Were Troops Poisoned? Vets Demand KBR Come Clean on Toxins in Iraq

The answer is, yes, but no one seemed to care.

These are just some of the stories posted on this blog. This is not a new story but it is yet another horrible one.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

KBR blamed for exposing troops to cancer causing chemical
June 21, 2008, 3:20PMArk. man, others blame KBR for contaminants in IraqAssociated PressWASHINGTON — An Arkansas man who worked as a contractor in Iraq says he lost his job after warning workers they were being exposed to a cancer-causing chemical there.Ed Blacke, a former safety inspector for Houston-based contracting giant KBR, says his exposure to sodium dichromate in 2003 gave him chronic thyroid problems and early signs of cancer. He said supervisors initially ignored his warnings about contamination at the Qarmat Ali water injection plant near Basra, Iraq."In my mind, it was criminally negligent of (the company) to make a decision to continue to expose personnel to sodium dichromate poisoning," the Bella Vista, Ark., man told a congressional panel Friday.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Indiana National Guard possible exposure and KBR
Army investigating possible chemical exposureBy Maureen Groppe - Gannett News ServicePosted : Tuesday Sep 23, 2008 18:09:28 EDTWASHINGTON — The Army will complete an investigation within 60 days into whether Indiana National Guardsmen and other soldiers providing protection at a water pumping plant in Iraq in 2003 were exposed to a deadly chemical.Army Secretary Pete Geren said in a letter to Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh that the “senior level” review will look at the Army’s procedures for handling hazardous exposure, the actions taken to follow up with those who may have been exposed and whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers properly oversaw contract work by Kellogg, Brown and Root Services.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Sixteen Indiana National Guard soldiers sue over chemical exposure in Iraq
Ind. soldiers sue over chemical exposure in Iraq
The Associated Press
By CHARLES WILSON – 20 hours agoINDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Sixteen Indiana National Guard soldiers sued the big defense contractor KBR Inc. on Wednesday, saying its employees knowingly allowed them to be exposed to a toxic chemical in Iraq five years ago.The federal suit filed in U.S. District Court alleges the soldiers from a Tell City-based unit were exposed to a carcinogen while protecting an Iraqi water pumping plant shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2003.The 23-page complaint claims that Houston-based KBR knew at least as early as May 2003 that the plant was contaminated with sodium dichromate, a known carcinogen, but concealed the danger from civilian workers and 139 soldiers from the Indiana Guard's 1st Battalion, 152nd Infantry.

But this is not just some sad story about accidental chemical exposure. This is a question of responsibility. CBS News has uncovered evidence that KBR may have known about the contamination at the power plant months before it took any action to inform the troops stationed there.
click link above for more

This story was covered even longer. The following are from my older blog.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Be honest. Who are you really supporting? The Troops or Bush?

In 2003 who were you really supporting? Bush? Halliburton? The Troops?Then why did you support this going on?

WHAT DID WE PAY HALLIBURTON FOR? Troops' health woes run gamut from 'Saddam's revenge' to severe stressBy Marni McEntee, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Wednesday, October 29, 2003BAGHDAD, Iraq — In Iraq’s harsh environment, even soldiers safe inside their base camp face dangers.
Between combat casualties and accident victims in Iraq, medical personnel are also busy fighting microscopic enemies that can lay a troop near as low as a gunshot wound.With ailments ranging from “Saddam’s revenge” stomach bugs to infections caused by bad hygiene, hundreds of soldiers are lining up at sick call instead of patrolling front lines.
Some maladies are caused by a witch’s brew of dust, heat, exotic bacteria and vermin. Others stem from poor sanitation and close living quarters, said Capt. Jolene Lea, a community health nurse at the 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad.Still others are related to the stress of seeing a friend killed in battle or hearing bad news from home, Lea said. Those can manifest themselves into mental health problems and, sometimes, suicide.
The most serious illness and injury cases are evacuated from Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. As of last week, Landstuhl doctors have treated 7,381 from Operation Iraqi Freedom, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw said. Only 10 percent of those casualties were from battle injuries, she said.
The problems have some troops at bases from Basra in the south to Mosul in the north afraid that living and working in Iraq may be bad for their health.“I am very worried about the long-term health effects of this environment,” Sgt. Brian Rau of the 372nd Military Police Co., in Hillah, wrote on a Stars and Stripes survey form. Stripes reporters surveyed nearly 2,000 troops throughout the country in August.“The food is bad and not reliable, so we eat on the local market every day,” Rau wrote. “There is standing sewage outside our building. And the cans we use for toilets are prefilled with diesel fuel so we sit on top of those fumes daily.”go here to see where your tax dollars went

Iraq Where Your Money Wenthttp://www.usaid.gov/iraq/updates/may06/iraq_fs28_052606.pdf

Or when it was reported in 2006?
April 7, 2006, 11:59PM
Doctor alleges water linked to infections
Halliburton contends it met Army standardsBy DAVID IVANOVICHCopyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington BureauWASHINGTON - A U.S. Army doctor serving in Iraq has linked a small outbreak of bacterial infections among U.S. troops to allegedly contaminated water supplied by Houston-based Halliburton Co.
In the latest broadside against Halliburton and its performance in Iraq, Senate Democrats produced an e-mail Friday from Capt. A. Michelle Callahan, a family physician serving at Qayyarah Airfield West, recounting how she treated six infections over a two-week period in January, at the same time she was noticing the water in base showers was cloudy and foul-smelling.
Follow-up testing of the water soldiers were using to bathe, shave and even brush their teeth revealed evidence of coliform and E. coli bacteria, Callahan wrote in an e-mail to a staffer for the Democratic Policy Committee, led by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

Memo: Halliburton failed to purify GIs’ waterInternal report says contamination could've caused 'mass sickness or death'Updated: 6:28 a.m. ET March 16, 2006WASHINGTON - Halliburton Co. failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused “mass sickness or death,” an internal company report concluded.The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the company failed to assemble and use its own water purification equipment, allowing contaminated water directly from the Euphrates River to be used for washing and laundry at Camp Ar Ramadi in Ramadi, Iraq.The problems discovered last year at that site — poor training, miscommunication and lax record keeping — occurred at Halliburton’s other operations throughout Iraq, the report said.“Countrywide, all camps suffer to some extent from all or some of the deficiencies noted,” Wil Granger, Theatre Water Quality Manager in the war zone for Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary, wrote in his May 2005 report.AP reported earlier this year allegations from whistleblowers about the Camp Ar Ramadi incident, but Halliburton never made public Granger’s internal report alleging wider problems.The water quality expert warned Halliburton the problems “will have to be dealt with at a very elevated level of management” to protect health and safety of U.S. personnel.

Friday, October 12, 2007


But the Democrats in Congress were trying to find out what was going on. This came out but not very many people paid attention to it.

While the Democratic Policy Committee was trying to focus on all of thishttp://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-new2.cfm?doc_name=inv2Top Twenty Iraq Oversight Outrages Uncovered by the DPCRepublicans in Congress Refuse to Demand Accountability in Iraq;Billions of Dollars Wasted, Our Mission UnderminedOver the last three years, Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) hearings have uncovered massive waste, fraud, and abuse relating to government contractors operating in Iraq. This report presents twenty of the worst oversight outrages, as documented in testimony and evidence presented at DPC hearings:
1) Halliburton billed taxpayers $1.4 billion in questionable and undocumented charges under its contract to supply troops in Iraq, as documented by the Pentagon’s own auditors. More…
2) Parsons billed taxpayers over $200 million under a contract to build 142 health clinics, yet completed fewer than 20. According to Iraqi officials, the rest were “imaginary clinics.” More…
3) Custer Battles stole forklifts from Iraq’s national airline, repainted them, then leased the forklifts back to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) through a Cayman Islands shell company — charging an extra fee along the way. More…
4) Halliburton allowed our troops in Iraq to shower, bathe, and sometimes brush their teeth with water that tested positive for e. coli and coliform bacteria. One expert has said that the troops would have been better off using the highly polluted Euphrates River. Halliburton has admitted that it lacked “an organizational structure to ensure that water was being treated in accordance with Army standards and its contractual requirements.” More…
5) Halliburton served the troops food that had spoiled or passed its expiration date. Halliburton managers ordered employees to remove bullets from food in trucks that had come under attack, then saved the bullets as souvenirs while giving the food to unwitting soldiers and Marines. More…
6) Halliburton charged taxpayers for services that it never provided and tens of thousands of meals that it never served. More…
7) Halliburton double-charged taxpayers for $617,000 worth of soda. More…
8) Halliburton tripled the cost of hand towels, at taxpayer expense, by insisting on having its own embroidered logo on each towel. More…
9) Halliburton employees burned new trucks on the side of the road because they didn’t have the right wrench to change a tire — and knew that the trucks could be replaced on a profitable “cost-plus” basis, at taxpayer expense. More…10) Halliburton employees dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they ordered the wrong size, all at taxpayer expense. More…
11) Halliburton employees threw themselves a lavish Super Bowl Party, but passed the cost on to taxpayers by claiming they had purchased supplies for the troops. More…12) Halliburton chose a subcontractor to build an ice factory in the desert even though its bid was 800 percent higher than an equally qualified bidder. More…
13) Halliburton actively discouraged cooperation with U.S. government auditors, sent one whistleblower into a combat zone to keep him away from auditors, and put another whistleblower under armed guard before kicking her out of the country. More…
14) Halliburton sent unarmed truck drivers into a known combat zone without warning them of the danger, resulting in the deaths of six truck drivers and two soldiers. Halliburton then offered to nominate the surviving truck drivers for a Defense Department medal — provided they sign a medical records release that doubled as a waiver of any right to seek legal recourse against the company. More…15) Halliburton’s no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure was the worst case of contract abuse that the top civilian at the Army Corps of Engineers had ever seen. She was demoted after speaking out. More…
16) Under its no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure contract, Halliburton overcharged by over 600 percent for the delivery of fuel from Kuwait. More…
17) Halliburton failed to complete required work under its oil infrastructure work, leaving distribution points unusable. More…
18) Iraq under the CPA was like the “Wild West,” with few limits and controls over how inexperienced officials spent — and wasted — millions of taxpayer dollars. More…19) Cronies at the CPA’s health office lacked experience, ignored the advice of international health professionals, failed to restore Iraq’s health systems, and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. The political appointee who ran the office had never worked overseas and had no international public health experience. More…20) Administration officials promoted construction of a “boondoggle” children’s hospital in Basra, which ended up more than a year behind schedule and at least 100 percent over budget. More…Maybe Bush could have a truthful moment and instead of saying support the troops in Iraq he will instead say, America needs to support the contractors in Iraq, because that is what it all boils down to.

Did Your Soldier Come Home Sick From Iraq?
Halliburton provided contaminated water to Soldiers
On September 3rd 2007 (Labor Day), President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and a Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace visited Al Asad and spent Labor Day with the Servicemembers deployed to the base.
Al Asad Airbase is the focus of the video I just added to this blog. It wasn't such a big secret considering it has been played across the country to the "liberals" who cared enough to see it. Ben Carter, worked for KBR/Halliburton as a water purification specialist.In the video, he talks about the fact the water at Al-Asad was contaminated. Chlorine was not found in the water supply that was supposed to be added to it. We've heard horrible stories about cholera outbreaks in Iraq, along with super bugs, as water is not fit to drink or bathe in. Yet our government contracted with companies and then provided no oversight to make sure the troops were provided with everything they were paying for.If your soldier came home ill, or passed away because of an illness, you need to know what caused it. Too many do not know about this.Then again, this isn't the only time something like this has happened and by all signs, it won't be the last.N.C. Marine Camp's Water Under ScrutinyPast Contaminated Water at Marine's Camp Lejeune Suspected in Death and IllnessThousands of Marines and their families went to serve their country at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune.The Associated Press By RITA BEAMISH Associated Press WriterATLANTA Jun 11, 2007 (AP)
Instead, many wound up fighting it, blaming the government for failing to protect them from an enemy that invaded their lives in a most intimate way: through the water that quenched their thirst, cooked their food and filled their bathtubs every day.
The gruff ex-drill instructor is angry leukemia claimed his daughter, Janey. Parents were guilt-ridden that perhaps their own actions had ruined their daughters' health. An aging major still mourns the wife who shared his torment over their baby's fatal birth defects. A former Navy doctor's career was demolished by his rare cancer.Each used the water that poured from kitchen faucets and bathroom showers at Camp Lejeune, an environmental tragedy realized a generation ago that is drawing new scrutiny from members of Congress outraged over the government's treatment of sick veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and elsewhere.U.S. health officials here in Atlanta hope to finish a long-awaited study by year's end to examine whether the water tainted with solvents affected the health of children. It will influence the Pentagon's response to at least 850 pending legal claims by people who lived at the Marine base, officials said.
The former residents, who together seek nearly $4 billion, believe their families were afflicted by water containing industrial solvents before the Marines shut off the bad wells in the mid-1980s.

At least 120,000 people lived in family housing that may have been affected over three decades, plus uncounted civilian workers and Marines in barracks, Marine Corps figures indicate. Defense officials recently told U.S. health investigators that between 1975 and 1985 alone, nearly 200,000 Marines were stationed at Camp Lejeune.About 56,000 Marines, family members and civilians now live or work at Camp Lejeune, the sprawling training and deployment base on the Atlantic seaboard. Its water meets current federal standards.go here for the rest of thishttp://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=3266355
Watch the video and then think about health problems that don't seem right. Then wonder what else they are not telling you.
I'll leave the link to the video up for about a week. After that you can view it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeIxHQ-lkuM

But it's not just a problem in Iraq.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Camp Lejeune and contaminated water
Camp Lejeune Water StudyJun 19, 2008
June 18, 2008 - The Marine Corps is concerned about your health. We ENCOURAGE all former Marines, family members and civilian employees who resided or worked aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune between 1957 and 1987 to REGISTER with the Marine Corps for information regarding past water quality.https://clnr.hqi.usmc.mil/clsurvey/
This is a huge number of people involved here!

Saturday, May 31, 2008

500,000 at Camp LeJeune may have been exposed to tainted water

MONEY DISPUTE THREATENS TOXIC TAP WATER STUDY
May 28, Associated Press – ( North Carolina )Money dispute threatens toxic tap water study. Continuation of a long-running government study on whether contaminated water harmed babies at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, hinges on a half-million-dollar payment that is due Sunday. The Marines estimate that 500,000 Camp LeJeune residents may have been exposed to the tainted water, including thousands of Vietnam-bound Marines. Federal health investigators estimate the number is higher.The U.S. health agency conducting the study, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said its research would be jeopardized if the Navy does not pay $522,000 to keep the study going beyond Sunday.Health problems blamed on Camp LeJeune ’s contaminated water were the focus of reporting by the Associated Press in June 2007 and congressional oversight hearings.

This is from Paul Rieckhoff. Maybe he should read this blog from time to time and then he'd know how bad it's been and for how long they knew it was.

Were Troops Poisoned? Vets Demand KBR Come Clean on Toxins in Iraq
James Gentry served his country honorably as a battalion commander in Iraq. Now, he is dying of a rare form of lung cancer. And he's not the only one. A troubling number of troops in Gentry's Indiana National Guard unit have bloody noses, tumors and rashes. And tragically, one soldier has already died.

New reports suggest these injuries may be the result of exposure to toxins at a KBR-run power plant in Southern Iraq. In 2003, James and his men were responsible for guarding that plant, and protecting KBR's employees. The soldiers were stationed there for months before being informed that the site was contaminated with a chemical known as hexavalent chromium.

Hexavalent chromium is a deadly carcinogen. It's the same toxin that Erin Brockovich became famous for campaigning against. James believes that it was the inhalation of this chemical that caused his cancer, and the other rare illnesses among the Guardsmen who served at the plant.

So Paul, the answer is yes, they knew and didn't care.