Nexus - 0405 - New Times Magazine-pages

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— GULF WAR SYNDROME — Biological Black Magic — GULF WAR SYNDROME — Biological Black Magic Already, more than 10,000 are dead and 250,000 are sick from Gulf War syndrome. What secret is so terrible (or embarrassing) that necessitates a cover-up of the facts? he air raid siren went off." Former Royal Air Force Corporal Richie Turnbull wheezed and coughed as he spoke. He is one of tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans who have been diagnosed with a fistful of illnesses attributed to service in the Gulf War. These include emphysema, angina, asthma, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, short-term memory loss, muscle wasting, cough syncope and numerous other debilitating ailments. Before deployment to the Gulf, Turnbull was an accomplished and superbly fit sub-aqua diver. Today, he walks with the aid of canes, slowly. With understandable pride he told me how he had "proved Soames to be a liar three times". The reference was to the former Conservative Minister of State for the Armed Forces, the Honourable Nicholas Soames, MP. Many vets uncharitably call the former minister "Fatty Soames", owing to his handsome girth. The appellation reflects the seething contempt of an individual whom vets regard as one of the principal architects of a monstrous transatlantic cover-up. Turnbull was an RAF Senior Electrician in a Nuclear, Biological & Chemical (NBC) unit and an experienced instructor on NBC equipment. He was stationed at the giant mili- tary base located at Dhahran on the night of 20 January 1991, when air raid sirens began wailing madly. Incoming Scud missiles were detected and a nearby US Patriot battery fired off intercept missiles. One of the missiles downed the Scud which landed a mere 400 yards from Turnbull. The impact left an eight-foot-deep crater but, curiously, the giant ground-to-ground missile did not explode. "All the nerve agent detectors sounded the alarm," Turnbull recalls. As an NBC expert he ran three tests which confirmed the presence of "G agent", otherwise known as Sarin— the deadly nerve agent developed by the Nazis in World War II. Turnbull ran a further three "residual vapour detector tests" which also showed the presence of nerve agents. In all, he says, "thirty-three items of equipment showed that chemical weapons had been detected".! "NBC Condition Black" was sounded and everyone on the base rushed to don their NBC "Noddy" suits. Incredibly, 20 minutes later an all-clear siren ("NBC Condition White") sounded and troops removed their protective clothing accordingly. Twenty min- utes later "NBC Condition Black" sounded again, and remained in force for a further eight hours. Turnbull, who says he is "absolutely certain it was a chemical weapon attack", is under- standably angry. Sounding the all-clear when nerve agents were shown to be present was, he says, "the biggest cock-up in history". Hundreds of troops were needlessly exposed to Sarin, he believes.” Turnbull continues to be a thorn in the side of Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the US Department of Defense (DoD). Both maintain that chemical weapons were not intentionally used by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. A spokesman at the MoD had earlier told me that he was a Royal Navy officer and was "in theatre" during the Gulf War. He went on to assure me personally that had the Iraqis intentionally used chemical and biological (CB) weapons "we would have retaliated in kind"—an allusion to US President Bush's threat to retaliate with a nuclear strike if Saddam Hussein unleashed his prodigious chemi- cal armoury on coalition troops. In the event, it was an empty threat—old-fashioned political rhetoric dished out for the folks at home. by David G. Guyatt ©1997 All correspondence c/- NEXUS Office 55 Queens Road East Grinstead, W. Sussex RH19 1BG United Kingdom Telephone/Fax: +44 (0)1702 217523 E-mail: david.g7@ukonline.co.uk NEXUS - 13 TRUTH IS THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR by David G. Guyatt ©1997 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1997