quote:

Dave, I still need a good supply of stones that I can cast even if you won't!!!!

I save mine for the politicians!

I had a bout of that crap maybe 8 months after coming home.. lasted a couple o months.. like a really amorphous kind of flu.. lot of ups and downs.. worst part was just the exhaustion.. i'd go one flight of stairs and have to lean on the rail and gasp for a minute..I got over it though, and never looked back.. My driver from GWI, not so lucky.. wound up hospitalized, and lost his kidneys.. I notice they still aren't linking Kidney failure, but xplain to me how a healthy 21 year old with no family history of kidney disease loses his...

I seemed to have researched this epidsode for so long, I'm totally convinced Iraq is nothing more than a toxic waste dump! From the burnt out convoys showered with DU rounds, to the burning oil fields, to low level chemical detection by the Czechs in Saudia Arabia (that our military initially called false readings but reluctantly concurred to 10 years later), to Dr. Robert Haley's findings with low level chemical detections, to Anthrax vaccines that were administered at the outset of the GW that had no receipe found by the manufacture in Michigan. Not to mention the additional findings of blood clots killing our brave men and women on active duty today.

I have an additional theory, and that is this: there is an atmospheric ducting system only found in the Middle East, and with our coalition forces active in destroying ammunition depots holding rockets known to be loaded with sarin and VX, the chemicals were dispersed into the atmosphere and followed the ducting system until a hole appeared and were dispersed amongst our troops, albeit in low concentrations.

This phenomena with the atmosphere is well documented in the Navy's Communications Lesson Learned messages sent to COMIDEASTFOR by every battle group that departs the Persian Gulf.

Speaking with members of the Fox chemical detection teams, it is known that field changes have been conducted on our equipment to correct dection of chemicals at low concentrations over the years since the initial GW.

A handful of GW veterans in my office have related symptoms of nerve agent attacks with the destruction of incoming SCUDs, no matter how small the levels, it defies the argument of our nations military leaders, desiring to preclude U.S. liability, there was nothing in the warheads on those SCUDs. My question remains, why would I launch something as large as a SCUD without an agent to inflict damage on the enemy? If I could gas Iranians and my fellow countrymen with smaller rockets, why not Americans with a low enough concentration, knowing their chemical detection equipment would never detect it and preclude retaliation by America's chemical arsenal? Saddam knew his warheads were defective and his engineers were unable to provide an effective delivery system, so why not use what he had? Especially in the face of Patriot Battery systems that were capable of intercepting the majority of the Scuds in close proximity of their troops.

Today, the common denominator appears to be DU. But I'm not so sure Pesticides, Deets, and other chemicals are meant to be ignored either, given the horrific toll the desert takes upon our troops in the heat of the day. Their pores are wide open and susceptible to who knows what?

It breaks my heart to write a claim for a young man or woman that left home an athletic hometown hero destined for the front lines, only to return and be rated 100% disabled for the rest of their lives neither of which were contributed to gunshot wounds or injuries inflicted by the enemy. But in these cases, Uncle Sam did own up, in less than a years time. The system does work....sometimes.

Outstanding post, thanks

HEBall... Now I think you are seeing the larger picture of the events. ... You have but just touch the surface. What to me is most disheartening is our DOD taking it apon itself to turn over 700,000 of our people willingly into human guinea pigs, and then lying about it for years afterwards, and even to yet today they still do.


I especially want to thank Dave for allowing me to post some of the articles from outside sources, because I think doing that is a little outside forum rules. But I would never have done so if I didn't think the content was worth posting and informing a lot of our readers of directions they can look to themselves. I just recently had a motherboard crash and I need to transfer that hard drive to this computer than I will have a lot more I could post if allowed to. Everything from the General Accounting Office report on the Company that supplied the anthrax vaccines to blatant DOD lies to the Congress and the US Public on different events that happened over there. They even found "gas" reports with almost all of the important dates "missing". There are a lot of "extremely interesting" reports, articles, etc that I haven’t posted yet. But I do really want to thank Dave for allowing me to post what I have so far.

Three cheers for Dave!!!!!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: SeaBeeSC,

So can I count on you guys
speaking out to this new ACGWV
this summer ?
Jagmedic
Silence and inactivity is failure and you must come out, Question Authority
Mod Edit: (LINK: External Links to blogs removed)

-------------------
Federal Register: March 6, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 45)] [Notices] [Page 12258]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr06mr08-144]

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans;
Notice of Establishment
As required by section 9(a)(2) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the Department of Veterans Affairs hereby gives notice of the
establishment of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs had
determined that establishing the Committee is both necessary and in the public interest.

The Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans will advise the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on the full spectrum of health care and
benefits issues that confront veterans who served in the Southwest Asia theater of operations during the 1990-1991 period of the Gulf War. The Committee will pay particular attention to issues that are unique to these veterans.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dave_M,

I find the following article interesting because it was written in a COMMUNIST online newspaper called"Peoples Weekly World On-line", the newspaper of the Communist Party, USA

Author: Conn Hallinan, The Nation’s Health Worker’s Safety

**Will we abandon the next Gulf War vets too?**
Headline



As the United States ramps up for invading Iraq, we should know that we are sending our troops into the most toxic battlefield on earth. And should those soldiers suffer the huge number of disabilities that Gulf War I vets do, they can expect their government, in the words of U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), to have “a tin ear, a cold heart, and a closed mind.”

For 11 years, more than 100,000 Gulf War vets have complained of chronic fatigue, headaches, joint pain, memory loss, cancer, and birth defects. For 11 years the Department of Defense (DOD) has known the cause but systematically denied the disabilities were anything but psychosomatic.

But, layer by layer, the lies have come undone. A recent study in the British Medical Journal demonstrated that British Gulf vets were three times as likely to be disabled as all other vets.

The study is hardly a bolt from the blue. The Centers for Disease Control concluded back in 1995 that Gulf War vets suffered illnesses at 12 times the rate as non-Gulf War vets. The stonewalling started when young soldiers were inoculated with an experimental anthrax vaccine that included squalene, an additive with dangerous side effects. The DOD denies the vaccine included squalene, but a Tulane University Medical School study found squalene antibodies in 36 out of 38 Gulf vets suffering from Gulf War syndrome and a high incidence of similar disorders in vaccinated vets who never served in the Gulf. The DOD won’t release information on the vaccine because it is “classified.”

The Pentagon also maintained that none of our troops had been exposed to chemical weapons, in spite of the fact that Army logs indicated the presence of chemical weapons on Jan. 20, 1991. When Sen. Donald Riegle (D-MI) requested those logs, he was told they didn’t exist. Eight months later the logs were finally released-with most of the pages missing.

It was not until 1998 that the DOD admitted that as many as 130,000 troops (the vets claim more) were exposed to chemical weapons following the destruction of the Iraqi arms depot at Kamisiyah.

The DOD says it never said anything about the exposure because “scientific research and medical research do not indicate that this type of exposure is harmful,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Dian Lawhon

But the Army never researched the matter and ignored a 1974 Swedish study showing that small doses of chemical weapons did produce long-term effects. The tragedy here is that because the Pentagon lied, the vets’ complaints were dismissed. “Because doctors were told that chemicals had not been used, many veterans were sent straight to the psychiatric department,” said Paul Sullivan of the Gulf War Veterans of Georgia. By July 1995, some 95 percent of vets seeking disability had been turned away because doctors thought they were nut cases.

When research was done, it was ignored. A 1997 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study demonstrated that the interaction of nerve gas pills (another experimental and dangerous drugs given the troops), insecticides, and nerve gas produced a rare disorder called “organophosphate induced delayed polyneuropathy,” which is essentially Gulf War Syndrome.

With an invasion looming, this is hardly an academic issue. As Shaun Rusling, chair of the British National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association pointed out, “Our troops, who will be exposed to the same as we were 11 years ago, need to know that should they be ill or injured that they will get the best medical care and proper pensions.”

The track record on our side of the Atlantic suggests quite the opposite.

The following are parts of a paper called "THE GULF WAR'S TROUBLING LEGACY" By Gary Null


What made our Gulf War veterans sick? There were several factors--including unprecedented environmental hazards, chemical and biological warfare agents, pesticides, experimental vaccines, and weapons made from depleted uranium--and it's getting harder for the government to pretend they didn't exist.

*****************************************
CONTENTS

Introduction
Symptoms
A New Generation Affected
A Multiplicity of Poisons
Unproven Vaccines, Unmonitored Medicine
Where Was the FDA?
Adjuvant Antibodies Found
Iraq's Deadly Arsenal
The U.S. as Supplier
The Corporate Connection
Unheeded Alarms
Depleted Uranium
The Downsized Doctors
A Half-Decade of Cover-Up
Other Countries' Experience
A Cover-Up Condemned
The Pentagon Begins to Come Clean
Are Gulf Vets Really Sicker?
Missing Log Pages...And Credibility
Preliminary Panel Report
The Power of Synergy
Strong Insecticides Used
Uncompassionate Care
What Clinton Says
We Need to Learn More
Endnotes
******************************************

Unproven Vaccines, Unmonitored Medicine

The widespread use of experimental vaccines during Desert Storm has often been cited as a possible cause of Gulf War syndrome. Dr. Garth Nicolson elaborates: "I'm not a big fan of experimental vaccines. There have been too many mistakes. Usually you find these things out years later. Often agents that we think innocuous turn out to be harmful." He explains that during the Gulf War, the established procedures of vaccination were ignored. Normally, only one inoculation should be given at a time, but the military insisted on giving multiple shots at once, which, according to Nicolson, is the worst thing you can do because it suppresses the immune system. [5]

The troops immunized for the Gulf have been called guinea pigs, and for good reason. They received experimental vaccines, e.g., those for anthrax and botulinum that were not approved for use by the FDA and have since proven to cause potentially dangerous side effects. Soldiers who were given these experimental vaccines, without informed consent, have reported suffering from a variety of neurological problems and aberrant bleeding from all parts of their body. Because of these vaccines' experimental nature, many questions have arisen as to why our government dispensed them. Not the least of these questions is, what about the Nuremberg Code? Developed by the Allies after World War II in response to inhumane Nazi experimentation, the Nuremberg code says that voluntary and informed consent is absolutely essential from all human subjects who participate in research, whether during peace or war. [11]

Nerve-gas-countering pills were a big problem for many Desert Storm participants. Documents released by the Pentagon in 1995 revealed that high-ranking military officials had pressured the Food and Drug Administration into authorizing experimentation with pyridostigmine bromide (PB) tablets for protection against Iraqi chemical or biological attacks. PB tablets are usually only used for the treatment of the chronic muscle weakness disorder myasthenia gravis, but the military and the FDA waived the traditional informed consent procedures during the early stages of the conflict. Many soldiers did inquire about the classified nature of the pills, but, nevertheless, they were forced to consume them in excessive quantities by their commanding officers. Others, fearing for their safety, ignored the orders of their superiors after witnessing the pills' highly unpleasant gastric effects upon their fellow servicemen

Where Was the FDA?

Isn't the FDA responsible for making sure that Americans aren't given unsafe drugs? Shouldn't they at least warn people of possible dangers? They claim they tried. They blame the Pentagon for PB. In May '97, it was reported that a top FDA official told Congress the Pentagon did not keep a promise to fully inform soldiers before giving them the experimental nerve-gas antidotes during the war. [12] The promise to warn soldiers about the drugs had been a condition of the FDA's agreeing, in 1991, to waive standard consent requirements. A Pentagon spokesperson said that information sheets had been sent to the Gulf, but sent late. Some members of Congress were outraged upon hearing this. For instance, Christopher Shays (R.--Connecticut), chairman of the Congressional investigating committee, said that the FDA's failure to compel the military to keep its word "blows my mind."

Evidence has indicated that the procedure for administering the pills placed the recipients at risk. Records of who received the pills were not kept, and a standard dosage was distributed, regardless of sex, age, weight, or medical history. What's more, the toxicity of this experimental drug was actually heightened by issuing it along with common household insecticides, a potentially lethal combination.

Nurse Carol Picou, who served in the Gulf, elaborates on the problems with pyridostigmine bromide: [13] "This has been used since 1955 on patients with myasthenia gravis. This drug has never been tested on healthy human beings. Yet I have a report where they show they did do testing on 10 soldiers--men. Two couldn't even finish the program. Two got severely sick....Even when you give it to myasthenia gravis patients you monitor for levels of toxicity. You give it to them according to their height, weight, bone structures. Yet they gave us pyridostigmine--everybody--the same pack--30 mg pills--take them three times a day. And when people had problems with them they didn't take us off. Right away, I looked it up--in 1955, if you have problems with this drug, they should take you off of it, and the antidote is atropine. Well, we received atropine during the war. We didn't know why we had to carry atropine and Valium. Well, it's because of the fact of the chemical warfare threat, and the fact that if something would happen to us from the pyridostigmine, that would be our antidote."

Carol Picou has been experiencing a variety of serious health problems, not the least of which is head-to-toe neurological damage, since her Gulf service. [13]

James Moss, a former researcher for the Department of Agriculture, has criticized the military's experimentation with PB tablets and has correlated their use with the manifestation of birth defects. At a Congressional Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, committee chairman Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D.--West Virginia) censured the Pentagon for its disregard for human rights and its utter lack of responsibility. Rockefeller believes that the Pentagon had no proof that the drugs or vaccines were safe or effective, yet proceeded to dispense them without first evaluating female recipients or apprising troops of possible side effects. [14]

At that same hearing, Gulf veteran Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Neil Tetzlaff explained to the committee how he and fellow servicemen experienced severe vomiting and other acute conditions after taking PB tablets during the journey to Saudi Arabia. According to Tetzlaff, officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs were reluctant to cooperate with the afflicted soldiers upon their arrival in the Gulf region because they were unable to corroborate that the medication was the cause of their problems. In defense of the Pentagon, Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Edward Martin asserted that the military was only trying to fulfill its obligations to its troops by offering protection from an enemy who had previously engaged in chemical and biological warfare. Regardless of these good intentions, babies with serious abnormalities continue to be born to demoralized veterans. As Senator Tom Daschle (D.--South Dakota) said at the hearing, "How many more lessons do we have to learn?" He was referring to the military's past experience with Agent Orange during the 1970s.

Adjuvant Antibodies Found

Recently, new information has been brought to light about squalene, an adjuvant (or compound that boosts the effectiveness of a vaccine) that is not supposed to be used in humans except in research on illnesses such as HIV and herpes. However, unusually high antibody levels for squalene have been showing up in the blood of Gulf War vets. This was the gist of an investigation by Insight magazine, [15] which reports that VA spokespeople have no explanation for these findings. The mystery is compounded by the disappearance of up to 70,000 service-related immunization records.

One of the scientists hired by Insight to investigate the presence of squalene in veterans' blood elaborates on the study's findings: "We found soldiers who are not sick that do not have the antibodies....We found soldiers who never left the U.S. but who got shots who are sick, and they have squalene in their systems. We found people who served overseas in various parts of the desert that are sick who have squalene. And we found people who served in the desert but were civilians who never got these shots...who are not sick and do not have squalene."

According to one government official familiar with the blood test results, increased levels of sickness in veterans were indeed correlated with increased levels of antibodies for squalene. Another official explained, "I'm not telling you that squalene is making these people sick, but I am telling you that the sick ones have it in them. It's probably whatever was used [mixed] with the squalene that's doing it, or in combination with the squalene. You find that, and you may be on to something."

Research immunologist Pam Asa has worked with about 150 individuals with Gulf War syndrome. Asa is one of the investigators looking into squalene, and she stresses that this is not a substance approved for use in humans, as it hasn't been through rigorous safety testing. She reports that the autoimmune manifestations of squalene vary from person to person, depending on the patient's genetic make-up. "In other words, patient A will have a certain spectrum of symptoms, and patient B will have another. But it's still the same disease process, basically. It does also involve neurological disease." [16]

Mark Zeller is one of the service people affected by this issue: "I sent my blood and got a notice back that I'm positive for this stuff called squalene, which is an adjuvant, which goes into a vaccine. This adjuvant is still not for human use. I'm here to tell you, I've got squalene in my body. And I said, 'It's not supposed to be in humans. To this date, it's still not used in humans except for research. I never sought to be a guinea pig out in the desert. I signed on to protect my country. At least that's what I thought." [17]

Unheeded Alarms

Many Gulf War veterans have testified that chemical warfare detector alarms at bases across the region were frequently triggered, yet troops were ordered to ignore the alarms. According to General Colin Powell, who had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war, American commanders had believed the frequent alarms to be false, because nobody seemed to be getting sick immediately. It was believed by those involved that you had to become obviously ill at the time of exposure to chemical or biological agents for exposure to mean anything. [24]

One veteran who did get immediately ill, Petty Officer Sterling Symms of the Naval Reserve Construction Battalion, was stationed in Saudi Arabia when one morning he was awakened by an extremely loud explosion overhead. Right after the detonation, chemical alarms were sounded, and a strong ammonia-like aroma permeated the air. Before he could rush to get his protective gear on, Symms's face and eyes began to burn; several months later, he began to suffer from typical Gulf vet symptoms, including chronic fatigue, open sores, and rashes. Symms and several of his comrades, who had contracted similar symptoms, described to Congress how they were issued orders by their commanding officers to avoid any further discussion of the incident.

Another veteran who testified before the Riegle Committee, Army Sergeant Randall L. Vallee, explained how orders to ignore chemical-detector alarms were rationalized by a variety of absurd scenarios, such as the idea that supersonic aircraft or sand-infested equipment had triggered the alarms. Vallee, like Symms, testified that the alarms frequently sounded throughout the conflict, especially after Iraqi Scud attacks. In Senator Riegle's report, it was confirmed that 14,000 chemical alarm monitoring units were installed by the military throughout the region to provide an early warning of imminent gas attacks, but many of them were disarmed after they began to sound too frequently. Members of the Riegle Committee chastised the Department of Defense for its apathetic disregard for the safety of our service people, concluding that the Department's insistence that all of the alarms had been false was a little hard to believe.

Interestingly, after his testimony before Congress, Sergeant Vallee received a phone call from Lieutenant Colonel Vicki Merriman, an aide to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for chemical and biological matters, who, after initially seeming sympathetic, interrogated the veteran and attempted to alter his recollections. [25]

Depleted Uranium

There's an aspect of our participation in the Gulf that hasn't gotten wide publicity, but should: our use of depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process. [26, 27] Its name implies that this is a harmless material, but, in actuality, it is still a highly poisonous, radioactive, heavy metal. The term "depleted" comes from the fact that natural uranium is made from a fissionable isotope, U-235, while depleted uranium is made from a relatively stable isotope, U-238. After U-235 is extracted from U-238 for use in nuclear weapons and breeder reactors, only U-238 remains. While it is now depleted because it no longer contains U-235, due to its density the uranium still emits one-third of its original level of radioactivity.

The military uses depleted uranium to tip bullets and tank shells, praising the material's ability to make metals super-hard so that they can penetrate steel as easily as butter. But what the military neglects to consider in its enthusiasm for depleted uranium is that the downside to this technology far outweighs its benefits. Once bullets reach their destination, they explode upon impact, releasing a fine, radioactive, aerosol mist. These toxic particles travel in the wind, mix with water and soil, and are inhaled and ingested by anyone in their path.

U.S. and British forces used Operation Desert Storm as a testing ground for the widespread employment of depleted uranium. It is estimated that over 940,000 30-mm uranium-tipped bullets and 14,000 large-caliber depleted rounds were used. Between 350 and 800 tons of depleted uranium residue, with a half-life of 4.4 billion years, permeate the ground and water of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

In light of such immense pollution, it is easy to see that many people have come into contact with depleted uranium. Inhalation and ingestion of the substance were unavoidable for troops in close proximity to exploding shells. In addition, soldiers spent long hours sitting in tanks, handling uranium-laced shells and casings. Weapons were also taken home as souvenirs. Families of veterans came in contact with the substance after handling clothing laced with it.

The insidious action of depleted uranium in the body was illustrated by scientists at the Defense Department Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Maryland, in research presented to the American Association for Cancer Research and the Society of Toxicology. They tested the effects of embedded DU by inserting shrapnel-like pellets into the legs of rats, and they were surprised at how quickly they discovered oncogenes--genes believed to be precursors to cancer. Another finding was that depleted uranium kills suppressor, or health-maintaining, genes. The experiments also demonstrated that DU spreads throughout the body, depositing itself in the brain and spleen, among other organs, and that it can be passed by a pregnant rat to a developing fetus. [28]

Many of the symptoms experienced by Gulf War veterans and their families are indicative of radiation poisoning. Some of these are nausea, vomiting, wasting, memory loss, and raised rates of cancer. As has been mentioned, vets' children are manifesting an alarming rate of birth defects, lowered immunity, and childhood cancers, some of which may be due to radiation-affected sperm.

Dr. Jay Gould, author of The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, has long been an outspoken critic of low-level radiation. Gould says that exposure to depleted uranium released into the atmosphere poses the same grave dangers as does any other exposure to uranium. [29] "There is nothing new about it," Gould says, stressing that a biochemical impact of low-level radiation is that it immediately attacks the immune response. Since the immune response is a key factor in maintaining good health, this means that people are then vulnerable to any kind of infection or allergic response. So, everything from cancer to allergies to multiple chemical sensitivities can be activated by the uranium dust.

Gould adds that one of the reasons people generally ignore the problem is that low-level radiation is often confused with background radiation: "Background radiation is something that humans have lived with for hundreds of thousands of years. Over that long period, our immune response has developed a capacity to resist natural forms of radiation from cosmic rays and radiation in the soil. But ever since the nuclear age began, we have introduced new fission products, like radioactive iodine and radioactive strontium, that are released in the operation of a nuclear reactor or an explosion of a bomb. These have the ability to impact the immune response. This is what we mean by low-level radiation. It's an internal radiation. In other words, if you ingest a fission product or a piece of uranium dust, it is like having a tiny x-ray go off for a tiny fraction of a second for the rest of your life. The effects of low-level radiation are quite awful, depending on which organ is affected."

There have been several army reports on the dangers of depleted uranium, which have been released by the Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network. [27] Sara Flounders, coordinator of the International Action Center, a network of organizations and activists initiated by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, points out that one of these reports, which was put out by the Army Environmental Policy Institute, discusses the negative health and environmental consequences of depleted uranium use in the army. [30] According to the report, the financial implications of long-term disability payments and other health care costs would be excessive if depleted uranium was indicted as a causative agent for Desert Storm illnesses. This may be why depleted uranium is not being discussed as a cause of Gulf War syndrome, Flounders feels.

The Downsized Doctors

Dr. Asaf Durakovic was a chief of nuclear medicine at the VA Medical Center in Wilmington, Delaware. After the war, Dr. Durakovic tried to test members of the 144th Service and Supply Company for depleted-uranium contamination. This was a unit that had been salvaging equipment that had been hit by depleted-uranium rounds. Durakovic first tested the vets and concluded that 14 out of 24 were contaminated. But since his testing equipment was outdated, Durakovic proceeded to send urine samples from the vets to be tested at the U.S. Army Radiochemistry Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland.

This proved impossible. A number of the samples apparently never made it to the lab, and the ones that did were lost. What's more, the VA decided against further testing. Dr. Durakovic was told by both the VA and the Department of Defense to stop his depleted uranium investigation. Then, after eight years of outstanding performance at his VA position, he ended up losing his job "because of cutbacks." Meanwhile two of the vets exposed to uranium died. The Pentagon released a paper stating that uranium had not been proven to cause health problems, but Durakovic points out that they were looking for short-term, not long-term hazards. [31] He also has stated that he feels certain that he was terminated from his job as a direct result of his involvement in the management of Gulf War veterans and his raising of nuclear safety issues.

Dr. Durakovic testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee in June 1997, estimating that 123,000 troops had been exposed to depleted uranium through contact with captured Iraqi tanks. "Those that were required to receive the vehicles actually lived very near them, ate lunch on top of them, and cooled themselves inside of them," he reported. "On Mar. 10, 1991, a Battle Damage Assessment Team dressed in full radioprotective clothing arrived, stating that they were from Washington to assess the radioactivity of specific tanks. They reviewed the tanks for four days, fully dressed in 90 degree temperatures. At the conclusion of the assessment the soldier in charge of the crew, required to move the equipment, was told that the tanks were 'hot,' to mark them with the atomic symbol, and not to let people go near them. The assessment team had detected 0.26 to 1.0 rad inside the tanks....The team stated that the tanks were not dangerous to those required to work in their environment. One soldier was given an outdated dosimeter which began to detect radiation right away despite the fact that it was long past its expiration date....All work that was conducted on behalf of DU contamination was coordinated through the Persian Gulf Registry of the Wilmington VA hospital. All records were subsequently lost." [32]

The Radiochemistry Lab in Aberdeen, Maryland, does admit to losing Dr. Durakovic's medical tests. What's more, Durakovic had also sought help from the Boston VA Medical Clinic. Two physicians from the Boston VA, Dr. Burroughs and Dr. Slingerland, asked for more sensitive equipment to better diagnose the 24 soldiers of the 144th Service and Supply Company who had been referred to them by Dr. Durakovic. The two lost their jobs.

Concerning testing for exposure to depleted uranium, Dan Fahey, legal assistant and outreach worker at Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco veterans service organization, brings up the point the urinalysis tests will give accurate results only if they're used within a year of exposure. That's because, for a year, the body naturally purges most of the uranium that's been inhaled or ingested, and after a year, although the substance remains in the bones, kidneys, and lungs, it's not being excreted in the urine. Thus, today, this type of test is useless. [33]

Fahey also describes a 1991 incident in Kuwait during which troops were unknowingly exposed to depleted uranium:

"There was a fire in July 1991 in Doha, Kuwait, in which there were several thousand DU rounds that burned up in this very large fire. There were severe explosions for six hours. The fire raged until the following day. And through the Freedom of Information Act we learned that while this fire was going on there was an explosive ordnance disposal team that was rushed to the scene of the fire, but before they arrived they warned the commanders at the Doha base...that DU rounds were burning, that they should keep the people out of the downwind area, and that they should issue respiratory protection. And we also know that that message was never passed down to the troops. And as a result some people were exposed during the fire." [33]

Fahey goes on to explain that troops were exposed after the fire as well. Given no information about the presence of depleted uranium contamination, they were assigned to clean up the compound with brooms, shovels, and their hands, and were given no protection.

According to the Depleted Uranium Education Project, [34] "the fire at the U.S. Army Black Base in Doha, Kuwait, destroyed more than 660 large-caliber DU tank rounds, 9720 small-caliber DU rounds, and four M1A1 tanks with DU armor. Over 9000 pounds of DU penetrators were lost in the fire, exposing thousands of vets to airborne uranium oxides. Despite the known health problems of vets, the U.S. Army's report on exposures to depleted uranium at Doha has not even been released to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, and U.S. troops continue to be stationed at Doha."

Other Countries' Experience


Lieutenant Louise Richard of the Canadian Navy served as an operating room nurse in the Gulf, where she treated numerous American and British servicemen, as well as Iraqi prisoners of war. In September 1995 Richard was discharged after eight years of lauded service because her health had deteriorated significantly subsequent to her overseas service. Richard's symptoms mimicked those of many other combat veterans, but when she complained to her superiors regarding the lack of acknowledgment of her combat-related illness and threatened to seek redress in the media, she was warned that she would be jeopardizing her career and her pension. "We were valued individuals when we were sent there," she says, but "now we're back, and we're not valued individuals at all."

It's important to remember that United States troops have not been the only victims of governmental callousness. Other allied governments, including those of Canada, Great Britain, and Kuwait, also disavowed evidence of chemical and biological warfare for a long period. According to an Oct. 10, 1995, article in the British newspaper Today, the British Ministry of Defense instituted a policy of denying the existence of what is known in that country as desert fever, for fear of big compensation claims. In an interview with the paper, a British Defense spokesperson alleged, "We have no evidence that this illness exists." This was an odd declaration when you considered that over 1000 of the 43,000 British veterans deployed to the Gulf reported that they were suffering from the syndrome.

Corporal Richard Turnball, an 18-year member of the Royal Air Force who participated in the Gulf conflict, asserts that a multitude of British veterans returned home suffering from various acute symptoms. Turnball, who was stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, during the war, aided in the construction of nuclear, biological, and chemical shelters, and educated British troops as to the correct use of chemical monitors and protective gear. According to Corporal Turnball, the use of chemical and biological weapons by the Iraqis was deemed inevitable by British intelligence reports prior to the war. During the conflict, Turnball claims that the inevitable came to pass many times; he personally witnessed casualties suffering from chest and eye ailments, infections, and skin irritations. But despite a multitude of warnings and reliable documentation by highly advanced equipment, the British Ministry of Defense denied the incidences, asserting that the alarms were activated by aircraft fuel.

Another British veteran, Corporal Terry Walker, recalled the sounding of chemical monitoring devices at approximately 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 20, 1991, after several Scud missiles exploded overhead. Military officials attempted to attribute the alarms and the explosions to supersonic aircraft, but Walker explains that their justification seemed ridiculous for two reasons: First, alarms within a 15-mile radius had been activated almost simultaneously, and second, the alarms had never been triggered by aircraft in the past. Corporal Walker, who had difficulty donning his gas mask during the attack, recalls experiencing an ammonia-like smell and a burning sensation on his body. Since his return from active service he has been plagued by a multitude of ailments, including chest infections, rashes, and headaches, and his wife and daughter have been afflicted as well.

The British medical establishment has begun, recently, to look into the Gulf War's repercussions for their veterans. According to the British Medical Association, a pilot study was conducted on 14 veterans, 12 men and two women, with an average age of 34. These veterans, who were randomly selected from a long list of many with unexplained illnesses, underwent a variety of tests, and the results were compared with those of a group of 13 healthy civilians. The tests included established techniques assessing the function of nerve function in the limbs, transmission of impulses between nerves and muscles, and movement of nerve signals through pathways in the brain and spinal chord. The researchers concluded that the tests revealed evidence of problems in the nervous systems of the veterans, particularly in the nerves of the arms and legs. [35]

Kuwaiti sources have also reported new health problems since the war. At the Kuwaiti Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Saleh Al-Harbi has verified that a significant number of Kuwaiti citizens are suffering from a variety of chronic illnesses evidently induced by exposure to either chemical or biological agents. Since the war's conclusion a variety of inexplicable diseases, such as rare blood disorders, have surfaced, and the rate of birth defects has increased dramatically. Dr. Al-Harbi, like many of his American peers, believes that the syndrome is a form of multiple chemical sensitivity. The Kuwaiti government, however, continues to emulate the official policies of their Western saviors by downplaying the problem. [25]

A Cover-Up Condemned

The Riegle report essentially accuses the Department of Defense of lying to the American public, and condemns it for abandoning the servicemen who were willing to die for their country. Senator Riegle referred to the heartlessness and irresponsibility of the military bureaucracy, concluding that there is no more serious crime than a cover-up of facts that could facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of sick U.S. veterans. [25] The military establishment was fully aware that Sadaam possessed biological weapons, was willing to use them, and, in fact, did use them; but despite concrete evidence, John Deutch, director of the CIA, and General John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, continued to deny the use of biological or chemical weapons by either side.

Proof contradicting the official government position exists in the Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) logs maintained by General Schwartzkopf at Central Command. These records indicate that U.S. forces were able to confiscate chemical and biological weapons, and cite the specific days on which the acquisition of weapons took place. In addition, the NBC logs detail plans for the destruction of the confiscated materials, and reveal that the military did not want to destroy the weapons in bulk, as such an action may have precipitated an international incident. Many of the NBC logs for the Gulf War have been smuggled out of the Department of Defense by veterans, who were able to circulate them and prove to the public that the U.S. government had full knowledge of the presence of biological warfare agents in Iraq.

Unfortunately, assessment of the magnitude of Gulf War syndrome has been made more difficult by the military's unbelievable ability to misplace essential information. While some of the documents may have been legitimately lost or misplaced, others seem to have been intentionally destroyed in an attempt to conceal information from the public. For instance, a request to view documents by the Gulf War Veterans of Georgia was rejected by Lieutenant Richard I. Neal, deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, who justified his response by referring to national security interests. Two months after the initial request was filed, additional inquiries to view the documents were also declined, but this time, veterans groups were informed that the d