April 07, 2004
"Supporting" The Troops: A Liberals' Primer
Senator Hillary Clinton has "blasted" Pentagon officials "for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq" for exposure to Depleted Uranium: "We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses. We have to have a before-and-after testing program for our soldiers," noting that, "One of the issues we raised [during meetings with Pentagon officials last year] was exposure to the Depleted Uranium that was in the weapons, and how they were going to handle it."
Clinton, of course, voted "with convction" to authorise the Bush Administration's war, on the grounds that, "It is...clear that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Nowhere in Clinton's speech endorsing the war did she admonish the Bush Administration not to deploy Depleted Uranium weapons -- even though she was surely aware that it was planning to do so (indeed, that it had done so in Afghanistan, and that her husband's Administration had done so in Yugoslavia).
So her "blasting" of the Pentagon amounts to this: go ahead and send the troops over there to be exposed (along with the Iraqi citizenry, which doesn't, apparently, even warrant testing) to DU, just make sure you diagnose them when they return. While that's surely better than the treatment veterans can expect from the chicken-hawks -- not testing upon return, and then telling veterans suffering from the effects of exposure that it's all in their heads -- it's got to feel more than a little underwhelming to those returning from the toxic battlefields.
Fuck your paritsan politics, Hillary. If your concern is genuine, then you will call for the United States to adhere to the UN's ban on DU (and cluster bombs, and napalm), for it to clean up its mess, and to administer the best treatment possible to those exposed to its radiological munitions -- both "coalition" personnel and Iraqi citizens.
Posted by Eddie Tews at April 7, 2004 08:59 PM
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