My recent response to "Jon" who wrote to remind me last night of President Obama's big announcement on Syria and the *gasp!* use of chemical weapons there:

Jon, 

Forgive me, but my "issue" seems to be the topic du jour.  I am a disabled but unrecognized (abused and abandoned) veteran who was poisoned by some of those CHEMICAL WEAPONS (please see HR 411 and associated documents) President Obama is in such an uproar about...here...in the United States....at Fort McClellan, Alabama.

So I must admit I found our Commander in Chief to be a bit ...hypocritical last night. He is outraged by the use of chemical warfare agents yet he has done nothing to help thousands of veterans poisoned by them in the line of duty here at home. HELLO! We've been writing, and visiting the halls of Congress. Where have YOU been? Seriously, plausible deniability only reaches so far.

Let's pretend you don't know about this scandal. 

Between 1933 and 1999 Fort McClellan was the Army's Chemical Warfare Headquarters and a major training center for fresh young MP's and female basic trainees. As "military property" these young men and women provided a readily available resource for testing known and experimental substances in various forms, some of which still contaminate the air, ground, water, flora and fauna in the area. You see, these substances, which were handled very carelessly, were also stored there, haphazardly...in leaking containers, which led to a mixture we who have so far survived call the "McClellan Cocktail"...something we all got plenty of while serving there because it leeched into the ground and eventually the water we drank, steam ironed with several times a day in 40-woman bays (the female trainees anyway) and showered in. 

Of course there was also the stuff they used in gas drills, the gas chamber and incinerated improperly with a smokestack that was wayyy too short to safely disperse anything, much less chemicals toxic in tiny doses. It would be a comedy of errors if so many people weren't already dead and the rest of us hadn't had so many miscarriages, lost our ability to even HAVE children or passed genetic damage on to the children we did have before our bodies became 90 years old when we had yet to reach middle age. Massive doses of radiation, experimental and known weaponized chemicals will do that to a person. 

MONSANTO (creators of Agent Orange and PCBs as well as other chemicals, herbicides and defoliants) had to pay damages to civilians of nearby Anniston due to overt environmental abuses over several decades but the VA, despite a court order in Anniston v Monsanto/Solutia has ignored the court's order to provide care and compensation to military personnel for deaths, injuries and also for genetic damage caused to offspring of McClellan vets. This denial of claims continues despite a clearly defined group of conditions and constellation of autoimmune diseases/syndromes related to exposure to Sarin, VX and Mustard gas, radiation, PCBs and a long list of other known and experimental chemicals. 

On a more personal note, McClellan vets suffer inadequate medical care and often die in terrible pain with no medical treatment at all because doctors write them off as psychosomatic as is often the case when so many body systems ("complaints") are involved. The fact is that these veterans are suffering from the effects of massive doses of chemicals that are toxic in minute doses, and that does wreak havoc in literally every system in the body over time. Obviously no one wants to believe the United States would experiment upon innocent human beings then abandon them to poverty, indignity and agony, but that is precisely what is happening...on President Obama's watch...while he's worrying about people in Syria who hate us anyway. OUR children are suffering too and they are the ones forced, often with backs damaged by spinal deformities, to take care of us when they're barely out of their teens and we are still in our forties. Yet the VA obdurately refuses to add one plus one together and come up with two, even though the court has already provided the answer for them.

Talk to Congressman Paul Tonko about all this. I could not, would not make this up, and I'm not buying the "plausible deniability" thing for President Obama either. The media blackout is no longer working and this president is no George W. Bush. He knows what's happening in the world and there's no way he doesn't know about Fort McToxic. That means he is choosing to do nothing about thousands of veterans who served this country in good faith and were literally poisoned for their efforts. 

I worked HARD (as hard as I was able anyway) on his campaigns, and he's left me and my brothers and sisters to die while playing hero to the people of Syria who were exposed to far fewer toxins than we were. No matter how you look at it, that's just wrong. So we don't have any big money military-industrial complex money to offer anyone. I don't really care that there's no PORK to be made off us. Think of something and take care of us. We took care of you! 

This whole thing leaves a taste in the mouth far more bitter than Sarin gas, and our president's voice and pen are the syringe of atropine that only he can wield to save our lives and those of our suffering children. It's time for this man of lofty principles to act here, at home, for those who have served this country before it's too late for us and for his legacy.

With Utmost Sincerity, 

Ms. Michelle L. Bastian RN, BSN

US Army Veteran

SSN: XXX XX XXXX

Honorably Discharged

Address/Phone