Lawsuit Filed Against Iraq Contractors Charges Soldiers Were Poisoned
By Susie Madrak Monday Nov 09, 2009 5:00pmBecause we've outsourced so many functions that used to be handled by federal and/or military employees, we've also lost control of outcomes like this:
Contractors working for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan are fouling the nests of U.S. soldiers with pollution, poisoning the troops in the very bases meant to be their sanctuaries.
That's the central allegation in a new set of lawsuits filed in Nashville and elsewhere across the country. The legal actions name as defendants the controversial contracting firm KBR Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root), as well as Halliburton Co., of which KBR used to be a subsidiary, and a Turkish general contracting firm, ERKA Ltd.
"These for-profit corporations callously exposed and continue to expose soldiers and others to toxic smoke, ash and fumes," says the complaint filed in Nashville on Friday, which asks for damages on behalf of two Tennessee soldiers. "These exposures are causing a host of serious diseases, increased risk of serious diseases in the future, death and increased risk of death."
The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, describes "burn pits" at U.S. bases in both military theaters that contain "every type of waste imaginable." Reading like a postmodern version of Jonathan Swift's Description of a City Shower, the catalog of rubbish in the pits includes:
"Tires, lithium batteries, Styrofoam, paper, wood, rubber, petroleum-oil-lubricating products, metals, hydraulic fluids, munitions boxes, medical waste, biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."
"Flames shoot hundreds of feet into the sky" as the huge pits are set ablaze, the Nashville lawsuit claims.
Noting that "burning plastics emit dioxins, which are known to cause cancer," the complaint accuses the defendants of negligence, battery and inflicting emotional distress. Saying an estimated 100,000 soldiers and contract personnel may have been harmed by the smoke from the pits, the plaintiffs want the court to force KBR and the other companies to cover future medical expenses and pay other compensatory damages.
I wonder who the human corpses were? And why were they burned?
Login or Register to post comments.
goverment (no taky good care of) ...it's soldiers or citizens.
so it hires other people (to do it's job) ...and fucks that up too!
Its obvious isnt it?
The human corpses were unoffically dead Iraqis.
The official numbers they give out for Iraqi dead is only between 100 and 150k. Those numbers are way off. Over a million is the real number.
...come equipped with gas masks?
I would wear mine...(tons of depleted uranium dust) ...everywhere over there.(nevermind the burnpits)
20 years worth of depleted uranium
Uuuuh-yeeaahh, NO! Doubt there is much in the way of depleted uranium through out the country. The Taliban doesn't have enough armor for us to use depleted uranium on.
wmd's?
nope, not over here
against his own people now, Dick? Who would have thought the wheel would turn full circle so quickly. "We know he has Toxic Burn Piles(TBP). They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
We have Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (under Bush Sr) to thank for the decision to terminate the full time military positions not needed in times of peace, to be contracted out in time of war.
The Dick commissioned a study by (who else?) Halliburton to decide whether this was a good idea. Paid them $5.4 million for the study. Surprise! Halliburton thought it would be a GREAT idea!!
Then, as CEO of Halliburton, The Dick acquired the Bush Family's military outfitter Kellogg and merged it with Halliburton's Brown and Root (aka "Burn and Loot" during the Vietnam War).
Then all they had to do was get a coupla good wars started ..
Electrocuted in the shower poison raining down from the sky...remind me.Who was the enemy again?
Gasmasks for everyone...
...no face left behind.
Oh, please, god, let them follow the money right up to dick cheney's doorstep. Please, please, please!
AMEN!!
to buy healthcare...
surely all soldiers and citizens of Iraq should be required to wear lung protection.
receiving any federal funds. Wait...that means they can't buy their own because their pay is from the feds. Oh, well. Just like women and the Stupak Amendment.
The Bush Administration had decreed that KBR is above the law as they were not only never punished for knowingly electrocuting soldiers for profit, but they were rewarded for killing US service personnel.
Obama has not only embraced Bush era crimes, he is expanding some of them.
Since Obama has obviously refused to enact the 'change' he ran on, KBR will never be punished. I expect KBR will receive another billion dollar reward specifically to kill more US citizens.
When war profiteering was "frowned upon" shall we say?
This is the end result of "free market" ideology:the cynical and callous disregard for the lives of your own soldiers sacrificed on the alter of greed.
This is what happens when a Republican Administration gives no-bid contracts to their donors' and friends' companies and by doing so runs the competition out of business, leaving our military and our government wholly dependent on corrupt and incompetent conservative mega-corporations.
It's a sick GD state of affairs,no two ways about it.
This "the private sector can do it better" mentality has got to be tossed in the garbage. These corporations could care less about American soldiers, let alone the Iraqis. By rights, they should be put in front of a firing squad.
Are you serious? Military contractors can be sued for poisoning soldiers? For real? Republicans for rape are not going to like this. Not one little bit.
There is a certain "homogeneous" quality to that group of individuals I just can't quite put my finger on...
Support the troops (wave flag here).
that list pretty well describes what gets burned in incinerators everywhere they're still licensed to operate. Doesn't that make you feel safer at home?
they at least have scrubbers on the smoke stacks. Not that that makes it much better.
is privatized....
there will be no Public Square.
That Iraqi nuclear plant that Israel bombed in the 80's? My buddy was stationed there around the surge time for about 20 months. On top of the fact that there still was very low grade yellowcake there (not good enough for bombs but still 2 years standing next to it is not good for you) they practiced the burn pit thing.
Now that hes back and alive (he took a bullet over there) the Army notified him that he might have serious problems down the road as a result. (See Cancer - Gulf War Syndrome etc) So this poor guy might be a casualty of this war 20 years down the road.
Bushco wars, the gift that keeps on giving.
I can attest to the claims at least for Afghanistan. Garbage at both Kandahar and Bastion Air Bases is burned in open pits, with the smoke blowing whichever way the wind carries it. It is sickening but you learn to deal with it. That's actually how most Muslim countries dispose of their garbage, but then most Muslim countries don't have Styrofoam or batteries to burn.
At Kandahar Air Base there is a water treatment plant that just so happens to be upwind of the base! Of course in the summer time the water in the "treatment pond" is...warmed and evaporates freely. By night, when the air is still, that evaporated water lies over the base, giving a nice pungent odor!
During my last "visit" to the base, I spoke with a U.S. Navy Sea-Bee, who was there studying the air quality: His initial assessment was that among "other" particulates in the air...17% is FECAL MATTER! Now those of you who suggest wearing gas masks don't understand the horror of wearing such a device is, especially in 110+ degree weather. So there's not much choice in the matter. Something I'm SURE "Georgie-Porgy and friends" (VP "Dick", Henchmen Rumsy & Wolfy et al) would've known if they served a day in combat.
It has gotten somewhat better over the past couple of years, but only after KBR lost their contract. So we "suck-it-up" so to speak and say its the "Price of Freedom"; ironically it is what I would expect the "Price of Capitalism" to smell like, if it actually had a smell!
Did KBR lose their contract? Because them getting their contract renewed under prez obama is my number one reason for ceasing to believe or support obama. There are hundreds of reasons, but renewing KBR contract is my first and favorite, my least forgettable, forever.
I just don't want anybody reading this thread and going away thinking Obama got rid of KBR, unless it's true. He's getting away with so much already.
Well, it is pretty obvious, that all this rubbish should be utilized somehow - the problem or its utilization is really actual for lots of European countries. In lots of cases the only way to get rid of it is to burn it, and it is really naive to expect that devastated country will think about building convenient rubbish recycling plants. The only way seems to get it as far as possible from bases and burn it there.
Because it called evidence? Death resulting from torture is a capital offense you know.
What scares me most about the outsourcing of War, bringing new meaning to the Military Industrial Complex is that with the sheer amount of money being thrown at Iraq and Afghanistan, if we pulled out immediately, it would cause a significant hit on our national economy. I'm quite sure this fact is not lost on Obama and the current administration. In a very real sense, like the banks, the Military Industrial Complex has the government where it wants it. It can't do something that will cause the economy to tank even further. So pulling out becomes an option that is not even on the table just as single payer was not a health care option that was allowed to be even discussed. It's all about large industries that will tank if we make intelligent and wise decisions.
My son, a 22-year-old "cherry" sergeant, army infantry, is at one of the bases named here. Guess who else's son was there until about a month ago? Sarah Palin's.
I wish she'd put on her Human Being hat and take an interest in this. Wouldn't that be nice?
Login or Register to post comments.