People Are Sick Over There Already

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Gulf War Syndrome, The Sequel 'People Are Sick Over There Already'

 

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 [training manual]. 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.

 

Page created April 11, 2003 by Charlie Jenks

 

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