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thedrifter
12-17-07, 07:07 AM
No End for 'Gulf War Syndrome'
William M. Arkin (washingtonpost.com)

The Department of Defense says it has not found a U.S. soldier who became sick from depleted uranium exposure since the Gulf War -- that is, since the U.S. military has been fighting and serving in Iraq since 1991.

In an interview with the Stars and Stripes this week, Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of force health protection and readiness for the DoD, said that not a single soldier who had served from 1991 to the present has become ill due to the American use of depleted uranium. The Pentagon, he says, has been following 70 service members who had heavy exposure in 1991 and that none have developed cancers or other diseases thought to be associated with depleted uranium. Moreover, of more than 2,000 members tested from the war in Iraq, only 10 were found to have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies.

That should be good news for Gulf War veterans and their families. But, because of the Army's insensitive and incompetent handling of concerns about depleted uranium over the years, and because a vocal depleted uranium protest industry continues to dominate the subject, the issue is unlikely to go away anytime soon. This is especially the case because the Pentagon's credibility on soldier and veteran health is low as a result of scandals like Walter Reed.

Depleted uranium, a byproduct of uranium enrichment, has been used by the military since 1950s as in tank rounds and large caliber bullets for armor penetration. Hundreds of thousands of such rounds were used in the first Gulf War and tens of thousands were used in the Iraq War. When unexplained illnesses referred to as "Gulf War Syndrome" emerged after the 1991 conflict, some people began to argue that depleted uranium was the cause.

Numerous medical studies, undertaken by the Pentagon and outside authorities, including the World Health Organization, have found that there was no difference in death rates, hospitalization rates or self-reported symptoms between Persian Gulf and non-Persian Gulf vets.

Yet today, there are doctors and scientists and veterans who have made it their life's work to argue that the U.S. military knowingly put the health of its troops at risk. Their crusade has prompted ongoing, congressionally mandated investigations and monitoring programs of veterans' health. And the agitation has provoked speculation and confusion in the news media. Take, for example, this heart-breaking story, which ran in the Arizona Daily Star last summer, about a previously healthy Iraq war vet dying of "a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it." Despite a lack of evidence, the paper accepted that depleted uranium might be the cause.

Meanwhile, the Italian defense minister has reported that 255 Italian troops contracted tumors and 37 died after serving on joint missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Balkans in the past decade -- because of radioactivity from depleted uranium. And when Iran's parliament passed a resolution in September labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," it cited the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq among the "crimes."

Because there are unexplained illnesses, and because many in Congress have neglected the science and pandered to the depleted uranium hype, the military has dutifully conducted studies galore and spent many millions trying to find the cause of sicknesses.

Because the subject of these investigations are U.S. soldiers and Marines, the Pentagon has found itself unable to say what it really thinks: that the people who complain about depleted uranium are quacks and anti-war partisans and anti-U.S. propagandists. Nor has the Pentagon been able to persuade Congress to stop its pandering or convince it that the confusion about depleted uranium is causing problems by allowing bad science and ugly speculation to simmer.

What is needed in the depleted uranium "debate" isn't more study, but brutal honesty. Depleted uranium isn't the cause of any syndrome -- except a highly political and imaginary one. What is more, it has become part of an ugly bill of particulars against the United States. That is all the more reason to end the speculation about the health effects of depleted uranium, both to U.S. service members and veterans, and to civilians abroad.

Ellie