(Senator) Rockefeller vows fight on Gulf War syndrome

[sabra]

Source: Charleston Daily Mail

CHARLESTON — Federal officials have been saying for more than a decade that Gulf War syndrome does not exist.

Yet mounting evidence from researchers and cries from lawmakers, including Sen. Jay Rockefeller, might indicate otherwise.

Last month, a 452-page report conducted by the Boston University School of Public Health found that one in four Gulf War veterans show signs of the disputed illness, which is characterized by chronic fatigue, headaches, muscle pain and other gnawing symptoms.

That amounts to about 174,000 veterans afflicted by the syndrome.

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who's stepping down as chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee, told his colleagues earlier this month to review the report and act on it.

The senator said it was shameful that neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledge Gulf War syndrome as a real illness.

"We were stonewalled by the DOD in hearing after hearing after hearing," Rockefeller said of several meetings on the issue since the early 1990s. "They thought we were wrong, crazy, and came up with some kind of cockamamie theory. No matter what we produced, they'd send it back and call it nonsense."

Read more: http://www.timeswv.com/westvirginia/local_story_364121712.html

[awoke_in_2003]

1. a country that doesn't take care of its veterans...

has no right making new ones.

[EFerrari]

2. Rockefeller is like the Democrats' Arlen Specter. He's all hot air.

[stevedeshazer]

3. Exactly. Nothing will happen.

Jay Rockefeller has a piss-poor record when it actually comes to getting something done.

He was gonna raise hell about pre-war intelligence, too.

Didn't do shit.