Post-9/11 veterans sickened by toxic chemicals and radiation
at an Uzbek airbase used for staging the war in Afghanistan are again absent
from must-pass defense legislation, Senate aides told the Washington Examiner.
“There was no comparable amendment offered to the Senate
NDAA by any senators,” a Senate Armed Services Committee aide told the
Washington Examiner of the $740.5 billion legislation.
The House version of the National Defense Authorization Act
included an amendment requiring the Department of Defense to study the effects
of contaminants that were present at the airbase known as K2, where some 10,000
veterans served between 2001 and 2005.
“A study will show what we already know: People are dead,
dying, and chronically ill at rates several factors higher than similar
populations,” said K2 veteran and retired Army Staff Sgt. Mark Jackson, who has
chronic thyroid and gastrointestinal problems. “It is a start.”
As violence flares in Afghanistan, Pentagon watchdog denied
data on Taliban attacks
The amendment was sponsored by Reps. Stephen Lynch, a
Massachusetts Democrat, and Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican, himself a veteran
of the contaminated Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan.
“The House-passed version would require the Department of
Defense to conduct an epidemiological study of health effects and exposures at
K2,” Lynch told the Washington Examiner.
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