America To Put Armed Forces Bases In India

[babbajoe]

2 reads

1st read

November 26, 2009

A Night With Shining Obama

The American East India Company

By FARZANA VERSEY

Minutiae have rarely been of such importance. Or symbolic. A white tent might have been more appropriate for an Arab head of state, but it works just as well for a fairytale. There was special vegetarian food to tickle the guest’s palate. Most important of all is that the First Lady wore a gown designed by an Indian American, never mind that it seemed more appropriate to walk the red carpet at Cannes.

Was India truly the flavour of recent times? The media, not only at home but in the United States, did give the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the state dinner a lot of mileage. There are Indians in the Obama administration, there are Indians who do business in America. There have been nine state dinners hosted for the Indian heads of state thus far. These are at the simplest level courtesy visits.

In the 90s, Indians who participated in beauty pageants began to win. We thought it was because of what they were and what they said in their trained elocution contest manner. This was the American East India Company at work marketing its cosmetic brands to the large middle-class population. Once they had consolidated their hegemony, the Indian beauty was junked. She continues to appear on the fringes as arm candy for a slumdog or the dusky woman as exotic breed as well as in exile trauma and triumph stories that feed literary vultures.

With the arrival of the 21st century and Indian consolidation and recognition in areas of intellectual endeavour, the West had to use other terms of trade. America, for all its worldly-wise attitude, is not as canny as the British were over a century ago. The Englishman knew us so well that he could as coloniser make us fight his enemy on the prompting of none other than the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi. It was quite easy, for Indians have always been ruled, by others and their own. We relish the pomp and pageantry of durbars; we like to see those superior to us in terms of wealth and power to prosper. Our problems are always with those like us.

The US is the outsider with little history of its own let alone historical colonising. It has been mimicking the British model by co-opting certain segments of society. Market politics have changed and you need to pit one against the other and then settle for a deal that is so completely abstract that no one knows what the trade was about.

Manmohan Singh went on his soft mission with the hard truth. Obama had told the Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing that the US wanted China to play an important monitoring role in the region. A joint statement consolidated to “support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan”.

China has been at war with India and continues to lurk near the border; China is on special terms with Pakistan and Pakistan is also lurking at our border and inside. America is inside Pakistan and Afghanistan, and its interest in China is one of staying away from a potential enemy.

It would have been clear to anyone that the US was telling India something. And it was telling China and Pakistan and Afghanistan something. China is the most powerful in this group; the other two countries have no options. Where does that leave India?

With the fly in the asparagus soup, a fly called a “rising and responsible global power”. Both terms are loaded. A rising power has a long way to go and responsibility means following certain rules and doing what is expected.

China may keep mum at the moment, but the US has thrown a ball of wool for the cat to toy with. It is pertinent to note that following this Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, chief of the Hurriyat Conference, said that China should become a part of negotiations on the Kashmir issue. China has no stake in Kashmir, so it will lie low. America knows that. This is to make the Indians edgy and the Pakistanis feel complacent for a while about their real allies – the Chinese and the Americans.

Singh did not raise any tough questions. All he managed was some tripe about maintaining peace and tranquillity until the pending resolution is dealt with. He even said, “I have received these assurances from Chinese leadership from the highest level”. This is like someone at a gossip session throwing names without really namedropping and not how a statesman would talk.

He repeated his naïve act when he mentioned that “there is but a certain amount of assertiveness on the Chinese part. I don’t fully understand the reasons for it”. What does he not understand about such assertiveness? The political machinations? Or the psychological dimensions? Does he comprehend the reasons for the US assertiveness in Iraq? Or the drone attacks on Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Some reports have talked about him being disturbed about the comparison with Chinese economic growth. This is a fact and was recently evident at a trade fair in India where the Chinese left within a few days because their goods were sold out. But the Indian PM had other ideas about “values” when he said, “I think the respect for fundamental human rights, the respect for the rule of law, respect for multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious rights, I think those have values. So, even the Indian perforce with regard to the GDP might not be as good as the Chinese, certainly I would not like to choose the Chinese path.”

This is most surprising. He heads a country that is a democracy and yet its record on human rights is being questioned, its courts take 17 years to table a report on major riots when the evidence stared them in the face right from the beginning, its multiculturalism is partly a case of being a vast nation with too many ethnicities, regions and languages. No one would suggest that India should go the China way because it cannot be a monolith even if it wanted to.

One might imagine that he was being brave. It came across as quite the opposite. This was the Indian on a levitating moral ground, one more exotic idea that America can chew on.

President Obama used the opportunity to bring Pakistan into the picture. “There were probably times when we were just focused on the (Pakistani) military...instead of (engaging its) civil society.”

This is smart. In September last year Obama, as senator, told Fox News that Pakistan was misusing its aid in “preparing for a war against India”. The tune has changed. The Pakistani army is not important enough in times of the Taliban. The elected government will play along. The US, as always, will seek puppet regimes and India will have to deal with them. The power by default lies with America.

Are we keeling over before the US because of the huge outsourcing potential? Young people despite faking American accents are abused in call centres; they are not considered ‘talent’ – they are cheap labour. They have become the equivalent of the White Man’s burden.

When George Bush visited India as President, there was a front page picture in a newspaper of the cone of a rocket being wheeled on a bicycle to its first launch site in Kerala, in the year 1966. There was a small editorial note alongside. Its post-script addressed Bush: “This isn’t a WMD. It’s a symbol of an upwardly mobile India”. This, after talking about the symbolism of how a technological marvel was being taken on the road in a bicycle and we have come a long way.

It was to convey that we are harmless; we just want to better our lives. Such sniveling reveals a feeling of being indebted to the West. The culture we take pride in is precisely the one that they find ‘interesting’. What are we then catering to? What powers do we have in the international arena, the Security Council, the United Nations?

Due to the sneaky fears we are saddled with, we are spending most of our budget on defence and not on education, literacy, health. Is this upward mobility?

What did Manmohan Singh’s visit achieve except for the benevolent catch-phrase from Barack Obama that US-India ties would be the defining partnership of the 21st century?

And Angelina Jolie adopts one more baby.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based columnist and author of A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan, Harper Collins, India. She can be reached at kaaghaz.kalam@gmail.com

2nd read

December 1, 2009

The Casualties of Toxic Warfare

Global Connections and the Arc of War

By SUSAN GALLEYMORE

Alameda, California was once home to one of the largest Naval Air Stations in the world with 271 separate and distinct trades to manufacture and repair every part of any aircraft. Vast quantities of chemicals went into this work including solvents, aviation fuel, and radium-based paints for cockpit dials. Leaks and spills were as common as they are in any operation of this magnitude. Rags, brushes, and cleaning supplies were regularly replaced, the worn-out burned in pits located at the northern tip of the naval base. Enough chemicals were mishandled or leaked out of containers and sewer pipes that the former base is, today, a Superfund site.

As I inch my way through the mountain of documents the Navy amasses as it cleans up the relatively manageable contamination in my home town, I encounter a theme that echoes in my other research into our military, the military mindset, and the effects of militarism: a tendency to under-report, minimize, even deny, “occupational” hazards. It crops up in military documentation, out of the mouths of military spokespeople, and is supported by the the national defense – and homeland security – industries that support and benefit from it.

There are more than 40,000 toxic sites in the U.S. and its territories... approximately 1,000 of which are on the National Priority List, and for which Federal cleanup funding is forthcoming. Certainly the financial costs of cleanup are considerable. But what of the moral and ethical cost? Just as each tax-paying American is implicated in the wars our country wages, so too are we implicated in the human and environmental damage.

Is the damage the U.S. military has caused here and abroad worth the material benefit the U.S. derives?

The more things change...

Vietnam. This year, as they did last year, and for several years before that, delegates from Vietnam came to the U.S. to plead their case and to raise awareness about their countrymen who continue to suffer the consequences of dioxin-laden Agent Orange sprayed by the U.S. Air Force.

During the conflict in Vietnam, the U.S. military denied food and protection to those deemed to be “the enemy” and contracted with over 30 U.S. chemical firms to supply chemicals to defoliate Vietnam's forests. The most lethal chemical, Agent Orange, was contaminated with trace amounts of TCDD dioxin – the most toxic chemical known to science – which disabled and sickened soldiers, civilians and several generations of offspring on two continents.

Medical evidence indicates that cancers such as soft tissue non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, type II diabetes, and spina bifida and other birth defects in children are attributable to this exposure.

Vietnam's victims of Agent Orange, 2007. Photo: Merle Ratner, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign

Surviving American veterans of Vietnam finally achieved limited compensation from the U.S. Government for some illnesses they suffer due to the poisons. The Vietnamese have received nothing. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently refused to review the dismissal of the lawsuit of more than three million Vietnamese against 37 companies that manufactured this chemical weapon.

Attorney for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, Jonathan C. Moore, states,“It is unfortunate that U.S. courts have chosen, contrary to U.S. and international law, to deny justice to millions of Vietnamese who suffer from the spraying of dioxin-laden Agent Orange which has left several generations of victims severely sick and disabled.”

These ailments and deformities are significant, sobering, and heartbreaking...made worse because affected families are physically unable to work and generate an income. Moreover, the chemicals continue to affect Vietnam's natural environment and destroy its mangrove forests, soil, and crops.

Dr. James R. Clary, a senior scientist at the Chemical Weapons Branch (the Air Force Armament Development Lab based in Florida at that time), wrote:

When we initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the military formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the civilian version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had [considered this scenario], we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated.

This scientist's naive candor is refreshing. If he was working in today's military, he'd probably lose his job.

...the more they stay the same?

Iraq. Balad Airbase, 68 kilometers north of Baghdad and east of Fallujah, is one of the largest bases housing about 25,000 U.S. military personnel and several thousand contractors.

In June 2008 it had three clean-burning incinerators handling about 120 tons of waste each day. Additionally, the burn pit consumes 147 tons of waste per day: styrofoam, unexploded ordnance, petroleum products, plastics, rubber, dining facility trash, paint and solvents, and medical waste that – according to those performing the burns – includes amputated limbs.

This concoction is set alight with jet fuel, a substance that releases chemicals known to increase the risk of leukemia. Just burning plastic water bottles creates elevated levels of highly toxic dioxins, which can contaminate food chains by landing on plants that are consumed by animals and accumulate in fatty tissue.

A plume of black, tacky smoke hangs over the region when waste is burned. Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, former bioenvironmental flight commander for Joint Base Balad, wrote in a memo dated Dec. 20, 2006:

“In my professional opinion, there is an acute health hazard for individuals. It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions over the past few years. There is also the possibility for chronic health hazards associated with the smoke.”

In June 2009 three military servicemen from Charleston filed a class-action lawsuit against Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). The lawsuit alleges that KBR burned hazardous waste in Iraq and Afghanistan that included human corpses, biohazardous medical supplies, styrofoam, tires, lithium batteries, asbestos insulation, paint, and items containing pesticides and latrine waste.

A mother in Baghdad's Al Mansour Hospital's pediatric oncology ward. Her child suffers from a cancer rarely seen in children. Photo: Susan Galleymore, 2004.

Since then dozens of U.S. military personnel have filed 34 lawsuits against KBR for allegedly incinerating toxic waste and releasing it into the atmosphere in Iraq and Afghanistan. A KBR spokeswoman responded via email that the “general assertion that KBR knowingly harmed troops is unfounded.” KBR, she says, did not operate most of Balad's burn pit, and that the others are operated at the direction of the military.

According to the June 12, 2009 Post and Courier article, “Burn pit caused injuries, suit says: Disposal of toxic wastes improper, servicemen claim,” there is also an Iraqi-run recycling center on the Balad base. Iraqis sort through recyclables tossed into the burn pit — such as the roughly 90,000 aluminum cans produced daily by the base — and resell them on the local market.

Are emissions from these burn pits and material from the recycling center simply adding to the toxic cocktail already flooding Iraq?

Fallujah's hospitals are experiencing a wave of newborns with chronic deformities and early life cancers. Dr Bassam Allah, the head of the Fallujah's children's ward, urges international experts to take soil samples across the region, and for scientists to mount an investigation into the causes of so many ailments. “Such abnormalities,” he says are “acquired” by mothers before or during pregnancy.

The UK Guardian reports that Fallujah's doctors, “are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting....from two [hospital] admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now.” Most deformities are in the head and spinal cord.... and “there is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of [children] less than two years [old] with brain tumours.”

Pediatrician Samira Abdul Ghani's kept detailed records over a three-week period and revealed 37 babies born with anomalies, many of them neural tube defects that result in brain matter found in the spine and dysfunctional lower limbs.

Abnormal clusters of infant tumors have also been cited in Basra and Najaf - areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.

Baghdad's hospitals sees young children with rare cancers too. I visited Al Mansour's pediatric oncology ward in January 2004. Mothers nursed children with leukemias, neuroblastomas, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and other cancers rarely seen in young children. Iraqi parents were selling their cars, houses, and other possessions to pay for chemotherapy whose medicines the U.S. refused to supply because, it was claimed, they were potential ingredients in the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Doctors in Fallujah repeat what I heard from doctors in Baghdad: they are reluctant to draw direct links with war zone chemical pollutants. “We simply don't have the answers yet....We need funds to conduct scientifically accurate studies.”

Baghdad's babies were not, of course, victims of the May and November 2004 battles in Falluja. Are they victims of the economic sanctions of the 1990s? Or victims of pollutants from U.S.'s ongoing bombing raids over the no-fly-zones during the same period? Or victims of airborne pollutants from burning oil during Gulf War I ? U.S. troops continue to suffer Gulf War Syndrome so why would the region's children be immune? Iraqis have better luck receiving compensation for their enormous health disasters than the Vietnamese have had? Or will their plight be similar to that of the Vietnamese and unacknowledged in the furor over American troop exposure? What about Kuwait? And Bosnia? And Gaza? And Afghanistan?

For more than eight years the U.S. Government has maintained the fallacy that bombarding Afghanistan is necessary, that that is a “righteous” war against terrorism. The lawsuit against KBR includes burn pits in Afghanistan and it is a matter of time before the world is aware of the affects on troops and civilians there. It is likely that the wave of deformities in Afghan newborns will go undetected for a longer period than they took to crest in Iraq since many Afghan babies are born at home and in remote regions. A new study by the U.S.-based independent charity Save the Children says 60 out of every 1,000 Afghan babies die; this is already one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.

When I began researching the military mindset I held that large institutions are inherently chaotic, that administrating millions of acres of military real estate around the world and the personnel occupying it – and their supply chains – results in inevitable errors, and that those responsible for public coffers would, occasionally, makes egregious mistakes that they'd want to hide. But, we the people, can no longer sustain this mindset and culture. We, the people, have reached the cul de sac of our “westward expansion.” We have nowhere else to go. We must turn around and face...ourselves.... We must begin the real work of recognizing our complex mutual humanity and interdependence...and cop to our innate glory...and vainglory, intoxication with self, denial, egotism, and our less-than-perfect traits that cross political boundaries. As we recognize the incontrovertible evidence in the arc of degradation that is war we must accept our responsibility for it...and ensure we no longer contaminate our world or its people.

Susan Galleymore is author of Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, host of Stanford University's Raising Sand Radio, and a former “military mom” and GI Rights Counselor. Contact her at media@mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org.

[Sukhdeep Singhh]

2 reads

1st read

November 26, 2009

A Night With Shining Obama

The American East India Company

By FARZANA VERSEY

Minutiae have rarely been of such importance. Or symbolic. A white tent might have been more appropriate for an Arab head of state, but it works just as well for a fairytale. There was special vegetarian food to tickle the guest’s palate. Most important of all is that the First Lady wore a gown designed by an Indian American, never mind that it seemed more appropriate to walk the red carpet at Cannes.

Was India truly the flavour of recent times? The media, not only at home but in the United States, did give the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the state dinner a lot of mileage. There are Indians in the Obama administration, there are Indians who do business in America. There have been nine state dinners hosted for the Indian heads of state thus far. These are at the simplest level courtesy visits.

In the 90s, Indians who participated in beauty pageants began to win. We thought it was because of what they were and what they said in their trained elocution contest manner. This was the American East India Company at work marketing its cosmetic brands to the large middle-class population. Once they had consolidated their hegemony, the Indian beauty was junked. She continues to appear on the fringes as arm candy for a slumdog or the dusky woman as exotic breed as well as in exile trauma and triumph stories that feed literary vultures.

With the arrival of the 21st century and Indian consolidation and recognition in areas of intellectual endeavour, the West had to use other terms of trade. America, for all its worldly-wise attitude, is not as canny as the British were over a century ago. The Englishman knew us so well that he could as coloniser make us fight his enemy on the prompting of none other than the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi. It was quite easy, for Indians have always been ruled, by others and their own. We relish the pomp and pageantry of durbars; we like to see those superior to us in terms of wealth and power to prosper. Our problems are always with those like us.

The US is the outsider with little history of its own let alone historical colonising. It has been mimicking the British model by co-opting certain segments of society. Market politics have changed and you need to pit one against the other and then settle for a deal that is so completely abstract that no one knows what the trade was about.

Manmohan Singh went on his soft mission with the hard truth. Obama had told the Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing that the US wanted China to play an important monitoring role in the region. A joint statement consolidated to “support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan”.

China has been at war with India and continues to lurk near the border; China is on special terms with Pakistan and Pakistan is also lurking at our border and inside. America is inside Pakistan and Afghanistan, and its interest in China is one of staying away from a potential enemy.

It would have been clear to anyone that the US was telling India something. And it was telling China and Pakistan and Afghanistan something. China is the most powerful in this group; the other two countries have no options. Where does that leave India?

With the fly in the asparagus soup, a fly called a “rising and responsible global power”. Both terms are loaded. A rising power has a long way to go and responsibility means following certain rules and doing what is expected.

China may keep mum at the moment, but the US has thrown a ball of wool for the cat to toy with. It is pertinent to note that following this Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, chief of the Hurriyat Conference, said that China should become a part of negotiations on the Kashmir issue. China has no stake in Kashmir, so it will lie low. America knows that. This is to make the Indians edgy and the Pakistanis feel complacent for a while about their real allies – the Chinese and the Americans.

Singh did not raise any tough questions. All he managed was some tripe about maintaining peace and tranquillity until the pending resolution is dealt with. He even said, “I have received these assurances from Chinese leadership from the highest level”. This is like someone at a gossip session throwing names without really namedropping and not how a statesman would talk.

He repeated his naïve act when he mentioned that “there is but a certain amount of assertiveness on the Chinese part. I don’t fully understand the reasons for it”. What does he not understand about such assertiveness? The political machinations? Or the psychological dimensions? Does he comprehend the reasons for the US assertiveness in Iraq? Or the drone attacks on Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Some reports have talked about him being disturbed about the comparison with Chinese economic growth. This is a fact and was recently evident at a trade fair in India where the Chinese left within a few days because their goods were sold out. But the Indian PM had other ideas about “values” when he said, “I think the respect for fundamental human rights, the respect for the rule of law, respect for multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious rights, I think those have values. So, even the Indian perforce with regard to the GDP might not be as good as the Chinese, certainly I would not like to choose the Chinese path.”

This is most surprising. He heads a country that is a democracy and yet its record on human rights is being questioned, its courts take 17 years to table a report on major riots when the evidence stared them in the face right from the beginning, its multiculturalism is partly a case of being a vast nation with too many ethnicities, regions and languages. No one would suggest that India should go the China way because it cannot be a monolith even if it wanted to.

One might imagine that he was being brave. It came across as quite the opposite. This was the Indian on a levitating moral ground, one more exotic idea that America can chew on.

President Obama used the opportunity to bring Pakistan into the picture. “There were probably times when we were just focused on the (Pakistani) military...instead of (engaging its) civil society.”

This is smart. In September last year Obama, as senator, told Fox News that Pakistan was misusing its aid in “preparing for a war against India”. The tune has changed. The Pakistani army is not important enough in times of the Taliban. The elected government will play along. The US, as always, will seek puppet regimes and India will have to deal with them. The power by default lies with America.

Are we keeling over before the US because of the huge outsourcing potential? Young people despite faking American accents are abused in call centres; they are not considered ‘talent’ – they are cheap labour. They have become the equivalent of the White Man’s burden.

When George Bush visited India as President, there was a front page picture in a newspaper of the cone of a rocket being wheeled on a bicycle to its first launch site in Kerala, in the year 1966. There was a small editorial note alongside. Its post-script addressed Bush: “This isn’t a WMD. It’s a symbol of an upwardly mobile India”. This, after talking about the symbolism of how a technological marvel was being taken on the road in a bicycle and we have come a long way.

It was to convey that we are harmless; we just want to better our lives. Such sniveling reveals a feeling of being indebted to the West. The culture we take pride in is precisely the one that they find ‘interesting’. What are we then catering to? What powers do we have in the international arena, the Security Council, the United Nations?

Due to the sneaky fears we are saddled with, we are spending most of our budget on defence and not on education, literacy, health. Is this upward mobility?

What did Manmohan Singh’s visit achieve except for the benevolent catch-phrase from Barack Obama that US-India ties would be the defining partnership of the 21st century?

And Angelina Jolie adopts one more baby.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based columnist and author of A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan, Harper Collins, India. She can be reached at kaaghaz.kalam@gmail.com

2nd read

December 1, 2009

The Casualties of Toxic Warfare

Global Connections and the Arc of War

By SUSAN GALLEYMORE

Alameda, California was once home to one of the largest Naval Air Stations in the world with 271 separate and distinct trades to manufacture and repair every part of any aircraft. Vast quantities of chemicals went into this work including solvents, aviation fuel, and radium-based paints for cockpit dials. Leaks and spills were as common as they are in any operation of this magnitude. Rags, brushes, and cleaning supplies were regularly replaced, the worn-out burned in pits located at the northern tip of the naval base. Enough chemicals were mishandled or leaked out of containers and sewer pipes that the former base is, today, a Superfund site.

As I inch my way through the mountain of documents the Navy amasses as it cleans up the relatively manageable contamination in my home town, I encounter a theme that echoes in my other research into our military, the military mindset, and the effects of militarism: a tendency to under-report, minimize, even deny, “occupational” hazards. It crops up in military documentation, out of the mouths of military spokespeople, and is supported by the the national defense – and homeland security – industries that support and benefit from it.

There are more than 40,000 toxic sites in the U.S. and its territories... approximately 1,000 of which are on the National Priority List, and for which Federal cleanup funding is forthcoming. Certainly the financial costs of cleanup are considerable. But what of the moral and ethical cost? Just as each tax-paying American is implicated in the wars our country wages, so too are we implicated in the human and environmental damage.

Is the damage the U.S. military has caused here and abroad worth the material benefit the U.S. derives?

The more things change...

Vietnam. This year, as they did last year, and for several years before that, delegates from Vietnam came to the U.S. to plead their case and to raise awareness about their countrymen who continue to suffer the consequences of dioxin-laden Agent Orange sprayed by the U.S. Air Force.

During the conflict in Vietnam, the U.S. military denied food and protection to those deemed to be “the enemy” and contracted with over 30 U.S. chemical firms to supply chemicals to defoliate Vietnam's forests. The most lethal chemical, Agent Orange, was contaminated with trace amounts of TCDD dioxin – the most toxic chemical known to science – which disabled and sickened soldiers, civilians and several generations of offspring on two continents.

Medical evidence indicates that cancers such as soft tissue non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, type II diabetes, and spina bifida and other birth defects in children are attributable to this exposure.

Vietnam's victims of Agent Orange, 2007. Photo: Merle Ratner, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign

Surviving American veterans of Vietnam finally achieved limited compensation from the U.S. Government for some illnesses they suffer due to the poisons. The Vietnamese have received nothing. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently refused to review the dismissal of the lawsuit of more than three million Vietnamese against 37 companies that manufactured this chemical weapon.

Attorney for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, Jonathan C. Moore, states,“It is unfortunate that U.S. courts have chosen, contrary to U.S. and international law, to deny justice to millions of Vietnamese who suffer from the spraying of dioxin-laden Agent Orange which has left several generations of victims severely sick and disabled.”

These ailments and deformities are significant, sobering, and heartbreaking...made worse because affected families are physically unable to work and generate an income. Moreover, the chemicals continue to affect Vietnam's natural environment and destroy its mangrove forests, soil, and crops.

Dr. James R. Clary, a senior scientist at the Chemical Weapons Branch (the Air Force Armament Development Lab based in Florida at that time), wrote:

When we initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the military formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the civilian version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had [considered this scenario], we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated.

This scientist's naive candor is refreshing. If he was working in today's military, he'd probably lose his job.

...the more they stay the same?

Iraq. Balad Airbase, 68 kilometers north of Baghdad and east of Fallujah, is one of the largest bases housing about 25,000 U.S. military personnel and several thousand contractors.

In June 2008 it had three clean-burning incinerators handling about 120 tons of waste each day. Additionally, the burn pit consumes 147 tons of waste per day: styrofoam, unexploded ordnance, petroleum products, plastics, rubber, dining facility trash, paint and solvents, and medical waste that – according to those performing the burns – includes amputated limbs.

This concoction is set alight with jet fuel, a substance that releases chemicals known to increase the risk of leukemia. Just burning plastic water bottles creates elevated levels of highly toxic dioxins, which can contaminate food chains by landing on plants that are consumed by animals and accumulate in fatty tissue.

A plume of black, tacky smoke hangs over the region when waste is burned. Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, former bioenvironmental flight commander for Joint Base Balad, wrote in a memo dated Dec. 20, 2006:

“In my professional opinion, there is an acute health hazard for individuals. It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions over the past few years. There is also the possibility for chronic health hazards associated with the smoke.”

In June 2009 three military servicemen from Charleston filed a class-action lawsuit against Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). The lawsuit alleges that KBR burned hazardous waste in Iraq and Afghanistan that included human corpses, biohazardous medical supplies, styrofoam, tires, lithium batteries, asbestos insulation, paint, and items containing pesticides and latrine waste.

A mother in Baghdad's Al Mansour Hospital's pediatric oncology ward. Her child suffers from a cancer rarely seen in children. Photo: Susan Galleymore, 2004.

Since then dozens of U.S. military personnel have filed 34 lawsuits against KBR for allegedly incinerating toxic waste and releasing it into the atmosphere in Iraq and Afghanistan. A KBR spokeswoman responded via email that the “general assertion that KBR knowingly harmed troops is unfounded.” KBR, she says, did not operate most of Balad's burn pit, and that the others are operated at the direction of the military.

According to the June 12, 2009 Post and Courier article, “Burn pit caused injuries, suit says: Disposal of toxic wastes improper, servicemen claim,” there is also an Iraqi-run recycling center on the Balad base. Iraqis sort through recyclables tossed into the burn pit — such as the roughly 90,000 aluminum cans produced daily by the base — and resell them on the local market.

Are emissions from these burn pits and material from the recycling center simply adding to the toxic cocktail already flooding Iraq?

Fallujah's hospitals are experiencing a wave of newborns with chronic deformities and early life cancers. Dr Bassam Allah, the head of the Fallujah's children's ward, urges international experts to take soil samples across the region, and for scientists to mount an investigation into the causes of so many ailments. “Such abnormalities,” he says are “acquired” by mothers before or during pregnancy.

The UK Guardian reports that Fallujah's doctors, “are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting....from two [hospital] admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now.” Most deformities are in the head and spinal cord.... and “there is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of [children] less than two years [old] with brain tumours.”

Pediatrician Samira Abdul Ghani's kept detailed records over a three-week period and revealed 37 babies born with anomalies, many of them neural tube defects that result in brain matter found in the spine and dysfunctional lower limbs.

Abnormal clusters of infant tumors have also been cited in Basra and Najaf - areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.

Baghdad's hospitals sees young children with rare cancers too. I visited Al Mansour's pediatric oncology ward in January 2004. Mothers nursed children with leukemias, neuroblastomas, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and other cancers rarely seen in young children. Iraqi parents were selling their cars, houses, and other possessions to pay for chemotherapy whose medicines the U.S. refused to supply because, it was claimed, they were potential ingredients in the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Doctors in Fallujah repeat what I heard from doctors in Baghdad: they are reluctant to draw direct links with war zone chemical pollutants. “We simply don't have the answers yet....We need funds to conduct scientifically accurate studies.”

Baghdad's babies were not, of course, victims of the May and November 2004 battles in Falluja. Are they victims of the economic sanctions of the 1990s? Or victims of pollutants from U.S.'s ongoing bombing raids over the no-fly-zones during the same period? Or victims of airborne pollutants from burning oil during Gulf War I ? U.S. troops continue to suffer Gulf War Syndrome so why would the region's children be immune? Iraqis have better luck receiving compensation for their enormous health disasters than the Vietnamese have had? Or will their plight be similar to that of the Vietnamese and unacknowledged in the furor over American troop exposure? What about Kuwait? And Bosnia? And Gaza? And Afghanistan?

For more than eight years the U.S. Government has maintained the fallacy that bombarding Afghanistan is necessary, that that is a “righteous” war against terrorism. The lawsuit against KBR includes burn pits in Afghanistan and it is a matter of time before the world is aware of the affects on troops and civilians there. It is likely that the wave of deformities in Afghan newborns will go undetected for a longer period than they took to crest in Iraq since many Afghan babies are born at home and in remote regions. A new study by the U.S.-based independent charity Save the Children says 60 out of every 1,000 Afghan babies die; this is already one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.

When I began researching the military mindset I held that large institutions are inherently chaotic, that administrating millions of acres of military real estate around the world and the personnel occupying it – and their supply chains – results in inevitable errors, and that those responsible for public coffers would, occasionally, makes egregious mistakes that they'd want to hide. But, we the people, can no longer sustain this mindset and culture. We, the people, have reached the cul de sac of our “westward expansion.” We have nowhere else to go. We must turn around and face...ourselves.... We must begin the real work of recognizing our complex mutual humanity and interdependence...and cop to our innate glory...and vainglory, intoxication with self, denial, egotism, and our less-than-perfect traits that cross political boundaries. As we recognize the incontrovertible evidence in the arc of degradation that is war we must accept our responsibility for it...and ensure we no longer contaminate our world or its people.

Susan Galleymore is author of Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, host of Stanford University's Raising Sand Radio, and a former “military mom” and GI Rights Counselor. Contact her at media@mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org.

It turned out the dinner was a great way to get publicity for Sikhis. A couple uninvited crashed the presidential dinner and their photo with Obama was shown frequently across the globe. Lucky for us Manmohan SIngh was in the background of the pic. Hopefully this will educate the wider public about the differences between SIkhs and Arabs.

[babbajoe]

Does anyone believe India will allow US Empire to put Military Bases

in India? Will the US manipulate India's fear of Chinese invasion to

forge closer US ties? Has anyone in India looked at the possibility US

manipulated Mumbai terrorists to attack Mumbai? Do Sikhs ever attend

religious festivals like the Khumba Mela? Do Rishis exist?

USA gave India MacDonalds. India gave USA Ram.

[BhForce]

Thanks for the article.

It says a lot of stuff, but it doesn't say the US is to put bases in India. Did I miss something?

[babbajoe]

My research about the US deliberately creating the 1993 World Trade center bombing, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and 911 has

made me suspicious about the Mumbai attacks . I am currently researching Mr Headley and trying to determine if he was on the FBI

payroll.I have no doubt American Foreign policy in India is driven by manipulating the two superpowers of India and China.

From where I sit in the United States I see the Mumbai attack as allowing the US to gain a foothold in India under the pretense

of assisting India in solving the Mumbai attacks. I believe if India is to solve the question of who was behind the attacks in Mumbai

they must look to America and see who created the three terrorist events listed above. I do not rule out the possibility of a US Military

presence in India under the guise of American friendship helping India to contain China. I have posted material that may be useful

in solving the question of who committed the 1993 World Trade center, Oklahoma City bombing and 911 attacks at these sites

American Brigadier General Benton K Partin spent his life in the US Air Force designing bombs and explosive weapons for the US Armed forces.

He visited the Oklahoma City bombing site a few days after the explosion and determined it was impossible for the truck bomb to have

destroyed the Murragh Building. He shows how satchel charges were used to collapse the columns of the Federal Murragh building here

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/PARTIN/ok8.htm

also see

http://www.dallasnews.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=48

http://forum.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=59139

You can view my video footage in a recent documentary made by a award winning filmaker looking

at the US Government creating 911 here www.911pressfortruth.com

[d2e]

@babbjoe are you out of your mind or do you regularly view Pakistani news channel?

[babbajoe]

I do not view Pakastani News Channel but I work as a filmaker and helped make a recent documentary

called 911 PRESS FOR TRUTH which can be seen at www.911pressfortruth.com

The documentary follows the money trail, the people who funded the 911 attacks and it leads

back to Pakistan and their ISI. I also have frequent conversations with Salt Lake City attorney

Jesse Trentadue who won a million dollar lawsuit against the FBI .He has obtained FBI documents

that show FBI agents were handling Timothy McVeigh before the Oklahoma City bombing. He was convicted

of this crime in the late 90's and was executed several years ago.

google nichols potts trentadue

google trentadue fbi video