This might be a good time for vets of any war, cold hot, declared or undeclared, to warn their sons and daughters about volunteering for these types of experiments.
Oh yes, they are always told that it is all for defensive purposes, but no one should believe that anymore; not after this administration, even if they believed it before.
It's time to help all of the "Cold War veterans exposed"
This was one of the most classified programs the government was involved in, they did not even admit that it took place until the late 1990s, unlike the chemical weapons experiments and drug tests conducted at Edgewood Arsenal from 1955 thru 1975 and the biological weapons experiments conducted at Fort Detrick known as Operation Whitecoat from 1955 thru 1973.
However, the experiments conducted at Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal have been in the public realm since 1973 and the Church Committee, and then in 1975 with the release of the Department of the Army Inspector General Report on Human Experimentation. Public outcry and congressional bluster forced the Secretary of the Army to voluntarily end all human experiments at Edgewood Arsenal in the summer of 1975. By then 7120 men had been used in drug experiments and chemical weapons, all told 254 different substances.
The Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration has for the most part ignored these veterans and their widows for decades, claiming that they can't prove they were exposed to specific substances, given the fact they are classified, they may never know.
Many of the veterans died with out ever telling their spouses or their family doctors that they were used in these experiments due to National Security Acts, the volunteers all signed agreements to never discuss the experiments being told if they did, they would be prosecuted and sent to Leavenworth Prison for 25 years. Many of these men carried this secret to their graves.
I believe that many of their widows have never been told that their husbands deaths may be linked to the toxic substances they were exposed to at Edgewood Arsenal and they may be entitled to veterans benefits.
Congress has a chance to amend this bill HR 5954, to include all of the veterans from the Cold War era exposure programs, they should not leave out two programs that involved the worst toxic materials known to man, talk about WMD's, this is the stuff they accused Saddam Hussein of having.
Yet our own government condoned using it on American soldiers, and is now denying them medical care, compensation and even the medals they promised them 30-50 years ago claiming what they volunteered for was not above and beyond the normal duties of regular soldiers.
Many of the researchers have stated these men were hero's and many of them deserved the Soldiers Medal because of the lives they saved thru the research they participated in. Myself, I don't care about the medals, I would rather have a fair roll of the dice for all of the veterans exposed to chemical weapons, drugs and biological weapons while in service to this nation.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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