn Pits , hes blown the whistle even louder.

Youve heard about Agent Orange in Vietnam, which resulted in tens of thousands of people including our troops getting cancer. Its likely you also know about Gulf War Illness, which the Pentagon now admits afflicts close to 100,000 of our veterans. Thats a cluster of medically unexplained chronic symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, memory loss, and respiratory problems. Some call these delayed casualties. But try using that polite phrase on the brave men and women who are still being refused benefits by the VAs powers-that-be for the debilitating illnesses that have plagued them ever since serving their country. Instead, call them denied casualties.

I doubt most of you have heard of Balad or Bagram, or soldiers like Daniel Mayer and Matthew Bumpus. You will now, and the stories will sicken you. You also may not know that KBR Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a former subsidiary of Dick Cheneys Halliburton company was the number one corporate beneficiary of the Iraq War. A lot of those millions were generated by operation of the toxic burn pitsand Halliburton shareholder Cheney was among those who cashed in.

In 2015 Vice-President Joe Bidens beloved son, Beau, whod served a tour of duty in Iraq, died of brain cancer. But you can bet the big media havent dared speculate about, let alone investigate , the real cause, which as youll see is likely connected to being stationed at two of the burn pits. One of them was Camp Victory, which is beyond ironic.

The Burn Pits pulls no punches. Youll read about the Veterans Administration claiming that the soldiers seeking legitimate benefits for their health problems were either lying or making it all up. Youll learn about the buck-passing and how the military cant be held legally accountable for whats happened to the men and women exposed to a toxic soup at 75 different bases. Youll discover a few heroes, too, like the courageous doctors whove dared to speak out about how the respiratory ailments and cancers are no coincidence.

I served my country for eight years as a Navy SEAL, and my parents before me in the Second World War. We all believed in freedom and democracy. It took a long time for me to consider that maybe we are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave, that money and power have corrupted everything America once stood for.

Can we turn back the clock in order to move toward a better future? I dont know. What I do know is that exposing the truth in books like Joseph Hickmans The Burn Pits is a wake-up call to all of us that wed better rise up and reclaim our birthright as Americans. And maybe theres a Smedley Butler out there among the veterans of our ill-conceived wars who is ready to help lead us out of the quagmire.

Authors Note

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In 1961, during the early stages of the Vietnam War, United States and South Vietnamese forces were getting ambushed and attacked by an enemy they could not see. The thick jungle brush in Vietnam was the perfect environment for the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong to conceal themselves from U.S. forces. To combat this camouflaged war, the United States created a new weapon called Agent Orange, an herbicide that Air Force planes sprayed above the treetops to kill the jungle brush below, creating fields of fire where the enemy could no longer hide. Agent Orange was effective, and the United States used it for ten years during that long war, killing almost 20 percent of the countrys plant life and sickening thousands of Vietnameseas well as many of our own troops.

As soldiers first started coming home from Vietnam, many were plagued with strange illnesses and cancers that couldnt at first be explained. By the end of the war there were tens of thousands sick. It didnt take these ill veterans long to realize they all had one common factor: they had all served in areas where Agent Orange was sprayed. At first the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) denied that Agent Orange was hazardous, and refused to provide the veterans with medical benefits. It took many years and hundreds of independent studies on the damaging effects of Agent Orange before the DOD finally acknowledged that the U.S. military had inadvertently poisoned tens of thousands of its own soldiers.