Gulf War Illness May Be Due To Toxic Environments

Gulf War Syndrome, Other Illnesses Among Veterans May Be Due To Toxic Environments
Huffington Post
Lynne Peeples
February 7, 2013

In 1991, as part of Operation Desert Storm, former U.S. Army Spc. Candy Lovett arrived in Kuwait a healthy 29-year-old eager to serve her country. Two decades later, she's accumulated a stack of medical records over five feet high -- none of which relates to injuries inflicted by bullets or shrapnel.

"It's just been one thing after another," said the veteran, who now resides in Miami and whose ailments run the gamut from lung disease and sleep apnea to, most recently, terminal breast cancer. "At one point," she said, "I was on over 50 pills."

Former Air Force Tech. Sgt. Tim Wymore, who was deployed to Iraq in 2004, suffers from an array of health problems that mirror Lovett's. "Everyone has the same things," said Wymore, who has inexplicably shed 40 pounds in the last few months. "It's just weird."

Wymore and Lovett -- and countless others who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the desert region over the past three decades -- have struggled to understand this, but they share one nagging conviction: These ailments are tied to service in a war zone.

Their suspicions -- long rebuffed by insurance companies -- are now getting support from some doctors and environmental health researchers, who suspect that American soldiers are being unnecessarily exposed to heavily contaminated environments while serving overseas. Even when not engaged directly in combat, they say, servicemen and women -- typically without protective masks or other simple precautions -- live and work amid clouds of Middle Eastern dust laden with toxic metals, bacteria and viruses, and surrounded by plumes of smoke rising from burn pits, a common U.S. military practice of burning feces, plastic bottles and other solid waste in open pits, often with jet fuel.

Research published in December 2012 raises the possibility that in some instances, soldiers may have been exposed to airborne cocktails that included low levels of a deadly chemical warfare agent, the nerve gas sarin, which wafted hundreds of miles from U.S.-bombed Iraqi facilities.
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Fort Hood The Untold Truth new film

Kimberly Munley talks about the day hell arrived at Fort Hood. As she lay on the ground, her gun would not fire. Hasan stood over her with his gun pointed right at her. His didn't fire. She lived. This is an amazing story and a sad reminder the families still wait for justice.

Carolina Beach officer who stopped Fort Hood rampage to be the focus of a local film on the incident
Thursday, February 7, 2013
by Cassie Foss

Kimberly Barbour Munley, a Carolina Beach native and civilian police officer credited with stopping the deadly 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, will serve as consultant to a group of local filmmakers who have set out to tell her story on the big screen.

“Fort Hood: The Untold Truth” will focus on Munley’s experience on Nov. 5, 2009 – Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and injured several others – and flash back to earlier events in the officer’s life, according to the film’s Indiegogo webpage.
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Fort Hood Spouse of Year candidate battles cancer

Hood’s Spouse of the Year candidate battles cancer
By Erin Rogers
Sentinel Staff
FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Marily Considine has been named Fort Hood’s candidate for Military Spouse of the Year, a competition through Military Spouse Magazine, on Jan. 22, and she moved on to the all-Army competition against the winning candidates from Army installations worldwide, which took place on Feb. 5.

Marily will find out if she won the all-Army voting on Feb. 21, and if she wins there, she will go on to represent the Army against all other branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Considine was nominated for Military Spouse of the Year by her sister, who found out about the competition through Military Spouse Magazine, without warning or knowledge of the nomination.

Considine began volunteering with Susan G. Komen after the news of her own breast cancer diagnosis came in September of 2010, in the midst of being an Army wife, a mother and a teacher.
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3,258 Civilian defense workers in Iraq killed, 90,000 wounded

Iraq War contractor fined $75,000 for failing to file 30 death reports on time
By T. Christian Miller
ProPublica

As of December, 3,258 civilian contract workers had been killed or died in Iraq, and another 90,000 had reported injuries.

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined a private security contractor $75,000 for failing to file timely reports on the deaths of workers in Iraq as required by law. The Sandi Group, based in Washington D.C., delayed telling the Labor department that 30 of its employees had been killed while working for the company between 2003 and 2005, according to the department.

The Sandi Group, a privately held company known for employing large numbers of Iraqis as security guards, did not return requests for comment. Since 2005 the company has won U.S. government contracts worth at least $80.9 million, according to a federal contracting database.

The fine, believed to be the largest ever levied against a single company for failing to report war zone casualties in a timely manner, is part of an enforcement crackdown that began after a ProPublica series highlighted problems with a government program designed to provide health benefits to civilian contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Timely reporting of work-related injuries, illnesses and fatalities are vitally important to protect the interests of injured workers and their families,” Gary A. Steinberg, acting director of the Department of Labor office which negotiated the settlement amount with the company, said in a prepared statement.
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JBLM soldier arrested in Wisconsin killing

JBLM soldier arrested in Wisconsin killing
A Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier has been arrested in connection with the torture and killing of her husband’s autistic stepbrother in Wisconsin last summer.
The News Tribune
STACIA GLENN
STAFF WRITER
Published: Feb. 7, 2013

A Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier has been arrested in connection with the torture and killing of her husband’s autistic stepbrother in Wisconsin last summer.

Shannon Remus, 26, who works as a military police officer, waived extradition Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court and is expected to be transported back to Dane County to face charges in the next few days.

Detectives from Wisconsin arrested her Tuesday on base on suspicion of hiding a corpse. The woman’s husband, Jeffrey Vogelsberg, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. Vogelsberg’s landlord and mother also are jailed in the case.
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