Jon Stewart's Advocacy for Veterans Exposed to Toxic Waste in Iraq and Afghanistan | Joe

Well, I had a thing, you know, we're trying to do this thing for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who've gotten sick from burn pits. Are you familiar at all with burn pits? No, what is it? So in the Iraq war in Afghanistan, I mean, this will go back generations, but in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of the hired contractors to dispose of the detritus of war, they would build these sometimes 10 acre, 20 acre pits. Everything would go into them from a mass waste to hazardous materials to computers, everything. They light it with jet fuel and they burn. So now you got guys that are down range that are also down. I mean, they're living, they're basically camping out. Yeah. And toxic waste dump, right? And it's in the air incinerator. So they come home and you're starting to see pulmonary issues, cancer issues. These guys are dying. Yeah. And they're not being, it's not being, they have to advocate against the government. So we're trying to put together working with this team coalition, wounded warrior groups and people, VSOs and groups like that to address this legislatively, similar to what was done for the 9 11 community, right? So I thought, cause it's always about money. You know, we always have money for war, but we almost never have money to pay for what are the absolutely could have seen coming a mile away consequences of what our veterans face when they come back, right? We don't take care when they're, when they're out, when they're out of sight, they're out of mind. And so my idea was you have all these profiteers, Ray Theon, Halliburton, all these groups, take them kick in 10% a contingency in war so that when these guys go home and the government backs away, there is money there to take care of what is the natural damage that's done to these people in the name of fighting for our country so that they don't and their families, I mean, these people have to become their own lawyers. They have to go in front of medical boards and they have no support. Their families are oftentimes caring for them, whether they have health issues or traumatic brain injury or, you know, other kinds of invisible wounds. And they're kind of hung out to dry. Yes, not kind of very much so. But, you know, the UFC had a program back in the day where we were working with the intrepid center for excellence to work with traumatic brain injury patients and to raise money for them. And we were doing this UFC fight for the troops to raise money for it. And what got me sick was how is it that we have to do this? Like how is it that this isn't something that's taken care of in the budget? Clearly, in advance, you're blowing people up and you're not preparing for people to come back injured. You're sending young, brave women and men to die for their country or risk severe brain damage and you don't have enough money set aside to treat them when they return. I'm like, that's insane. Everybody thinks that soldiers come back and they've got health care for life. No, they don't. You've got a five year window, but if you get something that they deem was not service related so you could have been sleeping next to an open air burn pit. There's a guy in Texas where we work with his wife, Rosie and Leroy Torres, who's literally like his case wouldn't be they denied his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court. Yeah, it's evil. This absolute intention to deny health care and it goes all the way back to Desert Storm. You remember the whole... To Vietnam. Yes. People were still fighting the government over Agent Orange and still being denied. Yeah, but yeah. It conquers. It's crazy and the depleted radiation sickness that people were getting from the Iraq War. Right, and the guys that went, that K2 base that were in, I think it was Uzbekistan and it was a toxic weight. These soldiers literally had irradiated tar on their boots. Sick as shit and they can't get... There's blue water, hooray. I'm telling you, every... Or inevitably and they're always told the same thing. Hey, we don't have the science yet and it's going to take us 20 to 25 years on the science, but you do have the science because you got the science from... Yeah. There's a jet fuel burned at the trade center. The science is in. Use that science. Stop fucking with these people and help them. Yeah, the jet fuel burned at the trade center is another excellent example of first responders, right, that were terribly sick and many, many of them died because of the fumes and people in the surrounding areas. In fact, Donna Summers died of lung cancer and she lived near there. Yeah. I don't doubt that it's related. It could be related, but many people did. Jimmy Zadroga, he was a cop and he got really sick. I mean, those guys developed the pile cough like a day into the search and rescue, but Jimmy Zadroga, he gets sick and they kept trying to tell him that, A, first it was in his head and then it was it had nothing to do with where you were and working on the pile in 9-11. And then they tried to say like, it's from snorting drugs. They fucking, you know, ruin this man's reputation as he's dying. He dies. They do an autopsy in his lungs. Everything you could possibly imagine from a pulverized building Jesus asbestos limestone cyanide like, like it was an utter disaster and they just keep fighting people and they're doing the same thing to these veterans now with the burn pits and it's, you know, the whole thing's just got to stop that. There's got to be a presumption for these illnesses so that these guys don't have to fight so hard to get your health care. I think along the same lines, we're talking about reform of the police department. There has to be some reform of the health care system that deals with veterans because it seems to be just this long history of doing it a certain way to save the most money possible. And the idea that these guys are sacrificial anyway, you know, they're sending them off to potentially die. If they come back alive, we, you know, we do our, they do our, their very best to not treat them and to not spend any more money on them. And it's, it's sick. It's amazing. We have so many guys that are still patriotic that still want to go and do this considering the fact that they're treated so poorly when they return. Yeah. And they lose, you know, listen, being in the military is isolating in the first place. It's just not that, you know, it's only less than 1% I think of the population. Put on top of that, when you get out, you know, you're used to being with a unit, you're used to that camaraderie. You're used to all pulling for the same, you know, working as a team. Well, now you're removed from your unit. And if you're hurt, that's even further isolating, you know, and in that moment to have to then you're, you're worried about your future, your family's future. And in that moment, when you, when that's when the government should step in and go, Hey man, were you fulfilled your service to us? You fulfilled that covenant. We will fulfill that covenant to you. You know, we will send that, that, you know, we'll do the right thing. Right. And they, and they do the opposite. They do the opposite. It's some of the shit is so simple and fair and obvious. And you do wonder like, how has the system become so corrupt and corroded that we can't anymore as a people do the right thing? Just do the right fucking thing. How did that, how'd we get here?