Veterans speak out about war in Iraq

March 22, on the third day of the new war in Iraq, a large group of veterans marched on the White House to deliver a petition against the war signed by more than 2,000 former members of the armed forces.

Veterans’ groups have been conspicuous in all the large anti-war rallies of the last six months in Washington, New York and San Francisco and in smaller demonstrations around the country. How is it that men and women whom most of us would consider model patriots have become among the severest critics of President Bush’s push for an Iraq war?

Veterans understand better than noncombatants how crucial it is to explore every alternative to war before committing young men and women to armed combat. Young lives should not be sacrificed to an unnecessary conflict. Many veterans, including the signatories to the petition delivered to Bush last weekend, feel the president has failed to make a convincing case for the necessity of war with Iraq. They question the credibility of his claims that Iraq can harm us with whatever weapons of mass destruction it still possesses. They question the president’s linkage of Saddam Hussein with Sept. 11 and al-Qaida.

If it is to be worth the loss of human life, a war must not only be necessary but sanctioned by the appropriate legal bodies. Veterans are appalled at the Bush administration’s abrasive dismissal of the views of its United Nations Security Council colleagues and its willingness to go to war without U.N. backing. They also question the constitutionality of attacking another country without a formal congressional declaration of war. Is it supporting the troops to send them into a war that many regard as illegal?

The new national security policy of pre-emption, many veterans feel, sets a dangerous precedent and is likely to stimulate rather than reduce global conflict. Why should young American lives be committed to a limitless series of future wars?

Now that war has begun, many veterans, particularly men and women who fought in the first Gulf War, are concerned about potential health risks to American troops in Iraq. An estimated 30 percent of the service personnel returning from Iraq in 1991 eventually submitted disability claims to the Veterans Affairs Department for a constellation of disorders that became known as Gulf War Syndrome.

It is now generally agreed that these mysterious ailments were caused by exposure to chemical weapons, depleted uranium, and untested drugs administered to “protect” combatants from chemical agents. Since all three of these dangers are still present, men and women returning from Iraq are likely to develop the same illnesses as their counterparts in Gulf War I.

Military preparedness for chemical attack was inadequate in the first Iraq war, and the situation has not improved. The military has not provided the necessary training (40 hours a year) to protect its forces from a chemical weapons attack. Moreover, trainers do not have the necessary background-only 30 percent of the officers in the Army’s Chemical Corps have degrees in the physical sciences.

More disturbing is the danger to our fighting men and women from the depleted uranium that continues to be used in anti-tank weaponry and in the warheads on the cruise missiles TV viewers have seen exploding in Baghdad the white sparks scintillating in the telltale mushroom clouds above the city are burning uranium fragments.

If U.S. troops are forced into urban combat in Iraq’s capital, it is practically unavoidable that they will inhale uranium dust. Though the Pentagon denies it, depleted uranium is known to cause cancer, birth defects, and other medical problems. One uranium particle lodged in a human lung emits 800 times the recommended “safe” level for radiation exposure.

The experimental drugs administered to combatants in the first Gulf War to “protect” them against chemical agents are another form of “friendly fire” that threatens our troops in the second Gulf conflict. Implicated in some of the symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, pyridostigmine bromide (PB) has recently been exempted by the Food and Drug Administration from the requirement of being tested for efficacy on humans before being given to military personnel to protect them from nerve gas attacks.

While young men and women risk their lives in Iraq, Congress is at work reducing veterans’ benefits in Bush’s new budget, which calls for generous tax cuts, particularly for the wealthiest Americans. Benefits are to be reduced by approximately $14 billion. Even with current levels of funding, Maine veterans must wait 6 months or more to receive health care at Togus VA Medical Center.

The No Child Left Behind Act initiated by Bush allows the military to recruit young people via access to their school records. In the climate of the new national security strategy, this policy can only be interpreted as a national effort to “grow” U.S. citizens for the international Armageddon ahead. In today’s depressed job market, young people are lured into the military by prospects of job training and financial aid for college, inducements which ought to be available to them without agreeing to sacrifice limb or life.

When asked if he isn’t undermining the troops by protesting the war, Korean War veteran Bob Hemingway from Richmond responds, “I support the troops, because I want to bring them all home alive.”

This commentary was signed by the following: Sam Jenkins, of Brewer; Tom Sturtevant, of Winthrop, president of Maine Veterans for Peace, Korean War veteran, U.S. Navy, l950-l954; Eli H. Zwicker Sr., of Brownville Junction, World War II veteran; Al Larson, of Orono, Vietnam War veteran, U.S. Navy, l964-l970; Jules Arel, of Hermon, U.S. Air Force, l954-58; Ron Warner, of Bangor, Vietnam War veteran, U.S. Marine Corps, l970; Dan Clarke, of Bangor, Vietnam War veteran; Gerald Oleson, of Bangor, second lieutenant, field artillery, New Hampshire National Guard, l966-72; Bob Hemingway, of Richmond, Korean War veteran.