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1996-12-10
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Foreign Correspondent
Inside Track On World News
By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>
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WHY THE PENTAGON HAS BEEN COVERING UP ABOUT GULF WAR SYNDROME
by
Eric Margolis 9 Dec 1996
New revelations last week reinforce the widely held belief
that the Pentagon has been covering up the extent and
gravity of the complex of illnesses known as Gulf War
Syndrome.
Military logs covering eight days in March 1991 are missing.
a period in which tens of thousands of US and allied troops
were accidentally exposed to chemical and/or biological
agents.
During this mysterious eight-day gap, US troops blew up the
huge Kamisiyah munitions dump in southern Iraq, that held
6,000 shells and 297 rockets containing the nerve agent
Sarin, or mustard gas. The cloud produced by the explosion
drifted south, blanketing at least 15,000 allied troops,
according to a CIA study. Other studies suggest 100,000 men
were affected by the toxic cloud.
The Pentagon, coalition leader Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and
former US Chief of Staff Colin Powell, all insist there is
no proof allied forces were exposed to chemical-biological
weapons (CBW), in spite of many alarms by chemical sensors.
Indeed, Gulf War veterans have not died, or been
hospitalized, at an abnormal rate.
Nevertheless, it's by now clear that large numbers of Gulf
War vets are suffering a host of ill-defined, unknown, or
undiagnosed ailments. Having been one of the first to
report the extent of Iraq's CBW plans, and based on my own
investigation just before the war in Baghdad, here is my
conclusion: :
Besides Kamisiyah, US forces destroyed a score of other CBW
plants in Iraq. The largest was Salman Pak, outside
Baghdad. This huge facility was bombed even though the US
believed it contained 150 litres of deadly anthrax, and
quantities of botulism toxin. Fortunately, the Iraqis moved
these toxins before the war began. Otherwise, the US attack
would have released a cloud of anthrax and botulism over
Baghdad - enough to kill a million of its inhabitants.
Substantial quantities of toxins, nerve agents, and mustard
gas were spewed into the air from other bombed plants,
blowing south into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Add to this
miasma a black rain of toxic hydrocarbons from Kuwait's
burning oil wells, and widespread use by US forces of
poisonous depleted uranium tank and cannon shells.
Not since the Western Front in World War I had troops been
so intensively exposed to a lethal soup of environmentally
toxic elements. In addition, most coalition forces were
given powerful, untested drugs against chemical attacks, and
potent inoculations that almost certainly caused severe,
lingering reactions in many soldiers.
Put troops in an ecological hellhole, douse them with small
amounts of airborne toxins and chemicals, inject them with
other chemicals, and it's inevitable that mass illness will
ensue. Ironically, the Gulf War - the most modern of wars
- was like a medieval war in that illness laid low far more
soldiers than combat.
The Pentagon covered up the extent of CBW-induced illness
and civilian casualties for two principal reasons: First,
the war was a made-for-TV triumph. Reports about large
numbers of sick veterans - or great numbers of Iraqi
civilian dead - would have spoiled President Bush's victory
parade.
Second, the US and Britain did not want attention drawn to
their central role in developing Iraq's vast arsenal of
toxins and germs. Last month, it was revealed that a senior
scientist -who chaired the Pentagon study that concluded CBW
had not caused illness among Gulf vets - had been director
of firm that had supplied Iraq with toxic cultures before
the war.
His biotech firm, American Type Culture Collection of
Rockville, Maryland, had supplied Iraq 70 shipments of
anthrax, botulism, and other extremely deadly pathogens in
the 1980's. Iraq used these breeder stocks to produce a
witch's brew of biological warfare agents.
Britain also supplied raw materials and manufacturing
equipment, as did Germany. Most important, Britain sent
technicians - many of whom I interviewed in Baghdad. Three
were working on the Salman Pak anthrax project; one on
Iraq's top secret nuclear weapons program. Their
information provided one of the first comprehensive looks
at Iraq's biological and nuclear weapons program.
Why did the west build Saddam's CBW capability? At the
time, Iraq, was locked in a long, bloody war with far more
populous Iran. The US and Britain secretly backed Saddam
Hussein with arms and money in the hope he would crush
Iran's Islamic revolution that threatened Anglo-American oil
interests in the Mideast.
Iran, short of weapons but with large numbers of troops,
resorted to mass infantry attacks, delivered with suicidal
bravery, to break Iraqi lines. Outnumbered Iraq needed
wide-area weapons to halt these attacks. The US and UK
secretly supplied the means: chemicals and toxins. Both
agents were used intensively by Iraq, killing or fearfully
maiming tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers. Western-
supplied CBW played a key role in defeating Iran. Iraq also
developed CBW as a counter-force to Israel's nuclear
weapons.
But the Pentagon cannot reveal US troops were sickened by
agents whose biological progenitors came from Rockville,
Maryland. Nor that blowing up Iraq's CBW plants and depots
may have been a grave error. Or, for that matter, that the
entire `surgical' Gulf War, and the subsequent poisoning of
so many soldiers, may have been avoided by diplomacy.
copyright eric margolis 1996
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For Syndication Information please contact:
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Eric Margolis
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