The Ghosts of Desert Storm

Seventeen years and three wars later, the ghosts of Operation Desert Storm -- the cancers, the chronic headaches and dizziness, the fibromyalgia, the ALS and so much more that have stalked returning vets, whose medical claims have been denied, ignored, relegated to the paper shredder -- have just gotten a reality upgrade.

"The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is real, that it is the result of neurotoxic exposures during Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or substantially improved with time."

Thus concludes the 452-page report of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, presented last week to Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake. Suddenly the government has several hundred thousand medical claims emanating from a few months in 1991 it has to start taking seriously -- and that's the easy part.

The implications of the congressionally mandated advisory panel's report, chaired by James Binns, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a Vietnam vet, may not be easy to contain. In the name of sanity and the planet's future, I hope this report blows the hellish toxicity of modern warfare wide open and creates a legal wedge by which the forces of moral outrage can hold governments accountable for what they do . . . for what our own government is doing right now.

For 17 years, the VA maintained that the strange, debilitating, sometimes fatal symptoms the vets of Gulf War I -- that quick little romp that routed Saddam's army and left America feeling so good about itself -- began experiencing was, to the extent that it was anything at all (or anything that had to do with the war), a mental thing, PTSD-induced. Vets learned that fighting the war may have been nothing compared to fighting the VA for treatment and compensation. It was a struggle that thousands didn't survive.

The Binns report estimates that more than a quarter of the GIs deployed during Desert Storm, around 200,000 of them, are suffering in some way from Gulf War Syndrome, and identifies two primary causes: pyridostigmine bromide, an anti-nerve gas medication all troops in the Gulf were required to take, and highly concentrated, DEET-like insect-repellents that were extensively used.

But the neurotoxic hell that is modern war cannot be reduced to two problematic substances. Many of the troops -- and, of course, millions of Iraqi and Kuwaiti civilians -- were exposed to a wide array of toxic chemicals, which the report did not rule out as contributing factors. These include: the smoke from burning oil-well fires; fumes from poison gas dumps blown up by the Army; anthrax vaccines; and the extremely fine radioactive dust of exploded depleted uranium munitions, which may prove to be the deadliest of all the poisons modern war leaves in its wake.

What the report also exposes is the cynicism and denial of the U.S. war establishment, which, as we all know, disputed the toxicity of Agent Orange for 20 years before giving in, and which, it now turns out, suppressed evidence that substantiated Gulf War syndrome. Quoted in the report, according to Cox News Service, is Lt. Gen. Dale Vesser, acting special assistant to the secretary of defense for Gulf War illnesses, who said in 2001 that, while Saddam Hussein didn't poison U.S. troops, "It never dawned on us . . . that we may have done it to ourselves."

And M.J. Stephey of Time magazine wrote that the report "serves as a grim reminder that sometimes a soldier's greatest enemy is the government he or she is fighting for."

All of this is true, but the irresponsibility of the war establishment and the enabling media goes, I believe, deeper than the betrayal of our own troops. What are we doing to the world, not merely with our satanic weapons systems but with the unregulated toxic waste of war?

Consider, for instance, a recent story in Army Times about the open-air burn pits throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, where the military disposes of hundreds of tons of war-zone waste every day, including "unexploded ordnance; paints and solvents; and even . . . bloody bandages and amputated limbs." U.S. troops (and, of course, the locals) have almost no protection against the toxic fumes the pits produce. GIs report such symptoms as "stinging eyes, monster headaches, severe respiratory infections and 'plume crud' -- prolonged hacking that produces blackened phlegm and sometimes blood."

No matter that the smoke contains "arsenic, benzene, carbon monoxide, sulfuric acid and dioxin, the cancer-causing main ingredient in the defoliant Agent Orange," the Pentagon insists that there's no long-term environmental impact. Yeah, right. Who here believes the soldiers in the war on terror aren't facing serious health problems because of such exposures? How long will we continue to tolerate our government's pattern of pathological denial?

Perhaps the Defense Department understands that if it ever begins taking responsibility -- and conceding liability -- for what it does, a moral and financial hemorrhaging will ensue that makes war itself impossible.

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Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at [e-mail] or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Comments

[NoSillyName]

Pathetic. I'm sure most volunteers for the military have the honorable intentions. Sadly, they are treated as nothing more than Fodder for the Death Machine. If not during the actual combat, then in the physical and psychological after-effects.

I've not been in the military, but I do know what its like to have an undiagnosed illness and being told its all in your head. Finally having that validation is vital to dealing with chronic conditions, even if there is no cure.

I'm glad there is now some vindication. What happens next in terms of healthcare for these people and their families remains to be seen.

[MHainds]

Your quotes someone or something as saying or writing "dioxin, the cancer-causing main ingredient in the defoliant Agent Orange."

I do a lot of work with herbicides and I am sure that dioxin was not the main ingredient in Agent Orange. I seem to remember that dioxin was a byproduct of the manufacturing process that was not supposed to be in the herbicide, but ended up there in trace, though potentially harmful amounts.

Here is a link to the VA where you can get a fact sheet on Agent Orange.

http://www1.va.gov/Agentorange/page.cfm?pg=2

From the fact sheet: "Agent Orange was a mixture of chemicals containing equal amounts of the two active ingredients, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T."

[MajorKong]

I believe there's also been a high rate of Leukemia in the children of Gulf War vets.

[mmerose]

A young Deputy District Attorney I worked with came back from Desert Storm with chronic, miserable sinus-infe­ction-type symptoms. A garden-variety allergy sufferer, I was always empathetic, but I have wondered since if it was worse than it seemed. What a loss of human potential, citizen productivity, and what a terrible insult to the American ideal of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." The lip-service paid to supporting the troops while spitting on them is one of the worst of the long list of perversions of American values perpetrated by the Bush interregnum.

[canarypapers]

I'm glad to see the truth finally acknowledged in the full light of day, instead of being relegated to the so-called conspiracy theorist "tin-foil hat" dens (a handy dumping ground for government lies & secrets). The military never needed to look any further than the symptoms repeatedly reported over and over and over by Gulf War vets. But, HAD they looked, they would have found Iraqi citizens also suffering some of the same symptoms, along with an epidemic of birth defects, presumably due to depleted uranium -- a hidden epidemic that has also been visited on the offspring of Gulf War vets. Midwives in Iraq came to dread births. I'm unaware if studies have been done on this in the U.S. The Gulf War illnesses are certainly due to many causes. Perhaps the truth would have come out earlier, had the government-military naysayers been subjected (in the name of science, mind you) to the full menu of vaccines, drugs, chemicals, burning fumes and depleted uranium.

[kylennblack]

The husband of a friend of mine was a GWI vet. When he came back he said that when the chemical attack alarms would go off, one was supposed to put on a gas mask. In short order that thing was going off almost all the time and eventually the guys in his unit were told to just ignore it because it was a string of false alarms.

I caught up with him 10 years later and he's now on disability for a whole battery of things and he now wonders if those "false alarms" were actually picking up traces of chemicals, the cumulative effect of which causing the symptoms he and some of his unit mates are experiencing.

[Halsey]

If the above does not show the abject disregard with which the talking heads of some gov't agency holds the grunt soldier..I don't know what does. I am battling cancer..but am not a soldlier...my case is just nature (can't even blame my parents).... I get so angry at the artitrary nature of this disease..B­UT..IF..my ailment were caused by MY COUNTRY for WHOM I'd been fighting literally...I'm not sure I could handle the bile that would come up at the though of what "they" had done to a strong, young body. I, human, ergo don't like taxes..but my GAWD amerika.....We OWE everything to these people...and it the tax rate went to 40% for those like me (under $50,000 a year)....IF I KNEW all that money went to help these soldiers...I'd gladly pay...

There are certain posts that make me very sad to be an American..this was one...shame on all of us...

[steamboat]

8 years of Democratic Administration (Clinton) and 8 years of Republican Administration (Bush) and neither wanted to admit something was wrong. Now we'll see how this incoming administration handles it. I'm not that optimistic that things will be different.

[dolphy]

Bad Karma for participating in killing millions?

[boogiewoman]

My husband and I were stationed in Europe at the time and he tells me about all the pills and shots he had to take. He was never deployed , but many of our friends were. 12 years of service and he knows often when he doesn't feel well what he was told to put in is body is why.

[ggm68]

I'm pretty sure my ex-husband was an undiagnosed victim of GWS. The worst for him was the crippling headaches. Navy docs attributed the headaches to sleep apnea, and while he was still active duty they did surgery on him for that, which did not help. I wanted him to pursue evaluation for GWS, but he was too afraid of being looked on as a "sick bay commando."

What we are doing to ourselves and to the planet is a tragedy. To the best of our ability the American people have =finally= put the grownups in charge, we think. We hope(tm).

It remains to be seen if our new President and the expanded Democratic Congressional majority will accept the leadership of the people who elected them, and put the common good above the bottom line for a change.

[watoova]

I have heard that the army at times did not have water to give to the troops so they shipped out diet sodas. The aspartame in diet soda becomes very toxic when it gets hot. Well theses sodas were not refrigerated. I think that aspartame and dehydration contributed a lot to some of these debilitating diseases for the Gulf War Veterans but for the general public. Mr Rumsfield and his company has made fortunes by selling to an unsuspecting public a very dangerous chemical as a sugar substitute.

[Bailey Reynolds]

I served with the 101st Airborne Division in the Gulf War. That story about diet sodas sounds bogus to me. I have never saw so much bottled water in my life as I saw over there. Granted, we often had to haul every last case on our own backs, but they provided. And we were 100% hydrated wherever we were (Riyadh, Southern Saudi; Dammam on the east coast; somewhere between Tapline Road in Northern Saudi and Najaf in Iraq). It was amazing.

I have always believed the main culprit for Gulf War Syndrome was somewhere between the series of shots we had to take and the anti-nerve agent pills they ordered us to take. Once our command got bored rousing us for 5 a.m. formation to watch us take our pills (under direct order), I, and many others quit taking them. We did not trust the Army because we knew all about Agent Orange.

Thankfully, I am one of the lucky Gulf War vets. For whatever reason, I am ok.

[goldcoastsailor]

This was a volunteer army, when I served it wasn't. Sometimes a soldiers greatest enemy is the government he is fighting for, indeed.

[vinny]

myth of the volunteer army...

[dolphy]

When you're uneducated, poor, don't have a job and politically dumbed down you turn to uncle sam.

[steamboat]

What goldcoastsailor is trying to say and I was also back then-----we were DRAFTED. We were all high school grads and employed. So none of this 'dumbed down' stuff please. In my neighborhood when you were 19 years old unless you had a deferment you went in. And were heading off to VietNam after basic and AIT, thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

[woodsywizz]

Before today's toxins, and DESERT STORM's 1) pyridostygmine bromide + 2) DEET + 3) casually burned nerve agents (exposing 100,000 personnel downwind), even before AGENT ORANGE (not shouting, these things are spelled in caps) - there were the Atomic Veterans.

Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of military personnel, often without any protection whatsoever, were exposed to all kinds of nuclear effects, from direct radiation (thermal and alpha), to blast effects, to enormous amounts of fallout. This rivals the horrendous evil experiments performed in the Nazi death camps, in scope if not (???) intent.

I don't know the solution. The Armed Forces are like a gigantic machine, and sometimes it mangles people and spits them out. I got tossed a round a bit, and saw a lot of other people virtually destroyed - not counting the ones who died.

Of course, for them, it's over.

The VA is being overwhelmed, and Bush cut its budget as much as possible. Also the Services and VA are being encouraged to diagnose PTSD sufferers as having "pre-existing personality disorders", thus cutting them off without treatment or disability payments.

If you love your country, care about your neighbor, call or write your Representatives & Senators. Make sure that the VA is funded - and watch for who gets appointed VA Secretary. Learn that person's name.

Your friends, children, neighbors may depend on that person for their very life.

[schatsie]

I would give my right arm to audit medical costs as accounted for by the military... My suggestion is to start using Medicare for military and families... I can tell you that system can account for the dollars to a penny and we all know that the DOD is exempt from General Accounting requirements...... I am not opposed to leaving military hospitals and clinics as they are, just that services for the reserves seem to be a bit of a mess since most of them are coming from exurban areas where there is not close military health care provided....This would also help out the rural providers although they might require teleconference case management. (I feel it is unfair to unduly burden the families with these healthcare issues any more than they are already.)

[NoSillyName]

One of the other comments made me think of the Nuclear Bomb Watching Soldiers who were told it was safe to view the explosions from a nearby trench. I didn't post my thoughts, so I'm happy that you did, woodsywizz.

[FreedomAgain]

There were people stationed in Europe that had all the vaccinations but didn't get shipped out that experienced GWS as well. I served during that time. I think it was either the vaccinations or the depleted uranium. Think about those soldiers that shipped the depleted uranium, and swept out the empty bunkers afterwards, etc. Perhaps it was the combined toxicity of dozens of vaccinations given at the same time that contain mercury. Who knows. The one thing you can be certain of is that the US government will claim the cause was something that exposes them to the LEAST liability. If they say it was the vaccines, that means a lot more people than those that were actually shipped out were affected. If they say it was the depleted uranium, then there are a lot of military people affected, and there are millions of people affected in those countries where we've been dropping tons of depleted uranium.

[rmreddicks]

Well stated. Having worked in a support staff position for the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati for a number of years I often saw the struggle of veterans in their quest for assistance from the VA. A terrible and unnecessary fight that often did a more egregious harm to the veterans than whatever harm that came them from their service.

[schatsie]

you know of course, that with UNIVERAL HEALTHCARE, this syndrome could not have been buried for so long....Of course it is not a surprise that the Republicans want to throw the Grunts to the dogs, after all look what they did to the grunts at Abu Graib....

[rmreddicks]

Certainly. Many things may work and are wished in the Obama support thought and comprehension. It will be interesting to see what develops. No one should feel contumelious while holding foot to fire. Let it become well after the sickness of the last eight years.