Linda Carroll, reporting for MSNBC on January 7:
A former Army Ranger who served with special forces in Iraq, Robinson says he and other vets remain angry at the toll this affliction has taken on their post-war lives, and they are unimpressed with changes since 1991. Among the gripes he and other vets cite as troops move toward Iraq once again:
- A lack of urgency in diagnosing the illness and providing care to those disabled in the Gulf War.
- Few improvements to the military’s ability to track individual soldiers’ locations on the battlefield in association with suspected weapons of mass destruction sites.
- A failure to remove up to 250,000 defective chemical and biological warfare protection suits from the military’s active stockpile.
- A failure to adapt protective gear or chemical-biological detection kits to the realities of desert warfare.
If Saddam uses chemical weapons, the casualties are likely to be high. Don't look for the hawks then, they'll be too busy trying to cover their asses and feigning ignorance.