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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , JAN&FEBRUARY 2002
RETURN OF THE DEMON
BY TOD ENSIGN
“The Last Superpower: Exorcising the demon of
Vietnam in the burning oil fields of Kuwait."
~photo caption, TIME magazine, ‘Gulf War Special' Feb 1991
The Demon is back: Eleven years after the U.S. air war
began over Kuwait and Iraq on January 17,1991, tens of thous
ands of sick Persian Gulf War (aka “Operation Desert Storm”)
veterans await treatment and/or compensation for chronic
health problems brought on by their military service.
Gulf vets and active duty GIs have sought government
evaluation and treatment for a variety of symptoms they have
exhibited since returning home from Gulf duty: neurological
problems, chronic skin rashes, respiratory problems, chronic
flu-like symptoms including severe body aches, immune
system disorders, severe fatigue, joint pain, gynecological
infections, bleeding gums and mouth lesions and unexplained
rapid weight loss.
Medical evaluations by both Department of Veterans
Affairs (DVA) and military medical personnel have typically
resulted in the conclusion "undiagnosed illness.” Government
scientists can’t decide whether the health problems suffered by
Gulf War vets constitute a previously unidentified medical
condition, or a combination of illnesses. More importanty for
veterans, these scientists haven't been able to offer meaningful
treatment protocols or credible explanations for what ails them
What some have called the “Gulf War Syndrome" most
likely was brought on by exposing Gulf service personnel to a
synergistic mix of multiple toxins, including:
-Smoke and pollution from over 700 oilfield Tires set
by retreating Iraqis in Kuwait, which burned for as long as eight
months after the United States launched its air war.
~ Wholesale destruction of Iraqi weapons caches,
many of which contained chemical nerve agents, by advancing
U.S. forces. After years of denial, in 1997 the Pentagon and
CIA admitted that based on computer models, at least 100,000
troops were exposed to some fallout from these detonations.
It was also revealed that a Lawrence Livermore lab
study in 1990 had warned the Air Force — three months before
the air war began — that bombing Iraqi chemical weapons
production facilities would expose advancing U.S. troops to
deadly nerve agents.
-Two nerve agent vaccines: anthrax (given to 150,000
GIs) and pentavalent botulinum-toxoid (given to about 8,000),
neither of which have been approved by the Food & Drug
Administration (FDA) for the use to which they were put in
the Gulf.
-One medication, pyridostigmine bromide (PB), admin
istered to approximately 300,000 troops to protect against the
nerve-agent soman, had been designated by the FDA as an
'Investigational New Drug'. The Pentagon was able to beat
back a court challenge to the FDA's “waiver” of normal rules to
allow PB use in the Gulf War.
-Depleted Uranium weapons: radioactive fallout from
the residue of DU shells fired by U.S. and British tanks and
by the machine guns of the A-10 Warthog attack jets. These
devastating rounds, which can penetrate any standard tank
armor, were used for the first time in Gulf War combat. An
estimated 3155 tons of DU projectiles were fired, creating DU
residue which contaminated thousands of destroyed tanks and
armored vehicles as well as the area around them.
-Organophosphate pesticides, which were widely used
to control insects in military housing areas in Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait These can interfere with normal nerve/muscle function
ing by affecting enzymes. Permethrin and DEET, pyrethroid
pesticides, were also issued to many GIs; sometimes military
uniforms were soaked with these repellents.
-Kerosene and leaded gasoline, which were used in
space heaters and unventilated tents.
Following the Gulf War, some influential analysts have
argued that American victory in the Persian Gulf was ensured
by our clear advantage in sophisticated weapons and inform
ation technology. Some have predicted that “digitization of the
battlefield means the end of Clauswitz,” i.e., of classical military
doctrine.
Former Army chief of staff Gen. Dennis Reamer even
speculated that if the Vietnam-era Pentagon had possessed the
information technology it has today, we might have “won" the
Vietnam War. Whatever the truth of these hypotheses, there
is no doubt that America’s GIs were fighting on a very toxic
battlefield in the Persian Gulf.
When the first sick veterans began to seek medical
help just months after the war ended, the Bush administration
responded cautiously After all, President George Bush Sr.
and Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell were still
basking in the glow of their great victory, which had supposedly
had laid the “Vietnam syndrome” demon permanently to rest
Once Clinton/Gore took over the sympathetic rhetoric
increased, but there was little change in the behavior of either
the Veterans Administration or the Pentagon. Indeed, Clinton
allowed the upper reaches of both agencies to be staffed with
some of the worst psuedo-medical hacks Washington had seen
in a long time
After a year of highly publicized hearings, a panel of
so-called experts (Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf
War Veterans’ Illnesses) at the end of 1996 published a report
which must have greatly pleased Bill Clinton. It allowed him to
broadcast his concerns about the well-being of Gulf veterans
while avoiding a showdown with the Pentagon and the CIA
The report begins by acknowledging th'at “many of
the health concerns of Gulf vets may never be resolved fully
because of lack of data." It dryly ticks off some of the deficien
cies: “missing medical (and vaccination) records, absence of
baseline (pre-war) health information about GIs, inaccurate
information on troop locations and incomplete data on health
effects (that) should have been reasonably anticipated risks."
After admitting these deficiencies, the panel felt that it
could credibly conclude that none of the principles risk factors
(listed above) were “causally linked" to the health problems
reported by Gulf veterans.
As a leading veterans' advocate, Paul Sullivan of the
National Gulf War Resources Center Coalition, succinctly put it,
“This report was dead on arrival ”
Unfortunately for Gulf veterans, any assigning of blame
would require the U.S. military to shoulder responsibility for its
past negligence or incompetence — and possibly to abandon
its use of certain weapons.
PHOTO BY TERRY CLARK (1991)
For example, many vets believe they were harmed by
depleted uranium exposure. But from the command's point of
view this devastating new weapon was a resounding success:
DU shells knocked out every Iraqi tank or armored vehicle they
struck, to say nothing of more than a few American ones that
were mistakenly hit by “friendly fire." The generals clearly
are unwilling to surrender such an advantage just because it
pollutes the battlefield or causes collateral damage to GIs or
to the civilian population.
Another example is the injury caused by exposing
GIs to fallout from chemical nerve agents. The Pentagon for
several years clung to the story that few if any GIs were hit
by residue from such deadly weapons*. But when Sgt Brian
Martin presented a House investigative committee with a
videotape he had made of the destruction of the huge Iraqi
ammunition dump at Khamisiyah, the military (and CIA) were
forced to change their tune.
“We placed explosives in and around 33 bunkers,”
Martin told the committee. “Witnessing these awesome
explosions was a remarkable sight. Our excitement however
quickly turned to fear when cook offs' or fallout from the
explosions began showering down on us."
Martin also testified that since Khamisiyah he has
suffered from “blood in my vomit and stools, excruciatingly
painful headaches, blurred vision, memory loss, severe
diarrhea and mood swings."
After a long struggle, Brian Martin was finally rated
by the VA as 100% permanently disabled. He had enjoyed
excellent health before deploying to the Gulf
Even after the CIA/Pentagon admission that at least
100,000 U.S troops were exposed to varying levels of chemi
cal nerve agents, nearly all other information about chemical
and biological weapons remains classified. Former CIA analyst
Patrick Eddington, author of Gassed in the Gulf: The Inside
Story of the Pentagon/CIA Coverup of the Gulf War Syndrome
(Insignia Press, 197), estimates that the two agencies are with
holding more than a million documents with potential bearing
on the health of Gulf War vets
Even worse, Eddington argues in a special report for
the National Gulf War Resource Center (Uncounted Casualties:
“The Pentagon has continually stonewalled claims of
Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War by the same
methods
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America's Ailing Gulf War Veterans) that recent legislation has
broadened the categories of intelligence records exempt from
disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOA).
In a related development Dr. Khidir Hamza, formerly
chief of nuclear weapons programs in Iraq, charges in his book
Saddam's Bombmaker (with Jeff Stein, Scribner's, 2000) that
Saddam Hussein ordered that thousands of chemical and
biological weapons be buried along the likely U.S. invasion
routes:
“Saddam’s thinking was that the Allies, following U.S.
tactical doctrine, would blow up the bunkers as they advanced,
releasing plumes on invisible gas onto themselves. The pattern
of contamination would be so disparate and the symptoms so
amorphous the sources of illness couldn’t be easily confirmed.”
The Pentagon’s institutional stake in continuing to down
play health effects from such exposures is all too apparent.
Obviously, however, if Hamza’s account is accurate, those
celebrated military commanders Norman Schwarzkopf and
Colin Powell — now George W Bush’s Secretary of State —
come off as bunglers, not to mention indictable perjurers for
their sworn testimony that U.S. troops were never exposed to
fallout from chemical nerve agents.
After the Presidential Advisory Committee report was
issued, Clinton and the Pentagon decided to shift from denial to
pretending to actively look for answers about Gulf War illness.
A new agency was created, the Office of the Special Assistant
for Gulf War Illness (OSAGWI — how they love acronyms!)
headed by retired Admiral Dr Bernard Rostker.
Since then, this agency has spent nearly $250 million
on “research" projects of dubious value Instead of funding
human health studies to compare the health of sick Gulf vets
with similar people who did not serve in the Gulf, OSAGWI
has financed mostly “literature reviews" which essentially
survey the existing published scientific literature in a given area
and attempt to summarize it.
Human health studies, especially those that involve
medical monitoring, are of course very costly and time consum
ing They carry the added risk that they might actually uncover
significant health deficits in Gulf vets that might be difficult to
explain away.
One literature review, on pyridostigmine bromide (PB)
pills, which were given to protect GIs against soman, backfired
on the military when its author, Dr Beatrice A Golomb of the
National Defense Research Institute, concluded: “PB cannot be
ruled out as a possible contributor to . unexplained illness in
some PGW (Persian Gulf War) veterans Second, uncertainties
remain (about) the effectiveness of PB in protecting humans
against nerve agents."
After a one-day news flurry, however, the report was
shelved, soon (the Pentagon hoped) to be forgotten
Clinton’s decision to leave control of the Gulf War
research in the Pentagon's hands directly contradicted a
unanimous vote by the House Committee on Government
Reform & Oversight in 1997, which stated that “Congress
should create an agency independent from the Department of
Defense (i.e Pentagon) and Department of Veterans Affairs
(to serve) as the lead federal agency responsible for all
research into Gulf War veterans’ illnesses and all research
funds."
In addition to mobilizing political pressure to fund
independent research, Gulf War veteran advocates have
also been lending support to other initiatives which could
eventually bring some compensation to ailing veterans and
their families, among them a class action suit against 70
multinational corporations that sold chemical weapon pro
duction equipment to Iraq is pending in Texas state court
Among the named defendants are huge American, German,
Swedish and French corporations that built chemical and
biological weapons facilities in Iraq, or sold the Iraqis chemical
and biological products which allowed them to arm their
weapons The theory of liability is that these companies sold
the Iraqis materials and did construction work they could have
foreseen would result in their use of such weapons against U S
service members
Progressive veterans and their advocates must once
again take the lead in challenging the corrupt cynicism of the
irredeemable militarists who continue to control these agencies
Tod Ensign is director of Citizen Soldier, which is a
founding member of the National Gulf War Resource Center
Coalition