Congress to CIA: Review Gulf War Illness Info

by Mike Bailey, Staff Writer 

I have an unique view of the chemical exposure’s of Kamisayah, Iraq in March 1991. I was not present for the exposures, despite being activated for the First Gulf War, I am however the only man that was in the First Gulf War, that was also part of the group chosen as the "control group"  the enlisted men of the Army’s Medical Volunteer program that ran from 1955 thru 1975 at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. I was selected a med-vol in May 1974 and was sent to Edgewood Arsenal on June 25 1974 where I remained until August 22, 1974. My med-vol number is 6778A.

These men spent twenty years being exposed to chemical weapons and drugs, such as LSD, PCP, Scopolomine and other aubstances that were never given names  just substance numbers from Edgewood Arsenal that were given numbers to identufy them  EA2345  the substances provided by large drug companies with chemicals they did not know what to do with, so they turned them over to the military for human experimentation.

These 7120 enlisted men are also the only know group exposed to Sarin and mustard agents.  The Department of Defense has spent since the First Gulf War to attempt to blame Gulf War Illness in mental issues. In FY 2000 the National Academies of Science/ Institute of Medicine   (NAS/IOM) conducted a DOD funded research project on the medical problems caused by Sarin Exposures.

The report that was issued by the NAS/IOM in March 2003 by William Page, P.H.D, who has been involved in most DOD research for the past 20 years that has failed to find any liability by the DOD. The report titled Long Term Health Effects of Exposure to Sarin and other Anticholinesterase Chemical Warfare Agents.

This report was light on substance and ignored some very high statistics that should have brough louder outcry from the veterans groups, but were for the main part over looked. The fact that these 7120 volunteers who were aged 45 – 65 in FY 2000, reported a 40% death rate, 3098 men could not be found using, IRS, VA and Social Seceurity databases. Men aged 45-65 are either paying federal taxes or drawing federal benefits, they do not just disappear.

The report also noted that of the 4022 survivors that were located and replied to the medical follow up surveys, indicated that 54% of them are disabled another 2200 men. Yet the report does not explain why the men are disabled or the cause of any of these disabilities.

The main conclusion of William Page’s report was that they could not find enough data on sarin exposed veterans to make a scientific jusdgement as to what medical problems could possibly be linked to small dosage exposures as the wind would have caused by spreading the Sarin present at Kamisayah over the Iraqi, Kuwait and Suadi Arabia, landscape of March 1991.

The medical problems related to Sarin and mustard agent exposure are known only to a small group of researchers and populations, Iran-Iraq war has left many victims, we have no cultural exchange with Iran, so there statistics are not available to us, despite the fact we supported Saddam Hussein’s was with Iran and supposedly made weapon available to them from 1980-1988.  Pesticides that were converted into chemical weapons, were American troops poisoned by pesticides by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld?

However there are a few western power chemical weapons studies that were compiled in earlier wars that are not as concise research done in the past 20-30 years, but a medical research project based on German soldiers from the Wermacht program was pusblished in 1975 thru the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) – Delayed Toxic Effects of Chemical Warfare Agents – from page 40 is a list of known medical problems from the Germans exposed to Sarin and Mustard agents in WW2

A psychiatric delayed-effect syndrome was found as a result of systematic investigations on former members of CW production and testing stations for the Wehrmacht. In terms of frequency, two groups of symptoms can be distinguished–each consisting of four separate symptoms or signs.

Our results are a contribution to the general question of psychopathological delayed and permanent lesions caused by industrial poisoning. On the basis of our studies of the etiologically different manifestations of toxication, the possibility of a relatively uniform–though equally unspecific–cerebro-organic delayed effect syndrome is conceivable

If you will check the list of undiagnosed illnesses accepted by the Department of Veteran Affairs for presumptive medical conditions from Gulf War One, you will find almost this entire list matches it, why?

Almost all periods of war have one thing in common, WW2, the Korean War, and Vietnam have an average of 9% of all veterans are compensated for service related injuries, why do the Gulf War veterans have a 25% compensation rate, what is the defining difference, could it be the exposures of sarin and mustard agents at Kamisayah, Iraq in March 1991?