other hidden costs of war

Other Costs of War (not seen in the "media")
The incidence of respiratory illnesses, endemic diseases and mystery illnesses from Iraq outnumber the incidence of the brain and limb wounds, according to Stephen Robinson, a Desert Storm veteran and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. Yet these conditions are more or less off the media radar.

"Iraq is not an OSHA-approved workplace," Robinson said. "So people are having extreme environmental exposures. Extreme heat and extreme cold and fine sand. The sand in Iraq is approximately two microns. It's respirable. If any bacteria, any petroleum products, any chemical or biological agent lands on or bonds itself to that silica, it then can be ingested through the fine sand into your lungs."

Soldiers also are contracting endemic diseases in Iraq, such Leishmaniasis, a blood-borne disease transmitted by the bite of a sandfly. It can linger in the bloodstream for years and may manifest itself initially as fatigue and malaise, Robinson said. Or it can lay dormant for a long time and tamper with the immune system.

A big question, though, according to John Rowan, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America, is whether the system can withstand the influx of both War on Terror veterans and Vietnam veterans who are filing belated Agent Orange-related claims as fallout from their exposure manifests in their older years.

"They don't understand how the Vietnam veterans are seriously affected with diabetes and prostate cancer so many years after the fact. We're twice as likely to have prostate cancer if we've been exposed to Agent Orange," he said. "All these things are coming out now when we're in our 50s and 60s."