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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 13, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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"Missing" Gulf War papers

What is the Pentagon really hiding?

By John Catalinotto

The Pentagon says it lost Gulf War logs covering eight vital days. This raises new questions about a bigger military cover-up regarding Gulf War Syndrome.

On Feb. 27 Pentagon officials announced they had "lost" 164 of 200 pages of classified logs for March 1-8, 1991. That was the first week of the land war against Iraq.

The official story is that these logs recorded when any chemical or biological weapons were detected. Copies-both on paper and computer, in two separate locations-have mysteriously vanished.

Some 697,000 U.S. troops served in the Gulf War. Of them, at least 90,000 have reported symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome. The symptoms include gastrointestinal dysfunction, severe fatigue, chronic headaches, joint aches and memory loss.

Veterans' spouses have also reported symptoms. And children born to Gulf War veterans have a high rate of congenital problems.

Gulf War Syndrome's suspected causes are the Pentagon's use of un tested vaccines, radiation from depleted uranium used in shells and tank shielding, micro-organisms, insecticides and nerve gas-or some combination of these factors.

Since last summer, most media reports have focused on nerve gas. At that time the Pentagon reversed its earlier denials. Instead it said GIs may have been exposed to nerve gas when U.S. forces demolished the Iraqi ammunition depot at Kamisiyah.

Even the Pentagon's usual supporters in the U.S. Senate and in the American Legion have criticized its lies and about-faces. But catching the Pentagon in a lie does not in itself prove nerve gas caused Gulf War Syndrome.

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf insists the troops were not exposed to nerve gas, and points out that nerve-gas exposure would have been impossible to cover up. If it had occurred, many troops would have died immediately.

Workers World spoke with Frank Alexander of the Depleted Uranium Education Project of the International Action Center. He said: "This latest disclosure demonstrates more clearly than ever the wide Pentagon cover-up of Gulf War Syndrome. But if-as Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf insists-troops were not exposed to nerve gas, then we have to ask if they are covering up something even bigger.

"The Pentagon has suppressed explosive information on the health and environmental consequences of the widespread use of depleted-uranium weapons and its probable role in Gulf War Syndrome," said Alexander.

"During the slaughter against Iraq," Alexander said, "the Pentagon field-tested weapons made with depleted uranium, a material that generates low-level radioactivity. The U.S. military left over 300 tons of DU from spent shells in the region."

DU is a super-dense material that makes effective penetrator shells and tank shields. DU shells burn when they strike metal. U.S. troops who boarded burned-out Iraqi tanks could have easily inhaled small particles of burnt DU that then lodged in their lungs.

The IAC is publishing a book by scientific experts, political analysts, anti-nuclear and environmental activists, and victims of Gulf War Syndrome that exposes the dangers from DU weapons. It calls for an investigation of the causes of Gulf War Syndrome completely independent of the Pentagon and the government. The IAC also calls for a ban on the military use of DU.

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