Editor, Times-Union: cc: National office of the American Legion Dear Sirs: I recently received a notice that my membership dues in the Warsaw Indiana American Legion were due. Unfortunately, I have decided to resign from the American Legion. My reasons are thus: I have been quite active in studying the effects of depleted uranium poisoning on the troops not only from the present un-American wars but also Desert Storm. Depleted uranium poisoning is affecting hundreds of thousands of veterans. So I produced CDs about the problem and tried to get the local commander to have a class on the problem. He blew me off not just once but twice. So I have been handing out CD information on this problem for nearly two years. By this time I find that no one at the American Legion will even listen to the CD. And the commander is certainly not going to call meetings about it. This is probably because at most the National American Legion has done almost nothing about this major problem. The American Legion, if it was doing its duty, should be all over the Oval Office and be running a crash program on assisting the veterans who are infected. But it appears the American Legion and the U.S. government is taking the same position they did on agent orange after the Vietnam war. I don’t need any form letters like I get from politicians giving me evasive answers. Based on all this I feel that to continue membership in an organization that primarily furnishes a bar, food now and then, bingo and burial services is not what I envisioned the American Legion to be. Probably if the bar shut down or bingo ceased the local American Legion would collapse. Not that I’m against having a drink. There are people (civilians) who are doing their best to spread the word on depleted uranium ammunition. It should be totally eliminated. American Legion should be first in line demanding that depleted uranium ammunition be eliminated. This problem is not even addressing the poisoning of the land in the Balkans and the Middle East, with thousands of people dying of depleted uranium poisoning. Veterans infected with depleted uranium poisoning from those areas are walking time bombs. Some have murdered their whole families because of the effects. Tom Metzger Warsaw, via e-mail
