"Use ‘em, abuse ‘em and lose ‘em. This has been the U.S. military mantra since before George Washington slapped on a pair of boots. This brilliant work documents it all. A searing condemnation of an ungrateful nation." --David H. Hackworth, Colonel, U.S. Army Retired. Author of STEEL MY SOLDIERS' HEARTS
With the number of American casualties on the rise in Iraq and Afghanistan, American military families have cause to worry about their enlisted loved-ones more than ever. Yet as award-winning journalist Rick Anderson's Home Front: The Government's War on Soldiers makes clear, America's soldiers have more to worry about than just the enemy: the true casualty measure of war is the body count––the medical failures, psychological toll and the uninvestigated suicides––that occurs on the home front.
American casualties in Gulf Wars I and II have been relatively light––so the public thinks. After all, only 148 soldiers were killed in the 1991 Gulf War. But 11,000 have died since. And that's only the beginning of the destruction. As Joyce Riley, former Army flight nurse and veterans' advocate puts it, “I don't know why the government, if it cares so much about its troops, isn't saying ‘My God, 200,000 disabled in that war, 11,000 dead! What did we do?'” New figures show that one third of the 696,000 Gulf I troops have sought war-related medical treatment. A similar pattern is emerging from the latest war in Iraq: For every service member killed in Iraq, 15 others have fallen ill; by October 2003, more than 4,500 had already been returned to the U.S. for medical treatment.
The Bush administration, like others before it, has made much of the need for the American public to support the troops that it sends to its wars––but for its own part, has not only curtailed their support, but recklessly furthered their endangerment. In the very midst of the latest war, while simultaneously lauding the troops, George W. Bush cut back support of both veterans and frontline troops. He has tried to mask the extent of American casualties by nonattendance at funerals and preventing public access to photographs depicting the reality of the escalating conflict in Iraq.
Inspired by the untold story of Sgt. Joe Hooper, Vietnam's most decorated solider and a home-front causality, Home Front examines the widespread effects of the government's weapons, medicines and bureaucracies of mass destruction: the use of vaccines that have led to mysterious deaths among both troops and civilians, and the likely emergence of Gulf War II Illness, a cocktail of ailments similar to Gulf War I Illness––the modern day version of Vietnam's Agent Orange. It details the health and medical issues facing American military personnel and veterans, and investigates the military/bureaucratic politicking behind them. It includes comprehensive documentation from the CDC, VA, and Pentagon to explain the illnesses, syndromes and symptoms, and an insight into veterans' battles over medical services, intractable policy, and VA hospital conditions. Public and classified military experiments are detailed along with the “friendly fire” effects of anthrax vaccine and depleted uranium. Also described are post-war suicides, alcoholism and military homicide incidents.
RICK ANDERSON is former columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Seattle Times and staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle ; he has also written for the Village Voice, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones and Salon . He won the Heywood Broun Award for human rights journalism. His story,"Crippled Home Front," for Seattle Weekly where he now writes, is displayed at the Arlington National Cemetery website.
FRANCIS A. BOYLE (Foreword) is a well-known expert on international law.
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