History moves in circles and cycles. That’s why it’s important to study history, because through the study of history you can learn to recognize your current place on the cycle and better anticipate what might be coming next. Sometimes you even meet the same people over and over.
Seymour Hersh has a new book out called Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America’s Ailing Veterans and Their Government. Seymour Hersh was the reporter who first uncovered evidence of the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops at My Lai 30 years ago.
Although the new book is about the aftermath of the Gulf War, I can’t help thinking about Vietnam. After the war in Southeast Asia, the veterans who returned were sicker, as a class, than Americans who stayed home. There was more cancer, more auto-immune disease; many veterans’ children were born with birth defects. The veterans blamed Agent Orange, the dioxin-laced defoliant spread by the military over much of Vietnam for many years of the war. A book about the 20 years following that war could have also been subtitled “The War Between Ailing Veterans and Their Government.” For 20 years, the federal government hid data, lied about exposure and denied benefits to men who had been poisoned in the service of their country.
The Gulf War has been over for seven years and we are again moving through the historical cycle of sick veterans and government stonewalls. Seymour Hersh has been through this territory before, he knows what to look for. Here’s what he came up with:
During the Gulf War, U.S. troops were exposed to fallout from U.S. bombings of Iraqi chemical and biological plants – including the accidental demolition of nerve gas weapons after the war, over 20 pesticides, radiation from depleted uranium ammunition, leaded diesel fuel, smoke from hundreds of oil well fires and perhaps most sinister of all, anti-nerve gas pills distributed by their own government.
Before ground action commenced in the Gulf, it was well known that U.S. troops might face nerve gas. As a precaution, the Pentagon distributed Pyridostigmine Bromide – or PB – pills to the soldiers. What the Pentagon did not distribute were the two complementary medicines needed to make the PB pills effective.
Hersh writes that PB pills until that time had only been tested on animals and were expected to have the unwanted side effects of confusion, tremor, memory loss, stupor and coma. Not exactly the condition you want to be in for battle. So the Pentagon handed out pills that instead of protecting soldiers, could only make them sick – but it all looked so good on the tee vee back home.
And what about the nerve gas the PB pills were not protecting the soldiers from? Hersh reports that between 1985 and 1990, until just months before the Gulf War started, the United States made 771 sales of weapons to Saddam Hussein, the mid-east madman.
So there it is – all documented and written down between hard covers, but where’s the outrage? I was against the Gulf War then, and I said so. Perhaps the soldiers who are sick today were wrong to have gone eight years ago. That’s immaterial. They committed a selfless act, and if those soldiers – and the rest of the nation – were misled by our leaders, then that’s a further reason we should be taking care of them today.
So where are the politicians and pundits who called for war? Where are the generals, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell? They commanded in Vietnam and again in the Gulf. Why have they never spoken up on behalf of their men, injured in either war?
The cycles of history continue to spin, the last war recedes, the next war approaches. Remember where you are and what will happen next.
Enough to Make You Sick
History moves in circles and cycles. That’s why it’s important to study history, because through the study of history you can learn to recognize your current place on the cycle and better anticipate what might be coming next. Sometimes you even meet the same people over and over.
Seymour Hersh has a new book out called Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America’s Ailing Veterans and Their Government. Seymour Hersh was the reporter who first uncovered evidence of the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops at My Lai 30 years ago.
Although the new book is about the aftermath of the Gulf War, I can’t help thinking about Vietnam. After the war in Southeast Asia, the veterans who returned were sicker, as a class, than Americans who stayed home. There was more cancer, more auto-immune disease; many veterans’ children were born with birth defects. The veterans blamed Agent Orange, the dioxin-laced defoliant spread by the military over much of Vietnam for many years of the war. A book about the 20 years following that war could have also been subtitled “The War Between Ailing Veterans and Their Government.” For 20 years, the federal government hid data, lied about exposure and denied benefits to men who had been poisoned in the service of their country.
The Gulf War has been over for seven years and we are again moving through the historical cycle of sick veterans and government stonewalls. Seymour Hersh has been through this territory before, he knows what to look for. Here’s what he came up with:
During the Gulf War, U.S. troops were exposed to fallout from U.S. bombings of Iraqi chemical and biological plants – including the accidental demolition of nerve gas weapons after the war, over 20 pesticides, radiation from depleted uranium ammunition, leaded diesel fuel, smoke from hundreds of oil well fires and perhaps most sinister of all, anti-nerve gas pills distributed by their own government.
Before ground action commenced in the Gulf, it was well known that U.S. troops might face nerve gas. As a precaution, the Pentagon distributed Pyridostigmine Bromide – or PB – pills to the soldiers. What the Pentagon did not distribute were the two complementary medicines needed to make the PB pills effective.
Hersh writes that PB pills until that time had only been tested on animals and were expected to have the unwanted side effects of confusion, tremor, memory loss, stupor and coma. Not exactly the condition you want to be in for battle. So the Pentagon handed out pills that instead of protecting soldiers, could only make them sick – but it all looked so good on the tee vee back home.
And what about the nerve gas the PB pills were not protecting the soldiers from? Hersh reports that between 1985 and 1990, until just months before the Gulf War started, the United States made 771 sales of weapons to Saddam Hussein, the mid-east madman.
So there it is – all documented and written down between hard covers, but where’s the outrage? I was against the Gulf War then, and I said so. Perhaps the soldiers who are sick today were wrong to have gone eight years ago. That’s immaterial. They committed a selfless act, and if those soldiers – and the rest of the nation – were misled by our leaders, then that’s a further reason we should be taking care of them today.
So where are the politicians and pundits who called for war? Where are the generals, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell? They commanded in Vietnam and again in the Gulf. Why have they never spoken up on behalf of their men, injured in either war?
The cycles of history continue to spin, the last war recedes, the next war approaches. Remember where you are and what will happen next.