Rense.com



1,011 Sarin-Exposed US
Gulf War Veterans Now Dead

By Steve Robinson
srobinson@ngwrc.org
Executive Director NGWRC
800 882-1316 ext. 162
www.ngwrc.org
2-23-2

Washington - The National Gulf War Resource Center (NGWRC), the nation's leading Gulf War advocacy organization, issued the following statement regarding a new Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) report showing extraordinarily high death rates among some Gulf War veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents near Khamisiyah, Iraq in 1991.
 
"The NGWRC thanks VA Secretary Anthony Principi for releasing the new Gulf War statistics that show a dramatically higher death rate among a segment of Khamisiyah veterans initially notified by the military of exposure to sarin chemical warfare agents, who then received a conflicting statement from the Pentagon saying they had not been exposed.
 
"The NGWRC asks VA to immediately launch medical research into the circumstances of the Khamisiyah veterans' deaths as well as to broaden research regarding the illnesses among many other Gulf War veterans.
 
"The Department of Defense (DoD) sent letters to nearly 100,000 veterans in 1997 saying they were exposed to chemical warfare agents at Khamisiyah in 1991. However, in 2000, DoD sent letters to 34,000 of the originally notified veterans saying DoD made an error and they weren't exposed in 1991 as a result of better modeling data. Also in 2000, DoD sent letters to a different group of 34,000 veterans saying that they were, in fact, exposed to chemical warfare agents in 1991 but that there were no long-term health effects from the exposure.
 
"VA statistics show that the 34,000 veterans who were sent letters in 2000, saying they weren't exposed, are ten times more likely to be dead than the 100,000 other veterans who were sent letters by the military in 1997 and 2000 retaining their status as exposed.
 
"By subtracting dead veterans and adding live veterans to the Khamisiyah population, DoD's model methodology is clearly flawed.
 
"The VA report, the first non-Pentagon analysis of deaths among Khamisiyah veterans, is convincing evidence DoD has not yet offered full accountability for the large number of Gulf War veterans who have fallen ill since 1990.
 
"The mind-set that there is no problem, must end immediately," said NGWRC President and Gulf War veteran Mike Woods.  "It took five years for DoD to admit anyone was exposed to chemical warfare agents during Desert Storm. Now DoD appears to be playing an insidious shell game with exposed veterans."
 
"Congress should fulfill its oversight duties by calling for the closure of the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses (OSAGWI), given the continued evidence that all it does is issue flawed public relations materials rather than oversee credible and long overdue research," said Woods.  "This data is not new.  Why it took more than a decade to release to the VA, which promptly publicized it, is utterly inexcusable," he said.
 
The NGWRC has called for independent oversight of investigative and research efforts since its inception in 1995.  Amont the NGWRC's goals is a full declassifiction of all government reports and documents related to toxic exposures, symptoms, and diagnoses, troop locations, and deployments dates.
 
"It is time to turn the information over to the VA, which is clearly more capable of releasing real data, no matter how troubling it might be," said Charles Sheehan-Miles, a novelist and co-founder of the NGWRC.  "Then VA and independent scientists can begin the long-neglected and much needed objective medical research on behalf of ill Gulf War veterans," Sheehan-Miles concluded.
 
"The Pentagon may be able to fool third world countries with Strategic Spin but Gulf War veterans are not buying it," said Woods.
 
http://www.ngwrc.org
 
View full report: (requires Adobe Acrobat reader)
http://www.ngwrc.org/pdf/gwvisreport.pdf


Email This Article





MainPage
http://www.rense.com


This Site Served by TheHostPros