Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own Part 1

By Gary Null Ph.D. Introduction Whether you support or challenge the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War, most agree that we should support the brave men and women who have given their time and even their lives in service of their patriotic commitments. However, what we are seeing today is a crisis, and it is a crisis that is not being captured by the American media or by the imbedded journalists. In fact, it is such an important story that I have performed hundreds of interviews over thousands of hours during the last four years investigating the issue of their unexplained and often untreated illnesses. I have traveled throughout the world to get these vets' stories. This issue is not dissimilar from the Vietnam War where 2.7 million Americans served. [i] When they came back with very disturbing illnesses, the American government for 20 years refused to acknowledge that these soldiers had been exposed to any serious problem. They said that our vets were suffering from a form of post traumatic stress syndrome. Similar to the Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, we are now seeing the types of illnesses that were not caused by the enemy combatants: rare and exotic cancers, debilitating fatigue, unremitting depressions, loss of cognition and memory, bleeding body rashes, and muscle and joint pain similar to arthritis and fibromyalgia.

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The Gulf War's Troubling Legacy

Updated on April 22, 2010 by Gary Null

By Gary Null Ph.D.
Introduction
With only 148 Americans officially killed in action and only 467 wounded, ours seemed to be a shining victory in the Gulf. But this victory has lost its glow somewhat, now that we know that tens of thousands of our Gulf service people have become sick from a debilitating and sometimes deadly syndrome. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that approximately 6000 soldiers have died since the war's conclusion, including1300 18- to 24-year-olds who were in perfect health prior to the war, but who mysteriously contracted various forms of cancer after their involvement with the military. According to H. Lindsey Arison, III, aide to the undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force, there are now over 50,000 veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome, including about 11,000 still on active duty.

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Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own - Part 2

By Gary Null Ph.D.
Unproven Vaccines, Unmonitored Medicine (continued)
There is debate raging in the United States between the conservatives and the liberals as to how we should extract ourselves from Iraq. While that debate is occurring and American casualties continue to mount, virtually no one is talking about the other casualties. The American casualties are the people suffering from what is called Gulf War Syndrome. What is not recorded is how many individuals, mainly women and children noncombatants who have died as a result of our being in Iraq. From 1991 to the present day, it is conservatively estimated that more than 700,000 women and children have died. Others place that estimate at over one million. Regardless of whether it is 700,000 or a million, it is an unacceptably large number. What are the consequences of our being there as far as the environmental impact, the use of depleted uranium? Have our soldiers been used as human guinea pigs? Has the military, the Defense Department, the CIA, and others used them as human guinea pigs to test different vaccines? We're going to find out the answers to these questions in this original in-depth investigative report.

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Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own - Part 3

By Gary Null Ph.D.
Depleted Uranium (continued)
The official count of the American dead since the second Gulf War began is approximately 2,350. The number of injured and seriously injured is over 20,000. Many of these people have been injured permanently. The piece of the puzzle that's missing, however, is that hundreds of thousands of vets from the first and second Gulf conflicts have come back home and are suffering from very unusual illnesses. These are illnesses that young healthy people simply never contract. When you look in their blood you're able to find types of microorganisms that were clearly weaponized. Finding weaponized microorganisms in the blood of our soldiers is a first in American history. The combined bacteria and viruses together to create mycoplasma that debilitates the immune system. How did the soldiers become infected? Why has our government lost 70,000 of their records, specifically those who had this special type of microorganism put into their bodies? Who authorized the use of these weapons? Why has the mainstream media been virtually silent on this? How many have died as a result of infection? Estimates are that as many as 15,000 to 20,000 have died. What would the American public think if on top of the 2,350 current dead in Iraq that there were another 20,000 dead from the first Gulf conflict? What if there were another 100,000 to 150,000 so debilitated and with their lives so diminished that they would be looked upon as victims of this war as well? The new figures would change our perspective. Whether we agree or disagree with the current presence of American soldiers in Iraq, we all agree that anyone who goes over deserves the best attention they can get. No one should come back after serving in the Gulf suffering from illnesses that our government denies they contracted, whether they're caused by depleted uranium, anthrax, or botulism vaccines. Our government is denying there is any such thing. As a result, these soldiers are going broke. They are dying in ways that you could not imagine.

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Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own - Part 4

By Gary Null Ph.D. Are Gulf Vets Really Sicker? (continued) Nearly 200,000 Gulf War veterans are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Some estimates are that 20,000 American service personnel have died due to the Gulf War Syndrome. What are we doing about this? How are we helping these vets? Please join me now as we continue our in-depth original investigative reporting series Gulf War Syndrome Killing Our Own. We have discussed up to this point about why the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the State Department, the CIA, the White House, and the Veterans' Affairs have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the complaints of these hundreds of thousands of Gulf War vets, and the thousands who have died from their illnesses. These soldiers' complaints have to be taken seriously. There has been no major effort by the government to understand what is going on. We understand. We believe these vets have real diseases and real physical ailments, and we believe they have real causes. The soldiers would like to hear a public acknowledgement of what caused their illnesses and would like a government official to say," here's your treatment and compensation." This has not been done. It is my hope that when more of this information filters out into the larger population people will begin to examine it and hold the appropriate agencies accountable.

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By Gary Null Ph.D.
Strong Insecticides Used

Hom and Haley's studies, mentioned earlier in this paper as well as others done recently with Duke University scientists, are finally demonstrating that chemical synergy, rather than combat stress, is the underlying factor in Gulf War syndrome. All of the the toxins to which troops were exposed show the potential for synergistic damage is extensive and hard to fully comprehend: ipesticides, insect repellent, sometimes used in the form of flea collars worn by soldiers, DEET, nerve gas, anti-nerve-gas medication, experimental vaccines, burning-oil-well fumes, and depleted uranium.

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Genetic Modification of Plants: Early History of Plant Genetic Engineering.

I was editor of the weekly biotechnology news service BioEngineering News from 1980 through 1993. I covered plant genetic engineering from its inception and was even allowed (under secrecy agreement) to attend the first Gordon Research Conference on plant genetic engineering. (No reporter had ever been allowed to attend one of these conferences before--since the secrecy agreement later hampered me as to what I could write about the subject, I suspect that may have been the reason.)

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Bond Market Will Never Be the Same After Goldman

Commentary by Michael Lewis
If you happen to be sitting on the Goldman Sachs bond-trading floor life must feel horribly unfair. You did nothing worse than live by the ethical assumptions of your market -- any money-making event short of obviously illegal is admirable -- and now your own grandfather thinks you’re some kind of monster. Your world feels upside down: What was right is now wrong; what was good is now bad; what once felt like winning now feels like losing. You are probably wondering: What next? What will the angry rabble -- all those ordinary people who can never really understand your business -- now demand that you explain to them, so they can disapprove of you all over again?

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The Middle Class Game Is Up: We're Heading to a Slave Labor Planet

Class solidarity was such a good idea. It really was. Obviously, most of the people who need solidarity are in the world's laboring classes. After all, the rich have more than enough solidarity already, as was recently demonstrated by their successful execution of the greatest global financial heist in history. Oh sure, we'll see some state sponsored mock show trials of a few of them -- they always throw a few of their own out of the sleigh to the wolves during their escapes. The big heist was big news. Working Americans will be applying Preparation H to their keisters for a long time to come.

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Hightower: The Screwed-Up Airlines Are Proof That 'Free Enterprise' Is Bogus Corporate PR

Golly, whatever happened to America's good ol', bold-and-brassy, can-do competitive drive? To see a troubling sign for our nation's famed, free-enterprise frontier spirit, sneak a peek at the downward flight path of America's major airlines. These corporations have become no-can-do, anti-competition behemoths, whining that there are too many airlines, too many planes, too much competition. "It's a jungle out there," wail top executives of the airlines. So, to enhance their "competitiveness," they are urging a rash of mergers that would consolidate the industry into fewer and even bigger corporations. Yes, in their alternate (and perverse) universe, airline CEOs say that the only way they can compete is to ... well, have less competition! "The industry needs to evolve into a more rational structure," asserts a top official at American Airlines. "We have an industry that is too fragmented, with too many competitors and with different ideas of capacity, pricing and strategic activity."

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