The Home Affront

The Home Affront
They fight for us, obediently. Yet in conflict after conflict, American soldiers are injected, gassed, medicated, experimented on, exposed to chemicals, and given faulty weapons and equipment by their own government. Then they come home to vanishing veterans benefits and Pentagon stonewalling.

by Rick Anderson

(Getty Images) About the Author Seattle Weekly writer Rick Anderson started his newspaper career as a copy boy for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. From there, he went to the Skagit Valley Herald, the Daily Olympian, the Hayward, Calif., Daily Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Tri-City Herald, the P-I again, The Seattle Times, then Seattle Weekly. And he’s still broke. This article is drawn from Home Front: The Government’s War on Soldiers (Clarity Press, 2004), a book that grew out of a story Anderson wrote for SW—“Crippled Home Front” (April 9, 2003). That article drew wide response and is displayed at numerous Web sites, including that of Arlington National Cemetery. Anderson will read from and sign Home Front on July 30 at 6 p.m. at Third Place Books in Bothell; Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m., at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle; Aug. 26, 7 p.m., at University Book Store in Seattle; and Aug. 27, 7:30 p.m., at Village Bookstore in Bellingham.

Toney Edwards met his daughter around midnight in the hallway at Fort Sam Houston’s Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. Prepare for a shock, she told Toney and his wife as they entered the hospital room that night in 1998. The father edged to the bedside and peered down at the distorted face of his Army son, Kevin. Toney flinched. The boy’s face reminded him of something he’d seen in Vietnam: a battered, swollen GI, the victim of friendly fire. N One of America’s 26.4 million war veterans, father Toney had joined the Army 30 years earlier, going from the backwoods of Virginia to become an airborne soldier in the Vietnam jungles, where he was exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange. “The Army gave me a life,” he liked to say—and then add that the life included post-traumatic stress disorder and maybe prostate cancer, linked, he thinks, to the chemical defoliants he was told were harmless to humans. It had been tough to live with his military memories. Now he had to face living with his son’s as well. N Hovering over Kevin, Toney was confused. How could the boy suffer such an injury? The father had witnessed members of his own unit in ’Nam after they were hit with napalm fired by U.S. aircraft. Their faces looked seared, inflated, cockeyed. N Did Kevin’s Army truck turn over? Was there a fire? An explosion? N Say what? An inoculation? N Moments after being given, under orders, a shot of anthrax vaccine while on duty in Korea, Army Spc. Kevin Edwards lapsed into a partial coma and stopped breathing. While being airlifted by helicopter to a hospital, he was given a tracheotomy. N The stab of vaccine was supposed to protect him. Instead, it put him near death and cost him part of his eyesight.

For the rest of the story, the link is at the bottom of the photo on the left. It is quite lenghty and is a small part of the book, America's War on Soldiers.
How could anyone want to join the military after reading this? How could anyone be for a draft after reading something like this? There needs to be a change in the military and in the way it treats its people.

Once again, the people need to stand up to those in authority and say, "We're not going to take it!"

This is a book I will consider buying and I recommend it to young persons who are considering joining the military.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0428/040714_news_homefront.php