Yesterday, in Part 1 of this series, “Who's Supporting the Troops?”, I shared part of my interview with Rachel, a formerly deployed soldier in Iraq who experienced first hand the abuse and neglect of private military contractors. Although many people identified with Rachel's incredible story, Rachel requested we not print her last name or rank for purposes of privacy. Rachel's story began by exposing the egregious pay discrepancies between military and civilian contractors. Her experiences teach us that the very idea of hiring these contractors is at once channeling resources away from the troops and placing profit as a priority over the security of our troops.
This reality would be infuriating enough if there wasn't an additional piece compounding this problem: the contractors are doing a poor, and sometimes downright destructive, job. In the case of KBR's performance in fulfilling their contracted service of providing water to the troops, Rachel had much to share with me:
Describe your experience with the
KBR water scandal.
I
traveled to many bases during my deployment and some were worse than
others, but it was nothing compared to the water awaiting me in Camp
Ar Ramadi. In Camp Ar Ramadi, we often ran out of water. When our
water tanks ran out, we were told we’d have to wait for KBR to come
and empty out the bad water and refill our non-potable water.
Some
days the water smelled like sulfur, other days it smelled like
straight sewage. They told us to make sure we kept our mouths closed
in the showers when we complained about the smell. I can’t count
the number of days I left the showers feeling dirtier than when I
went in and many others shared those feelings. I know many soldiers
used the water for brushing their teeth or shaving and others even
used it for coffee and hot chocolate. Showering almost seems worse
than drinking because the skin is so porous.
What sorts of illnesses did
you/your fellow soldiers experience?
While
it’s difficult to say exactly what could have been [attributed] to
the water, soldiers' most common complaint was diarrhea; other
symptoms included nausea and vomiting, headaches, fever and
occasional rashes or other issues with the skin, usually after
showering with a cut or other wound. Because this problem affected
just about all of us, it became the norm. It wasn’t common to take
time off from the mission to go to sick call unless it was really
bad. Sometimes though, we would get relief from symptoms while on
missions at other bases – only to return back to Ramadi to get sick
again.
Of the people you have kept in
touch with, have any experienced long term symptoms? Have any
received a diagnosis?
When
I came home from my deployment, I had a physical with a civilian
doctor. Full physicals were not given when we came off of active
duty. My doctor said that I had a high amount of bacteria and he
wasn’t sure why it was there. Two other females who lived with me
also had elevated bacteria levels. I didn’t yet know that the water
I showered with was contaminated. It took several months for my
stomach problems to stop.
It seems that the soldiers who
shaved and brushed their teeth with the water from the sinks in the
shower trailers are still having symptoms. Another male soldier, who
didn’t realize you could shower in the water but not brush your
teeth with it continues to have bad stomach problems.
The issue many soldiers are having now is that they do not know what specifically to have the doctor test for. Without accurate information as to what exactly we were exposed to, the doctors can only do so much. Other soldiers have requested testing from the VA and received equally uncertain responses from their doctors. What is more disturbing though, is that very few, if any, of the soldiers have been informed by KBR or the military. We all learned different ways, whether it was in a news story or by word of mouth.
I remember after this scandal broke in the press, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell at once dismissed this issue and made a joke about it at the troops expense, saying, “I mean, they make it perfectly clear that you don't want to drink the water...[the troops] should read the signs and just drink bottled water."
I don't know what I find more repulsive, the fact that Morell blindly defended the cronies of his superiors at the Pentagon, or the fact that he avoided addressing the real issue of what this water was provided for. This water wasn't given to the troops to drink. It was provided to shower in, and as Rachel points out, this makes the issue all the more serious, because soldiers' bodies were covered in it. As for Morell's comment that the troops should somehow know better, since Rachel points out that they often ran out of water, it makes sense that when the troops received batches of water allocated for hygiene purposes, many of them would use the same water to brush their teeth (and since yesterday's post revealed the abysmal pay the troops were receiving compared to the contractors, do you really think many of them would choose to spend their hard-earned money on bottled water?).
The second aspect to Morell's statement which I find equally disturbing is his blind defense of the contractors. Bear in mind that KBR is a former subsidiary of Dick Cheney's brainchild, Halliburton. This is a poorly disguised case of the administration protecting its own bedfellows and valuing cronyism over the health of American soldiers. Yet these are the folks who have the audacity to call war critics unpatriotic and accuse us of not supporting the troops. Perhaps an act of a true patriot would be to call for the protection of our troops through contractor accountability.
Tomorrow, Rachel will reveal her responses to the reports and investigations regarding the water scandal upon her return to the United States.
