WP: The Fallout of War: -- 30 Dec 2002

[Guest guest]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52223-2002Dec29.html

" The Fallout of War: Iraqi Ammo Debris Fell on Jim Stutts in '91. In Many

Ways, He's Being Pelted Still, Front Page, Style Section, Washington Post,

December 30, 2002:

Excerpt:

As the United States deploys troops in anticipation of another battle with

Iraq, the Pentagon says it still has no answer for an enigma that has

confounded experts for more than a decade: What caused all those Gulf

veterans' symptoms? The memory lapses, fatigue, joint pains, rashes,

headaches, dizzy spells . . . not to mention the cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease

and birth defects.

Many vets speculated that they were poisoned by a combination of vaccines,

pesticides, oil fire pollution and other battlefield toxins, including

chemical and biological weapons stockpiled by Saddam Hussein. For years their

maladies weren't taken seriously: It's stress, it happens after every war and

it's all in your head, the military doctors said

....(later)...

A standard-issue gas mask and chemical protection suit decorate one corner of

Steve 's small office in Silver Spring. A former Army Ranger

sergeant, he's head of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans'

advocacy group. Crunching recent VA statistics, he has come up with what he

calls the " post-war casualty rate " of America's last war with Iraq.

In his view, the numbers demolish the notion of a clean or easy victory.

Estimated veterans: 573,000. Number who have proved, to the satisfaction of

government doctors, that they had a service-related medical problem: 160,000.

Which comes to nearly 28 percent -- a rate of approved disability claims

exceeding World War II (6.6 percent), Korea (5 percent) and Vietnam (9.6

percent).

Some VA and Pentagon officials say the rate is inflated by the government's

recent, more liberal policies of evaluating service-related illnesses. Others

say the rigors of military life -- all that running and parachuting -- result

in higher claims in categories like musculoskeletal woes. Others postulate

that previous generations of vets were just tougher.

But, at both the VA and the Pentagon, the top doctors concur on one point:

The Gulf vets are not fakers or malingerers.

" This is not a psychosomatic issue, " says Kilpatrick, deputy director

for deployment health support in the Department of Defense...

....(later)...

Ashford, a psychiatrist, is an Alzheimer's specialist who runs the hospital's

memory disorders clinic. On a hallway wall, he displays computer images of 10

vets' brains, pinpointing areas of reduced blood flow. Compared to the smooth

gray hemispheres of a normal brain, these resemble landscapes pocked by

gaping craters. Bombs come to mind.

" The striking thing is, " Ashford says, " you don't see these problems in the

Vietnam vets, the Korean War vets, the World War II vets. "