Gulf War veterans leery of another war
U.S. hasn't updated chemical warfare equipment, they say
By Dick Foster
Rocky Mountain News
September 21, 2002
rockymountainnews.com
If President Bush is counting on veterans of the last Persian Gulf War to support a new one, he might be counting wrong.
Many Gulf War veterans are casting a wary eye on the administration's plans and reasons for another war against Iraq.
There's no shortage of patriotism among the vets. They recognize Saddam Hussein as the dangerous tyrant they drove out of Kuwait 11 years ago.
Some support action to oust him and finish the job left undone in 1991.
But many vets doubt the administration's arguments that Saddam poses an imminent threat to the United States that is worth American lives.
Some say policymakers are underestimating Saddam's ability to complicate any campaign against him, a mistake that caused tens of thousands of American casualties in the first Gulf War. Many say the military has not updated equipment to protect troops from chemical and biological weapons that caused such havoc after the first conflict.
This time, the vets expect prolonged, bloody guerrilla warfare in the streets of Baghdad and the renewed use of chemical and biological weapons. They do not want to see their successors pulled into an unexpectedly costly war.
"It's a very risky proposition. It's going to be a bloody mess if we do this," said Dennis McCormack, a retired Army helicopter pilot from Colorado Springs who logged three tours in Vietnam and flew in northern Iraq protecting the Kurds immediately after Desert Storm.
"There will be guerrilla war in the cities. It won't be like the last one. It will be more like Somalia, where we're outnumbered 20 to 1 and every window on every street could have somebody shooting at you. It's going to be bloody and long and indecisive," he said.
McCormack is concerned that the U.S. might be short of the forces needed for waging the war alone, without the coalition of 34 countries who supplied a quarter-million troops in the last war. "Even then, we were pulling units from everywhere to fight. We don't have those forces now, and I don't know if there's enough to do the job," he said.
Steve Robinson, a 20-year Army veteran who served in the Gulf War, agreed that close-in combat is inevitable.
"War can't be won by air alone," he said. "If you're going to make a regime change in Baghdad, you're going to have to put troops on the ground and go in and fight. That's the kind of battle we're going to face, and it's one we haven't trained for."
Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an organization of about 10,000 Gulf War veterans, said the Bush administration has not made a case that Saddam is a threat to the United States.
"We're not saying we want to prevent a war with Iraq. If the president can show us that we're in a situation where we've got to lay down American lives because Saddam Hussein is going to affect our nation, then he needs to make that case," Robinson said.
Jim Van Houten, a Gulf War veteran from Denver, agrees on the hazards but says Saddam "has to go."
"In 1991, I said that because we did not take care of it now, within 10 years we're going to be dealing with this man again. I was just one year off," Van Houten said.
"It scares me a little that we've got to do it by ourselves, but my sense is he's working on a nuclear capability. If you weigh what we're doing against the consequence of not doing it, it seems we have to take the action."
But the veterans worried that the U.S. military is inviting thousands of new American casualties by its failure to heed lessons of the first Gulf War.
Retired First Sgt. Dennis Ward of Houston, a member of the Gulf War Resource Center, said the military has changed none of its protective equipment for chemical and biological weapons encountered in the first Gulf War and it has not trained for the prolonged conflict that may ensue this time.
"The American public has got to be prepared. They don't know what kind of a war this is," Ward said. "The civilian sector has state-of-the-art chemical hazardous material suits. We don't have them in the military. We are not ready to go into sustained operations in chemical environments."
"We know that there are serious deficiencies and flaws that have not been corrected as we approach this new Gulf War. We know that if Iraq is going to use chemical and biological weapons, we're going to be fighting on a battlefield even worse than the one we faced the last time," Robinson said.
The 1991 war was at first hailed as a stunning victory for the U.S. and its allies, but the years have told a different story.
The coalition of 34 nations and nearly 1 million troops, including 697,000 Americans, smashed Saddam's army in four days with minimal casualties. There were 213 coalition troops killed in battle, 148 of them Americans. Another 145 Americans died in non-combat circumstances and 467 Americans were wounded.
But 11 years later, the human toll has soared. More than 159,000 American Gulf War veterans are receiving disability payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Thousands suffer from memory loss, dizziness, blurred vision, speech difficulties, nerve disorders, muscle weakness. Many have chronic skin disorders, including rashes. They have reported incidences of cancers in themselves and birth defects in their children, though U.S. government studies deny they are related to the war.
Research has failed to pinpoint the cause of the soldiers' disabilities, but the potential sources were many. Thousands of troops may have been exposed to chemical weapons launched by Saddam on SCUD missiles or dispersed into the atmosphere when the U.S. bombed Iraqi munitions plants and destroyed stockpiles. Others were exposed to radiation on the battlefield with the use of armor-piercing depleted uranium ammunition by U.S. forces.
Thousands of troops also had received batteries of shots that included anthrax vaccinations now the subject of controversy and an experimental anti-nerve gas pill, pyridostigmine bromide.
"We're now 11-plus years after the last Gulf War," Robinson said, "and I get calls every day from veterans who can't work anymore because they're so ill, their families are falling apart, they're losing their homes and they can't get access to the VA. Is that what we want with this next generation?"
fosterd@RockyMountainNews.com or (719)633-4442 |
