Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become an epidemic amongst soldiers/sailors serving and veterans who have returned from the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reasons are being depicted as purely psychological, but this seems to be very misleading.

The general public in the United States, Britain, and the rest of the world, including much of the Arab World, are unaware of one of the greatest war crimes and criminal acts against humanity that has been unfolding since the Gulf War from the Balkans to the Middle East and Afghanistan. Depleted uranium has been used for military use from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia to the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The use of depleted uranium (D.U.)—more properly nuclear waste—and other substances in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be ruled out as a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reported by U.S., Coalition, and NATO veterans. Veterans who have served in Anglo-American occupied Iraq and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan are coming back in sizeable numbers with medical, stress, and psychological problems, but there are undoubtedly more factors involved than just the theatre of military service or the war zone.

It is now known that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by the large-scale use of depleted uranium against Iraq in 1991. Additionally, about 70% (even possibly more) of Gulf War Veterans have had children born after the Gulf War with mutations, deformities, genetic disorders, and severe medical illnesses.

Causal analysis of the increasing rates of mutation, medical problems, and cancer in both foreign troops and local populations alike in Iraq and Afghanistan indicates that it is the military application of nuclear waste (D.U.) being used against civilian populations and resistance movements that is the cause.

There have been omissions to this such as the use of dosimeters by troops in Afghanistan. Dosimeters are measuring devices worn around soldiers’ necks that record exposure to radioactivity.

Although it replicates the U.S. and NATO claims that depleted uranium (D.U.) is safe and posses no health hazards to human beings, the Toronto Star, the newspaper with the largest number of circulations in Canada, published a revealing piece by Bruce Campion-Smith that gives an indirect omission of the horrors that foreign troops and local populations alike have been exposed to in the war zone.

Although the rudimentary causes of Jeanne Michel’s PTSD are not know, there is no doubt these causes at a minimum can be attributed to the war in Iraq, warfare, and the occupation of Iraq by American troops.

The article writes that “Iraq killed her just as certainly,” meaning it was because of the occupation of Iraq that Jeanne Michel died. This statement should proceed deeper—the regressive foreign policy of the United States dictated by interest groups concerned with their own profiteering and luxury is what killed Jeanne Michel and thousands of others.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the citizens of the United States, Britain, Iraq, and Afghanistan paradoxically suffer together because of war criminals in Washington D.C. and London.

Source: Center for Research on GI