Veterans for Common Sense

Scientists and several veterans groups said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ignored evidence indicating serious safety concerns when it recently approved a drug called PB to protect soldiers from poisoning by a nerve gas.

The veterans groups, including Gulf War Vets, whose members first took PB in 1991 while serving in Iraq, said they plan to urge Congress to investigate the science behind the FDA’s decision.

The groups point to a 1999 study by the RAND Corporation and a 2000 report from a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine, both of which concluded pyridostigmine bromide, or PB, could not be ruled out as causing Gulf War syndrome. This is a set of symptoms that includes fatigue, cognitive problems, muscle pain and weakness, and sleep disturbances experienced by some Gulf War vets who served in Iraq in 1990-1991.

Despite these studies, the FDA approved the drug last week for use in soldiers to prevent poisoning by a nerve gas called soman that can kill within a matter of minutes.

Another controversy about FDA’s decision is that PB is the first drug approved under a new rule that does not require human studies. The rule allows treatments for biological and chemical weapons to be approved on the basis of animal data because it would be unethical to expose humans to deadly agents.

In addition, the FDA did not convene an advisory panel of independent experts, as it normally does, and the agency did not consult with researchers considered to be experts in the area.

Beatrice Golomb, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego and the author of the RAND report, said the FDA’s approval of PB is “concerning,” in particular because “a substantial amount of research has been done since (the 1999 report) strengthening the case” of a link between PB and Gulf War syndrome.

A study released by Duke University researchers just two weeks before the FDA approved PB found a combination of three chemicals — including PB — to which Gulf War veterans likely were exposed caused testicular damage in rats. The researchers think this could explain the infertility and sexual dysfunction problems seen in some Gulf War vets.

Robert Temple, associate director for FDA’s center for drug evaluation and research, said he was not certain if the agency had reviewed the Duke study prior to approving PB.

He also acknowledged the agency decided not to conduct an advisory committee of independent researchers familiar with the topic because “we thought (the decision) was fairly clear cut.”

Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s health research group, questioned how the decision could be “clear-cut” given there were no human studies conducted. He also noted the drug’s effectiveness at protecting against soman is questionable and there is concern it could worsen exposure to another nerve gas called sarin.

Rick Weidman, director of government relations with the Vietnam Veterans of America, noted “there is no peer-reviewed scientific study saying that PB is effective against soman and it’s safe to use.”

The agency’s decision not to hold an advisory panel meeting “is a serous problem because this would be the first drug … approved just on the basis of animal evidence so there’s more of a reason to subject it to very careful scrutiny,” said Wolfe, whose group filed a lawsuit challenging the experimental use of this drug in Gulf War vets in 1991. Public Citizen lost the lawsuit because the court ruled national security overrode the health concerns of soldiers.

The decision to forgo an advisory committee also meant the FDA did not have to take public comment on PB.

The agency also did not consult with the members of the IOM committee, Golomb, or any other experts in the area, Temple said.

Instead, the FDA “just read the reports” on PB and relied on studies in guinea pigs and monkeys to reach the conclusion the drug was safe and effective, Temple said. The safety of the drug was also backed up by its use for treating patients with myasthenia gravis, a disease that affects the muscles and for which PB was first approved in 1955.

Temple also asserted the major studies on the effects of PB in soldiers “concluded that you really couldn’t make the case pyridostigmine had anything to do with the Gulf War syndrome.”

This is an interpretation that runs in direct contradiction with those of the experts involved in those studies.

“My reading of the literature suggests there is an increasing and persuasive amount of literature to suggest … pyridostigmine contributed to the clinical health problems in Gulf War Veterans,” said Golomb, who also serves as science director for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ research advisory committee on Gulf War illnesses.

Golomb noted the FDA did not consult with her before deciding to approve PB and she is “puzzled why they didn’t talk to me.”

Harold Sox, chair of the IOM committee on health effects associated with exposures during the Gulf War that issued a report in 2000, said in presenting the committee’s report in 2000 there was “sufficiently strong (evidence) to demonstrate an association between exposure and the immediate onset of mild, transient symptoms.” Sox, who chair of Dartmouth’s department of medicine at the time and is now editor of the Annals in Medicine, noted that the long-term side effects were uncertain.

“In other words,” he said, “we don’t know if they occur, and we can’t be certain that they don’t occur.” The committee recommended further study of the link between PB and Gulf War illness.

William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said, “We are pleased with the FDA decision to license pyridostigmine bromide … As an FDA-approved drug for use as a pretreatment against the chemical warfare agent soman, PB provides a critical safeguard against a chemical threat.”

One concern among Veteran groups is if PB will be mandatory or voluntary for soldiers. A source at the Department of Defense, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “There hasn’t been any kind of decision made if it would be mandatory or even if they are going to use it.” The source added, however, that since “PB is FDA-approved a commander would be able to order it’s use.”

Several members of Congress still have concerns about PB’s involvement in Gulf War illness, including Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chair of the House subcommittee on national security, international relations and veterans affairs.

“The approval is very troubling because PB is still under investigation as a contributing factor in Gulf War illness,” Shays’ spokeswoman Betsy Hawkins said. “Just as troubling is how the doses will be set in humans since the approval was based on animal data,” Hawkins said.

Shays plans to look into how the approval of PB in the absence of human tests could impact a veteran’s ability to obtain compensation if he or she suffers an adverse reaction to it.

“We would be looking at how the fast-tracking of some of these compounds is getting them into use before adequate testing on humans has been done,” Hawkings said.

“The challenge is going to be for (a soldier) to have adequate medical records and data to demonstrate a link (between PB and an adverse reaction),” she said. “If an item has been fast-tracked and the testing has not been done it might be more difficult to prove. So we will be looking at both those things and how it’s happening and why.”

Another issue is whether PB will impair soldier’s ability to function in a combat situation. John Richardson, who retired as a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, flew F-16 jets as a member of South Carolina’s Air National Guard and said the drug made him unable to operate as a pilot. His first dose of PB made him nauseous for two or three hours, he broke out in sweats and his eyes teared.

“I would have not been able to effectively accomplish a combat mission while taking that pill,” Richardson said. “I don’t think someone driving a tank would be able to do much better.”

All the major veteran groups, including the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the National Gulf War Resource Center and the Vietnam Veterans of America, will write a joint letter to FDA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs objecting to the approval of PB, said Steve Robinson, a spokesman for the NGWRC, which represents Gulf War Vets.

The letter will also be sent to members of Congress asking them to look into the issue, said Robinson, who served as an Army Ranger in the Gulf War.

“It does not pass the common sense test,” Robinson said. “There’s too much science that says it does harm.”

The manufacturer of PB, ICN Pharmaceuticals of Costa Mesa, Calif., did not return phone calls from UPI.

U.S. encounters more resistance to Iraq plans

China adds to calls to avoid war

Brussels, Belgium (AP)- Washington’s effort to build a coalition for war against Iraq hit more resistance today from NATO and beyond, with allies balking and China adding its voice to calls for bolstered U.N. arms inspections.

A second day of heated negotiations failed to end one of the worst crises in NATO’s 53-year history: a split triggered when France, Germany and Belgium blocked U.S. plans to defend Turkey in a possible new Persian Gulf war.

After behind-the-scene talks throughout the day, ambassadors from the 19 NATO countries met for only 20 minutes this evening before ending the session. Talks were to resume Wednesday morning, he said.

“Right now we do not have a conclusion,” said NATO spokesman Yves Brodeur. Informal negotiations would continue through the night, he said.

The 15 other alliance members support the United States.

The division in the alliance also threatens to undermine the Bush administration’s attempts to muster support in the U.N. Security Council for military action against Iraq. France, Russia and Germany sought more time Monday for beefed-up U.N. inspections in a proposal opposed by Washington.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin, in a telephone call with French President Jacques Chirac, reiterated China’s stance on finding a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.

Beijing’s support means three permanent members of the council — with veto power — are now lined up against the United States and Britain in opposition to war with Saddam.

“The inspection in Iraq is effective and should be continued and strengthened,” China’s official Xinhua news agency paraphrased Jiang as saying Tuesday. “Warfare is good for no one, and it is our responsibility to take various measures to avoid war.”

Besides China, France and Russia also were prepared to block a Security Council resolution calling for war, after Moscow added its voice Monday in support of intensified arms inspections.

In Paris, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin praised the French-Russian partnership against an Iraq war today. “It is up to us … to do everything possible to prevent a conflict that could seriously threaten regional and international stability,” he said in a toast to visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

NATO’s disarray drew international headlines, with Danish newspapers proclaiming “NATO in a historic crisis” and “NATO is the hostage of the Iraq conflict.”

The crisis cast doubt on the future of an alliance founded to fight the Cold War: In seeking to reinvent itself as a force to counter terrorism or rogue states, the alliance has yet to agree on even modest defensive measures for one of its members.

“It is a matter of enormous consequences for the alliance,” NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said after talks Monday failed to soften resistance to military preparations for Turkey.

The crisis, bubbling for almost a month, came to a head Monday when France, Germany and Belgium rebuffed Turkey’s direct appeal for help under NATO’s mutual defense treaty.

A second emergency meeting of the alliance’s decision-making North Atlantic Council began tonight after two postponements.

The U.S.-backed plan would involve preparations to send Turkey AWACS early warning planes, Patriot anti-missile batteries and units trained to counter chemical and biological weapons.

The United States says those measures are needed to protect Turkey from an Iraqi missile strike, as the U.S. prepares to move troops into Turkey for a possible northern front against its neighbor Iraq.

Opponents argue such military planning would set NATO on a path to war and undermine efforts for a peaceful solution. Playing down the threat to Turkey, they want to delay a decision at least until Friday’s report to the Security Council from U.N. weapons inspectors on any Iraqi progress.

Diplomats suggested today that changing the wording of Turkey’s request for help — to stress the need to calm civilians rather than prepare for war — could clear the way for a compromise but a decision could still be delayed until the end of this week.

The split has plunged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into what some at alliance headquarters said was its worst crisis since the dispute over the deployment in Europe of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the early 1980s.

Some diplomats even compared it to the mid-1960s, when then French President Gen. Charles de Gaulle withdrew from the alliance military structure and forced NATO to move its headquarters from Paris to Brussels.

Some of the European allies said the split strikes at the heart of NATO’s united defense pledge.

“This is the most fundamental rule in NATO, on which we, too, base our security,” Norway’s Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold said, adding that she was appalled by France, Germany and Belgium’s decision.

In Washington, President Bush said: “It affects the alliance in a negative way when you are not able to make a statement of mutual defense.”

“Upset is not the proper word,” Bush said when reporters asked for his views on France’s diplomacy. “I am disappointed that France would block NATO from helping a country like Turkey to prepare.”

Washington allies hoped the holdouts would be swayed by NATO’s senior military official, German Gen. Harald Kujat, who briefed the alliance Monday on the potential dangers to Turkey from Iraq — including, diplomats said, Scud missiles tipped with poison gas or germ-warfare agents.

Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul acknowledged the dispute went beyond the question of helping his country to deeper divisions within NATO.

“There is no doubt that Turkey is not the target here,” Gul said in Ankara. “A diplomatic battle is going on.”

Without NATO agreement, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said Washington would act on its own to defend Turkey. Already, the Netherlands is preparing to send Patriot missile units to Turkey without waiting for NATO.

In the wider context, NATO would not play a direct role in any U.S.-led offensive war against Iraq. Instead, as in 1991, Washington will rely on allies such as Britain and Australia. Germany has ruled out any participation in a war, but France, which participated in 1991, has yet follow suit.

Court Bans Peace March in Manhattan

New York, NY – Antiwar demonstrators may not march past the United Nations complex on Saturday, or anywhere else in Manhattan, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Agreeing with the city that a large, moving rally of 100,000 people or more raised serious security risks, the judge said the organizers would have to settle for a stationary rally five blocks north of the complex.

In refusing to grant a parade permit, the city did not violate the demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, wrote in her opinion rejecting their request for a preliminary injunction. She said that their free-speech rights were adequately protected by the city’s counteroffer of a rally for 10,000 people at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, at 47th Street, with overflow space as far north on First Avenue as needed.

Judge Jones said that the city had offered compelling reasons for not being able to guarantee the safety of marchers — or of the United Nations complex, where all demonstrations and parades have been banned since the terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center. The judge noted that the city had presented evidence about two incidents: a failed plot to bomb New York landmarks, including the United Nations, and the case of a gunman who scaled the front fence at the United Nations in October and fired pistol shots through upper windows to protest human rights violations in North Korea.

Organizers of the umbrella group organizing the protest, United for Peace and Justice, began negotiating with the Police Department about three weeks ago. They called the judge’s decision an assault on their constitutional right to express opposition to a possible war with Iraq. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed an immediate appeal yesterday with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

“We know we have a right to march so we will continue to fight for that right,” said Leslie Cagan, 55, a co-chairwoman of United for Peace and Justice.

Ms. Cagan said the group had specifically requested a march because it was more meaningful than a rally. Noting that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had recently made a case for war to the United Nations, she said she wanted marchers to pass by the complex because it “is also a symbol for the possibility of international cooperation, and that’s what we want to be promoting.”

But Judge Jones gave great weight in her opinion to testimony from Michael D. Esposito, an assistant police chief. He said that Ms. Cagan had not been able to give him a firm estimate of how many people would be attending the march, so he feared the department could not provide sufficient security. He said a stationary rally, in contrast, could be adequately policed, even if crowds of 100,000 or more gathered.

Judge Jones said that she was not willing to “second-guess” the chief’s judgment, saying that “the court credits the city’s assessment that the N.Y.P.D. could not responsibly plan security for a march of this magnitude with only the limited amount of information that the organizers have offered the N.Y.P.D. at this late point in the planning process.”

Jeffrey D. Friedlander, the city’s assistant corporation counsel, said he was gratified by Judge Jones’s decision. “We will continue to work with the organizers so their voices can be heard consistent with the First Amendment and the interests and safety of the city,” he said.

The city’s counteroffer included the rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th Street and First Avenue, which is within view of the United Nations. An overflow crowd of any size could be accommodated in pens on First Avenue, the police said.

Ms. Cagan said of that location: “If you’re at all toward the back you can’t see the U.N. We’re trying to show a unified statement against this war. The proposal breaks us up.”

The Police Department’s contention that it could not maintain safety at a traditional, peaceful protest march was rejected yesterday by a number of First Amendment experts who found the court’s decision a bad precedent.

Victor A. Kovner, a leading First Amendment lawyer and a former corporation counsel under Mayor David N. Dinkins, said it marked a “low moment in New York’s history.”

“Large marches are being held in cities throughout the nation and the world,” Mr. Kovner said, “and it is incomprehensible that the finest police department in the world cannot accommodate a traditional peaceful protest. Given the wealth of precedents for peaceful marches, it is a highly disturbing precedent.”

Ms. Cagan and others who support the effort to march said the city’s denial of a parade permit had nothing to do with safety. At a news conference yesterday, City Councilman Bill Perkins said: “This is meant to send a message beyond New York City and it is going to have a chilling effect nationally. I think the Bush administration does not like political dissent and has influenced the Bloomberg administration to stop it.”

Ms. Cagan said that the presence of two federal prosecutors at the hearing last week was a testament to that. The prosecutors, David Jones and Andrew O’Toole, assistant United States attorneys based in Manhattan, appeared before Judge Jones to voice the government’s concerns about its treaty obligations to ensure access and safety at the United Nations.

“We had no idea that they were going to weigh in on this,” Ms. Cagan said. “We think this is part of something unfolding nationally, a serious curtailing of civil liberties throughout this country.”

Ms. Cagan and Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, noted that the city allowed cultural parades that attract just as many people as the protest march might. They cited the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which usually draws around 100,000 spectators.

But Judge Jones found that these annual events involved months of planning, and that the police had substantial experience securing them.

Chief Esposito said that Ms. Cagan’s proposed march lacked a carefully planned and paced sequence, which would make it difficult to control crowd surges or other emergencies.

In a statement sent to media organizations earlier this week, the retired CIA officials also referred to an agency assessment report last fall, which, they said, opposed a military offensive against Iraq.

They urged the Bush administration to “re-read” the CIA report that pointed out: “The forces fueling hatred of the United States and fueling al Qaida recruiting are not being addressed” and that “the underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist.”

That CIA report cited a Gallup poll last year of almost 10,000 Muslims in nine countries, in which respondents described the United States as “ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased.”

Terrorism, the CIA veterans said, is like malaria. “You don’t eliminate malaria by killing the flies. Rather you must drain the swamp. With an invasion of Iraq, the world can expect to be swamped with swamps breeding terrorists. In human terms, your daughters are unlikely to be able to travel abroad in future years without a phalanx of security personnel.”

Referring to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation at the U.N. last week, the veterans said: “We give him an ‘A’ for assembling and listing the charges against Iraq, but only a ‘C-‘ in providing context and perspective.”

Powell, they said, effectively showed that Iraq is not cooperating fully with U.N. Security Council Res. 1441 but “the narrow focus on (the resolution) has diverted attention from the wider picture.”

The key question, they said, is whether Iraq’s flouting of a U.N. resolution justifies war. “Secretary Powell’s presentation does not come close to answering it,” they observed.

The veterans argued that there were other U.N. resolutions that had never been implemented and asked if the United States would be willing to go to war to implement those resolutions as well.

They observed that the Arab-Israel conflict was among “the root causes not only of terrorism” but also provided Saddam Hussein with an excuse to arm himself.

Challenging the perception that Iraq is a grave threat to the United States, the veterans urged the administration to reconsider its Iraq policy, as presenting Iraq as a threat to the world’s only superpower did not sound very convincing.

The veterans refer to an Oct. 7, 2002 letter the CIA sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in which the agency said that the probability is low that Iraq would initiate an attack with weapons of mass destruction or give them to terrorists. That was so unless: “Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would be come much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions.”

For now, continued the CIA letter: “Baghdad appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical/biological warfare against the United States.”

With his back against the wall, “Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.”

They added: “It is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future. Far from eliminating the threat, it would enhance it exponentially.”

Discussing the possibility of the Iraqi use of chemical weapons, the veterans said it has been the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community for over 12 years that the likelihood of such use would greatly increase during an offensive aimed at getting rid of Saddam.

Referring to Powell’s claim that Saddam had recently authorized his field commanders to use chemical weapons, the CIA veterans said: “We find this truly alarming. We do not share the Defense Department’s optimism that radio broadcasts and leaflets would induce Iraqi commanders not to obey orders to use such weapons, or that Iraqi generals would remove Saddam Hussein as soon as the first U.S. soldier sets foot in Iraq.”

They said the last time the United States sent more than 600,000 troops to the Gulf, one of three came back ill — many with unexplained disorders of the nervous system.

“Today’s battlefield is likely to be even more sodden with chemicals and is altogether likely to yield tens of thousands more casualties,” they added.

Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International

Dallas, Texas – Thousands of servicemen and women preparing for an attack on Iraq could face a horrifying mix of deadly chemicals and biological agents — and some veterans advocacy groups fear they aren’t as prepared as they could be.

Many researchers believe Desert Storm veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome have provided troops now deploying to Iraq a valuable lesson at the expense of the veterans’ own health: that even low-level exposure to biochemical weapons can damage the nervous system beyond repair.

The Department of Defense asserts it’s made dramatic progress in its ability to protect American troops against chemical and biological warfare in the past 12 years. The protective gear being issued to troops deploying now is vastly improved, the agency says, and “without a doubt the best that is available in the world today.”

But some veterans and their advocates aren’t buying those assurances.

“You know, they said the same thing before 1991,” said Steve Robinson, director of the National Gulf War Resource Center.

Secretary of State Colin Powell spent 90 minutes before the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday trying to convince member nations that Iraq is hiding from U.N. inspectors stores of biochemical weapons and mobile facilities to make them.

President Bush continued to hammer the point Thursday, charging that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein “recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons — the very weapons (he) tells the world he does not have.”

The dangers of the Iraqi arsenal are well-known to Charles Townsend, a veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq and a victim of Gulf War syndrome. His brain damage, the apparent result of exposure to low levels of sarin gas, has left him with dwindling motor control, balance problems and the inability to concentrate.

“Everyone is cannon fodder in a war,” Townsend said, shrugging. But he says he’s angry that his government sent him overseas with poor protective gear and then fought his disability claims for years, attributing his medical symptoms to stress and his imagination.

“The design of the mask I wore was 30 years old,” he said.

Veterans advocate Steve Robinson fears that many of the troops being deployed to Southwest Asia may come home in the same shape as Townsend. He points to a report issued by the U.S. General Accounting Office in October charging that 250,000 defective chemical protection suits never were accounted for and could still be in service.

“I’m concerned about the deficiencies of the equipment. I’m concerned about what (the Defense Department) did to the last vets, and I’m concerned with the next generation going over there, because they clearly have the same threat we were facing in 1991.”

Joyce Riley, a former military nurse and founder of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, takes an equally jaundiced view. She says she has gotten calls from parents of currently deployed troops relaying complaints that the newly designed gas masks don’t fit well.

“Do I think our troops are going to be safer this time? Absolutely not,” Riley said. “We have not even admitted to our veterans just how serious the previous problems are,” Riley said.

Townsend’s medical problems have grown more serious over time, like thousands of other Persian Gulf veterans who came home with a baffling assortment of symptoms that first were dismissed by Veterans Administration doctors as stress-related.

Although the VA now concedes that many Gulf War veterans share ailments such as chronic fatigue, balance and cognitive problems, the cause of those illnesses remains in dispute.

Of approximately 575,000 Gulf War veterans eligible for VA benefits, about 25 percent are certified as disabled to some degree.

The life Townsend knew before the war just slipped away over time. He’s 53 now, can’t hold down a job, can’t pursue the hobbies and sports he once loved and has trouble with mundane chores such as putting dishes on a shelf.

The Dallas man’s living room is piled knee-high with old newspapers, cardboard boxes and books. The mess clearly embarrasses him.

But those yellowing piles of debris are the crumbs he left to mark the trail he’s followed for a decade, trying to get answers for why his body turned on him.

Townsend said he arrived in the Persian Gulf region in late August 1990. A member of the 50th Signal Battalion of the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, he was stationed at King Fahd Airport in Saudi Arabia.

During January 1991, U.S. troops stationed at the airport came under attack by Scud missiles launched by the Iraqis. U.S. troops fired Patriot missiles at the Scuds, destroying them over the heads of servicemen.

Monitors installed at the airport to “sniff” the air for toxic chemicals and biological agents went off all the time, Townsend said, but the technicians manning them always dismissed them as false alarms.

The Pentagon denied for several years after the Gulf War that American troops had been exposed to toxic chemicals, but in 1996 conceded that as many as 100,000 Gulf War veterans may have been exposed to low levels of sarin gas when U.S. troops destroyed an Iraqi munitions depot in Khamisiyah in March 1991.

UT Southwestern Medical Center epidemiologist Robert Haley, Townsend’s doctor and a renowned expert in Gulf War syndrome, believes the answer behind many health problems that veterans brought home is found in incidents such as these: exposures to levels of toxic chemicals high enough to set off alarms, but low enough that medical personnel believed at the time it was not harmful.

“The thinking at the time was that if it didn’t kill you, there was no exposure,” Haley said.

But Haley and other researchers have focused their research on low-level exposure to sarin and other toxic agents. A consensus is growing, he said, that low-level exposure may not produce immediate symptoms, but can produce late-onset brain damage.

Sarin is a colorless, odorless and tasteless nerve gas that can be inhaled or absorbed very rapidly into human skin. The powerful toxin disrupts the nervous system — in lethal doses frequently suffocating its victims by paralyzing the muscles around the lungs.

Sarin was used by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people and sent 5,000 to hospitals. Haley says symptoms experienced by many veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome are identical to those experienced by the Tokyo sarin victims.

Using sophisticated scanning equipment that measures chemical concentrations in the brain, Haley has determined that Townsend suffered brain damage consistent with exposure to sarin gas.

What Haley calls “the clinching evidence” came in October from the University of New Mexico, where researchers exposed laboratory rats to low levels of sarin for five to 10 days. The rats suffered no immediate problems but 30 days later showed evidence of brain damage.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi last month asked the Institute of Medicine to study whether findings in the New Mexico study “hold true for humans in the Persian Gulf.”

Principi’s interest in the New Mexico research is a major breakthrough for sick Gulf War veterans, Haley said. He believes his own research has determined why some veterans were sickened after exposure to toxins, while some were not: People with higher levels of paraoxanase, a naturally occurring enzyme, appeared to have a higher tolerance to sarin exposure.

His research team has been able to isolate the paraoxanase gene and inject it into mice — which doubled the enzyme level in the test animals.

“We made them invulnerable,” Haley said, but coming up with a vaccine to immunize people against the effects of sarin is years away.

The only protection available to U.S. troops against many chemical and biological weapons comes in the form of suits, masks and air monitors. But an investigation ordered by Congress into the Department of Defense’s chemical and biological defense capabilities, reported by the GAO last October, raised several troubling points:

· 250,000 defective protective suits that cannot be accounted for

· a complex, error-prone process — essentially, record-keeping problems in the field — that precludes the DOD from being able to accurately identify the location and condition of available protective gear

· inadequate chemical defense training for ground troops

· a potential shortage of protective gear if the United States were forced to simultaneously fight two military engagements.

“We’ve put a lot of priority and emphasis on improving the protection that we provide to the individual service member,” said Department of Defense spokesman Donald Sewell. He noted improved chemical protection suits, better-fitting gas masks with filters that are easier to change, and a variety of fixed and mobile systems for detecting chemical and biological agents.

The Defense Department takes all GAO reports very seriously, he said, and has “initiated substantial corrective actions to address those concerns.”

Sewell said the Defense Logistics Agency determined that all of the chemical suits found to be defective in 2000 (produced by manufacturer Isratex) were being stored in warehouses in Albany, Ga.

But the GAO report spelled out that out of the 778,924 defective suits the DLA was trying to locate, 250,000 could not be accounted for.

The Department of Defense believes the armed services and Defense Logistics Agency “have identified all the Isratex (suits) that still exist and that the 250,000 that cannot be accounted for have been consumed and disposed of,” Sewell said.

Veterans advocate Robinson says that explanation is not good enough. “We’re going to take this risk knowing we have serious deficiencies in equipment and the threat is the same as it was in 1991,” Robinson said. “And you’ve got some PR spokesman from DOD saying we’re the best-equipped fighting force on the planet.”

“That’s probably true,” Robinson said. “But are we ready?”

Washington, DC – “You can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say, and you can’t rely on their judgment. . . . People do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong.”

Those words, uttered in the Oval Office in the early 1970s by then White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, paraphrased the thinking of another presidential adviser: Donald Rumsfeld.

According to Haldeman, Rumsfeld, who was then working in the White House, understood that the American public had lost faith in government as a result of the publication in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers, which showed the administration was not being entirely truthful with the public about the Vietnam war.

But 30 years later, Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, tells us to trust President Bush’s unproven claim that Iraq poses imminent danger to the United States.

It seems that Bush, Rumsfeld and most U.S. citizens — including the press — have forgotten the lessons of Vietnam. We have forgotten that our fears of the government’s dishonesty in the early 1970s were proven correct many times over.

Remember that former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in his memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, acknowledged that he and Nixon misled the nation about the prospects for victory in Vietnam. He apologized for failing to negotiate an early settlement of the war that could have saved thousands of young American lives.

In a subsequent book, McNamara admitted the war was prolonged by a lack of communication between the leaders of the United States and Vietnam. He said Nixon made a big mistake by acting without the support of U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere.

Sound familiar?

The Vietnam War was a searing experience for this nation. For nearly a quarter-century after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saigon, we as a nation likened every potential conflict to the war in Vietnam.

But now that we are on the verge of a war that has more similarities to Vietnam than anything since then, almost everyone seems reluctant to make the comparison. We seem bored with the Vietnam analogy.

One person who is not yet tired of thinking about Vietnam is Daniel Ellsberg, the former military officer who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

In an interview published in the Jan. 27 issue of Editor & Publisher, Ellsberg accused the American press of failing to report dissent within the government to Bush’s assertion that Hussein poses a threat to our security.

“There is as much lying going on (now) as in Vietnam, as in Iran-Contra, as in the Catholic Church sex scandal, as in Enron — you can’t have more lying than that, and that’s how much we have,” Ellsberg said.

“The first lie is: Saddam represents the No. 1 danger to U.S. security in the world. To allow the president and Rumsfeld to make that statement over and over is akin to them saying without being challenged from the press that they accept the flat-earth theory. . . . More dangerous than al-Qaida? North Korea? Russian nukes loose in the world? An India-Pakistan nuclear war?”

Ellsberg noted Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush’s mediator in the Middle East, has said that Iraq is only sixth or seventh on the list of dangers facing the United States.

Nor is Zinni alone among military men in raising doubts. Former Gens. Wesley K. Clark and Norman Schwarzkopf are also questioning whether the president is acting hastily. Clark worries that a U.S. attack on Iraq will help to radicalize more young Muslim men, turning them into anti-American terrorists.

Under normal circumstances, we might look to the opposition party to ask these hard questions. But Democrats, even Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, himself a Vietnam vet, are clearly afraid of having their patriotism impugned by Bush.

Thus the job of the loyal opposition has fallen to the oldest member of Congress, Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a history buff who at age 85 is one of the few Democrats who does not dream of sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

“This administration has put this country on a bull-headed rush to war without regard for the implication such unilateral action will have on America’s relationship with other nations,” says Byrd. “Congress has been complicit, and in my 50 years in Washington, I have only seen this cloak of secrecy as it is twice, in particular in the Nixon administration and now in this administration.”

Sara Fritz: fritz@sptimes.com

Saturday, that changed. With the proposal planned by the French and Germans, we may have found our best possible chance for a peaceful resolution.

In short, the Franco-German plan is a reinforced inspection regime: tripling the number of inspectors, reinforcing them with United Nations troops and expanding the current no-fly zone to cover the entire country of Iraq. If the plan can be implemented in such a way that the UN force does not include U.S. forces, and is not perceived as an occupying force by ordinary Iraqis, this may be the best chance to succeed, for several reasons:

* An improved and reinforced inspections regime will be able to effectively disarm Iraq;

* The sooner the UN is satisfied Iraq is disarmed, the sooner crippling economic sanctions can be lifted and the Iraqi people can stop suffering from a policy none of them can affect;

* Bush and Rumsfeld can walk away believing they have given a backbone to the United Nations and forced it to action, and can walk away with the credit;

* Saddam Hussein will be able to claim he stood up to a planned imperialist invasion and prevented it.

Most importantly:

* American soldiers won’t have to die in an offensive war;

* Tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis won’t have to die;

* Preventing a U.S. led invasion reduces the risk of inflaming the entire Muslim world against America, a very real risk associated with a unilateral assault on Baghdad.

It’s hard to argue with a plan that has all these benefits, but the first reactions of the President’s cabal are not promising, because this plan stands in the way of the real goal, which is American hegemony in the Middle East.

President Bush may be between a rock and a hard place. Faced with a real solution for peace, which would accomplish the disarmament he claims he wants, to proceed with plans for war would expose this war for what it is: naked aggression. The biggest stumbling blocks for the plan are two key issues: who will control Iraq’s oil fields when it’s all over, and the lack of a plan for regime change, one of the Bush administration’s key demands.

This may be the last critical moment to prevent a war. If enough pressure is brought to bear by American citizens, Congress and the press, the Bush administration can walk away, stop a war, and declare themselves the winners.

If there was ever a time for action, this is it. The anti-war community should quickly get behind this proposal and urge the Senate to press the administration into considering it. It may be our last chance to stop the war and prevent the deaths of thousands of people.

Charles Sheehan-Miles, a Gulf War veteran and a co-founder of Veterans for Common Sense, is a former president of the National Gulf War Resource Center and author of the novel, “Prayer at Rumayla.”

Washington, February 8, 2003 — It was right before Christmas, in a Saturday meeting in the Oval Office, that President Bush first heard the intercepted conversations between Iraqi military officers that became a centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s presentation this week to the United Nations Security Council.

On that day, Dec. 21, Mr. Bush sat with George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, and listened to the recordings of Iraqis talking about “nerve agents” and apparent efforts to hide incriminating material from United Nations arms inspectors.

That presentation, given to the president so he could consider whether to make the classified recordings and other intelligence public, was the beginning of what the White House is calling its 2003 campaign to move Americans toward support of war with Iraq.

The public relations campaign, coordinated by the White House communications office and the National Security Council, has included carefully timed speeches by Mr. Bush and his war council, a close monitoring of public opinion polls and the use of television in crucial markets to spread the administration’s message across the country.

On Thursday, the same day Mr. Bush appeared in the Roosevelt Room to say “the game is over” and put his imprimatur on Mr. Powell’s United Nations remarks, the White House directed the top two officials at the Pentagon to give an unusual series of interviews underscoring Mr. Powell’s case.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke to anchors at the ABC television affiliate in Los Angeles, the Fox affiliate in Chicago, the NBC affiliate in Seattle and the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis. The No. 2 official at the Pentagon, Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the administration’s biggest hawks on Iraq, gave interviews to local television anchors in New York, Cleveland and San Francisco. On Wednesday night, Ms. Rice made the case in appearances on CNN’s “Larry King Live” and ABC’s “Nightline.”

“We knew there was going to have to be a steady escalation of public appearances and speeches and comments about the nature of the threat,” said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.

Matthew Dowd, the Republican strategist who oversees polling for the White House, said there had been no overnight poll by the White House or Republican National Committee to gauge reaction to Mr. Powell. But he said he was encouraged by other polls showing a rise in support for action to oust Saddam Hussein, with 60 percent or more favoring a war with Iraq.

“The one-nights were all good,” Mr. Dowd said in an interview. “But it’s one night, and I would have expected there to be a jump up. I think what matters is where it is a week from now.”

The White House campaign has nonetheless suffered numerous stumbles and setbacks. A debate continued among Mr. Bush’s top national security aides until the night before Mr. Powell’s testimony over how much information to declassify, reflecting the tension between trying to convince the public of the threat of Mr. Hussein and fears that the sources of the intelligence would be compromised.

Administration officials were also alarmed when the French foreign minister said at the United Nations on Jan. 20 that “nothing, nothing” justifies war. In that same period, the United Nations weapons inspectors were asking for many more months to complete their work.

The developments prompted some White House officials to murmur among themselves, as one put it, that it was beginning to feel “a lot like August” — a reference to last summer, when Mr. Bush stayed largely silent on Iraq at his Texas ranch as a debate over the war raged among leading Republicans and on the opinion pages of newspapers.

But the White House soon moved to take control of the agenda with a precisely coordinated series of speeches. On Jan. 21, Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, gave a speech in Washington, saying that it was “ludicrous” to think that Mr. Hussein would remain “in his box.” Mr. Wolfowitz followed on Jan. 23 in New York, telling the Council on Foreign Relations that Mr. Hussein had ordered any Iraqi scientist who cooperated in an interview with inspectors to be killed, along with his family. Mr. Powell, until then the administration’s strongest advocate for weapons inspections, continued the campaign on Jan. 26 in Davos, Switzerland, indicating that he thought the inspections were useless.

White House officials leaned on Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, to be tough when he gave his Jan. 27 report to the United Nations on Iraq’s cooperation. Mr. Blix was issuing a broadly negative report that gave Mr. Bush the opening he needed in his State of the Union address the next day to move the argument forward by adding that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush also promised that the secretary of state would provide the details of these links in his presentation to the United Nations last Wednesday.

The State of the Union address, Mr. Bartlett said, was “not the appropriate forum” to present what became Mr. Powell’s 90-minute brief against Mr. Hussein. Mr. Powell also happens to be the administration’s most respected figure worldwide, with polls showing his favorability ratings higher than those of the president. “The bottom line is, he’s a strategic asset,” a senior administration official said.

The brief, which had been in large part assembled by Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, was closely monitored at the White House. Mr. Bush missed the first half hour of Mr. Powell’s presentation because of a meeting with Poland’s prime minister, but he watched the next hour live, over cheese and crackers and a Diet Coke, in his dining room off the Oval Office. With him were Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary.

Mr. Bush was so familiar with Mr. Powell’s presentation, Mr. Fleischer said, that he would signal to the group crucial parts of the testimony.

“The president would say, `This part’s coming up,’ ” Mr. Fleischer said. Afterward, Mr. Bush called Mr. Powell to congratulate him.

On Friday, Mr. Blix is to report back to the United Nations on the progress of weapons inspections, an assessment expected to be negative. Then Mr. Bush will press his case into late February or early March — when Pentagon officials say they will be ready for war. As the president said at the White House on Thursday, “The game is over.”

The search for the elusive “smoking gun” continues: do Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have a business and working relationship? So far there is a lot of smoke but no gun.

As the mocking grin of Osama still haunts us through intermittent videos on the major networks, we prepare to invade Iraq because Saddam has “weapons of mass destruction.” But how did Saddam obtain these weapons that we are on the verge going to war to destroy?

Look no further than the White House. That’s right! There are at least two smoking guns hanging out at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Two of our leaders screaming the loudest for the invasion of Iraq have ties to Saddam that have been verified. Their transactions are on paper and on video. They are both clearly linked to Saddam. They are smoking guns.

Smoking Gun Rumsfeld

Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld never experienced combat, he is anxious to send our men and women into war. Prior to his cabinet position he had considerable success as Ronald Reagan’s bagman to Baghdad. In the early 80s Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad to meet with Saddam and normalize relations. This was indeed a successful mission.

Reports by the US Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, overseeing American exports policy, show the successive administrations of Reagan and Bush Sr. sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs, and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other nasty germs were also sold. Saddam used these weapons of mass destruction on the human waves of Iranian children-soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and on the Kurds in Northern Iraq.

Supposedly, the use of chemical warfare was outlawed in the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S. and European corporations that make these horrible weapons and the intense U.S. hatred of Iran at the time made it easy to forget old laws. So Saddam got his weapons of mass destruction.

Today there are estimates of approximately 100,000 Gulf War veterans receiving disability compensation for Gulf War Syndrome. Perhaps Rumsfeld can shed some light on these ailments.

Now he wants to send our citizens to possibly face weapons he helped provide for the enemy. It’s interesting that the administration will drag out the charge of “traitor” when citizens speak out against the war, yet not for one who was instrumental for arming our enemy.

Smoking Gun Cheney

During the Gulf War, the Secretary of Defense was Dick Cheney, our current Vice President. Like Rumsfeld, Cheney never experienced combat, in fact he was never in the armed forces, but like Rumsfeld is very familiar with Iraq. During his tenure as CEO at Halliburton, the company did $23.8 million in business with Hussein after the first Gulf War.

If Hussein is such a monster, why did Halliburton and its subsidiaries sell him the equipment to get his bombed out oilfields up and running so he could afford to build weapons of mass destruction?

Though we are ready to invade Iraq, we are still doing business. Iraq is America’s second-largest Middle Eastern oil supplier. When one trades with the enemy, isn’t he a traitor?

When Cheney left Halliburton, he received a $34 million severance package for a job well done. Halliburton stockholders are now suing him for some Enron-like practices that occurred during his time at the helm.

As America’s top oil-services company, Halliburton is the nation’s fifth largest military contractor and the biggest non-union employer in the United States. It employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide and does more than $15 billion in business a year. It is not surprising, then, that Halliburton and its many subsidiaries are lined up with hands out for the anticipated military contracts. Who better to take care of Iraq’s oil after the war?

While the U.N. Inspectors are combing Iraq for weapons, they should also visit Washington and talk to Rumsfeld and Cheney, who encouraged Iraq to build up its weapons capabilities in the first place. The smoking gun is not in Iraq, it’s right here at home.

Charles R. Steward III is a journalist in Texas and is a U.S. Army Veteran.

The Call to Peace from Gulf War Heros

No one can tell John Peters and John Nicol anything about the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

They suffered grievously for fighting against the Iraqi despot in the war to free Kuwait.

They were shot down, captured, beaten and tortured. Yet yesterday, as another 100 British planes were ordered to the Gulf, both former airmen spoke out against waging a new war on Iraq.

Like others who have actually taken part in military conflict, they understand it is necessary but must be the last resort.

And we are not yet at that stage in the struggle to control Saddam. He may want to possess weapons of mass destruction, he may want to attack other nations, but there is no evidence he is anywhere near being able to.

That is why so many former military men have come out against war at the moment. Like John Peters and John Nicol, they don’t believe action is necessary – and think it might be dangerous.

We know the British generals are dubious about invading Iraq. Their opposite numbers in the US are likely to feel the same.

As ever, the politicians who order in troops do so from a position of comfort and safety. Neither George W. Bush nor Tony Blair have personal experience of warfare.

They should listen to the men who do.