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Vets Under Siege
How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles
By Martin Schram St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 Martin Schram
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-2879-3
CHAPTER 1
The Wartime Battles of Bill Florey
E4 SPC, U.S. Army, 82nd Airborne,
Persian Gulf War
It was four in the afternoon of March 10, 1991, when the first explosion of the day reverberated through the weapons depot at Khamisiyah, Iraq, propelling a column of gray-white smoke into an already hazy sky. There would be many more explosions that day, as the U.S. Army was deliberately destroying by detonation what was once a major part of Saddam Hussein's arsenal before his Iraqi military had been defeated and he had accepted President George H. W. Bush's cease-fire. Each explosion launched a column of smoke skyward above Khamisiyah, and the columns rose side-by-side, like fingers of a gray glove against a hazy blue-gray sky. Soon the fingers merged into what would become infamously known, years later, as the Plume.
Bill Florey had parked his Army truck after a long morning's work, hauling here and there. Florey, an army E4 Specialist, was given the rest of the day off because the top brass had figured out, after seeing what had happened four days earlier, during the March 6 midday explosions, that there would be debris — metal, masonry, munitions — raining all over the Khamisiyah compound. Florey figured he'd wait it out near his tent; then after a while when the dust and debris got so bad, he moved inside his tent; and then, when the dust and bad air seeped into and filled the tent, he pulled a tarpaulin over his head, hunkered down, and waited for the Plume to move on. Unglamorous, as wartime poses go; but war in any place is just about surviving day by day, and it was that way even now that Saddam Hussein, who had tested the world by invading neighboring Kuwait, had been quickly defeated and accepted the terms of a cease-fire.
When the rain of metal, masonry, and munitions bits seemed to have tapered off, Florey emerged from under the tarp, stepped out of the tent and into a much hazier haze. After a while, he glanced up and saw that the Plume was taken elsewhere by a moderate wind that was blowing from north-northwest to south-southeast — but he didn't think much about it that day. He just walked to his truck and got to work.
It would be one year after the Khamisiyah explosions before United Nations officials first reported that the U.S. Army had detonated some of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons — including the deadly nerve gas sarin — that were stored at Khamisiyah. The U.S. Army's official position at the time was that it had no such information.
It would be five years after the Khamisiyah explosions before the Pentagon would officially acknowledge that the army had in fact detonated Iraqi chemical weapons, including sarin, at Khamisiyah and that some troops may have been exposed.
It would be six years after the Khamisiyah explosions before Department of Defense (DOD) officials, under fire from Congress, would get around to sending out the first letters officially informing twenty thousand soldiers that they may have been exposed to hazardous materials, including sarin nerve gas, at that arsenal in March 1991. By then the plume had been cited in congressional hearings and scientific studies as the possible cause of unexplained illnesses and ailments suffered by Gulf War veterans: chronic fatigue, aching joints, headaches, insomnia, diarrhea. Their cases were eventually given a catchall label: Gulf War syndrome.
It would be eleven years before the Defense Department would issue its final report on the 1991 unpleasantness at Khamisiyah: "Case Narrative: US Demolition Operations at Khamisiyah. Final Report. April 16, 2002." The report reads like a mix of officialese and satire. The Pentagon stated that at the time of the demolition, the army didn't know Iraqi chemical weapons, including sarin, were stored at Khamisiyah. The CIA issued a statement acknowledging that it did have information that sarin and other chemical agents were stored at Khamisiyah — but that it had failed to tell the army what it knew. The CIA later amended its position when it discovered that it had indeed sent a memo to the army stating that chemical agents were apparently stored at Khamisiyah; and the army amended its position, stating that its people had apparently filed the CIA memo but never followed up on it or passed it along through proper channels. Now this: New evidence, discovered in researching this book, raises new questions about just what the army engineers on the ground in Khamisiyah did know on the day they conducted the demolition.
In 2002, the Pentagon recalculated the size and path of the Plume and sent more letters, this time informing 101,763 soldiers that they might have been exposed to hazardous environmental agents at Khamisiyah. The Pentagon still took the passive position that soldiers who felt okay didn't need to take any action; but if they felt ill they should consult a doctor. The Pentagon decided against the more costly recommendation: a physical exam for all exposed soldiers to check for possible problems, or at least a medical baseline to help detect changes. Also that year, a Pentagon–Veterans Affairs epidemiological study found that Gulf War veterans were twice as likely as veterans based elsewhere to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease — the most devastating disease linked to Gulf War service to date.
Bill Florey really did not pay much attention to the government twists and twirls of that tumultuous decade. His time in Iraq seemed like distant history and he was getting on with his life. But in 2003, Florey learned that the plume and the Khamisiyah explosions that created it may have been the defining event of his life — a life that, by then, was devolving into a series of sad, even hideous medical crises. He was diagnosed with a rare cancer, a crisis compounded by bureaucratic bungling, late diagnoses and misdiagnoses that left him horribly disfigured on the right side of his face even as the cancer aggressively burrowed deep into his brain and throughout his body. And near the end, when he reached out for a bit of financial help, this quiet, young man was also rejected by the U.S. government he had so unhesitatingly served in battle years before. The VA coldly and bureaucratically denied his request for modest service-related disability compensation. It didn't even bother to check its own data, which would have proved the merits of his request.
There is no way of knowing, let alone proving, whether Florey's sad outcome might have been averted by quicker and better treatment. But it is indisputable that he honored and served his government — and in the end his government dishonored and disserved him.
Bill Florey's story needs to be told not because he was special or exceptional, but because he was every soldier. He was as average as an individual soldier can be — and in that sense, he was also the best of what we want our soldiers to be. He was a teenager from a small town in Oregon who volunteered to join the U.S. Army in 1987 because he thought his country needed him. If going to war meant driving a truck — not firing a rocket or a gun — well, he'd do whatever job needed doing. He was not a complainer, never one to ruffle eagle feathers or be a crusader. He would never push his story before our eyes, which is why it is important that we see through his eyes how our government systematically dishonors and disserves so many who fight our battles so the rest of us won't have to go to war.
Florey's story shows us that the blame for all of this falls not just upon a government that has become unbearably bureaucratic and legalistic to the point of being antagonistic to the men and women it sends off to war. Blame also falls upon our society — all of us — for our silent acceptance of the way we dishonor veterans who went to war so that we, our children and our grandchildren could stay home.
Khamisiyah is a worthy starting point for taking the measure of Bill Florey's life, and of our own responsibility for what happened to him.
KHAMISIYAH, IRAQ: MARCH 1991
In the days leading up to the order to demolish the arms arsenal at Khamisiyah, soldiers from the 37th Engineer Battalion and the 307th Engineer Battalion conducted random inspections of the bunkers. They were searching for possible chemical weapons that might be stored there. According to the detailed 2002 Pentagon report, the soldiers were told to look for boxes with various colored markings and lettering in Cyrillic or Arabic that would indicate chemical weapons. Soldiers opened a sampling of boxes and, finding no chemical weapons, concluded that all boxes similarly labeled contained no chemical weapons.
"We were to look for yellow bands on the ammunition for chemical," the report quoted one of the soldiers as saying. "I went in bunkers specifically looking for that and didn't find any." It was on that basis that senior officers concluded there were no chemical weapons at Khamisiyah and ordered the destruction of the arsenal. The first series of explosions occurred at a closed bunker on March 4. The second occurred on March 10, this time in an open area known as the Pit. It was that explosion that produced the Plume that officials would conclude eleven years later had been a chemical cocktail cloud — one that may have exposed more than one hundred thousand soldiers to chemical weapons including sarin.
At 2:05 p.m. on March 4, 1991, the first explosion of the closed munitions bunker shook Khamisiyah. "Within minutes of the first detonation debris and 'flyouts' [munitions that were thrown out from the explosion without detonating] began to fall among the soldiers at the observation points and elsewhere, posing a significant hazard," the Defense Department report said. "The explosions created huge columns of dust and smoke, which the prevailing winds carried away from the soldiers at the observation points. The debris was thrown several kilometers in all directions. ... Munitions continued to explode throughout the evening."
It is clear from the DOD report that in their zeal to complete their mission army experts failed to heed a number of flashing caution lights and even ran some red lights. Forty minutes after the first arsenal was detonated, the report noted, a chemical detection alarm sounded. "At 2:45 PM, an M8A1 chemical detection alarm sounded in Company B, 37th Engineer Battalion's area of the observation point," the report said. "On hearing the alarm, the soldiers in Company B immediately put on their chemical protective clothing, as did some soldiers from other units around the observation point. Others only put on their masks."
The report continued: "By this stage of the Gulf War, the soldiers' experiences ... taught them that many things common to their environment, such as blowing dust and vehicle exhaust, frequently caused the alarms to sound. Therefore, they generally did not regard the sounding of the chemical alarm as proof of the presence of chemical agents."
Four engineer companies performed tests using their chemical agent detection kits. "All chemical detection tests yielded negative results for chemical warfare agents [i.e., no chemical warfare agents detected], except for the following two instances." In both of those cases, initial tests were slightly positive for chemical warfare agents, but retests then produced negative results.
The warning signs came in various forms but were all ignored: "The intelligence staff NCO [noncommissioned officer] of the 37th Engineer Battalion and his assistant reported that shortly after the explosion they saw 'a dog running across [an] open area [that started] circling and dropped dead.'" By the time Pentagon officials reinterviewed those same battalion members, the two individuals had found a way to explain what they witnessed in a semipositive light: "In follow-on interviews, the two individuals said that the dog did not display any symptoms consistent with nerve agent exposure." In that spirit, the Pentagon report optimistically noted that other dogs didn't die: "The 37th Engineer Battalion videotape of the March 4, 1991, demolition shows several dogs running across the terrain without any obvious health effects from the ongoing explosions."
The Pentagon report provided the conclusion that more than one hundred thousand veterans had waited more than a decade to receive: "We have assessed that chemical warfare agents were present at Khamisiyah and US soldiers definitely destroyed many, but not all, of the chemical agent weapons in the Pit and Bunker 73. It is likely that the demolition of rockets in the Pit exposed some US units to very low levels of chemical warfare agents." That exposure occurred mainly from the March 10 explosions, the report concluded. The assessment also noted that the engineering battalion experts did not have state-of-the-art chemical detection equipment: "US forces did not have chemical warfare agent detection equipment that could distinguish intact chemical warfare agent-filled munitions. Properly employed, chemical warfare agent detection equipment possibly can prevent the accidental destruction of munitions containing chemical warfare agents."
The report's second major finding was less than satisfying to those veterans who had been classified with Gulf War syndrome and had long awaited this Pentagon task force study: "No evidence exists that any soldiers at Khamisiyah exhibited symptoms consistent with exposure to a chemical warfare agent."
For years, the U.S. government's official pronouncements concerning the army detonations at Khamisiyah were marked by profound confusion and contradiction. Official assurances and official denials were issued, only to be rescinded.
The army claimed that it had no intelligence that Iraqi chemical weapons were stored at Khamisiyah at the time of the 1991 explosions — and in fact, had no such information until 1996. In the early years after the explosions, the CIA took the official blame, admitting that well before the detonations, it did have intelligence information that Saddam's chemical weapons were stored at Khamisiyah, but had failed to tell the army.
But in 1997, that explanation was modified, muddled and muddied. A Pentagon internal investigation discovered that the CIA had sent the army two memos in November 1991 — eight months after the detonations — stating that chemical weapons apparently had been stored in Khamisiyah. One of the memos specifically warned of "the risk of chemical contamination" of the soldiers based there. However, the Pentagon didn't officially follow up on this CIA alert. Indeed, the Pentagon continued for years to state that it had no information that soldiers could have been exposed to chemical agents at Khamisiyah.
But through all of those conflicting statements and denials, the army's central assertion that it had no knowledge of chemical weapons being stored at Khamisiyah stood basically unchallenged. Until now.
Now new information has surfaced about what the U.S. Army officials knew, and when they knew it. It comes from an interview I conducted with a military policeman who was patrolling the compound and was stunned to discover that his beat had taken him into the heart of the demolition zone just as the first explosions shattered the stillness of Khamisiyah.
A NEW DISCLOSURE
U.S. Army Military Police team leader Eric Adams, then a rank E4, had been in his Humvee on a routine patrol with several other MPs along the Khamisiyah perimeter on the afternoon of March 4, 1991. "Just chasing Shiites," he told me in an interview years later. "They'd be driving in these white Toyota pickups, looking for ammo. They were helping our guys take on Saddam's troops and apparently some of our guys had apparently told them they could help themselves to whatever they found lying around. But our job was to drive them away. Keep the perimeter clear." Adams kept in radio contact with the other Humvee on patrol with them and also with their base: his radio was a bulky VRC 46 radio left over from Vietnam. There was no unusual radio chatter that day, certainly no indication of what was about to happen.
Adams and his team had returned from the perimeter and were on a dirt road, well inside the first checkpoint, about three kilometers from the paved road. At 2:05 p.m., the silence was blown away by the first explosion, which seemed to be very close. Too close.
"They gave us no warning that we'd be having this explosion," Adams recalled. "Chucks of metal were flying around. We could hear them hitting the metal roof of our Humvee, denting it. Took the paint off right down to the black. It was amazing." The MPs figured they were alone and possibly in a dangerous place when Adams looked up the dirt road and saw several other Humvees stopped on the hardtop. He sped toward them, then slowed, stopped and got out. A number of soldiers had gotten out of the parked Humvees — they had their guns drawn and pointed at the MPs. "They were locked and loaded and ready to shoot us," Adams said. "I was a little scared. It was very tense." These were members of one of the engineer battalions that were detonating the weapons depots.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Vets Under Siege by Martin Schram. Copyright © 2008 Martin Schram. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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