Gulf War Syndrome, The Sequel
'People Are Sick Over There Already'
Published: Apr 08 2003
Steven Rosenfeld is a commentary editor and audio producer for
TomPaine.com.
Soldiers now fighting in Iraq are being exposed to
battlefield hazards that have been associated with the
Gulf War Syndrome that afflicts a quarter-million veterans
of the 1991 war, said a former Central Command Army
officer in Operation Desert Storm.
Part of the threat today includes greater exposure to
battlefield byproducts of depleted uranium munitions used
in combat, said the former officer and other Desert Storm
veterans trained in battlefield health and safety.
Their concern comes as troops are engaged in the most
intensive fighting of the Iraq War.
Complicating efforts to understand any potential health
impacts is the Pentagon's failure, acknowleged in House
hearings on March 25, to follow a 1997 law requiring
baseline medical screening of troops before and after
deployment.
"People are sick over there already," said Dr. Doug
Rokke, former director of the Army's depleted uranium
(DU)project. "It's not just uranium. You've got all the
complex organics and inorganics [compounds] that are
released in those fires and detonations. And they're
sucking this in.... You've got the whole toxic wasteland."
In 1991, Desert Storm Commander Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf asked Rokke to oversee the environmental
clean up and medical care of soldiers injured in friendly
fire incidents involving DU weapons. Rokke later wrote the
DU safety rules adopted by the Army, but was relieved of
subsequent duties after he criticized commanders for not
following those rules and not treating exposed troops from
NATO's war in Yugoslavia.
Rokke said today's troops have been fighting on land
polluted with chemical, biological and radioactive weapon
residue from the first Gulf War and its aftermath. In this
setting, troops have been exposed not only to
sandstorms, which degrade the lungs, but to oil fires and
waste created by the use of uranium projectiles in tanks,
aircraft, machine guns and missiles.
"That's why people started getting sick right away, when
they started going in months ago with respiratory,
diarrhea and rashes -- horrible skin conditions," Rokke
said. "That's coming back on and they have been treating
them at various medical facilities. And one of the doctors
at one of the major Army medical facilities -- he and I talk
almost every day -- and he is madder than hell."
DU, or Uranium-238, is a byproduct of making nuclear
reactor fuel. It is denser and more penetrating than lead,
burns as it flies, and breaks up and vaporizes on impact --
which makes it very deadly. Each round fired by a tank
shoots one 10-pound uranium dart that, in addition to
destroying targets, scatters into burning fragments and
creates a cloud of uranium particles as small as one
micron. Particles that small can enter lung tissue and
remain embedded.
Efforts to contact Pentagon officials for comment at the
Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses and
officials at the Veterans Administration who deal with
DU-related illness were not returned.
What Rokke and other outspoken Desert Storm veterans
fear is today's troops are being exposed to many of the
same battlefield conditions that they believe are
responsible for Gulf War Syndrome. These illnesses have
left 221,000 veterans on medical disability and another
51,000 seeking that status from the Veterans
Administration as of May 2002.
"Yeah, I do fear that," said Denise Nichols, a retired Air
Force Major and nurse, who served in Desert Storm and
is now vice-chairman of the National Vietnam and Gulf
War Veterans Coalition. "We're sitting here watching it
happen again and wondering if the soldiers are going to
be taken care of any better [than after the 1991 war]."
Nichols' lobbying sparked Congress to pass a 1997 law
requiring the Pentagon to conduct a physical and take
blood samples of all soldiers before and after deployment.
In a House hearing on March 25 on that requirement,
Public Law 105-85, Pentagon officials said the military
had not conducted those baseline tests for Iraq War
soldiers, saying they asked troops to fill out a
questionnaire instead.
"Their actions not to fully implement PL 105-85 and go
beyond the words of the law, show their lack of caring for
the human beings that do the work and place their lives in
jeopardy for this nation," Nichols said in testimony
submitted to the Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) the
Government Reform-National Security Subcommittee
chairman, who held the hearing and told military officials
they were "not meeting" the letter or spirit of the law.
"I hope that when the soldiers return that the standard
tactic of blaming PTSD [Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder]
or stress will never be allowed to block soldiers from
getting fast answers to what is happening to their health,"
Nichols testified.
"If you don't look, you don't find," Rokke said,
commenting on the Pentagon's failure to assess soldiers'
health. "If you don't find, there is no correlation. If there's
no correlation, there's no liability."
Both Rokke and Nichols says health problems
associated with DU exposure are likely to be more
widespread in the current war than in 1991. That's
because the military relies more heavily on DU munitions
today and there's more fighting in this war.
When Rokke sees images of soldiers and civilians driving
past burning Iraqi trucks that have been destroyed by
tank fire, or soldiers or civilians inspecting buildings
destroyed by missiles, and these people are not wearing
respirators, he says they all risk radiation poisoning,
which can have lifelong consequences.
"He's going to be sick," Rokke said. "He's supposed to
have full respiratory protection on. That's required by his
Common Task . And when he comes by
and he's downwind, he supposed to have a
radio-bio-assay. That's urine, feces and nasal swabs
within 24 hours."
When asked why those protocols -- part of the DU rules
he wrote for the Army -- apparently aren't being followed,
Rokke said the military doesn't want to lose the use of
DU weapons. He said as early as 1991 the military
issued memos saying DU ammo could become
"politically unacceptable and thus be deleted" if health
and environmental impacts were emphasized.
Outside the military, medical journals say the jury is still
out on DU's potential health impacts. Although the
government says it is safe, medical researchers say not
enough is understood about DU's acute and long-term
effects, wrote Brian Vastag in the April 2 edition of the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
Veterans disagree, however, saying the military has
known about low-level radiation poisoning since the
development of atomic weapons in the 1940s. They say
the military will not disclose its DU test results and that
it's almost impossible to do medical research while
combat rages.
Meanwhile, in political circles, the White House has
dismissed DU issues. On March 18, it issued "Apparatus
of Lies," a report which, among other things, attacked
claims that DU fallout from Operation Desert Storm has
caused higher disease rates among Iraqi citizens. Those
claims were part of "Saddam's disinformation and
propaganda" campaign, the White House said.
tompaine.com
Published: Apr 08 2003 |
