Letter from the US: Scandal widens over Gulf War illnesses

April 9, 1997
Issue 

Letter from the US

Scandal widens over Gulf War illnesses

By Barry Sheppard

In late 1991, the year of the Gulf slaughter, returning US soldiers began to complain of symptoms like chronic fatigue, pains in the joints, digestive problems and headaches. Recent studies show that soldiers who were in the gulf have such symptoms at far higher rates than troops who were not deployed there.

An example is the case of Specialist Melissa Coleman, who was 20 at the time of the war, and was the first US female soldier to have been a prisoner of war. "Shortly after coming home from the gulf, I started having real severe headaches", she says. "They would last from 10 hours to a day or two. And the biggest problem for me, the one that affects me the most, has been the tiredness."

Before the war she was in perfect health. "I could do 42 push-ups and 32 sit-ups and run for two miles", she says. The mother of two speculates on the possible causes. "I believe some of it has to do with the vaccines we were given. I know one of my problems was the oil well smoke."

But like many of the tens of thousands who suffer from "Gulf War syndrome", she suspects Iraqi chemicals released by the massive US bombardment of Iraqi facilities. She recalls that while she was stationed in northern Saudi Arabia before her capture, chemical detection alarms sounded repeatedly. Thousands of other soldiers reported such alarms.

Gunnery Sergeant George Grass told Congress last December that his vehicle had detected chemical weapons repeatedly in Kuwait. Yet all of his reports, like those of other chemical specialists, were dismissed by his commanders.

Right from the start, the Pentagon, the new Clinton cabinet and the CIA vehemently denied that soldiers were exposed to anything that could cause the syndrome, and suggested it was "all in the head" of troops who went through the trauma of war. Slowly, some of the truth has come out. Not only US troops detected chemical weapons, but Czech and French soldiers said they had detected them in northern Saudi Arabia.

On February 3, 1991, before the ground war began, French military spokesperson General Raymond Germanos said that low levels of nerve gas and other agents had been reported "a little bit everywhere" after the relentless bombing.

In March 1994, a senator from Michigan began to inquire about possible poisoning of the troops, and asked the Pentagon for the daily log books made during the war. The brass replied by stating the logs did not exist. In May 1994, officials in Clinton's cabinet told the senator that there was no indication that chemical weapons were released. Then in January 1995, the Pentagon released some of the logs but with most of the pages missing.

In April 1996, the CIA director stated that "there is no compelling evidence" of the release of chemical weapons during the war. Finally, in June that year, the Pentagon announced that it had evidence that 300 to 400 American troops may have been exposed to chemical weapons. In December 1996, the number was raised to 20,000.

In the March 19 New York Times the CIA is now quoted as saying it has evidence that possibly hundreds of thousands of troops were exposed to clouds of nerve gas released when the Kamisiyah depot was exploded. The CIA also now acknowledges it knew Iraq had nerve gas stored at this depot as far back as 1986, during the Iraq-Iran war, when Washington backed Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

No wonder there is a widespread belief in a cover-up!

Last October, two CIA analysts went public with charges of a cover-up, saying they had evidence of as many as 60 incidents when troops were exposed to chemical weapons. Their CIA careers were shortly terminated.

While this side of the scandal has made the pages of the major dailies, another aspect of it has been largely hushed up, except for an article in the Nation magazine last October in which Bill Mesler documents the use by the US forces of special shells made of depleted uranium (DU), a form of radioactive waste. It seems that these shells ignite upon impact, and burn through even the toughest armour.

The Pentagon wanted to test out these shells on the Soviet-built tanks of the Iraqis, which the Kremlin gave Saddam Hussein for his war against the Iranian revolution, as a favour to the US. They were highly successful, but also were the source of radioactive contamination of troops, who were not told of their dangers.

Soldiers like combat engineer Dwayne Mowrer, whose unit went into many Iraqi tanks disabled by the DU shells, began to have flu-like symptoms. "He figured the symptoms would fade once he was back in the United States", Mesler writes. "They didn't. Mowrer's personal doctor and physicians at the local Veterans Administration could find nothing wrong with him. Meanwhile, his health worsened: fatigue, memory loss, bloody noses and diarrhoea.

"Then the single parent of two began experiencing problems with motor skills, bloody stools, bleeding gums, rashes and strange bumps on his eyelids, nose and tongue. Mowrer thinks his problems can be traced to his exposure to DU."

The Defense Department insists that DU radiation is relatively harmless. When properly encased, DU gives off so little radiation, the Pentagon states, that a soldier would have to sit surrounded by it for 20 hours to get the equivalent of one chest X-ray. But once it is used, that casing is gone. One DU anti-tank round outside its casing emits as much radiation in one hour as 50 chest X-rays.

Why is the government so adamant in denying that veterans of the Gulf War were exposed to dangerous substances, except when forced to by leaks?

Because the Gulf War was supposed to be a "clean" war with few US casualties (Iraqi deaths in the slaughter don't count). The idea that the US could carry through such a war and win its objectives in such a way that there were few US deaths was supposed to end the "Vietnam syndrome". That there were serious consequences for US soldiers, let alone ordinary Iraqis and Kuwaitis, challenges that assumption.

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