Larry Roberta, one of the 12 Oregon plaintiffs, with his medications. Photo by Rob Finch/The Oregonian. Front photo of  Cheney by Gage Skidmore/Veteran by U.S. Marines Corps.

Proving there is no level of low Dick Cheney and his cronies will not go, Halliburton-linked, scum-sucking defense contractor KBR is suing 12 Iraq veterans who had the audacity to seek and win $85 million in damages for the cancer they got from burn pit smoke while guarding a toxic water treatment plant for KBR - a company which, the jury ruled, acted with "reckless and outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm" to them. The legal battle began when the veterans, part of a contingent of 300 Oregon members of the National Guard, were sent to Iraq in 2003 by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which was run by former VP and current war criminal Cheney. The Guardsmen were tasked with providing security at Qarmat Ali water treatment plant. They were conveniently not told the site was full of the powerful corrosive hexavalent chromium, a highly toxic orange-yellow crystalline powder linked to lung cancer and breathing problems; it is banned in the U.S. but was omnipresent at the plant, stored in bags and drifting loose, sometimes visibly on soldiers' dinners. When they started having breathing and other health problems, their KBR bosses said they had "sand allergies" and not to worry. When the health issues kept escalating, a KBR safety manager finally shut the plant down.

Back home and increasingly sick, 12 of the Guardsmen sued the company; another 21 are reportedly waiting to join them.