JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, Amy, our report, which we have been working on for several months found that first -- four of nine soldiers from the 442nd military police of the New York National Guard were found with the depleted -- contaminated with depleted uranium. They are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict. Army officials at Fort Dix and Herbert Reed Army Medical Center are now rushing to test all returning members of the 442nd. More than a dozen members are back in the U.S. but the rest of the company mostly comprised of New York City cops, firefighters and correction officials is not due to return until later this month. After learning of the news investigation, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York blasted Pentagon officials yesterday for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq. Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said she will write to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answer and soon will introduce legislation to require health screening for all returning troops. Depleted uranium is considered to be the most effective anti-tank weapon ever devised. It is made from nuclear waste leftover from the making of nuclear weapons and fuel. The public first became aware of the U.S. military was using D.U. weapons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. But it had been used as far back as 1973 during the Yom Kippur war in Israel. Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the European parliament called last year for a moratorium on its use.

AMY GOODMAN: Today we're joined by three soldiers who came home sick from Iraq. We're going to begin with sergeant Agustin Matos. Welcome to Democracy Now!

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: Thank you. Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It's very good to have you us with. Can you talk about what happened you to in Iraq?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: Basically, we were living in areas that were bombed out or very dirty as far as - we lived in one train station of Samarra, where it was filled with bird droppings and grease pits and asbestos from brakes. We were forced to clean these areas, because we have to live in them, and as far as dust was concerned and sand storms. They were constantly. Every time you went out on missions and came back. All of your equipment and gear was filled with sand. Sometimes you slept and woke up, you had sand behind your ears and sand in your nose. Everywhere.

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the things in the process of talking to several of you, you had one of the medics, Sergeant Juan Vega, who told you when it got to Samarra, some time was it in June of last year, that suddenly a lot of men in the company started coming down with similar symptoms. He had as many as a dozen of the 106-member company had high fevers and kidney stones, and urinating blood for many of the soldiers. Can you talk about what happened there in Samarra.

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I myself while I was out there, experienced a couple of fevers one night. Unexplained, I was fine during the day and then it just hit me. It just totally knocked me out. I was in bed. I couldn't get out. I can't remember exactly what the fevers were. But also I had -- I was urinating blood while I was out there. It wasn't good. It was just a place not to be when you are sick like that.

AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: We were in Samarra.

AMY GOODMAN: Which is how close to Baghdad?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I would say about a 40 minute ride to an hour ride.

AMY GOODMAN: And Juan, how did you first hear about the story?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I initially got a call back in I would say, mid November from the mother of a soldier, who is still there actually. And who had come back because his grandfather had died for a few days for the burial. But who was -- who was sick, and he had not been shipped out. She was concerned about him. He eventually went back to Iraq with the company. The whole company is not due to return until April 23rd, is it -- coming back?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: Anytime after the 17th.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And -- but then she told me there's a whole bunch of others from the same company that are at Ft. Dix, who are also having all kinds of problems. So she put me in touch with them. One by one, I started meeting with some of the soldiers and finding they had very similar types of complaints about their physical conditions. A lot of kidney problems. With the urination or blood in the urine or kidney stones, which is a sign of depleted uranium, because uranium is a heavy metal attacks the kidney as one of the first organs. So, I talked to several of the men about the possibility of their getting independent testing, because they were having trouble with the military dealing with their testing. I don't know, maybe sergeant Herbert Reed, who is also one of the men, I want to talk about the problems that you had. You were one of the few that actually did get tested. What were the problems in getting the results?

SGT. HERBERT REED: Yes. Well, what happened was it was several of us that went to Herbert Reed to be tested. And you had to fill out a survey but a lot of us were turned away. I was tested in early December when we submitted the specimen back to Herbert Reed. After numerous tries to retrieve the results, we were told they hadn't come back. Just recently, last week, we went to -- back to the office to get the results, and we met with this colonel who told us that they still hadn't returned. They made a telephone call to the lab. The lab indicated to them that all the results had been completed, and they didn't know why ours had not reached Herbert Reed yet. So, he told them that -- to send him an email and he would get him the results. And about an hour later, we were telephoned that they had our results, and that myself, Specialist Phillips, and Sergeant Ruez had came back negative, but I was positive for 6.2 nanograms of uranium, and 6.0 nanograms of that correlate -- I think it's like that.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Sergeant Herbert Reed, you're Assistant Deputy Warden at Reicherâs island.

SGT. HERBERT REED: Yes, Mam.

AMY GOODMAN: And the 442 police company is - of New York Army National Guard - is made up of what, cops, correction guards, firefighters, and Agustin, what do you to do?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I'm a New York City corrections officer. So I work closely there.

AMY GOODMAN: In the tombs?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: We are going to break and when we come back you're going to also hear from Hector Vega, who is with us, who has tested positive in this "Daily News" special investigation also for depleted uranium. Again upon reading this investigation, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is calling for all soldiers returning from Iraq to be tested.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. And she said she's going to introduce legislation on it this week.

AMY GOODMAN: And now she has done that before, is that right? Or she has at least called for some kind of -

JUAN GONZALEZ: She spoke to me yesterday and she said that last spring she met with the Pentagon as a member of the Armed Services Committee and specifically asked them what are you doing about the soldiers that are going over there in terms of health and specifically in terms of depleted uranium. And she was told at the time that all of the soldiers were going to be screened when they were coming back. So, that's why now she's so angry that she had been told one thing, but now she's finding out that a lot of soldiers are having trouble even getting tested or screened when they have ailments.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!. We'll be back in a minute.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, here with Juan Gonzalez as we continue with this "Daily News" expose, Juan Gonzalez's special investigation, his cover story of the "New York Daily News" yesterday with the headline, Shell Shocked, and today, another cover story with the headline, Uranium Ammo Furor; Army Tests Them All.

Juan, very interesting results of this-- response to the investigation yesterday. The Army announcing after you first called them last week, that they will be testing everyone from the 442nd, is that right?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. They haven't actually announced it. They just did it as last week after we started inquiring the -- they sent some couple of colonels down from Herbert Reed to Ft. Dix and called all of the men from the 442nd in and said, look, we're going to test you all. We're going to do everything possible to find out if you have got any problems. But this is after months, some of them have been asking for it. Depleted uranium testing for months and have gotten no response.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, why don't you introduce Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a guest we have had on before on Democracy Now!, talking about depleted uranium and the role he played in your investigation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: When we first began to get a sense that the soldiers might have a common problem, I contacted Dr. Asaf Durakovic who is a Gulf War veteran, a colonel in the Army Reserves and who is an expert in depleted uranium. He was one of the first doctors when he worked at a veteran's administration hospital in Wilmington in the mid-90's who identified soldiers contaminated with depleted uranium and we asked Dr. Durakovic if he would do some independent testing of the soldiers if they would volunteer to do so. He did, and back-- a couple of months ago, we did examinations of the soldiers, he took urine samples of them, and then we had them analyzed at a laboratory at Goethe University in Frankfurt. I'd like to welcome Dr. Durakovic to Democracy Now!.

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Durakovic, it's good to have you with us.

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Yes. It's good to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I start off by asking, why did you have to send the samples to Germany?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Well, our first laboratory for determination of uranium isotopes was in Newfoundland, Canada. And after our first results were published, the laboratory was closed, and the scientist who was operating the lab, and doing studies for us was fired. So, we went from Canada to England, and we continued at the British Geological Survey. Then from England we went to Frankfurt because of my personal connections with an outstanding scientist, Dr. Axel Gerdes, who is head of the Mass Spec Laboratory, it is at Goethe University in Frankfurt. It is one of the best laboratories in the world for the determination of aconite, special uranium isotopes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. Durakovic, can you talk about-- one of the things that there's a concern now is that the Army is saying they're going to test all of the soldiers, but there is a question as to the sophistication and the kind of testing that they do, as to whether they're actually going to get results or not, or whether they're going to be able to essentially clean the slate wihtout really identifying whether these men are contaminated with D.U. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of testing that's necessary?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Well, all results that are done by the government so far are inferior, because the methodology used was inferior methodology which could not distinguish between the different isotopes of uranium. Most of the studies done by the government teams included total uranium and most of those studies did not include the ratio between uranium 238 and 235, which is the single most important factor in determining depleted uranium contamination. In addition, government studies could not or did not want to perform their analysis of uranium 236, which although in very small quantities indicates that uranium in the patients we are studying, or they are studying, is not natural. Uranium 236 does not exist in nature. And we have been able to determine uranium 236 in the urine of current groups of American soldiers. So, the question is what is the government doing about testing of the people from the Iraqi conflict? I would say that studies have not been scientifically sound in most of the cases and most of the reports. The fact that they're going to start studies now on the large groups of the Iraqi veterans are a bit too late, because a question that I ask everybody is, why does not the government of the United States, which has funding and equipment and universities and laboratories, why are they not capable of doing proper studies? Why are independent institutions like our Uranium Medical Research Center capable of doing it, and the government is not capable? It is either desired not to present the true story to the public, or blame government incompetence of which I'm very familiar because I worked in the government scientific and health care facilities. I don't know, but I do know the fact that it's a little bit too late to start these studies after our work has been presented to the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Durakovic, just to clarify, you are a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and you worked for the U.S. government?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Of course, I did. I advanced from the ranks of Captain to Colonel in the United States Army. I hold the rank of United States Army Colonel of which I'm quite proud. My work is dedicated to help the soldiers and the veterans of the United States and other countries, as well as to help civilians who are contaminated with uranium isotopes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why are you not still working for the U.S. government, investigating the effects of depleted uranium?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: I was fired in the year 1997. Because after the Persian Gulf War I, I was approached by the officials of the different departments of the U.S. government who asked me to stop my work on the depleted uranium, which I obviously could not agree with, because I was mandated by the government of the U.S. to take care of my patients, and I was the head of Nuclear Medicine Department of the V.A. Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. So when I discovered a high percentage of contamination with the D.U. in Gulf War I veterans, every effort was made to stop my work. Which I obviously couldn't. I'm a medical doctor, and my responsibility is for the well-being of my patients. So, in 1997, I was fired. I lost my job after 19 years service for the government of the United States.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dr. Durakovic, in terms of this whole issue ö I spoke with the Pentagon, with Dr. Michael Kilpatrick who is in charge of a lot of the health services for the Pentagon, who insisted that all of the Army's tests have shown, number one, that only soldiers who have shrapnel wounds or who were inside tanks that were hit with depleted uranium shells are in danger of exposure to D.U., and that even those soldiers in about 70 of them that the Army has been following up since the Persian Gulf War, or since shortly after the Persian Gulf War, that none of them have gotten sick. So that one, you have to be very close to a D.U. shell exploding to be able to be exposed, and two, even if you are exposed, there's no proof that you are going to get sick from it? What's your response to that?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: My response is very simple. Out of nine patients whom I examined in the current report from the "New York Daily News," some of them were very sick indeed, and their sicknesses are containing the same symptoms as the symptoms of contaminated veterans from the Persian Gulf War I, and also similar to the symptoms of the contaminated veterans from the Balkan conflict. So, the fact that the Pentagon is insisting that soldiers are not sick does not surprise me, because I'd like to see how those patients were selected. Was it random selection or was it selection by the symptoms. To say that shrapnel wounds are the main source that would contribute to the illnesses of exposed soldiers is plain nonsense, because we know that shrapnel does not wound too many soldiers. We also know that shrapnel does indeed cause internal contamination, but it is really focusing our attention to the outside issues. Because the main issue is contamination by the respiratory pathway, by breathing. When uranium shell hits the tank or hits the target, radioactive dust is formed. And billions upon billions of the submicroscopic micrometer particles are released into the air, baked on the particles of dust and inhaled by people in the area, whether they're military or civilians. So, shrapnel, really, is not an important issue. Important issue is that mass contamination by the inhalation of the radioactive dust. That is my study.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We're also joined, Dr. Durakovic, by Leonard Dietz, who is on the phone, who was a long-time nuclear scientist, more than 30 years at the Knolls Atomic Laboratory, and who actually discovered something that contradicts much of what the Pentagon is even saying right now. I'd like to welcome Professor Dietz.

LEONARD DIETZ: Yes. Hello.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Professor, I'd like to ask you, because the Pentagon insists that D.U., this radioactive dust that's emitted, because it's twice as heavy as lead, it's going to fall to the ground and it doesn't disperse or move around, so there's no danger except in the immediate spot of an exploded D.U. shell. Could you talk to our listeners about your research and what you found back over 20 years ago?

LEONARD DIETZ: I worked at I was a physicist and I worked at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, New York for 28 years. In 1979, we accidentally discovered the emissions of depleted uranium particles from the National Lead Industries site in Colonie which is on the Western boundary of the city of Albany, New York. It this is ten miles from the Knolls site. The particles were in 16 different air filters that we analyzed. Three of the filters were exposed for one month each at the West Milton, New York, where the naval training site is, and that's 42 kilometers. The transport of these tiny particles, which indeed do have the density of lead are unlimited. For example, at the ten mile distance, we isolated four individual uranium particles that were proved to be pure, depleted uranium in our mass spectrometer analyses. They were the size that was slightly below. They were four to six micrometers in size, irregularly shaped particles except for one, which was a perfect sphere of 3.8 micrometers diameter. These are slightly below the size of what are called respirable-sized particles, in other words you can inhale them into your lungs. They will be there for many years. The particles that the-- these large particles at the ten mile distance had unlimited range. It depends on the atmospheric conditions of how the wind is blowing and what the specific conditions are. For example, a one micrometer diameter uranium dioxide particle with the density of lead falls at the rate in still air of four feet per hour. A one-half micrometer diameter particle falls at the rate of one foot per hour. Both of these size particles are literally floating in air. So when the military says they fallout within a range of 50 meters or so from a tank that's been hit by a depleted uranium penetrator, they're just -- it's just not true at all. They have unlimited range. They can go hundreds and hundreds of miles.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And your sense from seeing the reports of the sandstorms that were constantly bedeviling the troops in Iraq in terms of the capacity of some of that D.U. to travel?

LEONARD DIETZ: The particles attach themselves to dust particles or silicon dioxide, which is dirt particles, and they can become resuspended in air. So when you have these sandstorms in the Persian Gulf region, that just spreads it all around the country. For example, a Kuwaiti scientist in 1992 and 1993 took samples of the desert soil and analyzed them in laboratory in Kuwait using mass spectrometry, and it is clear from his mass spectrometer results that the depleted uranium which we estimate produced about 10 metric tons of these particles in Kuwait were spread all over Kuwait within two to three years.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask Dr. Durakovic a question before he has to leave. Juan writes in his expose in "The New York Daily News" yesterday and today, that in August, a contingent of Dutch soldiers arrived in Samawah to replace the Americans. Press reports in the Netherlands revealed that Dutch authorities questioned the U.S. beforehand about the possible use of D.U. contamination-- or D.U. ammunition in Samawah. According to Sergeant Juan Vega, a senior medic for the 442nd, the Dutch swept the area around the train depot with geiger counters and their medics confided to him they found high radiation levels. The Dutch unit refused to stay in the depot, Vega said, and pitched camp in the desert, instead. And in February, after Japanese troops moved into the same town, a Japanese journalist, equipped with a geiger counter, reported finding radiation readings 300 times higher than background levels. What does that mean for these men?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Well, it is very simple to answer this question. The areas which are as highly contaminated with uranium isotopes as Samawah should really be off the limits for either active duty or civilian personnel. Until or unless the area is cleaned to acceptable levels of radiation. I, incidentally, am going next week to Japan because I'm giving a presentation of my current findings to the Japanese Parliament, and I'm also doing some studies of plutonium in American soldiers' urine. I'm going to be asked in Tokyo, what is the significance of some of the region deployments to the Japanese soldiers. And I simply have to tell the truth. That if the area is unfit for the Dutch soldiers, it is equally unfit for the soldiers of the United States or Japan to do active duty work in the highly contaminated area. Our soldiers from Samawah ö nine military police personnel ö show close to 50 percent of D.U. contamination in their unit, which means it is not fictitious, it is actual, physical evidence of aconite contamination of the soldiers who were not even involved in the active battles in the front lines. That is very simple to conclude that areas that are highly contaminated have to be surveyed, have to be followed up, and have to be declared fit or unfit for the work of the civilian or military authorities.

AMY GOODMAN: What does this mean for these men? What is their prognosis?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: I'm sorry. Perhaps we have bad connection. Could you please repeat.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the readings, what are the findings of depleted uranium, even of U236 mean for the men? What is their prognosis?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: The prognosis is still being debated in the scientific literature. I can tell you what the government of the United States studies indicate. The Armed Forces Radio Biology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, studies were done that confirmed carcinogenesis of depleted uranium, which means depleted uranium isotopes in the cell culture show transformation of the immature cells of the human tissues into cancer cells. Which means carcinogenesis or capacity to cause cancer is definitely proven in the scientific experiments. Genetic changes are definitely proven by the studies that were done on my patients from the Gulf War I, the University of Bremen in Germany, where scientists confirmed significant changes in the chromosomal structure in the patients who were referred to them for their chromosomal analysis. The immune system can be affected. The reproductive system can be affected. The central nervous system can be affected, and many tissues -- kidneys, obviously, because of the chemical toxicity in uranium. We are talking about multiorgan risk to the people who are contaminated with uranium isotopes. And how realistic is that risk? We don't know because epidemiological studies have been either insufficient or not even started ö even at institutions like the World Health Organization. We don't know practical implications of the levels of contamination we are dealing with now, but we do know that science has no contradiction about harmful effects of uranium isotopes in the few man body. The prognosis that you were asking about cannot really be determined without many studies to be conducted in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Asaf Durakovic. We want to thank you very much for being with us. We know that you have to leave. We thank you for this report. But we're going to stay with our guests, the men from the 442nd, again the 442nd of the New York Army National Guard, Juan Gonzalez's special investigation in the New York Daily News yesterday and today, front page stories, where the Daily News tested nine men returned from Iraq. Four of the nine testing positive for depleted uranium and the other five not off the hook. The other five, some of them having raised levels of uranium 236. We're going to talk with them also, Dr. Dietz, when we return. This is Democracy Now!. Our website is democracynow.org, as we broadcast on more than 200 radio and television stations around the country. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Kahn and Eleanor McDonald singing, "I've Got to Know" by Woody Guthrie. This is democracy now!, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez with Juan's explosive expose in the New York Daily News yesterday and today called "Shell Shocked." the story of men, the headline ö ãThey Served Us in Iraq. Have They Been Poisoned by the Uranium in Our Own Ammunition?ä Our guests today in the studio are three men from the 442nd. They are Sergeant Agustine Matos, Sergeant Hector Vega, as well as Sergeant Herbert Reed. Herbert Reed, assistant deputy warden at Richterâs Island in New York. Agustine Matos is a corrections officer at the tombs here in New York. And Hector Vega, who we have not spoken with. Sergeant Vega a, what do you do in New York?

SGT. HECTOR VEGA: I'm a retired postal worker. I'm working in Manhattan in a high-rise building.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened you to in Iraq? How do you feel now? What about the tests that the New York Daily news did on you?

SGT. HECTOR VEGA: I got wind of it from Juan Vega a few months back. He told me it was possible I might be tested positive to get tested. I didn't know nothing about it until he spoke to me. I was suffering through headaches and your urinating problems and lately I have been having a lot of rashes and itching. I'm itching a lot. I was told that I tested positive, it was very concerning.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What did you know about the depleted uranium when you went to Iraq and came out. I know in conversations we had when you were in Iraq. You would like to shoot photographs of -- you went up to -- you shot off Iraqi tanks and were shooting photographs. What did the army tell you?

SGT. HECTOR VEGA: I knew nothing about this. I found out about this back here in Ft. Dix. And Juan Vega has been keeping me in touch with what was going on. I didn't know nothing. We went up and we saw these tanks and took pictures of them.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Augie Matos, you were telling you that when you were at Ft. Dix that you were supposed to have got a training video about the depleted uranium.

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: They were talking about the video they kept referring to, if we saw the video. We go through a process of being certified before we go away on deployment. You go to the ranges, you go out and perform your tasks as a soldier, and you have to pass them. At no time did we ever see a tape regarding decompleted uranium informing us what to do if we saw a tank or anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you know about the Dutch and the Japanese that followed? Did you know about these Geiger counter tests and the fact that the Dutch were so concerned they wouldn't even sleep where you slept? They went out and pitched their tents in the desert?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: The Dutch came to us before we left. When they came, in that first week, almost 50% of their soldiers went down with unexplainable as far as diarrhea. They were going to the bathroom a lot. They were walking around with zombies with actual i.v. bags and had to be helped to the bathroom.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you with them?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: They were in the same base camp until air base camp was built outside. They refused to be there, but they had to stay somewhere until the construction was done. They had a nice air conditioned room and everything. They just went down. They just -- to the point where they were incapacitated. They couldn't do any missions.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what did you think?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I -- at first I was saying, wow, maybe it's the heat get to them or the change in food. When we all got there. We had the symptoms. Our stomachs. Nobody wanted to eat and the heat was intense we just started going to the bathroom a lot. Everybody started coming down with stones. I figured it was due to the heat. I had no idea. I only found out about them testing the soil when I got to Ft. Dix.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How long you have been in the National Guard?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I have 20 years as of February 22nd. I joined military when I was 17.

AMY GOODMAN: When you are going to retire?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I'm actually going through my process now. Now Iâm -- because of my injuries, I sustained in Iraq, they consider me non--- I can't be in the military anymore. So, I don't think medical standards or that's well and good anyway, I have 20 years February 22nd. I'm being processed out now.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Herb Reed?

SGT. HERBERT REED: I have eight years of active army, and I was in the coast guard for about ten years. And I just recently transferred over to the army national guard. I have been in about two years in the army national guard.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Hector?

SGT. HECTOR VEGA: I have 27 years in. I just completed 27 years march 28

AMY GOODMAN: And how do you feel about the military's treatment of you? I understand some people who have been participating in this investigation have really been called on the carpet, like why did they turn to an outside tester rather than inside, inside the military? Why did you participate in this? Why didn't you stay with the pentagon and let them take care of you?

SGT. HERBERT REED: Because we were being frustrated. Every time you turned around and you asked to be treated with something, they just gave you more medication, and instead of seeing doctors, and when you proposed to them that you just was -- this was hurt organize that was hurt, they would say, okay, we're going to take care of one thing at a time. One thing at a time. They never got you the next thing. When we reached out to Juan Gonzalez, we were happy that the "daily news" was going to test us.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you facing pressure right now?

SGT. HERBERT REED: Well, Iâm on leave right now. So, I don't know. I guess I will find out when I get back.

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: We probably will face pressure when we get back. My point is this-dish have been asking to get tested since October. And -- they looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I wanted to get tested for depleted uranium. They actually told us that there was no such test for depleted uranium. So, when Sergeant Reed went to Herbert Reed on his own and went and inquired about it. I guess they gave him a test because they were tired of seeing him. When wl he got his results on time or whether they are accurate, who knows. My thing is this -- I was very upset because I came down with an episode of urinating blood while I was at Ft. Dix and they found a 2.5-centimeter lesion in my liver. Unexplainable. They were checking to see if it was cancerous. Herbert reed told me it was benign, it wasn't cancerous. My wife came down just last month with abdominal pains that I had to take her to the hospital. She got tested. They thought it was stone they put here on vicadin and painkillers, and as far as the act acts. They're trying to find out what was it that caused it. I'm waiting to go to the doctor with her and find out what happened.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the rest of the company, the rest of the company is still -- I think they just left Iraq this week, and they're on their way being processed to come back to the United States --

AMY GOODMAN: About how many of them are there?

JUAN GONZALEZ: There's what, 106 or so in the company?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: About 150. Some of them are back here now.

AMY GOODMAN: Were they all in Somalia?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: They were the same places we were. They're all in Kuwait right now. They should be coming after the 17th.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Have you had any contact with those folks down range in the company about what's going on with you guys and what the results are?

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: I tried not to explain what was going on back here. Not to get them excited or concerned, because they need to be focusing on being safe and doing what they have to do. They noticed it in my voice, a couple of my friends and they kept asking me what was wrong. And I have three phone calls from different friends of mine on three occasions, and all of them wanted to know what was happening. I finally broke down and told one guy. He's another corrections officer. His name is Frank Morales. I told him because he was able to keep a secret. I told him don't tell anybody about it. When you get back, then we'll discuss it. I received another call from another friend, his name is Bobby Matthew. He told me it was told in the meeting out there that members that are -- from the unit back here in Ft. Dix tested positive and that now they are going to be testing the whole unit when they get back. Now, they're calling me and Frank, what is this about this D.U. What did we get exposed to out here? What's going to happen to us? I'm up in the air as you are right now, but we're trying to get this done so when the whole unit comes back, they get tested. They have a four-day process window to actually process out of Ft. Dix. In the four days, they have been out there over a year. They're not going to want to stay around and get the tests. They want to see their family. Now, at least, supposedly, when they get back, they only have to ask for the test and they will test them and notify them of the results later.

SGT. HERBERT REED: My concerns are --

AMY GOODMAN: Herbert Reed.

SGT. WALTER REED: I have two young children. And although I tested low for depleted uranium, which is what 138.9, I still tested positive. Now, I also tested positive for u-236. My thing is, you know, what is this doing to me? You know, am I going to be able to pass this on to my wife or my children? So, Iâm going to my local physician and I'm going to have the buy . Sy done that was recommended by dr the doctor.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, you write, the interviews that you have done, the soldiers talking about two Iraqi tanks, one all shot up, had been hauled onto flatbed railroad cars less than 100 yards from where the company slept. This raises also questions about Iraqi civilians. You're talking about a whole country that's been shot up. And depleted uranium has been used extensively. What do you think this means for them?

AMY GOODMAN: And does it matter to you?

SGT. HERBERT REED: Yes, it matters to. I mean, we're all human beings. -- beings. I don't know if they're suffering from any of the symptoms that we are having. We worked very closely with them. I can only attest to, you know, my symptoms right now.

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: We're feeling like this now -- if we're feeling like this now and they're living in that country, I can imagine their symptoms are probably much worse than what we are. I just have to think about it 1991, I didn't deploy. They went through it, they went through the bombings. Now as far as this war, they're going through it again, plus all of those years those 12 years they were living in that stuff. I was only out there maybe seven months and I came back, and Iâm already having shortness of breath and stuff. Whatever Iâm feeling, Iâm pretty sure theirs is magnified.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever go through a day where you feel like you did before? -- before you went to Iraq?

SGT. HERBERT REED: No.

SGT. AGUSTIN MATOS: No. Ever since I came back, I have been so different. As far as my demeanor. I was always an energetic person. I stay awake until the last minute, for or five hours of sleep and go right to work. I live on long island. My commute is on the 406 train coming in to Manhattan.