Atomic waste on the USS Calhoun County? If not, why is everyone so sick?

The VA’s Claim Dodge

The VA’s Claim Dodge
Beyond the awful conditions at Walter Reed hospital, something smells fishy in the government’s handling of veterans’ claims. One appalling case study suggests what might be happening and why.
by Deb Derrick


The two signature injuries of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). An estimated 26,000 U.S. veterans from these wars have had their brains traumatized from nearby explosions. Another 45,000 have initiated post traumatic stress disorder claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

These claims concern real disabilities that are medically hard to prove. In each VA case, it is up to the military and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to decide if and how much any given soldier’s mental faculties have been impaired. These are also precisely the kinds of claims that the U.S. government has actively thwarted in the past — and recent news and health articles suggest that a repeat performance is underway. The Defense Department is being accused of under-funding studies of traumatic brain injuries. The VA and Defense Departments are refusing to make their brain injury data public. Current PTSD claimants are finding their medical and service records missing, lost, or subject to challenge. A class action lawsuit was recently initiated on behalf of PTSD claimants.

My recent investigation on the VA claims of a Navy waste disposal ship, the USS Calhoun County, provides a cautionary tale about what might be happening and why.

Harvey Ray Lucas served in the late 1950s on the USS Calhoun County, a low-ranking Navy ship whose primary mission was to dump atomic and other military waste into the Atlantic Ocean. Lucas spent four years heaving radioactive materials over the side of the ship. After leaving the military, he suffered from chronic health problems and sired five children with birth defects. Lucas’s testimony made my jaw drop. He described one baby whose skin oozed “bloodwater.” He described the birth and death of another whom physicians termed an “anencephalic female monster.” A couple years after his testimony, Lucas died of a rare cancer associated with radiation exposure.

I came across Lucas’s story in 1998, when I worked in a U.S. Congressional office and read the transcript of his Board of Veterans Appeals hearing. Lucas’s widow, Barbara, and my boss, Congressman David Skaggs (D-Colo.), both felt that Harvey Lucas and his family’s illnesses stemmed from radiation exposure in the Navy. But Barbara Lucas had been pursuing a compensation claim with the VA for 18 years without success. The VA always seemed to need more or different evidence. When our office dug up a key final document and Barbara prevailed, I decided to write a book about the USS Calhoun County and her VA claim.

Deck logs and interviews with the ship’s sailors, officers, and scientists suggested that the USS Calhoun County had carried excessively radioactive material and that the ship’s decks had been contaminated. When I discovered a number of other sailors had experienced odd health problems, I broadened my inquiry to look at the VA cases of other USS Calhoun County veterans.

I interviewed Deane Horne, whose teeth and hair had fallen out after he left the ship and whose eldest son was born without a femur. I interviewed Richard Tkaczyk, who had also lost his teeth and whose first born son had seizures and brain damage. I interviewed George Albernaz, who was half paralyzed after suffering from an odd brain disease that his physician called radiation necrosis. All had filed claims with the VA. None had made any headway.

In all cases, the VA began the claims process by asserting that there was no proof that the USS Calhoun County had even carried atomic waste — even though there was ample evidence of the ship’s mission in public federal archives. In all cases, the Navy forwarded personnel files to the VA that were missing a key radiation exposure document.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/12/5180/

out of sight out of mind :sarcasm:

The VA and the Pentagon and various successive administrations know and have known since the fifties that all kinds of atomic weapons cause health problems, cancers, birth defects, environmental damage.......and they know it's a gift that keeps on giving.

There is no doubt, there is no argument, and there is no fixing the problems after the fact.

This is a crime by a government on the world. Not just on the rest of the world, but on your own servicemen and women, on their families, and on the entire environment.

The government of the United States has been using it's own population as a test for a very, very long time.

It should not be on the serviceman to prove that he/she can't function, that his/her health is impaired, that the damage from fighting for the US has left them without the wherewithal to care for themselves and their families. It behooves the government, since they do know what kind of damage they are doing in their wars of choice, to fund the vets and their families fully. Asking people to volunteer to die for a lie is a crime.

If you want to know why a good portion of the world considers the US a rogue state, you need look no further than this.

about 'my' government than I already am.

from here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2276637&mesg_id=2276637


Thank you for addressing the non-combat deaths issue. I’ve been struck by the number of people killed when vehicles drove into canals (Michael Kelly of the Washington Post being the best known of these).

Another mystery you should call attention to is the medivacs of people for non-combat injuries and illnesses, which far exceed those for combat injuries. Icasualties.org reports 24,912 non-hostile medivacs, which means the people were flown out or Iraq and to Germany (or perhaps other military hospitals). Some 18,741 of the patients suffer from disease/other (as opposed to the 6,171 for non-combat related injuries, presumably trauma).

Disease? Three times as many of our troops are being flown out of Iraq for disease than wounds in battle (6,354), and yet we hear nothing about this epidemic, or whatever it is. Soldiers are selected for their good health to begin with and most troops deployed are in their 20s and almost all, other than the National Guard duffers who have been sent over, are under 40. These diseases are serious enough that the soldiers have been flown out of the country, so we’re not talking about colds or even the clap, which can be treated with antibiotics. And Iraq seems a little short on prostitutes and brothels serving the U.S. forces anyway, unless they among the “contractors” being flown in from Thailand and other countries to provide services.

So we have a situation where thousands of certifiably healthy young men and women are coming down with diseases of some sort that are serious enough to get them flown out of the country on an emergency basis. What’s going on over there?

Also, as for stress levels, the U.S. Army concluded in WWII that 24 weeks of combat was about all anyone could take and still be able to function as reasonably effective soldiers. That is about a third of the current tours of duty in Iraq.

Edward Furey
New York, N.Y.

What you don't know about your government could kill you...
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Thank you! And as far as the draft dodger, I went to Ellington ANG base last year (it's real close so we go often to the PX) for a new ID, and there was a pic of Rummy 'after he had resigned' sitting there, and a glass case full of pics of the blivet back in the day. It made me ill.
The Rummy pic I turned face down, 'cause I could, but it was back up by the time I left. :(
Short of throwing a brick through the glass case, my hands were tied. But some people obviously still think he was a great or important or...something, pilot.

But notice that in Blocks 23 & 24 their is no mention of his Wings being issued or authorized to wear? I don't think Shrub ever qualified as a pilot or else his wings would be listed! Don't ya think?

under the rug so quickly speaks volumes, which is why that display bugged me so much.

Then again maybe not!
http://web.archive.org/web/20030423180104/