The Burn Pits
The Poisoning of America's Soldiers
Published on 22. July 2019
168 pages
978-1-5107-4320-5 (ISBN)
Description
"There's a whole chapter on my son Beau… He was co-located [twice] near these burn pits."
?Joe Biden, former Vice President of the United States of America
The Agent Orange of the 21st Century… Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the "burn pits" where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material.
This shocking work, now for the first time in paperback, includes:
- Illustration of the devastation in one soldier's intimate story
- A plea for help
- Connection between the burn pits and Major Biden's unfortunate suffering and death
- The burn pits' effects on native citizens of Iraq: mothers, fathers, and children
- Denial from the Department of Defense and others
- Warning signs that were ignored
- and much more Based on thousands of government documents, over five hundred in-depth medical case studies, and interviews with more than one thousand veterans and active-duty GIs, The Burn Pits will shock the nation. The book is more than an explosive work of investigative journalism?it is the deeply moving chronicle of the many young men and women who signed up to serve their country in the wake of 9/11, only to return home permanently damaged, the victims of their own armed forces' criminal negligence.
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Person
Joseph Hickman spent most of his life in the military, first as a Marine, then as a soldier in both the Army and the National Guard. He has deployed on several military operations throughout the world, sometimes attached to foreign militaries. The recipient of more than twenty commendations and awards, he was awarded the Army Achievement Medal and the Army Commendation Medal while he was stationed with the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion in Guantanamo Bay. He is currently working as freelance journalist covering national security issues, and corporate fraud. He is also an independent researcher, and Senior Research Fellow at Seton Hall Law School's Center for Policy and Research. His revelations about the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo resulted in a National Magazine Award?winning story in Harper's magazine and a 2015 book, Murder at Camp Delta. He has also written for Newsweek, TIME, VICE News, and Al-Jazeera America.
Content
Contents
Foreword ix
Author's Note xi
Chapter 1: A Soldier's Story 1
Chapter 2: A Call for Help 11
Chapter 3: A Disastrous Record 21
Chapter 4: Major Biden 27
Chapter 5: "Iraq Is Poisoned” 35
Chapter 6: U.S. Army Inc. 41
Chapter 7: Warning Signs 53
Chapter 8: Covering All Angles 61
Chapter 9: Project 922 67
Chapter 10: No WMDs in Iraq? 75
Chapter 11: "We Knew the Ground Was Hot” 87
Chapter 12: Signs and Symptoms 95
Chapter 13: Delayed Casualties 101
Chapter 14: The Wheels of Government 111
Chapter 15: Report to the Senate 117
Chapter 16: "Embrace the Suck” 123
Symptoms and diseases 129
FOR MORE INFORMATION 133
Acknowledgments 137
