Gulf War Veterans to Push for Treatment and Benefits

Persian Gulf War veterans agreed Tuesday to launch a major push in Congress next year in the wake of the Pentagon’s latest disclosures that U.S. troops may have been exposed to chemical agents during Operation Desert Storm.

At a meeting here, board members of the Gulf War Resource Center, which represents 19 veterans’ groups, voted to seek legislation that would guarantee Gulf war veterans full treatment and disability benefits for their illnesses and finance more research into the problem.

Chris Kornkven, the center’s president, said that the group hopes to take advantage of heightened awareness of the issue following a Pentagon admission this summer that thousands of U.S. soldiers probably were exposed to nerve agents in 1991 after blowing up the Khamisiyah weapons storage complex in Iraq.

The disclosure, which followed an inspection of the Khamisiyah site by a United Nations investigative commission, effectively reversed the Defense Department’s previous position that no U.S. troops had been in contact with chemical agents during the war.

The announcement by the center marked the first formal reaction to the Pentagon disclosures by a Gulf War veterans’ organization. Although the decision is not binding on other Gulf War veterans groups, it is expected to set the tone for any new legislative effort.

In Washington, Defense Department officials told reporters Tuesday they also are investigating another intelligence report that suggested U.S. troops may have been nearby when Iraq used mustard gas against Shiite Muslim nomads in southern Iraq shortly after the war ended in 1991.

Navy Capt. Michael Doubleday, a department spokesman, cautioned, however, that the information, reported over the weekend in the Birmingham (Ala.) News, was “raw intelligence” sent quickly to troops in the field before it had been evaluated. He said the Pentagon was investigating to see if it is true.

Kornkven said that legislation the veterans plan to seek would be modeled after a 1991 law that expanded treatment and benefits for Vietnam-era veterans after it was found that some had been exposed to Agent Orange, a chemical used to defoliate enemy-held territory.

Although researchers never proved a medical link between exposure to Agent Orange and the symptoms that the Vietnam veterans suffered, Congress declared all such illnesses--including two forms of cancer--to be “service-connected,” guaranteeing free treatment and disability and survivors’ benefits.

Persian Gulf veterans have been complaining of a wide variety of symptoms, from aching joints and insomnia to memory loss and serious neurological problems but clinical studies by the Pentagon had been unable to find a cause for the illnesses.

The Defense Department conceded last month that as many as 15,000 U.S. troops may have been exposed to nerve agents during the destruction of the Iraqi bunker, but Pentagon officials have said that they expect the figure to rise significantly after revised estimates are completed soon.

Gulf War veterans said that the figure could surge to 100,000 or more, particularly if authorities find evidence of additional exposure, either attributable to fallout from explosions at the bunker or from other incidents that some of them believe the Pentagon has not yet revealed.

The announcement of the new legislative push came a day before the President’s Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, a special White House panel set up to investigate the handling of the veterans’ complaints, is scheduled to meet in Tampa.

The committee is expected to consider a routine staff report and is not expected to make any decisions on substantive issues. The group is to present final recommendations to President Clinton sometime in December. It will meet in Washington next month.

In its legislative agenda approved Tuesday, the Resource Center’s board would:

* Require the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs to assume that all chronic neurological and immunological illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans are service-connected, no matter how long after the Gulf War they occurred, and provide full treatment and compensation.

* Finance independent research by private medical organizations into the causes and consequences of illnesses related to exposure of U.S. troops to chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War, along with a large-scale epidemiological study on general Gulf War-related illnesses.

* Establish an independent commission to review the Defense Department’s overall chemical and biological warfare programs to uncover any pitfalls and recommend ways to improve the military’s ability to detect such agents and protect troops who may be exposed to them.