{"id":231177,"date":"2016-03-12T19:31:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T19:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/torching-the-truth-at-us-military-bookstores\/"},"modified":"2016-03-12T19:31:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T19:31:46","slug":"torching-the-truth-at-us-military-bookstores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/torching-the-truth-at-us-military-bookstores\/","title":{"rendered":"Torching the Truth at US Military Bookstores"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The US’s military adventures — and, just as often, its misadventures — have inspired thousands upon thousands of books. But the military isn’t just in the business of inspiring books: Sometimes it bans them, too.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon recently announced that it was\u00a0refusing to carry<\/a>\u00a0a new book by journalist (and veteran) Joseph Hickman in the stores on US military bases. It’s called\u00a0The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Burn pits,\u00a0NPR reports<\/a>, are “acres-wide mounds of waste near bases” containing “everything from batteries to vehicle scraps to amputated body parts.” These refuse piles, once set aflame with jet fuel, can burn for 24 hours a day. They expose our troops and other personnel to deadly toxic fumes.<\/p>\n

Banning books is bad enough. But there’s a bigger issue here: Why does the Pentagon expose our soldiers to deadly poisons and then pretend it hasn’t happened?<\/p>\n

Hickman’s\u00a0Burn Pits<\/em>\u00a0exposes a link between military service near burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan and serious maladies, including everything from respiratory illnesses to rare brain cancers. Indeed,\u00a0Hickman says<\/a>, Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau died of one of these rare brain cancers after serving in Iraq.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon’s ban comes despite the fact that the book is\u00a0an Amazon bestseller<\/a>\u00a0and has been reviewed favorably in media around the world. So it seems like a sure bet that the brass doesn’t intend to change its policy of exposing our soldiers to these deadly toxins. By officially sticking their heads in the sand, they’re hoping the problem will go away.<\/p>\n

The problem won’t go away, though. Agent Orange didn’t go away after Vietnam. Gulf War Syndrome didn’t go away after Desert Storm. And now brave men and women who wanted nothing more than to serve their country are dying prematurely.<\/p>\n

The effects on families are devastating. Just ask Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Or ask Tammy McCracken. Her husband David was one of my best friends. We were nearly inseparable since the age of 15.<\/p>\n

David’s father was a highly…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US’s military adventures — and, just as often, its misadventures — have inspired thousands upon thousands of books. But the military isn’t just in the business of inspiring books: Sometimes it bans them, too. The Pentagon recently announced that it was\u00a0refusing to carry\u00a0a new book by journalist (and veteran) Joseph Hickman in the stores […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-231177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}