A veteran finally gets his overdue awards

Dave Dufrane called today to give me some gratifing, good news. Imagine what its been like for him to be a Vietnam War Veteran who also served in Laos, but to not be able to prove it. He has his proof now from the Army itself who apparently discovered that acting Platoon SGT Dufrane was there and particpated in Action as well. He now has two Bronze Service Stars and the Vietnam Service Medal for Gallantry.

I hope you will join me in congatulating him on a job well done, because he deserves it, and the more so because it has been over forty years that he has lived without that recognition. He got a double whammy, because like the rest of us he still awaits Army recognition for Edgewood service.

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I SALUTE Dave Dufrane for his extraordinary service both at Edgewood Arsenal in the human experiments and for his heroism on the field of battle. It is a shame that it took the Army more than 40 years to present him with the medals he earned on the filed of battle. Now if they will just recognize him as well as the other 7119 men of the Edgewood experiments, the veterans of Fort Detricks Biological experiments, the men of the SHAD experiments, the men of Operation 112 experiments, and the men used in the nuclear experiments after WW2 thru the 1960s both in the Pacific and at the Nevada Test site. There have also been human experiments at Dugway Proving Grounds Utah, Fort Greely Alaska, Panama, and these are just the ones we have learned about that the military has failed to award these veterans awards or medals that were promised more than 40-60 years ago, and now they claim that participating in these experiments were not above and beyond the normal call of duty, all of these experiments are illegal today under laws passed in 1975, yet due to the Nuremberg Codes of 1947 they were illegal then also, many officers have stated that the men used in these experiments were heroic and deserve medals for involvement in these CBR research tests, these men should have been awarded the Soldiers Medals they were told they would receive or at a minimum the Army Commendation Medal for going above and beyond "normal and safe duty" conditions.

I know the men of Edgewood experiments are shown by the last study in March 2003 by the IOM that of the 7120 men used from 1955 thru 1975, that 3098 were deceased 40% and of the 4022 aurvivors, that 54% of them are disabled which combines for a 74.43% death and disability rate, far higher than any unit of the same size from the Vietnam era, it shows that something caused these men higher than normal death rates and medical problems, regardless of the fact that DOD refuses to do a thorough health study of all potential problems, the way they write the IOM studies intentionally disregard known problems from exposures to the drugs and mustard agents, they write the parameters to exclude known studies that do show medical problems caused by mustard agents and other chemical weapons.

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