WASHINGTON — President Biden acknowledged Monday at a Memorial Day event that his late son Beau died from brain cancer and not while at war — 11 days after he wrongly told US troops in Japan that his son died “in Iraq.”
Biden told the grieving families of war dead at Arlington National Cemetery that his son didn’t die on the “battlefield” but that he believes his cancer may have been caused by exposure to toxic fumes from “burn pits” during a nearly yearlong deployment.
“Our losses are not the same. He didn’t perish in the battlefield. It was cancer that stole him from us a year after being deployed as a major in the US Army National Guard in Iraq,” Biden said, misstating by about five years the duration between his son’s return from deployment and death, though he later correctly stated the amount of time since Beau died.
The 80-year-old president has puzzled viewers by claiming at least three times since last year that his son died in Iraq.
Biden said in October that Beau “lost his life in Iraq” and claimed the following month that Iraq was “where my son died.” This month, he told a group of Marines during to a trip to the G-7 summit in Hiroshima that “we lost him in Iraq.”
Beau Biden, Delaware’s former attorney general, died in 2015 at age 46 from glioblastoma at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He was deployed to Iraq for almost a year in 2008 and 2009. The eighth anniversary of his death is Tuesday.
Biden’s mental acuity has emerged as a major campaign issue, with a Washington Post-ABC poll released this month finding just 32% of the public believes Biden, the nation’s oldest-ever leader, has the mental sharpness required to be president.
But Biden also has a long record of exaggerating or making false or unverifiable claims, such as claiming in December that his uncle Frank Biden won the Purple Heart and claiming last May that he was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965. There’s no evidence to support either claim.
The president proceeded to say in his remarks at Arlington cemetery in Virginia that the bipartisan PACT Act, which he signed in August of last year, was “the most significant law in our nation’s history.”
The PACT Act funds enhanced medical care for up to 10 years after a veteran leaves the military — up from 5 years — and allows the Veterans Affairs Department to more easily approve disability insurance claims for veterans with respiratory issues or cancer that may be linked to war zone toxins. About 70% of such disability claims reportedly were denied before the law passed.
“Together over the last two and a half years, we’ve worked to make good on that promise [to veterans], passing more than 25 bipartisan laws to support our service members, their families, caregivers and survivors,” Biden said.
“That includes the PACT Act, the most significant law in our nation’s history, to help millions of veterans who were exposed to toxic substances and burn pits during their military service.”
He added: “Many of our nation’s warriors… have selflessly served only to return home and suffer from the permanent effects of the poisonous smoke. Too many have died — excuse the personal reference, like my son Beau.”
The incidence of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive cancer that kills 83% of patients within two years, has increased in recent years in areas around the world, with pollution and radiation among the suspected causes. A 2020 study on the Mediterranean island of Malta found the prevalence of glioblastoma cases surged from 0.73 to 4.49 cases per 100,000 over just one decade.
A 2021 study of glioblastoma cases in Ohio found that veterans “experienced a greater proportion of glioblastomas” than the general public.