Jon Stewart presses for a breakthrough to get the first 9/11 troops full care

WASHINGTON (AP) — The primary U.S. troops to deploy after the Sept. 11 assaults are affected by radiation publicity that the federal government has but to formally acknowledge 23 years later. They’re a last group of 9/11 service members that comic Jon Stewart, a champion for first responders, can’t depart behind.

Particular operations forces have been despatched to a former Soviet base in Uzbekistan in early October 2001, the place they launched the primary missions towards the Taliban in Afghanistan, together with the secret horseback operation depicted within the film “12 Sturdy.” Over the subsequent 4 years, greater than 15,000 U.S. troops deployed to Karshi-Khanabad, referred to as K2.

Troops discovered clumps of yellow powder scattered close to bunkers the place Soviet troops had saved missiles. Testing confirmed it was radioactive uranium, in line with a declassified November 2001 Protection Division evaluation.

Within the years since, hundreds of K2 veterans have reported cancers, kidney issues and different medical circumstances, a few of that are identified to be linked to radiation publicity. However publicity from K2 shouldn’t be lined below a significant veterans assist invoice referred to as the PACT Act that President Joe Biden signed in 2022.

“K2 veterans have been the tip of the spear. They have been the primary group deployed within the conflict on terror, and they’re nonetheless on a lazy Susan of bureaucratic nonsense, holding them from getting the advantages and well being care that they earned,” Stewart mentioned in an interview this week with The Related Press.

Stewart is urgent the Biden administration for modifications to get the K2 veterans absolutely lined and he referred to as into a gathering Monday between veterans and the Protection Division’s assistant secretary for well being affairs.

A 2001 Military well being crew web site evaluation discovered uranium littered round K2 in “pellets, discrete pockets of yellow residue, and finely distributed all through the soil.”

“Testing so far implies that the uranium shouldn’t be depleted uranium however relatively an enriched product,” the now-declassified report discovered.

Regardless of these information, the Protection Division has not formally recognized the bottom as a location the place radiation publicity passed off. And the Division of Veterans Affairs has not added it to the presumptive circumstances troops skilled there. The White Home has mentioned it stays a precedence for Biden, however has deferred to the companies, which say extra data is required.

“President Biden believes veterans harmed by poisonous exposures whereas they have been stationed at K2 ought to have entry to the advantages they earned and deserve,” White Home spokesperson Kelly Scully mentioned in a press release to the AP.

The Pentagon additionally mentioned in a press release it “stays dedicated to completely reviewing all data associated to K2” and that “making certain the well being and security of our service members and veterans stays a high precedence.”

VA spokesman Terrence Hayes mentioned in a press release that for the reason that passage of the PACT Act virtually 12,000 K2 veterans have been accredited for at the very least one service-related situation and have acquired a median yearly fee of $30,871 to compensate them for the disabilities they now have.

However K2 veterans have additionally died ready for the Pentagon and the VA to acknowledge their radiation-related sickness claims, and additional research and opinions simply delay the method, mentioned Matt Erpelding, who leads the K2 veterans group Stronghold Freedom Basis.

“It must get completed now,” mentioned Erpelding, who deployed to K2 as a C-130 pilot in December 2001.

Primarily based on a assessment of the declassified K2 knowledge, radiation ranges documented at K2 in 2001 have been as a lot as 40,000 occasions what would have registered if the uranium was naturally occurring, mentioned Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear fusion specialist and president of the Institute for Vitality and Environmental Analysis.

Radiation publicity from uranium can harm kidneys, create a threat for bone most cancers and have an effect on pregnancies, amongst different dangerous results, mentioned Makhijani, who beforehand labored with veterans sickened by radiation on the Bikini Atoll throughout nuclear weapons checks within the Nineteen Forties.

The VA doesn’t have statistics on how lots of the 15,000-plus troops deployed at K2 received sick. The veterans grassroots group has contacted about 5,000 of them, and greater than 1,500 reported critical medical circumstances, together with cancers, kidney and bone issues, reproductive points and start defects.

U.S. forces left the bottom in 2005. Since then, Uzbekistan has taken on a better function in regional counterterrorism efforts, significantly after the U.S. misplaced its foothold in Afghanistan after the 2021 withdrawal.

Simply over a dozen U.S. troops have been recurrently deployed to Uzbekistan over the previous couple of years, in line with Pentagon knowledge. Uzbek Gen. Maj. Shukhrat Khalmukhamedov met with Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, on the Pentagon on Monday to debate shared efforts to defeat the Islamic State group and “Uzbekistan’s need to develop a strategic partnership with the U.S.,” a readout from Brown’s workplace mentioned.

K2 didn’t come up, in line with a U.S. official who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the non-public assembly.

The veterans don’t perceive why U.S. companies won’t formally acknowledge the radiation publicity, significantly as a result of it’s been reported in company paperwork.

“They’re clearly weirdly delicate about this place,” Stewart mentioned.

Congress obtained detailed environmental assessments of the bottom and reams of information from the Pentagon and made it public 4 years in the past in a bipartisan effort to get the K2 veterans’ poisonous publicity acknowledged. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., and Rep. Mark Inexperienced, R-Tenn., lately introduced new laws to that finish.

In response to a number of queries by the AP, officers on the White Home, VA and Protection Division have pointed to different elements of expanded look after K2 veterans — each from the PACT Act and supplemental care that the VA introduced final month including extra circumstances that they face.

In the case of the radiation publicity, the federal government refers to a Johns Hopkins research on depleted uranium impression on veterans that gained’t be full till 2031, the thirtieth anniversary of the assaults.

“As a result of DOD, and by extension the VA, don’t acknowledge it was there, it’s a sticking level for each K2 invoice or rule and was overlooked of the PACT Act as a result of it was nonnegotiable,” K2 veteran Mark Jackson mentioned.