Military Glance
For three decades -- from the 1950s to the mid-1980s -- the water supply used by hundreds of thousands of Marines and their families was laced with chemicals from an off-base dry-cleaning company and industrial solvents used to clean military equipment.
"The Marine Corps knowingly poisoned their own people," Partain recently said in his living room, surrounded by stacks of military documents and water analysis reports. "They were told about the water, and they did nothing. Nothing. And then they lied about it."
The number of unresolved disability claims has soared this year, prompting protests from veterans groups and members of Congress. The American Legion said in late June that the number was approaching 1 million claims, but Department of Veterans Affairs officials dispute that figure.
Job Description
Suicide counts tend to be undercounts, and the trend is less marked in other branches of the military. Nor are there reliable figures for veterans who have left the service; the Department of Veterans Affairs can only systematically track suicides among its hospitalized patients, and it does not issue regular suicide reports.
The future mix of homeless veterans was signaled here last weekend at Stand Down, an annual three-day tent city that provides respite and aid to former members of the armed forces whose lives have collapsed.
Some 52 percent of soldiers severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have come to the U.S. Army's largest hospital for treatment have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), an internal study has found.
Agent Orange, used by U.S. forces to strip Vietnamese and Cambodian jungles during the Vietnam War, may raise the risk of heart disease and Parkinson's disease, U.S. health advisers said on Friday.
