/** mideast.gulf: 32.0 **/
** Topic: Italy-->USVets: Syndrome **
** Written 6:14 PM May 15, 1997 by seg in cdp:mideast.gulf **
The present letter is being sent to the seventy-odd "Gulf War Syndrome Organizations and Contacts" we have been able to locate, thanks to internet.
The Italian monthly Guerre e pace (wars and peace), published by the Comitato Golfo per la Verità sulla Guerra (Gulf Committee for Truth on War), has published several articles dealing with the medical situation in Iraq as a result of the war and "embargo", and on the Gulf War syndrome. In our December 1996 issue we published my article "Iraq, the Unending War: Syndrome - 5 Years of Lies".
We maintain that it is scandalous that Allied authorities (USA, UK) knowingly held back information that would have enabled veterans to better understand and cure their war-derived health problems, but also that the lies and the indifference of these authorities towards the health situation in the Gulf area (Kuwait, Iraq) have prevented an effective diagnosis of the syndrome. If this should be true, then the Gulf syndrome organizations would seem to have something to gain, apart from simple reasons of human solidarity, by demanding that the terrible health situation in the Gulf be expeditiously, thoroughly and expertly studied by any authority interested in helping the Allied veterans.
To quote, in translation, from the said December article, "The scandal, a scientific idiocy, is that the Gulf syndrome is faced as if it were simply the Allies' problem, as if the hundreds of thousands inhabiting the war zone, especially infants and children, who have died because of war related diseases and toxic wastes, belonged to another species, not quite human, not pertinent, not to be taken into consideration.
"And yet it is there that most of the veterans were poisoned, undergoing, although to a far lesser degree, the same contagions to which the Iraqis and the other peoples of the area were exposed. Nevertheless, the US government has consistently rejected all requests by the doctors and the government of Iraq for information on the location of atomic residues in order to prevent a further worsening of the already disastrous health situation and give better cure to the population. Likewise, it has refused to recognize the gravity of the sanitary situation in Iraq, clearly related to the conditions of the Allied veterans. Since it refuses to recognize it, clearly it cannot study it, not even to have a better understanding of the diseases of its own soliders and their families."
How do you feel about our analysis? To what extent is the request for a US or Allied study of the situation in Iraq a part of your program? These are the two questions to which we would be glad to have your frank, detailed response.
Gordon Poole
Comitato Golfo per la Verità sulla Guerra
Guerre e pace
via Massimo Stanzione, 18
Napoli 80129 ITALIA
e-mail <go.poole@agora.stm.it>