Kathleen Sullivan of the San Francisco Chronicle in a December 26, 2002 story:
"Damn — we don't need to go to war with bad equipment," said Steve Robinson, whose Army unit helped repatriate Kurdish refugees after they fled into the mountains of northern Iraq during the Gulf War.
His concern was echoed by other veterans, including Erin Cole of Alexandria, Va., who collected maps, ledgers and unit insignia from deserted Iraqi foxholes during the war.
When chemical alarms sounded in their camp, everyone in Cole's unit would immediately put on their gas masks. They took them off only when they heard the "all clear" signal, she said.
Cole was shocked at disclosures — contained in a 2001 Army report — that 62 percent of the Army's gas masks were "either completely broken or less than fully operational."
"If we had thought there was even a question that our gas masks would not work, that they could be defective or completely useless, that fact would have been devastating for morale in the face of an attack with biological or chemical agents," she said.
Erin, quoted above is on the board of Veterans for Common Sense and I echo her sentiments. During six years of active duty, I never had a working mask. Training in the gas chamber was quite nice. There's nothing like a full dose of CS in a confined space. Many of those men and women in the Gulf today are using the same sorry equipment I used in 1991. And yet, the Adminstration still them sent to war and the pro-war crowd said nothing. Because they don't really care. If chemical weapons are deployed, no one in the Administration has the moral right to act surprised when the U.S. death toll rises dramatically. They, the chickenhawk brigade, and previous Administrations created this problem by ignoring the pleas of vets for 12 years.