Letter: Hold Congress accountable for giving rights to military personnel

Dave M.

Shouldn’t U.S. service personnel and veterans get back those constitutional rights they die for and convicted rapists and murderers keep?

Convicted rapists and murderers are given protection from human experiments by the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, Amendment Eight.

The Senate signed and ratified the United Nation, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992.

Its 1994 Index, ” … Article 7 – Freedom from Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” notes that, “Written policy and practice prohibit the use of” [prison] “inmates for medical … experiments.” Nineteen times cited are the U.S. Constitution plus its Eighth Amendment’s no cruel and unusual punishment.

“The Feres Doctrine should not be applied for military personnel who are harmed by inappropriate human experimentation when informed consent has not been given.” Then, “During the last 50 years, hundreds of thousands of military personnel” were subjected to “experiments that were designed to harm,” i.e., the 1994 Senate report’s biological and chemical agents, radiation exposure, hallucinogenic and investigational drugs, experimental vaccines and behavior modification projects.

In 2011, still ignored is this, and their also noted past and present, “III. Findings and conclusions,” “K. DOD and DVA have repeatedly failed to provide information and medical followup to those who participate in military research … ” and “N. Participation in military research is rarely included in military medical records, making it impossible to support a veteran’s claim for service-connected disabilities from military research.”

This is the withheld needed for diagnosis and treatment for experiment identifying evidence. Underlying this Senate report is the General Accounting Office September 1994 House report, “Human Experimentation Overview on Cold War Era Programs.”

In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1950 Feres case, a death due to a 1947 Army barracks fire was determined to be an “incident to service.” In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1987 Stanley a Department of Defense 1958 “to harm” drug experiment is swept under the same cover of “injuries that arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service.” Fifty times it cites the Feres Doctrine. Not once mentioned is the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, Amendment Eight.

In 2005 some in Congress made an attempt to get the biological and chemical portion of this withheld needed for treatment evidence, e.g., H.R. 4259 the “Veterans’ Right to Know Commission.” It died. It is now from 1944, 67 years of U.S. Congressional talk with no Feres Doctrine and its Stanley “to harm” correction. During the 1994 reported past, hundreds of thousands of the “to harm” service records were destroyed in a 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire.

Then Congress’s 1974 Privacy Act censored experiment verifying witnesses from any surviving and future records. Overlooked by many in Congress is their Oath of Office to defend the U.S. Constitution, our “Pledge of Allegiance” “with liberty and justice for all,” their U.S. Constitution Eighth Amendment protection of convicted rapists and murderers with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ignored, carved in stone over its entrance, “Equal justice under law.”

As in the GAO and the Senate’s reported past, these “military research” “incident to service” activities are conducted under the ongoing secrecy cover of our “national interests,” e.g., WWII, Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do not the U.S. Senate’s stated Department of Defense “experiments that were designed to harm” continue? Please hold your members in the Congress accountable for giving back to those that serve their constitutional rights.