http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3658
In this interview, Paul Sullivan, executive director of VCS and veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, notes that over 700,000 veterans need help but have been under-assisted by the VA in recent decades. (Sullivan also notes that 2 to 3 million Iraqis need help, too. I have to ask, “What about those of us in Kuwait?”)
Sullivan also noted that the VA report on the legitimate claims of veterans with Gulf War Syndrome failed to accurately reveal that a lot of evidence exists to demonstrate that usage of uranium-tipped weaponry has played a role in the Gulf War illnesses—suffered
Sullivan is trying his best to drum up media awareness on Gulf War topics, including recent research demonstrating that several hundred-thousand Iraqi-, Afghani-, and American war veterans are suffering from brain damage due to U.S. led bombings in the last two decades.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/11811
These brain injuries from U.S. bombings simulate Alzheimer’s in some American vets.
Jane Akre for VCS writes “Problems [in the recent American war veterans] observed include seizures, aggression and dementia [and] are noted in a report issued Thursday by the nonprofit, Institute of Medicine. Also noted are depression symptoms, Parkinson's-disease-like tremors and unemployment. The report is being called a wake-up call.”
http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3726.aspx
Akre elucidates, “A recent report by the Rand Corp estimated that among 300,000 troops returning from overseas, one in five had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Between 2002 and 2004, the numbers of veterans claiming unemployment for ex-service members increased by about 75 percent. The cost is more than one-half billion dollars in treatment and lost productivity . . . .”
Meanwhile, one-of-the-very-few active generals in February 2003 who basically called Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz’s war and occupation plans inept and inaccurate, was ex-General Eric Shinseki. Shinseki will try to clean up the mistakes and crimes of the Rumsfeld-Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz clan.
http://www.juancole.com/2008/12/obama-taps-shinseki-for-veterans.html
Shinseki was retired a few months later, i.e. in summer of 2003.
Let’s hope he can do many things better than incompetents (and the criminals) in the White House and under the W. Bush administration before him have done.
NOTES
Akre, Jane, “December 5, VCS in the News: Scientific Review finds Long-Term Brain Injuries for Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan Bombing,” http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/11811
Leopold, Jason, “December 7, VCS in the News: Shinseki Promises to Overhaul Veterans Administration”, http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/11835
