This generation’s Agent Orange
Well, It isn’t like we haven’t mentioned this before as part of the societal cost of war.
1 in 4 Gulf war vets have Gulf War Syndrome. It seems to be linked to pesticides and pyridostigmine bromide (PB). Pesticides are nerve agents and guess what they affect people as well as the insects they are aimed at. There is probably more causals but this shows how much we simply don’t understand.
Via the Rome News (Rome, GA)
Gulf War illness is typically characterized by a combination of memory and concentration problems, persistent headaches, unexplained fatigue and widespread pain. It may also include chronic digestive problems, respiratory symptoms and skin rashes.
[snip]
In a 2004 draft report to Congress, the panel said that many Gulf veterans were suffering from neurological damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals.
The new report goes further by pinpointing known causes and it criticizes past U.S. studies, which have cost more than $340 million, as “overly simplistic and compartmentalized.”
[snip]
It said that Acting Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Gulf War illnesses Lt. Gen. Dale Vesser remarked that year that although Saddam Hussein didn’t use nuclear, biological, or chemical agents against coalition forces during the war — an assertion still debated — “It never dawned on us ././. that we may have done it to ourselves.”
“We know that at least 40,000 American troops may have been overexposed to pesticides,” Vesser said, adding that more than 250,000 American troops took the small, white PB pills. “Both of these substances may (be) consistent with the symptoms that some Gulf War veterans have.”
Read the entire article. Pesticide exposure, bathing uniforms in DEET, Soldiers wearing flea collars against insects and scorpions, and that doesn’t count the 100,000 troops exposed to Sarin when we demolished an arms bunker.
A chilling report to say the least.
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And many of my fellow brothers from the Vietnam War are still fighting the VA to be able to get benefits for Agent Orange exposure! And also many are seeing private physiologists on their own buck because the VA canceled contracts to cover PTSD treatment with those physiologists. Now they want the physiologists to do it for free. Go figure, they will only be happy when we are gone!