Texans Sue KBR, Halliburton Over War-Zone Burn Pits

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Guillermo Contreras
June 5, 2009 - San Antonio Express-News

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Six people from Texas, including some soldiers, who claim they were poisoned by toxins and emissions from burn pits at U.S. camps in Iraq and Afghanistan are suing contractors KBR and Halliburton.

The suit, moved to federal court in San Antonio from state court last week, alleges the companies operated the large war-zone pits and burned waste since 2004 that included trucks, tires, plastic water bottles, medical waste, hazardous materials, animal carcasses and even human corpses.

The suit claims burning the waste in open pits - with no safety controls - may have released toxins that harmed at least 100,000 people, including U.S. troops, contractors and civilians.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking to make the case a class-action lawsuit, citing evidence that many others are having symptoms or medical conditions that include severe respiratory ailments, asthma, sleep apnea, heart problems, tumors, lymphoma and leukemia.

Some even have died, according to the suit and news reports.

The situation has been likened by some observers to that caused by Agent Orange of the Vietnam era.

The suit was filed on behalf of Robert Cain of San Marcos; Craig Henry of San Antonio; Francis Jaeger of Haltom City; David McMenomy of Lampasas; Mark Posz of San Antonio; and El Kevin Sar of Houston.

The six exhibited symptoms ranging from acute abdominal pains, chronic respiratory infections, burning sensations in the lungs and persistent cold-like symptoms.

McMenomy had a football-size tumor removed from his hip suspected of being caused by fumes from a burn pit at Camp Al Taji, Iraq, the suit said.

The six couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.

Lawyers with Burke O'Neill LLC in Washington have filed lawsuits in 10 states, including the one in San Antonio.

Thirty-four suits have been filed or are expected to be filed in 34 states where people with symptoms have surfaced, plaintiffs' attorney Elizabeth Burke said.

The burn pits are so large, the suit said, that tractors are used to push "every type of waste imaginable" into the fire, and the flames shoot hundreds of feet into the sky, sometimes around the clock.

The suit claims the contractors failed to install incinerators to limit the toxic exposure.

"They took an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars and did shoddy work," Burke said of the contractors. "The work they did harmed the soldiers and hindered the military mission. In some bases with an Air Force presence, planes could not take off and land because of the smoke."

Houston-based KBR said it operated within the rules and regulations set by the U.S. military.

"The general assertion that KBR knowingly harmed troops is unfounded as the safety and security of all KBR employees and those the company serves remains our top priority," said an e-mailed statement from KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne.

Halliburton, which at one time was the parent company of KBR and also is in Houston, questioned why it was named as a defendant.

"As these lawsuits are based on KBR activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, we believe that Halliburton is improperly named in these cases and, as such, we expect Halliburton to be dismissed from the suits as Halliburton would have no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the actions alleged," Halliburton spokeswoman Diana Gabriel said by e-mail.

Senior members of military environmental health assessment teams have expressed concern about the pits to the Pentagon. One of them called the burn pit at Balad Air Base in Iraq "the worst environmental site I have personally visited" in 10 years.

In May, congressional lawmakers introduced a bill that would prohibit the military from operating burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan for longer than six months and require the Pentagon to identify service members who already may have been exposed to toxins so they could be treated.

"Disturbing reports are coming to light every day about these burn pits and the toll they are taking on the health of many of our service men and women," said U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., who co-authored the bill with U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H. "Our troops should be free to focus on fighting the enemy without worrying how their lives may be further endangered by the actions of private contractors operating under different rules."

Bishop and others set up a Web site - burnpits.org - with information and personal stories about burn pits.

An Air Force memo that was leaked recently on Wikileaks, a Web site that receives documents from anonymous sources to help expose government misdeeds, said thousands of people might have been exposed to toxins at a burn pit at Balad Air Base.

"In my professional opinion, the known carcinogens and respiratory sensitizers released into the atmosphere by the burn pit present both an acute and chronic health hazard to our troops and local population," Lt. Col. James R. Elliott, the chief of aero-medical services, wrote in a December 2006 memo.

The memo said the pit had been identified as a health concern for several years.

The claims against the defendants include negligence, battery, breach of duty to warn, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract.

The suit seeks compensatory damages for current and future medical expenses and punitive damages "in an amount sufficient to strip defendants of all of the revenue and profits earned from their pattern of constant, wanton and outrageous misconduct and callous disregard and utter indifference to the welfare of Americans serving and working in Iraq."

"KBR is still reviewing the recently filed suits," KBR said in its statement. "It should be noted, though, that KBR did not operate the burn pit at Balad in Iraq, as has been previously asserted. It should also be noted that any burn pit operated in Iraq or Afghanistan is done pursuant to Army guidelines and regulations."

Let's Get Down to the Essentials

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Jacques Attali
June 3, 2009 - L'Express

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Contrary to what they'd like us to believe, the crisis is deepening: in the United States, all deficits are growing; bank defaults are worsening, and, even though Wall Street is up, its value still remains 40 percent below what it was in October 2007. On top of that, within informed circles, everyone is murmuring that we should expect further tsunamis: on private real estate loans, credit cards and commercial property.

To respond to all that, the United States, in a huge bet, is investing money it doesn't have in cutting-edge sectors. And China, in an equally audacious bet, is abandoning all hope of a recovery in its exports to America and, in a gigantic recovery effort, is investing 20 percent of its GDP in domestic infrastructure. Europe, for its part, is not doing anything. Paralyzed by its history and its precautions, it prefers to believe that the crisis will sort itself out on its own. Having bet everything on a reform in global governance that the London comedy quite naturally did not produce, it now seems to expect that the market will pull a miracle cure out of its pocket. Deprived of bold leaders in Brussels, the Union is not providing itself with a single new resource, neither to protect its banks, nor to relaunch its cutting-edge sectors. Two thousand and eight and 2009 will remain the years of the European nadir. The Euro itself will not withstand such a
shock.

It's time for France to understand that at this rate, the worst is virtually certain: a dropping real estate market, production overcapacity in key sectors, a recession in 2009, 2010 and even 2011. Unemployment will exceed 3.5 million people; the budget deficit will reach, in spite of all the cosmetic steps taken, eight or even 10 percent of GDP, unless there is a massive increase in taxes, which will become more and more difficult to implement as the presidential elections approach. Scientific and technical elites will rebel or leave, disgusted by the revelation of the fortunes made in finance. We must confront a difficult reality and repeat this every day until people understand it: if the government does not act in a truly revolutionary manner, the recession is here for at least ten years, which will lead to a decoupling of Europe and France, left behind forever by the countries that will have understood the significance of the upheavals underway.

In consequence, to act means massively reviving industry through spending clearly targeted on sectors of the future: health, energy, agriculture, infrastructure, the environment, new materials, software, nanotechnologies, neurosciences, cutting-edge services and cultural industries. And, to accomplish that, significantly increasing the salaries of researchers, professors, doctors, engineers - that is, all those whose creativity provides for the country. To the detriment, if necessary, of the income and privileges enjoyed by those who manage, finance and divert them. To act also means provisionally accepting deficits targeted to finance this spending for the future. That means promoting new models for companies, models more concerned about the long term and closer to those of NGOs and public services. That means orienting finance towards risk-taking in long-term sectors and not toward profit for its own account.

It's not a new recovery plan that we need, but a true realization of cultural and political urgencies. And in particular, we need a radical reconsideration of the division of power between those who create and those who finance: a requirement, I repeat, for our survival.

Europe Agrees How to Open Door to Dozens of Guantánamo Detainees

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June 04, 2009 - The Guardian UK

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Brussels boosts Obama's plan to close detention camp.

Brussels - European countries yesterday agreed terms for taking in dozens of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, boosting President Barack Obama's plan to close the detention camp.

After months of division over whether and how up to 60 detainees could take up residence in Europe, EU interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg agreed security guidelines and a mechanism for sharing information on the detainees.

Agreement means that iIndividual EU states will now be able to accommodate detainees who have been cleared for release but cannot be repatriated for fear they will be killed, tortured or jailed. They could take in "several dozen" detainees, said Martin Pecina, the Czech interior minister, who chaired the meeting.

The US has long been seeking new homes for about 60 inmates, with Washington stepping up the pressure from January when Obama announced the closure in one of the first statements of his presidency. This called Europe's bluff, since it has long deplored Guantánamo and needed to demonstrate support for the new US administration with more than words. While Spain and Portugal led about eight of the EU's 27 countries keen to help the Americans, there was resistance from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries alarmed about security risks and the ease with which immigrants can travel around the 25 EU states which share the border-free Schengen regime.

Individual countries were split between political leaders keen to show willing with Obama and security establishments worried about taking in the detainees. "The security people have had the upper hand, highlighting the risks involved," said Anthony Dworkin, counter-terrorism expert at the European Council for Foreign Relations. "They argued that Europe did not make this problem, so why should it bear the risks. "

Yesterday's deal leaves it up to individual countries to decide whether to take inmates. Those that do have to furnish all other EU governments with intelligence information on the proposed immigrant and take account of objections.

The Dutch, said diplomats, also insisted on being able to invoke national law to bar a freed inmate from travelling from one EU country to another, despite Schengen.

The Europeans expect several of the detainees cleared for release to go to the US, while the European green light for accepting detainees could also raise pressure on Canada and Australia to follow suit.

Germany, for example, has argued that US federal states' reluctance to take in inmates should mean that European countries are not required to accommodate them. The Americans are pressing Berlin to allow in many of the 17 Uighurs, Chinese Muslims, held at Guantánamo and cleared for release.

Britain believes it has "done its bit" and is reluctant to accept more inmates. Since Obama made his closure pledge, Britain has accepted one former UK resident. There is one more former UK residentstill at Guantánamo, but the Americans have made no request for his acceptance by Britain. Under the Bush administration, Britain accepted a further 13 British citizens or residents. Britain and Ireland are not part of the Schengen area that extends from Portugal to Poland."It's a significant agreement because it puts a collective European stamp, a set of standards, and recognises that the US is rethinking its counter-terrorism policy in line with international law," said Dworkin.

The Europeans and the Americans are now expected to coordinate their counter-terrorism strategies by issuing a joint statement next month, following which the Americans will ask specific countries to take in certain individuals and also supply intelligence on their cases. The Americans want the problem solved by next January.

The European governments said they took yesterday's decision to show support for Obama's "thorough review of US counter-terrorism policies consistent with the rule of law and international law".

California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply

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Nearly a third of the country's food supply comes from California, but drought there may be a catastrophe for farmers -- and the rest of us.

Scott Thill
June 6, 2009 - AlterNet

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What a difference an administration makes. Samuel Bodman, the previous secretary of energy under the Bush administration, spent his short term stumping for nuclear power plant construction, polluting the hell out of the Earth, profiting off global warming and trying to significantly downplay America's singular role in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new one? Well, he's a doom prophet with a Ph.D.

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going," Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in February, shortly after taking office in January. "I'm hoping that the American people will wake up," he added, just in case there was any confusion about the gravity of the situation.

That kind of apocalyptic foresight has made Chu a breath of fresh, dystopian air. For eight nearly insufferable years, the American public has had no shortage of political tools telling it everything is going to be all right, that the United States is the greatest country in the world, that reports of our impending environmental devastation have been greatly exaggerated, and so on. By contrast, Steven Chu is a Cassandra on a mission from reality. But few, especially in the state he singled out, feel like buying what he is selling.

"Dr. Chu is not a climate scientist," argued Jim Metropulos, senior advocate at Sierra Club's California chapter, echoing the same conditional given in the Los Angeles Times article in which Chu was quoted. "Obviously, he's versed on it, but he's taking an apocalyptic view. I think it's not sustainable in its current form. We rely on imported water to grow high-value crops, but maybe the agriculture we have today may not be the agriculture we have decades from now."

That's a big maybe.

Here are some not-so-fun facts: California's agricultural sector grows approximately one-third of the nation's food supply and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled yearly by runoff from its prodigious Sierra Nevada snowpack, as well as groundwater pumping and other less-reliable methods. That snowpack -- which once sparked the first, but not the last, water war that helped transform a semi-arid Los Angeles into an unsustainable oasis less populous than only New York City -- is disappearing fast. Hence Chu's worrisome prediction.

To make matters worse, a crushing drought, now well into its third year, has made simply everything problematic. In California's central valley, home to a majority of the state's agricultural output, farmers are leaving hundreds of thousands of acres fallow, and the resultant economic depression is having a domino effect that could cost California $1 billion to start and is causing residents of a one-time food powerhouse to go hungry.

In April, a series of spring showers and storms upped the snowpack to 80 percent of normal. At the beginning of May, it stumbled to 66 percent, compared to 72 percent the year before. Complicating that are recent federal directives mandating reductions of water deliveries to California farmers and urban users by 5 to 7 percent in hopes of preserving the Pacific Coast's salmon fishery, which is hovering, like the state's snowpack, on the brink of extinction.

"This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger self-righteously fumed after the federal directive came down in June. His sound and fury is unjustified, but instructive.

"Sooner or later California is going to change how it uses water," explained Environmental Defense Fund officials Cynthia Koehler and Laura Harnish in the Huffington Post. "We can do it before we lose our fish, or after."

But these are short-term issues clouding, pardon the pun, an inevitably larger one. According to recent climate science, California is never going to get its regularly scheduled snowpack back. Which means that even well-intentioned conservation outreach programs and bad-faith battles over agricultural irrigation are missing the point.

Like other geographies once sustained by an uninterrupted supply of water, California is going dry. And when it dries up, so does its cities, its people and its future. Simply put, global warming, human-induced and otherwise, has significantly broadened the range of the tropical belt by a rate of 70 kilometers per decade. Southern California, like the Sahara Desert and Sahel savanna, is already subtropical in the summer. But with climate crisis expanding its reach, that subtropical heat could claim not just Northern California's snowpack, but even part of Washington's and Utah's bounties.

Game over. Right?

"We don't share Chu's assessment," asserted John Andrew, executive manager on climate change for the California Department of Water Resources. "The hazard here is that you are trying to predict the future. Even if you are as brilliant as Chu, you're pretty much guaranteed to be wrong."

Fair enough, one supposes. But then why does the DWR have its own internally generated climate models forecasting what Andrew claimed as a "25-40 percent reduction of the snowpack by midcentury," which is trying to predict the same future, albeit more optimistically?

"We came up with that by looking at climate models that were out there," Andrew explained, "and applying historic hydrologic data in the state. We looked at every snowpack study out there, and they shoot the range of projections. Some are as high as over 90 percent reduction by 2100. But if you look at the linear trend, then you wind up with a smaller reduciton. It's not good science to look at one study; what we really wanted to do was take a responsible look at all the data."

But a responsible look at the historical data, which has been mostly linear for a few hundred years, is inherently unreliable, given the exponential nature of global warming. Everything from glacial melt rates to the occurrence of so-called freak firestorms has been thrown into nonlinear chaos in the last few decades.

Carbon emissions have exceeded projections of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while ocean and land sinks, which suck up and store CO2, have decreased in efficiency. A study completed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Columbia University has argued that the southwestern United States could be headed for permanent drought by 2050. Given that the IPCC has been historically conservative, even out-of-date in its nevertheless sobering projections, playing it safe on climatological modeling is beyond conservative. It's reckless.

"The modeling we used is uncertain," Andrew admitted, when pressed further on DWR's predictions. "I guess you could call it modeling. Historic data is going to be an inadequate indicator, but we still have to look at it."

True that; you have to look at everything. But when it comes time to offer a prediction, it's best to, like Chu, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

In fact, if you shave 10 conservative percentage points off DWR's predictions, you arrive around where Chu explained you would. And that is when things come into finer focus. Instead of fighting over Pacific salmon and Central Valley cows, or junior and senior water rights, you are now fighting for survival.

As Chu explained, cities like Los Angeles will not have to think about why it can't hose off its driveways or take long showers; it will have to think about whether it is going to run out of water altogether.

"What are you going to say?" Metropolous asked rhetorically. " 'All you people have to move out and go elsewhere?' That's not going to fly. We're trying to promote things that are cost effective and pretty easy, like water conservation. It doesn't mean a radical change to the people's lifestyle, if we manage water better."

Well, that depends on the lifestyle. It was barely a decade ago that the governor of water-challenged California was giving a thumbs-up to Hummer in a photo-op. Now he's had an environmental deathbed conversion? Please.

The way California is currently wasting water -- on elaborate lawns in Beverly Hills, on cow death-camps in the San Joaquin Valley, on whatever -- it either doesn't know where its water comes from or simply doesn't care.

So any significant conservation initiative is going to be a challenge to the status quo, to say nothing of lifestyle. And when the water vapor truly hits the fan in 2100 or 2050, or even sooner, given the cross-your-fingers modeling of not just the DWR but also the IPCC, what alternatives will there be other than to pack up and leave?

Metropolous and Andrew and other well-intentioned enviros might balk, but I'll stick with the apocalyptic rants of a truth-telling Ph.D. nominated by Barack Obama to become the nation's chief brainiac on all things energy, thanks. And you should, too.