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Intelligence

Senate Raps Investigation, Chemical Warfare Training

 
By Douglas J. Gillert 
 
American Forces Press Service

 WASHINGTON -- A new Senate report criticizes the federal 
 investigation of Gulf War illnesses but generally supports 
 findings suggesting there's no single cause of the illnesses. 
 Moreover, most military units are not adequately trained to 
 respond to future chemical or biological attacks, the report 
 said.
 "There is no smoking gun in this report, no explosive new 
 evidence that says 'whodunit' and why," committee member Sen. 
 Robert Byrd said. But the report confirms that veterans were 
 exposed to "a poison cocktail of hazardous materials, that many 
 are now ill, and that the bureaucratic response has been slow 
 and stumbling," Byrd said.
 The DoD investigation didn't integrate crucial weather 
 information provided by the Air Force, according to the Sept. 1 
 report from the special investigation unit of the Senate 
 Veterans' Affairs Committee. Neither did the department subject 
 its findings to important critical scientific review by outside 
 experts, the report said.
 A scientific consultant contracted by the Senate investigators 
 supported these criticisms. The consultant also said DoD grossly 
 overestimated the numbers of service members who may have been 
 exposed to chemical warfare agents.
 The investigating unit found no evidence to either prove or 
 disprove Iraq used chemical weapons during the Gulf War. 
 However, the report concluded that the U.S. military was not 
 adequately prepared to deal with the threat of biological or 
 chemical warfare and is still unprepared today.
 "Although the threat of chemical and biological warfare has 
 increased since the Gulf War and hangs heavy over the potential 
 battlefields of the 21st century, the military still has 
 inadequate supplies of vaccines and chemical biological 
 protective equipment," the report said.
 "Almost eight years after the Gulf War, our military is still 
 not prepared to fight in a chemical or biological warfare 
 environment, said committee member Sen. Jay Rockefeller. The
 senator pointed to a DoD inspector general report that 
 corroborates these findings.
 The IG report, released July 17, said only the Navy's surface 
 ships have fully integrated chemical and biological defenses 
 into the unit training mission. The DoD inspectors reviewed 232 
 military units. At 187 of the units, "commanders could not 
 adequately assess unit readiness to successfully complete 
 wartime missions under chemical and biological conditions," the 
 IG report stated. Management controls "needed improvement to 
 ensure that chemical and biological defense is fully integrated 
 into all levels of unit training," the report concluded.
 Bernard Rostker, who heads the DoD Gulf War illness 
 investigation, said the Senate report contains good insight 
 about the investigation and recommendations for improvement.
 "While there are some criticisms, which we will address, we 
 appreciate the good working relationships developed with the 
 [special investigation unit] staff who traveled with us to 
 search for answers to help veterans," Rostker said. "We look 
 forward to continuing this work with the committee."
 In an earlier statement, Rostker praised DoD for taking lessons 
 learned from the Gulf War to develop new protective measures for 
 deployed troops. He said his investigation revealed a need for 
 better record-keeping, medical surveillance, environmental 
 sampling and forward-deploying biological detection. Since the 
 Gulf War, he said, DoD has fielded a new gas mask, tested 
 medical dog tags and begun developing improved chemical alarm 
 systems.
 "I can't take direct credit, but the importance of these issues 
 is consistent with what we have learned," he said.
 DoD also has launched a departmentwide vaccination program that 
 eventually will provide every service member and certain 
 civilian employees and contractors with protection against 
 anthrax, a deadly nerve agent that can be easily weaponized. 
 Anyone deploying to the Persian Gulf receives the shots, and 
 those assigned to units in South Korea received the first of a 
 series of six required inoculations in September.
 




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