Gulf War Syndrome II

Soldiers now fighting in Iraq are being exposed to battlefield hazards that have been associated with the 'Gulf War Syndrome' that afflicts a quarter-million veterans of the 1991 war, said a former Central Command Army officer in Operation Desert Storm.

Part of the threat today includes greater exposure to battlefield byproducts of 'depleted uranium' munitions used in combat, said the former officer and other Desert Storm veterans trained in battlefield health and safety.

Their concern comes as troops are engaged in the most intensive fighting of the Iraq War.

Complicating efforts to understand any potential health impacts is the Pentagon's failure, acknowleged in House hearings on March 25, to follow a 1997 law requiring baseline medical screening of troops before and after deployment.

"People are sick over there already," said Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the Army's depleted uranium (DU)project. "It's not just uranium. You've got all the complex organics and inorganics [compounds] that are released in those fires and detonations. And they're sucking this in.... You've got the whole toxic wasteland."

In 1991, Desert Storm Commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf asked Rokke to oversee the environmental clean up and medical care of soldiers injured in friendly fire incidents involving DU weapons. Rokke later wrote the DU safety rules adopted by the Army, but was relieved of subsequent duties after he criticized commanders for not following those rules and not treating exposed troops from NATO's war in Yugoslavia.

Rokke said today's troops have been fighting on land polluted with chemical, biological and radioactive weapon residue from the first Gulf War and its aftermath. In this setting, troops have been exposed not only to sandstorms, which degrade the lungs, but to oil fires and waste created by the use of uranium projectiles in tanks, aircraft, machine guns and missiles.

"That's why people started getting sick right away, when they started going in months ago with respiratory, diarrhea and rashes -- horrible skin conditions," Rokke said. "That's coming back on and they have been treating them at various medical facilities. And one of the doctors at one of the major Army medical facilities -- he and I talk almost every day -- and he is madder than hell." Rokke declined to identify his Army medical contact.

DU, or Uranium-238, is a byproduct of making nuclear reactor fuel. It is denser and more penetrating than lead, burns as it flies, and breaks up and vaporizes on impact -- which makes it very deadly. Each round fired by a tank shoots one ten-pound uranium dart that, in addition to destroying targets, scatters into burning fragments and creates a cloud of uranium particles as small as one micron. Particles that small can enter lung tissue and remain embedded.

Efforts to contact Pentagon officials for comment at the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses and officials at the Veterans Administration who deal with DU-related illness were not returned.

What Rokke and other outspoken Desert Storm veterans fear is today's troops are being exposed to many of the same battlefield conditions that they believe are responsible for 'Gulf War Syndrome.' These illnesses have left 221,000 veterans on medical disability and another 51,000 seeking that status from the Veterans Administration as of May 2002.

"Yeah, I do fear that," said Denise Nichols, a retired Air Force Major and nurse, who served in Desert Storm and is now vice-chairman of the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition. "We're sitting here watching it happen again and wondering if the soldiers are going to be taken care of any better [than after the 1991 war]."

Nichols' lobbying sparked Congress to pass a 1997 law requiring the Pentagon to conduct a physical and take blood samples of all soldiers before and after deployment. In a House hearing on March 25 on that requirement, Public Law 105-85, Pentagon officials said the military had not conducted those baseline tests for Iraq War soldiers, saying they asked troops to fill out a questionnaire instead.