Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor
By Mark Benjamin
UPI Investigations Editor
Published 10/17/2003 3:36 PM


FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors.

The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.

"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen."

Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.

After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still trying," Buckels said.

One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.

The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.

Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.

The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are left to wallow in medical hold.

"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.

A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.

Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.

They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.

"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.

But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.

Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.

Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.

"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.

Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.

"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he got back, he said.

Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."

The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.

In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the military.

"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush said. "And you're making your state and your country proud."

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Mark Benjamin can be contacted at mbenjamin@upi.com




Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International

Where are the "Support Our Troops" cretins from over at War Channel (Clear Channel) Propaganda now.

A.W.O.L.

They are scum.

The suckers who attended their rallies and are now not raising their voices in angry dissent as to how our Brave young men and women are being treated are scum.

thank you, veteran.
I watched as my comrades were killed in combat.
I watched as my comrades came home and tried to purge the sickness inside them with drugs and booze as the lice that sent them over there to provide wall street with 'defense' spending contracts promptly abandoned them, spreading the spitting at vets lie to further isolate them in their pain. I was never spat at, I was sympathized for the shit I had to go through.

This ain't no different than an economic system that, even if you participate in it according to its rules, will let you earn wages so low that you'll have to cram yourself into a one-bedroom apartment with another worker, just to have a roof over your head. That won't guarantee that you'll have to go to county for health care, because the bosses won't shell out for health insurance.

Look at this parallel. A lot of military families are paid so little that they qualify for Food Stamps. A lot of factories will "lay off" workers during holidays, and push them onto unemployment, as a way to give them paid vacation.

What's the difference? It's a case of greedy conservatives "working the system" and not paying their fare share. Conservatives love to talk about "responsibility" but get real quiet when it comes to crap like leeching off welfare (or getting addicted to drugs like Rush did).

Jeez if he had only used cheap labor conservatives I could have sworn I wrote that. HERE HERE!!!!! And keep up the good work.

Cheap labor conservatives! Cheap labor conservatives! SQUAAAAAWK!

Yes the theme will be recurring because it's true. Just because it unveils the illusion that the cheap labor conservatives have used for years. If you can point out to me where the cheap labor consevatives have given ANYTHING to anyone except the mulit-national corporations it will be the first time. Once again the cheap labor conservatives try to drown out rational discourse with teen age antics. Just like Laura Ingraham broadcasting from the basement of the Heritage Foundation calls her book"Shut Up and Sing". To paraphrase the title correctly for cheap labor conservatives would be "Shut Up and Work."

A new record for you, chump. Have you ever been responsible for anything besides your poli sci book report? Making a payroll, anything? Employees get paid whether or not the business makes money. That is what they signed on for. That is why there is a "Business" section in the newspaper, rather that a "Labor" section.

Found your subscription to Pravda yet?

>Yes the theme will be recurring because it's true.

The theme will be recurring because krankyman the wingnut got his marching orders (as do all liberals and anarchist) from someone else (see link below) and is simply spewing out someone else's bad idea because he can come up with a bad idea on his own.

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/beattherightinthree.htm

>Yes the theme will be recurring because it's true.

The theme will be recurring because krankyman the wingnut got his marching orders (as do all liberals and anarchist) from someone else (see link below) and is simply spewing out someone else's bad idea because he can't come up with a bad idea on his own.

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/beattherightinthree.htm

I heard about this from a member of American Legion Post 521, and I was greatly appalled. Why doesn't the government do anything about this?

They really should do something about this.

An except from a October 13 2003 New York Times article:
"Sometimes called the father of the conservative movement, Paul M. Weyrich holds a weekly strategy session for 50 or so activists at the offices of his Free Congress Foundation near the Capitol.....When I (Matt Bai)attended a recent meeting, at the invitation of Weyrich's staff, those giving briefings included Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, representing the Republican leadership of both chambers, as well as President Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman. and the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers,N. Gregory Mankiw. The prickly Weyrich presided with a scowl from the dais(he is now confined to a wheelchair), from which he exhorted the faithful to get their message out, using words that made him sound like some liberals parody of Dr. Evil.
"There are 1500 conservative radio talk show hosts,"Weyrich boasted. "You have Fox News. You have the Internet, where all the successful sites are conservative. The ability to reach the people with our point of view is like nothing we have ever seen before!"
Weyrich was 31 when he and Edwin Feuler, then serving as disgruntled aides in a Congress dominated by Democrats, founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 with early donations from a handful of wealthy families with names like Coors and Scaife. Determined to foster conservative scholarship and get it into the hands of like-minded policy makers, Weyrich and his compatriots were driven by a single, overarching conviction that grew out of the Goldwater campaign in 1964: government needed to be stingier at home and tougher abroad.
Weyrich and Feuler were not interested in securing immediate victories for a Republican Party that seemed to have,at that time,almost no hope of controlling Congress. In fact, many of the ideas they would ultimately champion--Social Security Privitization,school choice,missile defense--began well outside their party's mainstream. They were insurgents, and they set about staging an ideological takeover of the party, a process that came to fruition sooner than they might have hoped when Ronald Reagan, a fellow outsider, was elected president in 1980.
Today the Heritage Foundation, with an annual budget of roughly 30 million dollars, is like a university unto itself. It's eight story building houses some 180 employees, and it just completed an addition that has, among other amenities, state of the art teleconferencing, apartments for about 60 interns and a fully wired 250 seat auditorium with it's own greeroom.(Laura Ingraham, with one of the nation's largest radio followings, broadcasts from a Heritage studio)
In all, according to a study by the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy, Heritage and other conservative think tanks--best known being the Cato Institute and the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute--spent an estimated $1 billion promoting conservative ideas in the 1990's. From their ranks sprang some credible academics, whose think tank writings spawned powerful careers, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.N. ambassador, and Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court associate justice. There also came a flood of conservative theorists--like Charles Murray, whose book,"The Bell Curve" attacked assumptions about racial equality, and John Lott, who proposed that we would be safer if everyone carried a gun--whose arguments, however dubious, bled indelibly into the public debate."
Give me a break with that marching orders bullshit. If you just read the article the marching orders are followed and obeyed by the cheap labor conservatives. And you always say you think for yourselves. You just repeat what someone else tells you to say. Remember the phrase Ditto-heads, there is a reason for the phrase. There maybe not be a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy....but they are really fucking organized. And obediant.

krankyman - "You just repeat what someone else tells you to say."

This from someone who just repeats what someone else has told him to say.

See below:

krankyman - "cheap labor conservatives"

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/beattherightinthree.htm

Jesus all you right wing nutzo's think you all made up the drivel you spiel. That's what the previous except was about. The cheap labor conservatives all say what the think tanks tell them. All "dotto-heads" have a hard time grasping reading and research. As I have said before when something I read that makes sense I will use it. That's called learning. IF you can refute the arguments on the web-site,www.conceptualguerilla.com I would love to read them...the challenge is there.....well.....????? Or are you going to grasp for the cheap labor conservative straw and call me a name. Well........point by point.

What's the opposite of "cheap labor conservative", anyway?

"Expensive unproductive liberal"?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Oh, by the way -- I went to that website, and nearly got motion sickness from the spin in there. You should put a warning label on that joker.

>Or are you going to grasp for the cheap labor conservative straw

You're the one reaching for straws. And then after being spoon feed what your marching orders are as handed down the chain of command, you declare to us that we're the one's who are receiving marching orders, just like they told you to say.

Here's the link again. Go back. Brush up. Your new marching orders await.

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/beattherightinthree.htm

I still don't read any salient points being made by anyone why cheap labor conservatives aren't trying to screw the working stiff. Just more right wing nutzo name calling. And how about all that garbage(oops "position papers") that comes out of cheap labor conservative TRAINING FACILITIES like the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, etc,etc. Answer me this, Batman, why is the Republican unemployment rate always HIGHER than the previous Democratic administration. Why have cheap labor conservatives ALWAYS voted against minimum wage laws, child labor laws, Medicare, Medicaide, Social Security Insurance? Basically all the PROGRESSIVE reforms that have made this country a good place to live.Why do the cheap labor conservatives keep handing out huge sums to already viable corporations? I hear no answers.........hello.... hello...probably trying to think up more written misdirection from the questions.

That's because we don't answer to you or anyone. You provide EV, we laugh and belittle you. That's the game here. And it *is* a game to us, make no mistake about that.

Carry on.

Still waiting to hear the explanation of why "cheap labor" is somehow evil.

Remember our last heroic use of military resources in the region? Many of them are now ill. Birth defects, and contagion follow the shadows of these welcomed heroes. The y came home to yellow ribbons and denial.
Denial in not in short supply here with fresca around.

Hey, flicka, the reason that cheap labor isn't good for society as a whole is it kills the middle class which is one factor that made this country a great place to live. Look at cheap labor hell holes like China,Thailand, the Mariana Islands(especially) and you see a distinct lack of a middle class. Just so the bosses can load up their pockets AT THE EXPENSE of labor. Eventually that will happen here in America especially with the Little Boy Emperor in the White House now.

Plus who is going to buy the products that industry produces if very few people earn a decent wage. The grocery workers tend to average about 8.65 an hour(even though the top rate is 15 or 16 bucks an hour.Butchers make a top of 19 bucks an hour or so,is that easy work?). At 8 or 9 dollars an hour that's just about the poverty level for a family of four at 40 hours a week(try getting forty hours a week at Wal-Mart who just got busted for using cheap immigrant labor). If the cheap labor conservatives have their way they'd pay everyone a buck an hour and tell them to go fuck themselves.