August 27, 2021

Back in 2019, Biden's idea about brain cancer in veterans failed a fact-check, yet he repeated that idea yesterday.

From yesterday's speech
Being the father of an Army major who served for a year in Iraq, and before that was in Kosovo as a US attorney for the better part of six months in the middle of a war, when he came home after a year in Iraq he was diagnosed like many, many coming home with an aggressive and lethal cancer of the brain and we lost.

I think Biden was reading his speech, but it's hard to believe this line was written and edited. Many veterans returning from Iraq had aggressive brain cancer? 

Here's a piece from FactCheck.org from December 2019, "Biden Exaggerates Science on Burn Pits and Brain Cancer."

Although future studies may eventually come out to change scientific opinion, there is no direct evidence that burn pits cause brain cancer, and no indication that Iraq War veterans are especially affected by brain cancer, as Biden claimed.

53 comments:

Howard said...

For decades Agent Orange didn't cause cancer either, yet yellow bellies kept crying about it until the Feds decided to open the checkbook and give them liberal Marxists free stuff just to get them to shut up.

Fyi, ultra fine particulates found in smoke pass through the lungs into the bloodstream and past the blood-brain barrier. But I am sure you are right to criticize a grieving father. The last thing we need is to attribute war exposures to health problems. That money needs to be spent on weapons, fuel and nation building graft instead.

Wince said...

"...there is no direct evidence that burn pits cause brain cancer, and no indication that Iraq War veterans are especially affected by brain cancer."

Yet, in a double-blind experiment (n=2), smoking crack and banging hookers were less lethal when it comes to Biden sons.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Dementia causes him to repeat himself a lot. He told the same story to George Stephanopolous last week. Same reason. People were questioning his judgment and command of the military. When demented Joe feels any heat related to military matters he hides behind his dead son Beau’s service. He just can’t help exaggerating because he’s always been a braggart bullshitter and it’s worse than ever now. Same way he used his wife’s tragic death repeatedly and often slandering the poor guy who was in the accident as a “drunk” driver for more sympathy from his audience. He is despicable that way. And it’s harder for his handlers to hide his psychopathic tendencies.

gilbar said...

Our Professor asks...
Many veterans returning from Iraq had aggressive brain cancer?

No! you're taking him Out of Context, what he said was: "Many, Many"

Many Veterans could easily be taken to mean, i don't know; Ten? Twenty?
(out of half a million)
But; Many, Many coming home with AN agressive and lethal cancer of the brain
means, i don't know? Hundreds? All coming home with (not just some cancer (or, even some brain cancer)
but all coming home, with The SAME ("AN") agressive and lethal cancer

He's not just a F*cking Liar, he is (and Always HAS BEEN) a F*cking TERRIBLE Liar

Andrew said...

Off the subject of our decrepit president, but I remember that after the first Gulf War, there was a syndrome associated with it. "Gulf War syndrome," but I don't know if that's one thing or many. I knew a man who served in Iraq (the first war), who would occasionally have seizures after coming home. I don't have time to research it, but does anyone else remember that? If I recall there was a concern that it came from experimental immunizations. The official explanation was toxic exposure in the war zone.

gilbar said...

Jese! IF you want to blame cancers on something, blame it on the depleted Uranuim shells, that are lying all over Iraq

It's Still NOT TRUE, but it has the word Uranium in it, so it sounds Scary!!!

Drago said...

Beau was a political "add" in his early 30's to the JAG corps because the Biden Grift Family wanted to ensure his electoral viability.

The scam is that the Biden's and the media keep portraying Beau as a combat vet who died from what he "endured" in theater.

All lies. From top to bottom.

Beau sat in a safe office prosecuting real combat soldiers while also enforcing insane ROE restrictions on actual combat soldiers that got them killed.

Just like Joe's tales of CornPop confrontations.

Just like LLR tales of lifelong conservatism.

All lies.

Temujin said...

Did we have US attorneys in Kosovo? And how does that work?

henge2243 said...

Nobody realizes how dangerous the functions of a JAG are.

It's one thing to lie. To believe your own lie is pathetic.

Gunner said...

Can't wait for the media that loooooves facts so much to take him to task for this.

Joe Smith said...

He is more like Trump than the lefties will admit...you don't stay in DC almost 50 years without a huge ego.

It's not about you, Joe...

ReadDude said...

Sadly, this is a projection of personal pain. The loss of his son weighs heavily upon him, but the consequences are awful for those impacted by this loss of perspective.

One of the things I always wondered about Churchill was how he was so able to be personally connected to the British people at one level and able to make decisions that resulted in thousands of deaths on the other. For some reason that is one way I feel he was such a great leader.

Charlie said...

Why does he keep mentioning his son Beau? Hunter must feel awfully inadequate!

Critter said...

But Corn Pop agrees.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Also the little nap he took during his remarks disturbed me. The whole world can see how fucked up he is mentally. Where’s fake doctor Jill when we need her?

Geoff Matthews said...

Nice concession they gave Biden. Future studies may support this claim?

tommyesq said...

Also, military lawyers are hardly front-line infantry...

John Borell said...

Many veterans have traumatic brain injuries, not cancer.

https://www.research.va.gov/topics/tbi.cfm

("The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) reported nearly 414,000 TBIs among U.S. service members worldwide between 2000 and late 2019.")

TBIs and PTSD (often related) are serious problems, one the military wanted to ignore. But some pushed back, like retired Gen. Don Bolduc (who is now running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire).

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/world/africa/donald-bolduc-ptsd.html

But, as you note, these veterans did not come home with cancer.

DarkHelmet said...

Biden will say anything. 50 years in politics has demonstrated that conclusively.

Remember, this is the man who said to a black audience that the Republicans want to "put y'all back in chains!"

He's always been a nasty, rather dim hack. Always.

Sally327 said...

President Biden has also been known to assert that a drunk driver killed his first wife and baby daughter. This is not true either.

I wonder about that kind of personality, when a horror (deadly car crash, terminal brain cancer) isn't enough on its own, that it has to be spiced up somehow to sound even more terrible than it already was. Maybe it's a need to find agency to make sense of what seems inexplicable.



Scot said...

Joey has always been a verbal counter-puncher. The problem is, he tends to deploy unneeded & counterproductive augmentatives. I suspect the teleprompter showed "many", but his instinct turned that into "many, many".

Joe Bar said...

He was a JAG major. He was nowhere near a burn pit.

Bob Boyd said...

In Iraq, the burn pits were generally staffed by third country nationals or local nationals supervised by American civilian contractors.
Beau Biden was a JAG officer. It's awful he died of cancer, but I doubt he spent a lot of time at the burn pit.
Joe Biden is using Beau's tragic death to try to paint himself as a parent who lost a son to the war. Americans are thinking about those Marines killed yesterday and about how their families must be feeling. Biden shamelessly equates himself with those parents for political gain. Disgraceful.

Mark said...

Before he ever (finally) showed up, I knew that Biden would make this about him and bring up Beau.

Mark said...

Beau Biden was a JAG officer. It's awful he died of cancer

Joe himself had brain aneurysms way back when. Was not surprised when Beau got brain cancer.

Drago said...

Howard has decided defending Biden's lies about his JAG son being a combat soldier and dying of his "injuries" while in theater is a better hill to fight on than continuing with the Biden Is The Most Competent Military Planner Evah lies.

You will recall that Howard spent months arguing that a few soldiers who had headaches from Iranian fired rockets (the US soldiers were safe on their base within their bunkers) was the equivalent of Pearl Harbor with hundreds of soldiers with "severe traumatic brain injury".

Spoiler: It too was all lies.

This was after Howard cried and cried over the death of that "Austere religious scholar" Soleimani.

wendybar said...

THIS was posted in another thread, but I want to make sure rocean sees my reply to them...and I want them to answer!!!

rcocean said...
Somebody in another thread mentioned Glenn Beck. If glenn beck, Conservative Inc, Mitt Romney, McConnell and McCarthy are the oppostion to the Left and the Democrats, you might as well just assume the Left will win everything, everywhere, and bet accordingly. Glenn Beck wouldn't persuade a Morman Temple from having Drag queen hour. Unless the Drag Queen was against illegal immigration

8/26/21, 9:37 PM

Glenn Beck raised 20 million to get Christians out of Afghanistan before they get tortured and killed by the Taliban. WHAT have YOU done?? People like you are why we can't have nice things.

Bob Boyd said...

(the US soldiers were safe on their base within their bunkers)

You don't know what you are talking about.

Ceciliahere said...

Resident Biden cannot help himself. One way, or another, he will take a catastrophic situation and make it about himself, his family, his loss. I don’t know how many times since Biden has been in public office that he has trotted out the story of his wife and daughter when it serves a purpose. . Now, it’s about Beau and his death due to war? It is the worst thing to lose a child/children, and a spouse. However, I feel that Biden is despicable because he exploits these deaths to gain sympathy when he needs to look like the injured party or when he tries to relate to voters to get their vote.. I knew that he would bring up Beau again yesterday and I was waiting for it. What a cheap tactic to get out of a difficult situation. Beau was never in combat. He was in an office and he didn’t die in the service of his country. He did die of brain cancer in Walter Reid Hospital. And I remember Obama putting Joe in charge of finding the “cure for cancer.” Was that just a sick joke? Joe finding the cure for cancer??? Or was that a job given to Joe to keep him busy?

Ceciliahere said...

Resident Biden cannot help himself. One way, or another, he will take a catastrophic situation and make it about himself, his family, his loss. I don’t know how many times since Biden has been in public office that he has trotted out the story of his wife and daughter when it serves a purpose. . Now, it’s about Beau and his death due to war? It is the worst thing to lose a child/children, and a spouse. However, I feel that Biden is despicable because he exploits these deaths to gain sympathy when he needs to look like the injured party or when he tries to relate to voters to get their vote.. I knew that he would bring up Beau again yesterday and I was waiting for it. What a cheap tactic to get out of a difficult situation. Beau was never in combat. He was in an office and he didn’t die in the service of his country. He did die of brain cancer in Walter Reid Hospital. And I remember Obama putting Joe in charge of finding the “cure for cancer.” Was that just a sick joke? Joe finding the cure for cancer??? Or was that a job given to Joe to keep him busy?

Lars Porsena said...

Beau Biden was an army lawyer, about as safe as being back in the States. Burn pits were only a rumor to him.

Yancey Ward said...

Biden was only fact-checked on that because no one in the Democratic Party wanted him as a candidate. That is how fact checkers work.

Yancey Ward said...

Biden trots out his dead son whenever any kind of military matter becomes a topic. I think it is kind of a sickness, and probably a result of a great grief.

Howard said...

Again with the lies about Generalissimo Greasespot, Drago. Your desperation too impress the peanut gallery is quite boring and pathetic as well. None of my short guy friends have short guy complexes. I used to think of us as friends LOL.

wildswan said...

Biden is China's Cash for Clunkers program.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Where’s all the medical doctors (not fake first doctor Jill) who were so ready to go on TV and diagnose Trump? Surely someone can connect the dots— you know, the long pauses the trembling arms the vacant stare the alternating bulging or slittish eyes the shuffling off in odd directions the mumbling of instructions rather than prepared remarks (“salute the Marine”) the flat affect then nearly rage emotions— and give us an honest guesstimate of the President’s physical and mental health?

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Joe is bragging about how fast we are being chased out of town while vowing to not stop until we get the guys chasing us. Wait. What?

Tina Trent said...

No love lost for Biden, but I was visiting a group of female vets who had just returned from Bush I’s war, and they all had exactly the same horrifying and severe gynecological ailment. NOT a vd. Their vagina walls were falling out of their bodies. In pieces. So yes, depleted uranium affects the thyroid and reproductive organs, especially of women, because the cells in their menses are replaced rapidly. This was seen after Hiroshima.

So. The ones who had kids weren’t having more. The ones who had never had kids were terrified they would never be able to do it. The government was denying that there was a problem. I couldn’t believe the poverty we made our troops live in. They all had second jobs. It was a real eye opener for me. They weren’t JAGS. They were in the lower ranks. You know, the people who don’t have Senator daddies.

We owe these people better. And the truth. Good on Glenn Beck. He’s a real nut, but every squirrel catches a nut here and there, right? Bad metaphor.

jim said...

When it happens to your family, it's easy to exaggerate. Means he's human.

Glean Beck raised $20mill, wonder where it's going, who's his auditor?

David53 said...

I forgot that Biden had cranial surgery in 1988, it's no wonder he is obsessed with brains and cancers. You can copy and paste the address below to view a 2013 WH video of him speaking about his surgery. Compare that video with any of his recent appearances on TV and judge for yourself how much his cognitive acuity has declined in the last 8 years.

These are the two best lines from the video

“The only totally unchartered portion of the universe is the brain,”

That’s some bold word salad. I’ll give him a pass for saying unchartered instead of uncharted but the rest is garbage.

Then there’s

“I had two cranial aneurysms, and they literally had to take the top of my head off. I mean, they take a saw and they cut your head off, and go in to find the artery…”

I’m not familiar with the treatment of cranial aneurysms; maybe they did take the top of his head off a la Hannibal Lecter but to follow that up with, “they cut your head off,” is just dumb. A related question, are dangerous surgeries performed on US senators recorded? If Biden did have his head cut off I want to know the truth about it.

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/terence-p-jeffrey/flashback-brain-surgeon-told-biden-he-had-less-50-chance-being

Drago said...

jim: "When it happens to your family, it's easy to exaggerate. Means he's human."

Oh, okay then. Not a big deal at all that the Commander in Chief is being deceptive about his son's military service (which was as a rear echelon lawyer only and not close to combat at all) and lying about what is known medically all in service to the political goal of avoiding responsibility for decisions made that led directly to the deaths under combat conditions for others.

It's all good.

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck is raising money and is overseas attempting to rescue Christians from certain death under the Taliban so naturally that must be questioned vigorously.

Thanks for your input jim! Another "outstanding" "hot take" on things.

Drago said...

Howard: "Again with the lies about Generalissimo Greasespot, Drago."

The projection is, once again, off the charts.

Howard: "I used to think of us as friends LOL."

More delusion. I suggest you hang out with your pro-antifa pals who, like you, also claimed the antifa lunatics were the equivalent of the forces that stormed Normandy in '44.

Unless, of course, you are sticking with your more recent position that antifa doesn't exist at all.

I suppose you are waiting for "direction from above" on what your latest "beliefs" happen to be.

Drago said...

Bob Boyd: "You don't know what you are talking about."

Do tell.

Drago said...

Bob Boyd: "You don't know what you are talking about."

Do tell.

Drago said...

Howard thinks if he throws up enough smoke no one will notice Beau was just a JAG guy and not a grizzled hardened combat vet in the way Dementia Boy likes to portray him.

Sorry Howard. Your GI Joe portrayal of Beau ain't gonna fly around here.

wendybar said...

Glenn Beck raised $20 million for The Nazarene Fund who help get trafficked people out of terrible places. You should look it up and donate. The Nazarene Fund chartered planes and got Christians out of Afghanistan where they will be tortured and killed. It would be nice if more people were this compassionate and unselfish, but unfortunately, most things come down to who you voted for.

Michael K said...

“I had two cranial aneurysms, and they literally had to take the top of my head off. I mean, they take a saw and they cut your head off, and go in to find the artery…”

Given that cerebral aneurysms are approached from beneath the brain, this may explain a lot about Joe.

Big Mike said...

Biden has always been a fabulist. Why would anyone expect that to change just because he’s President? To this day he insists that the truck driver involved in the accident that killed his daughter and first wife “drank his lunch,” though the official accident report exonerated the truck driver. If any driver involved in that accident was DUI — and I’m not saying anyone was — it was not the truck driver. In 1988 Biden was caught plagiarizing his “personal life story” from a speech by Neil Kinnock. For those who aren’t aware, Kinnock isn’t even an American politician. At the time of the plagiarism he was a well-known Member of Parliament representing the Labour Party.

I’m sure it’s hard to loose a son to cancer, but tying the cancer to the son’s service in Iraq (in a noncombat role, as others upthread have pointed out) is simply not justified by facts.

Quaestor said...

Nobody realizes how dangerous the functions of a JAG are.

Vicious paper cuts. Briefcase elbow. Terminal eyestrain. Lawyers are in constant danger. How many are crushed to death each under the weight of collapsed filing cabinets? It must be in the thousands annually. And that doesn't include JAG officers. Nobody realizes how dangerous those Pentagon-purchased filing cabinets are. Well, here's the straight dope from your friendly neighbor Quaestor -- they're not just made of steel, they're lined with Composition 4. Look at one crosseyed and it's liable to explode. And what about the hundreds of Bar Association members injured each year rescuing babies from flame-engulfed tenement buildings?

Nobody realizes how dangerous the functions of a JAG are. Nobody includes henge2243.

Bilwick said...

Biden reminds me of something a friend of mine said about sociopaths and their lies. We had the misfortune to work for several of them, and how they could lie so freely and without the slightest twinge of conscience. My friend summarized their attitude as, "They're just words."

.

madAsHell said...

Given that cerebral aneurysms are approached from beneath the brain, this may explain a lot about Joe.

I love it when Dr. K weighs-in.

madAsHell said...

Wait!! Wasn't Humper dismissed from the Navy for cocaine?

He was a 42 year old Ensign that was commissioned with some political exemption, and then couldn't keep the Columbian marching powder out of his nose. Urine tests have consequences.

Richard Aubrey said...

Beau notwithstanding.... I've notified Next of Kin and done Survivor Assistance Officer. I'd give a grieving parent all the slack in thw world. Not going to argue. But to use the tragedy is different.

That said, different wars have different issues and may result in different results.
WWI had "shell shock" This has been called mean and cruel to guys who had "combat fatigue". But there was a factor. Artillery fuzes were not as sensitive as later on and the shells almost always detonated several feet into the ground. Thus the acres of overlapping shell holes not characteristic of later wars. This meant you might get your bell rung very severely by the shock wave but the fragments were muffled and you weren't killed. In later wars, you'd be killed and the question didn't arise. So, yeah, there was a lot of what we now call TBI. Not necessarily combat fatigue, although Robert Graves in his auto bio said a platoon leader took three weeks to find his feet and was good for three more before "neurasthenia" disabled him. Tough fighting in the trenches.

A book called "Grunts" gets into the anatomical issues of the recent wars. Due to the combination of the design of armored vehicles and the design of helmets and the use of IED, there are lots more TBI when, in more conventional fighting, the IED would be replaced by a truly lethal weapon and the TBI would be irrelevant.

There were burn pits in Viet Nam. No organized complaints. Was different stuff burned?

What was burned in the burn pits which, 1, has not been burned there for millennia, and, 2, has not been burned in earlier burn its?

Heard that Gold War Syndrome was contentious because it was presumed to have been a matter of exposure to poison gas. And since we'd promised that all WMD were the same to us--poison gas gets a nuke--if we admitted our guys had been gassed and we hadn't responded as advertised, our deterrence disappeared. Just a rumor. Which like earlier rumors might make it into a novel, then to a documentary.