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The press release was picked up
by CNSNEWS.com
Thanks to all for getting this
out to the media.
;)
Vets Group Wants Rumsfeld Out Over
Alleged Shipment to Iraq
By
Lawrence Morahan
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
October 08,
2002
(CNSNews.com) - The American Gulf War Veterans Association
(AGWVA) is calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for
his reported denial that he knew anything about U.S. shipments of chemical and
biological agents to Iraq in the 1980s.
If the defense secretary is
unaware or in denial of the sale of biological materials to a country the United
States is preparing to attack, then he represents a danger to the lives of
service members, said Joyce Riley vonKleist, a spokeswoman for AGWVA.
"As
a result of the actions of the secretary of defense, we have now called for Mr.
Rumsfeld's resignation or dismissal from his office. This is absolutely
unconscionable," vonKleist said.
In response to questioning by Sen.
Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 19,
Rumsfeld "quickly and flatly denied" any knowledge that the United States helped
Iraq acquire biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, Byrd stated in a Sept.
20 press release.
Rumsfeld, however, told Byrd he would review Pentagon
records on the issue.
Byrd, citing a 1995 letter from David Satcher, the
former director of the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said
the United States in fact provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples
to Iraqi scientists in the mid-1980s, "samples that included the plague,
botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases," according to Byrd.
A Senate report on U.S. dual-use exports to Iraq, dated May 1994, made
clear the United States shipped anthrax and the West Nile virus to Saddam
Hussein's nation in the 1980s with the knowledge and approval of the Commerce
Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vonKleist
charged.
Rumsfeld should be up-to-date with information about the
military capabilities of a potential enemy, she added.
A defense official
had no comment on the veteran group's demand for Rumsfeld's resignation. Lt.
Col. Cynthia Colin, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said a review of Pentagon
records to date indicated, however, that the department had not supplied germs
or other toxins to Iraq.
Rumsfeld's testimony has become a controversial
subject with Gulf War veterans who have comrades who died of unexplained deaths
or suffer illnesses the veterans believe they contacted in the Gulf in
1990-91.
Of 697,000 service members who deployed, 400,000 are suffering
some form of illness related to the conflict, said vonKleist, who served as a
medical crew director aboard a C-130 at the rank of captain in the Air Force in
1991.
According to an April 2002 report from the Department of Veterans
Affairs, nearly 7,800 Desert Storm veterans have died since the end of the
conflict and nearly 200,000 filed claims with the VA for medical
problems.
Gulf War veterans suffered from exposure to biological and
chemical weapons, depleted uranium in ammunition, and smoke from oil well fires,
veterans' groups report. VonKleist said the Defense Department has not fully
investigated the effects of various vaccines service members were required to
take, including inoculations for anthrax.
"We have a credibility problem
with the Department of Defense. It's not just the atomic veterans. It's not just
the Gulf War illness. It's not just Agent Orange. It is the whole idea that the
Department of Defense is telling the American public one thing and doing another
thing," she said.
A great deal of research continues to be conducted on
the causes of illnesses reported by service members who participated in the Gulf
War, Pentagon officials reported.
But although Gulf War veterans report
higher rates of sickness, to date there is no objective evidence to suggest they
experience higher frequencies of hospitalization, death rate or birth defects
than their peers who did not deploy, officials said.
"We know that there
are Gulf War veterans that have some health problems and we've done a lot of
work here trying to pin down a cause," said Austin Camacho, a Defense Department
spokesman. "There has been a huge amount of research, but there doesn't appear
to be anything definitive.
"We continue to research ... what we can do to
make these folks feel better," he said.
Defense officials also have not
been able to link illnesses with the possible use of chemical or biological
weapons by the Iraqis during the Gulf War, Camacho said.
"That's one of
the things that we investigated exhaustively here and we haven't been able to
find any evidence, working with the CIA and DoD (Department of Defense) ... that
the Iraqis actually used any kind of chemical or biological weapons during that
conflict," he said.
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