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November 02, 2006

One in Four War Vets Disabled

For every four soldiers we send to Iraq and Afghanistan, one returns home disabled. That's the bad news straight from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs in documents obtained only after nine months of stalling in an effort to get around a Freedom of Information Act request.

Initially, the VA had said no such documents existed. Recently it was learned that this was a game of semantics. The FOIA request asked for records of veterans from "Operation Enduring Freedom" (Afghanistan) and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (Iraq); the "magic" name, however, was "the Global War on Terrorism." Once they asked the right question, they were given the data.

If this trend continues, the VA could be burdened with trying to care for 400,000 new disabled veterans and nowhere near the budget it needs to do so.

Project Censored reports that Iraqi civilians are suffering the same debilitating symptoms as our troops and in very elevated numbers – and says these symptoms are the effect of exposure to depleted uranium.

Posted by Becky at November 2, 2006 12:01 PM