
Cancers strike US military deployed to Uzbekistan after 9/11 - Tomte
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article238510218.html
======
nimbius
so 20 years ago the US dropped troops into a former military base with ample
warnings of chemical and radiation contamination legible in two languages. a
sizeable number of them developed cancer. The VA subsequently ignored and
marginalized these cases.

>“We were doing a great thing” at K2, said retired Air Force Tech Sgt. Jeff
Frisby

two trillion dollars later, this proves to be patently false or at best,
arguable.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743782)

The US went down this road in Iraq with the burn pit ailments, and again
before that with the chemical weapons ailments. Prior to this, Vietnam
soldiers and agent orange. at some point this has to stop for recruitment
sake. the internet makes it far too easy for the average highschool student to
spend 10 minutes catching up on exactly how forgotten a promise the government
makes to soldiers after they've fought in service of their country.

~~~
sushid
I don’t understand why we’re still exposing our troops to harms needlessly.
Maybe you can chalk up Agent Orange to a lack of understanding but burn pits
and radiation contamination are obviously dangerous.

~~~
jjcc
Harming US troops is part of equation. The local people in the countries
suffered more which is usually less concerned than US troops. Not only the
chemicals , but also killing each other because of destabilization of the
regions.

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hans1729
>[...] _U.S. special operations forces who deployed to a military site in
Uzbekistan shortly after the 9 /11 attacks found pond water that glowed green,
black goo oozing from the ground and signs warning “radiation hazard. [...]

After returning from combat years later, we are all coming down with various
forms of cancer that the [Department of Veterans Affairs] is refusing to
acknowledge,” said retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Scott Welsch [...]_

That's insane. As someone completely unfamiliar with such proceedings,
shouldn't locations be checked for such, well, dramatic attributes? If so,
what went wrong here? Because _this_ is not satisfying:

> _The U.S. military jumped on using K2 because it had few other good options
> in the immediate response to 9 /11, said former Army Reserve Capt. Ken
> Richards, who deployed to the base in 2002, and was diagnosed with kidney
> cancer in 2009.

"There were a lot of good reasons to accept what they [the Uzbeks] gave us,”
Richards said. “Safety was never an issue.”_

~~~
eloff
To play devil's advocate, yeah that sounds bad, but the article didn't
quantify any risks. If the risk of cancer for those stationed there rose by
some small fraction of a percent per day, it may still have been basically
irrelevant compared to the very real combat risks these people faced. In fact
it may well have been irrelevant compared to e.g. A chest or dental x-ray or
even a transatlantic flight. We just don't know without hard numbers.

~~~
krageon
> We just don't know without hard numbers.

If the risk increased only very little, it would be extremely unlikely for
there to be such a big blip in cancer occurrence.

The combat risk is always going to be there, but the cancer is not. Putting
those against each other isn't terribly relevant from a decision-making
standpoint (unless the odds are very, very low - but we know this is not
likely)

So really, we can know a few things with a reasonable degree of certainty.

~~~
eloff
Is it such a big blip? I didn't see that established either, but I may have
missed it while skimming through.

The risk of having to support troops from a suboptimal spot further away could
have a very real impact on casualty rate in a conflict. So I think you do
really have to quantify the tradeoffs here to say if one is better than the
other.

~~~
kaikai
It is a big blip, and they talk about it in the article.

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austincheney
I remember it was late December 2012 when the bulk of my unit was deploying to
Kandahar. They had a lay over in either Manas or K2. Keep in mind that this is
winter in Siberia and temperatures getting down to -30F at night. This unit
was located in West Los Angeles so it was rare for many of these people to
ever experience any kind of freezing weather. Due to political _boots on
ground_ limits some of us were instead routed to Kuwait and so I never saw K2
myself.

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binarray2000
Honest question (since it is essential for any further discussion and the
article says nothing about it): Why the USA has to be in Uzbekistan?

~~~
2a0c40
“... to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of
the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that
posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration
underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to
prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would,
under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.” See
Wolfowitz Doctrine

~~~
pinkfoot
Hearts and minds then.

------
mrb
I'm reminded of a story from a HN commenter who was a US soldier. He said in
his unit he's been trained and tasked with cleaning rifles with brushes, rags,
(no gloves) and an unlabelled liquid cleaning product. After years of doing
that, one day he stumbled upon a label for that product, which said
(paraphrasing) that it was a dangerous carcinogen chemical and should never
come into contact with skin.

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aaron695
I see zero attempt to compare this to expect levels so are putting this down
to normal junk science for the masses.

"black goo oozed, ponds glowed" is laughable.

We know putting people overseas will cause them health issues (ie cancer), we
see this with all military deployments and non military for instance in the
Cuba embassy.

But what's hilarious is PM (particulate matter) which we know causes cancer is
admitted to be high by the military on this base, but not even mentioned in
the article. I kinda give up.

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onetimemanytime
Someone should go rot in jail. Maybe a lot of people. We're talking about many
lives here. Eventually someone in the chain of command knew or should have
know this.

------
newnewpdro
Maybe karma for what the US did to the Marshall Islands? [0][1]

I'm surprised the government doesn't approach any preexisting military base
with suspicion and caution considering its own history of contaminating
grounds with military activity.

To this day military bases across the US have contaminated groundwater from
the relatively benign activity of using firefighting foam. [2] And that's in
the US where there's supposedly an EPA and oversight of such things. At this
point any grounds having experienced significant military activity should be
presumed contaminated.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands#Health](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands#Health)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Dome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Dome)

[2] [https://phys.org/news/2019-10-firefighting-foam-toxic-
legacy...](https://phys.org/news/2019-10-firefighting-foam-toxic-legacy-
military.html)

