From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit GULF WAR SYNDROME Pentagon covers up 35,000 U.S. casualties By Deirdre Griswold You've heard of the Gulf War Syndrome. It is a complex of symptoms that includes muscle and joint pain, memory loss, intestinal and heart problems, fatigue, diarrhea, urinary urgency, twitching, rashes and sores. U.S. military personnel sent to attack Iraq began experiencing these symptoms during and after the Gulf War. Before long, members of their families also began getting sick. At first, there were hundreds of complaints. Then thousands. Now tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans are suffering from the syndrome. Some have died since returning from the Gulf. A committee staff report sent Oct. 7 to Sen. Donald Riegle, chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the problem is growing. "Currently it is estimated that there are 29,000 servicemen and women on the Department of Veterans Affairs Persian Gulf registry and 7,000 on the Department of Defense registry. The Department of Defense registry is growing at a rate of about 500 individuals per week," says the report. "In just over a year's time the number of veterans who have registered in these registries has grown by nearly 700 percent," the report concludes. A committee investigation heard testimony from many veterans. It concluded that the syndrome appears linked to exposure to toxic chemicals and/or biological agents. The report describes an incident in which U.S. soldiers in Kuwait found a 500-gallon leaking drum of toxic chemicals that sickened many of them. MADE IN U.S.A. Where did these chemicals come from? Before the war, says the report, the U.S. government itself licensed the export of equipment used in chemical and biological weapons to Iraq. It was part of the Cold War and also a way for U.S. arms manufacturers to get rich. The report does not charge that Iraq deliberately used these weapons. Rather, it says that fallout of chemical and biological agents of the type sold by the U.S. to Iraq was detected in the area after the massive "coalition"--mostly U.S.--bombing. With its heavy destruction of Iraq's plants and warehouses, the Pentagon seems to have unleashed these toxic substances on many of its own soldiers. Of course, civilians in Iraq and Kuwait may also have been exposed, but the report says nothing about them. Throughout this investigation the Department of Defense has denied that U.S. troops were exposed to chemical or biological agents during the Gulf War. However, the department recommended awarding various medals to U.S. soldiers in a "chemical troop" that identified and located chemical agents during the war. Now many of them are suffering "permanently debilitating illnesses." In the early months of the troop buildup against Iraq, an anti-war movement that opposed dying in the Middle East for the oil companies' profits mushroomed in the United States. But once the high-tech air war started, the Bush administration was able to avoid turmoil at home largely because of low U.S. casualties. The Pentagon was ecstatic: It had overcome the "Vietnam syndrome" and was free once again to unleash large forces on Third-World countries that don't submit to Washington's program. Now the casualties are coming in. You can expect a major coverup by the Pentagon. New recruits must not learn that someday, after some future war, they too could be creeping through life, unable to control their functions, covered with sores, bodies aching and twitching. -30- (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwp.blythe.org.) ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan archives by the archive maintainer. All files are ZIP archives for fast download. E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)