9/11 missions gave them radiation disease, another US administration has ignored them

For over a decade, soldiers who got sick during the first round of missions in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack have fought for Government assistance.

Another administration is about to end, and some of these soldiers are still fighting to get their conditions recognized as duty-related. The Biden administration promised to help.

Still, According to AP News, the PACT Act, a veterans aid package bill President Biden signed in 2022, was supposed to include these cases and fix the VA denials.

However, according to the news agency, the Act left out uranium exposure, leaving out many of the soldiers who got sick after spending time in a contaminated US base.

These soldiers departed to a distant base to start a mission to hunt al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The US deployed 10,000 troops to the location during the aftermath of 9/11.

The mission’s base was Karshi-Khanabad, a former Soviet base in Uzbekistan known as K2. It was close enough to Afghanistan to launch the first operations in the area.

Many of the soldiers who served in the base developed rare forms of cancer or other illnesses in the years after their mission ended. They believe it is related to chemical exposure at the plant.

According to CBS News, 1,000 soldiers have shared their stories in a social media group. The broadcaster gathered their testimony and interviewed base personnel to investigate their claims.

The investigation revealed that chemical deposits contaminated the soil, air, and water at the K2 base. The broadcaster also said radiation was up to nine times higher than average.

A Department of Defense employee involved in testing at the base told CBS that the local workers they hired to build a dirt barrier in the base started to get sick immediately.

The workers fainted, got dizzy, and vomited. At the first site they dug up, the DoD employee said, a substance that looked like jet fuel poured from the soil. They also found asbestos and refined uranium.

Their source also shared a report with satellite images that showed an explosion in 1993 in an adjacent plant that the Soviets used to decontaminate chemical weapons, which spread chemicals.

CBS also obtained a memo from a base surgeon, who warned about arsenic and cyanide present in the soil, air, and water” for his unit’s permanent medical record, in case of disease afterward.

Two years after the investigation was released and twenty years after they traveled to Uzbekistan, the veterans sued the Department of Defense to obtain base records.

The soldiers argued that some classified documents of the K2 base could contain vital information for their doctors and allow them to appeal the VA’s denials of aid.

The veterans gathered the support from a famous advocate: comedian and TV personality Jon Stewart. He has pushed the VA office to meet with the former soldiers.

Stewart has also managed to pressure the White House to recognize the US Government’s responsibility for the health problems that these soldiers are experiencing.