The Pits of Hell
Robert Koehler
Posted: 05/24/2012 4:11 pm
This week's NATO summit on the future of the war in Afghanistan probably did not get to the matter of burn pits or abandoned latrines.
These are the details of hell. They are also our legacy, in Afghanistan, in Iraq ... wherever we employ our military to pursue our geopolitical self-interest. Strip away the propaganda, strip away the politics and the pursuit of strategic advantage, and what American/NATO policy amounts to is burned, buried, dumped and abandoned waste, some of it radioactive, most of it toxic.
"My nephew went in the military healthy," wrote a woman named Patsy on the website Burn Pits Action Center. This is one story out of hundreds that are now surfacing, about American vets poisoned by American war waste that was discharged into the environment of the countries we occupy with no regard for international law or, my God, sanity.
A month after he got out, she wrote -- after three tours to Iraq and Afghanistan -- he went on a vacation with his family to Disneyland. He couldn't finish this mission. He had to leave early because he had what turned out to be a "small stroke." This was followed by seizures, trouble breathing, more small strokes, blood clots. He now has stomach cancer and it may have spread.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/the-pits-of-hell_b_1543761.html
