Jon Stewart Returns to DC to Advocate for Veterans Exposed to Toxic Burn Pits: Vets Are ‘Not Just Bumper Stickers, They’re Human Beings’
Jon Stewart has been a major advocate for sick 9/11 first responders in the past few years, and on Tuesday he returned to Washington D.C. to take up another important cause: veterans who have gotten illnesses from toxic burn pit exposure.
Burn pits used at military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan — utilized to burn piles and piles of trash — gave a number of veterans serious long-term health issues. Marine vet Scott Evans, who served in Afghanistan, said he was recently diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. One group at the forefront of this fight has been Burn Pits 360, started by Le Roy and Rosie Torres.
NBC News’ report said that veterans trying to get the treatment they need face an uphill battle:
The Department of Defense estimates that roughly 3.5 million service members could have been exposed to burn pits. The Department of Veterans Affairs has denied about 75 percent of veterans’ burn pit claims, including Evans’, because it does not acknowledge a connection between conditions like asthma and cancer to exposure to the flaming garbage piles.
Veterans say that at the same time they face resistance while seeking treatment from the VA, they have also been let down by civilian medical providers who often lack an understanding of the existence and dangers of burn pits.
There is a bipartisan effort underway in Congress to get veterans the treatment they need, with legislation introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D- NY) and Senator Marco Rubio (R- FL).
Stewart joined them at a press conference Tuesday and said, “If you come home from war and you have a physical wound, and you end up at Walter Reed Bethesda, right, you’ll get world-class care in terms of adaptive rehabilitation and prosthetics.”
“Unfortunately Walter Reed Bethesda is world-class in dealing with injuries of war because they’ve had to deal with them so often,” Stewart continued. “But if you have a toxic wound — and I’m telling you, the toxic wounds are as real as any physical wound that you would get from war — they don’t know what to do with you. And you spend your time, when you come back home, basically as a defendant in a trial for your own health care.”
He said it’s “immoral” and “unconscionable” but “easily remedied” without putting suffering veterans through another lengthy bureaucratic process.
The press conference (which you can watch in full above) featured speeches from Gina Cancelino, an advocate whose husband Joseph served in Iraq and died of cancer in 2019, Army National Guard veteran Cindy Aman, who described her own fight for health benefits, and many more.
At one point Stewart made a point of saying, “Veterans are human beings. They’re not just flags, they’re not just bumper stickers, they’re human beings.”
“These men and women swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Well, what do you do when you’ve fulfilled that obligation and you come home and the enemy is now negligence and bureaucracy and apathy? They’re not trained for that,” he said.
And just like with his 9/11 first responder advocacy, Stewart has been doing a number of interviews to raise awareness about the subject, including with NBC News’ Lester Holt for a Monday profile and with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on Tuesday.
