Debora MacKenzie writing for New Scientist on US in U-turn over Gulf war syndrome
Terence Walker is one of the lucky ones. On 19 January 1991 he was with 6000 British troops at Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia, as the first Gulf war was beginning.
At the same time, I was with about a few thousand or so Marines from Camp Lejeune, somewhere in the Saudi desert, having already departed Al Jubayl.
At around 3am there were loud bangs and flashes, and troops scrambled into gas masks as chemical detector alarms sounded. Some detectors in the area registered the nerve gas sarin, but the UKƒ€™s Ministry of Defence later said that these alerts were false alarms.
In our various USMC compounds we had several false alarms. Given the fact that one of those false alarms resulted in us spending over 8 hours at MOPP Level IV, I'd have to question the validity of our command's claims that all the alarms were false. Why spend so much time in gear (specifically the charcoal suits) that had been used well past their effective time limit if this was a simple false alarm?
You can't do squat at MOPP IV (at least not in the Gulf War era charcoal suits). Movement and vision are impaired and its an overall pain in the ass. As a side note, this was due as much to the design of the gear as to insufficient training at this level of NBC protection.
Since Walker returned home he has suffered from chronic diarrhoea, sweating, insomnia, muscle and stomach pain, fatigue, loss of memory and arthritis. That does not sound so lucky. But in 1997, after five years of trying, he won a full military pension on the basis of some of those symptoms. Many similarly afflicted Gulf veterans have failed.
Large numbers of sick veterans in the U.S. have been getting turned away as well, although things may be about to change – nearly 14 years too late for some. Tireless activists like Steve Robinson are seeing to it that the "Support the Troops" folks from the first Gulf War finally make good on their rhetoric. Yellow ribbons in a time of war is one thing, looking the other way when the man you sent to war becomes deathly ill is quite another.
Of course, prior to our most recent foray into Iraq when I helped sound the alarm on our serious deficiencies in the area of NBC gear, the chickenhawks (who don't really Support the Troops, just the President) were too busy screaming "TRAITOR" at everyone else or hating all things French to notice this problem. I still shudder when I think about how big a bullet our men and women dodged as a result of Saddam's lack of chemical or biological weaponry on the battlefield. Folks, you just don't know it. Had the Administration's bullshit about massive stockpiles actually been true, our casualty rate would be much, much higher. That may not be the case when our Big Government Conservative President decides its time to act on his "mandate" by annexing Iran and Syria. The gear is still in too short a supply and the fucked up older gear is still mixed in with the good stuff.
Link courtesy of Richard M. Ask.