LOYAL OPPOSITION: Army Ads Get Ironic Facelift

Be all you can be? Not anymore. The new advertising slogan for the Army -- backed up by a $150 million ad campaign -- is "an Army of one." Like its predecessor, this pitch fixes on the individual -- an odd choice for an organization in which recruits are supposed to sublimate themselves to the larger good of the institution. But the Army's copy-gunners -- the Leo Burnett USA agency -- had to concoct a nifty way of selling their client to Generation Y, many of whom have been raised on a diet of Internet individualism. In the first commercial to feature this focus-group-tested message, a lone corporal runs though the Mojave Desert, in the opposite direction of a squad of other soldiers. Is he going AWOL? Nah, he's just demonstrating that today's soldiers are able to march (with a 35-pound pack on their backs) the road less traveled. "I am my own force," the corporal declares. "...I am an Army of one."

The new Army campaign has more truth to it than its authors and the Army may have realized. Too often, the US military has treated its grunts as armies of one that could be disavowed or tossed aside. Remember Agent Orange -- the toxic defoliant used in Vietnam which ended up poisoning American GIs as well as the locals? For years, the military ducked responsibility for harming its own. A more recent example is the military establishment's reluctance to recognize the reality of Gulf War syndrome, a collection of chronic symptoms, including fatigue and neurocognitive and musculoskeletal problems. For years after the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon brass dismissed talk of such a disease. In fact, in the mid-1990s, when the National Gulf War Resource Center tried to enlist the so-called heroes of the Gulf War -- Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, and Norman Schwarzkopf -- in an effort to publi cize the health troubles faced by the men and women they sent into battle, all three were MIA. Powell, for one, was dismissive of early studies showing a link between Gulf War service and illnesses.

Today, the Veterans Administration recognizes Gulf War syndrome. Of the 700,000 Americans dispatched to the Persian Gulf in 1991, 183,000 -- a third -- filed medical claims with the VA, as of the end of 1999, and the VA approved three-quarters of them. The Pentagon has conceded that 100,000 soldiers were exposed to low levels of nerve gas, and 436,000 entered areas contaminated by depleted uranium -- but without acknowledging these exposures definitely caused harm. And hundreds of thousands of America troops who participated in Operation Desert Storm breathed air while more than 700 burning oil wells belched fumes and particulates. Perhaps the corporal in the new ad is running like hell from an environmental hazard.

As the Army's ad-buyers purchase slots on _Friends_, _The Simpsons_, _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, and MTV, would-be soldiers should pay heed to the scandal under way in Europe concerning the US military's use of depleted uranium during the undeclared war against Serbia in 1999. American fighter jets fired 31,000 rounds of DU ammunition against Serbian targets. (DU is placed on the tips of shells to enhance their ability to penetrate armor.) Several dozen French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish soldiers who have served as peacekeepers in the Balkans have contracted cancer or other serious diseases, with 15 dying from leukemia. Other European peacekeeper vets have complained of ailments that resemble Gulf War syndrome, and the European press has proclaimed the rise of the "Balkan syndrome." There is widespread speculation these soldies may be victims of exposure to depleted uranium. A recent UN study found evidence of radioactivity at 8 of 11 sites in Kosovo that were hit with DU rounds. Some of this radiation was located in the middle of villages where children were playing. Last May, another UN study warned that m uch of Kosovo's water could be contaminated by depleted uranium. Par for the course, the Pentagon and NATO have denied DU exposure caused these illnesses and deaths. European governments, nevertheless, are investigating. Meanwhile, the United States, Britain and France have turned down calls from their NATO allies to suspend the use of DU ammunition.