Anatomy of a Pentagon Lie
It shouldn’t startle anyone to find that the Pentagon has blatantly ignored a congressional mandate to start reducing its use of burn pits at U.S. bases overseas. It was only a year ago that Pentagon officials openly doubted that the black hellfire released from tons of burning hazardous waste in the open air could possibly have any long-term health effects on anyone unlucky enough to be breathing it in everyday.
“When we look at respiratory effects on a population-wide basis,” said Dr. Craig Postlewaite, director of DoD’s force readiness and health assurance, in an interview last September, “we’re not seeing a cause for concern.” The DoD’s official view has so far not changed. So, even as more and more service members come home sick – some of them irreparably, terminally – it would seem the Department of Defense has gone into classic default mode: stall until it becomes impossible to stall any longer. That may buy the DoD ten years at least, and by then it’ll be the Veterans Administration’s problem.
“They hold with the lie until they are caught so red handed they just can’t lie about it any longer,” says Deb Crawford, who spent time as a civilian electrician in the Green Zone from 2004 to 2006. She now publishes Ms. Sparky.com, a popular watchdog site, and recently spoke with Antiwar.com. “If anyone in the Pentagon were to claim they didn’t think the burn pits were an inherent health hazard to civilians and troops, I would have to call them a bold face liar.”
We certainly saw it with Agent Orange exposure among Vietnam veterans, and Persian Gulf Illness after the first Iraq War. Let’s face it – the government’s just getting around to compensating the so-called “Atomic Vets” from WWII! And now we’re seeing it with the countless men and women exposed to these toxic trash pits in Afghanistan and Iraq today.
Matthew Nasuti: American military creating an environmental disaster in Afghan countryside (Part 1 of 3) + Part 2 + Part 3