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Interview by Dan Kapelovitz Ever since she served on the front lines of the Persian Gulf War, Carol Picou has suffered from a variety of illnesses. The retired Army nurse attributes her ailments to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal the U.S. military used extensively during Operation Desert Storm. Is a new batch of recruits about to share Picou's fate? Fewer than 200 American soldiers were killed in battle during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but more than 9,600 of the relatively young Operation Desert Storm veterans have died since serving in Iraq, a statistical anomaly. Many of their lives were cut short by a host of medical problems, collectively known as Gulf War Syndrome. At least a third of the veterans who are still alive have filed claims for war-related illnesses. After years of foot-dragging and stonewalling, the Veterans Administration has finally granted more than 150,000 of these claims. The Pentagon blamed the illnesses on a variety of factors, including stress, insects, pesticides, vaccines and oil-well-fire smoke. What the Department of Defense and the government-serving mainstream media have failed to report is that the most likely cause of our soldiers' medical problems is the allied forces' use of a radioactive material called depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is an extremely dense metal the military uses because it can easily penetrate steel-armored tanks and can be used to strengthen the armor of our own tanks. It's also extremely dangerous to the troops who use it. A 1990 government study by the U.S. Army Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command contained a report by military contractor Science Applications International Corporation stating that the "short-term effects of high doses [of depleted uranium] can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer." Even though the U.S. government knew of the potential hazards of depleted uranium at least six months before the war began, the military dropped tons of depleted-uranium-tipped weapons on Iraq. Our soldiers, who were often required to enter radioactive battlefields unprotected, were never warned of the dangers of depleted uranium. In effect, George Bush Sr. used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. Because the U.S. military continues to use these "dirty bombs" in combat, American troops fighting in the second Gulf War will be exposed to the same harmful radiation that our soldiers experienced during Operation Desert Storm. Carol Picou, Sergeant First Class (retired), who served for 15 years as an Army nurse and medical health counselor, is just one of the tens of thousands of American soldiers who currently suffer from Gulf War Syndrome. Picou, who founded the MISSION (Military Issues Surfacing In Our Nation) Project and has testified before Congress, sacrificed her long military career so she could speak the truth about Gulf War Syndrome and depleted uranium. * * * HUSTLER: Tell us about your experiences during the Persian Gulf War. CAROL PICOU: I was a licensed practical nurse, but I also drove a five-ton truck, which contained the first operating room and was the third vehicle in the convoy going into combat. I drove all the way through the war. I noticed that all the bodies that were on the highways and the tanks and all the armament that was damaged were burnt. They were actually literally black, and I thought the Iraqi people were black-skinned. It amazed me that they were burned that bad-that we would have used some type of armament that would actually melt these people into their vehicles. I was always in the medical field, and we've had tank accidents in Europe. Soldiers would come in with shrapnel in them, but to see people literally burnt and melted into the vehicles...it's not normal. I asked questions about it, and, of course, I got no answers; so I took photos, and I brought sand samples back. HUSTLER: When did you first become ill? PICOU: I was getting these black flecks on my skin and having health problems on the front lines, and no one would address them. I was losing control of my muscles. One hour after I took the pyridostigmine pills-a little white pill that our government issued to us as a precursor against any possible chemical-warfare attack-I started drooling, and my muscles started twitching. When I returned to the United States in July [1991], my health started deteriorating. I started losing control of my bowels and my bladder. I started wetting myself and soiling myself, and by October I noticed I was gaining weight. I started researching why I was having these symptoms. I started evaluating everything that I was exposed to during the war, which was the anthrax shots, the botulinum vaccines, the pyridostigmine bromide and the new weapon system that we called depleted uranium. We used it in our armored tanks and in our A-10 aircraft. HUSTLER: What did you find? PICOU: In August of 1992, I went public to find out what's wrong with American soldiers, because too many of us were getting sick. In 1993, I went to Congress and testified. I was the first active-duty soldier to go, but I didn't go in uniform, because I represented myself and not the Army. I testified about what the Desert Storm soldiers were experiencing, and I brought photos of babies that were born with major birth defects. They were missing their arms, their legs, their eyes, their ears. They had golden-heart syndrome, where their heart is actually on the wrong side of the cavity. I started a support group and realized that there were many of us from our unit that were sick and having problems. In San Antonio, we had two major brain tumors in soldiers that died a year after returning. It was just getting to be where so many soldiers were getting sick and dying, and nobody wanted to do anything to help us. HUSTLER: Weren't you told that you were sick because you lived in San Antonio? PICOU: Yeah, but we didn't have any depleted-uranium mines where we lived, and we didn't have any tanks or aircraft that this weapon would have been involved in where I lived. The ironic part was I only lived in San Antonio three months prior to my departure for the war. HUSTLER: Who gave you the San Antonio explanation? PICOU: It was a doctor who was ordered to test my urine for depleted-uranium poison. The only soldiers that were being tested for depleted uranium-this was in January of 1993-were the soldiers that were hit by friendly fire. We had over 32 soldiers that were hit with our own aircraft. They found that depleted uranium was spilling into their urine. Depleted uranium had shown up in my urine, and they said it wasn't anything to worry about; it was just background levels, it's just natural. I knew the doctor didn't have any idea what he was talking about, because I had just spent the year and a half researching depleted uranium. HUSTLER: Was he a military doctor? PICOU: Yeah. Of course, there were major problems, because I had already gone to Congress and testified twice, and it was my congressman who ordered that I be tested for depleted uranium; so our government wasn't very happy with that. HUSTLER: How did you lose your military career? PICOU: I continued to testify before Congress and the Senate, and I was ordered that, if I continued to speak out, I would possibly lose my military career. This was a threat from my chain of command. The Army had put me on bed rest from July of 1992 until I was no longer functioning. I would come to work, and I would soil myself and urinate on myself. My muscles were deteriorating. I was sick, running 104-degree fevers. My skin would be breaking open and bleeding. They said I was no longer fit for active duty. They're supposed to actually help you get well, but in 1995, I was medically discharged against my wishes. I was up in Washington testifying, and I got discharged without my signature. I refused to sign it because I felt that they should have taken care of me. When we all join the military-I joined in 1978-one of our benefits that's promised to us is that we would receive expeditious medical care. Unfortunately, none of us were getting it. Soldiers were being discharged and put out, and they referred us to the VA, when the VA had no idea what was happening. It was like nobody wanted any responsibility to take care of me medically. I had private health insurance through my husband's company. When I did all my tests, they found that I had neurological damage, a suppressed immune system, antibody develop- ment and chemical toxicity. I was chemically poisoned. I was losing speech and thoughts and not really functioning. My insurance then dropped me. They kept getting a Code 99, which meant that this was combat-related. They didn't have to pay because they had a war clause, and the Army was discharging me noncombat-related so they wouldn't have to pay either; so I was caught in catch-22. HUSTLER: How's your health now? PICOU: As a matter of fact, I got a phone call today; I have to go for another MRI tomorrow. I had one done of my brain last month, and I've got severe burning sensations in my spine. They're looking right now to see if the neurological changes are still developing. I've been wearing diapers since 1991 because I have no feeling from my waist down. I've been catheterizing myself to urinate since 1992. The neurological damage is still there, but I went through psychotherapy to learn how to speak again and learn how to drive and just to maintain. I'm very forgetful. My speech breaks up from time to time, and my thoughts wander. I've just learned to live with it. HUSTLER: Tell us about the report you received. PICOU: This report came to me anonymously in 1994. I received it the same week that I got confirmation that I was exposed to depleted uranium. It was sent in a brown envelope stamped Washington, D.C. It was a study of the soldiers' exposures to everything in the Persian Gulf War, which included anthrax, botulinum, pyridostigmine, cart paint-the paint that we used to paint the vehicles the sand color-and depleted uranium. For the first time, there was mention of this weapons system; so my husband had announced on a network call [with other Gulf War Syndrome activists] that he was going to make copies and leave it for me. I wasn't on the phone call at the time he was talking; I left to go out of town to get a muscle biopsy done. When I came back, he left the report in the car, but I didn't know that; I just thought it was his paperwork. The next day, I had to go get my sutures removed and left everything in the car because it was too heavy to carry. That night, at 1:45 in the morning, I was awoken; the whole backseat of my car was engulfed in flames. I called my husband, and he asked me if I got the report out of the backseat, and I told him I didn't. I thought he had the copy. HUSTLER: Did he have a copy of it? PICOU: No. All of it was engulfed in flames. The next day, another one of those reports arrived anonymously at my house; so we did get a copy of it. HUSTLER: Do you think it was arson? PICOU: Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, they said it was definitely arson. The fire department asked me if I had any enemies, and if I knew who would do this. I told them the only people I know that would probably do this to me would be the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, because I was already speaking out in Congress. I had already received threatening phone calls. A week later, the fire department told me that they had found something suspicious: None of the engine was burnt; it was all started in the backseat, and that's where that report laid. HUSTLER: How did they know the reports were in there? PICOU: Apparently, because of the phone call. We were on a network call. HUSTLER: What kind of threatening calls had you received? PICOU: They would hold a device to their throat and say, "I know you're going to Washington. And if I were you, I'd take a different route," and, "If I were you, I'd quit testifying." Vietnam veterans called me and said, "You ought to be careful; they're watching you." You could just feel that somebody was watching the home. It was an uneasy feeling. And when we finally did get to testify-three of us had testified-one guy was stabbed in the lung, and his hands were tied behind his back in a cornfield. One of the doctors that had testified, his laboratory was messed up. One of the colonels had tried to bring information about Desert Storm-his stuff was confiscated. It was pretty interesting to see all these things developing over the years. I brought back sand samples and tried to have them analyzed. I sent them to a lab in Canada; the lab was broken into and destroyed. It's very frustrating. HUSTLER: One excuse given early on by officials was that the illnesses were due to shell shock. PICOU: I went through two weeks of psychiatry, and they did every possible psychological test they could to try and say that this was stress-related. HUSTLER: Do you believe Gulf War Syndrome is due to a combination of the depleted uranium and the pills you were given? PICOU: I think it was exposures to the fallout from the depleted uranium. I went back to Iraq in 1997 to do a film documentary on the effects of the depleted uranium and [to see] if it was affecting the Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi people like it had affected the people in America. People who lived in Nevada, where they actually tested [depleted uranium], were sick and dying with cancer. [In] Jonesborough, Tennessee, is a plant where they manufacture it. The plant workers started getting sick. The people that live within one mile downwind from the plant in Massachusetts where they manufactured the depleted uranium have heavy cancer rates. Aberdeen Proving Grounds was an open-air site [where depleted uranium was tested], and those people were complaining of high cancer rates. We just paid billions of dollars to clean up that site just a few years ago. Everywhere this depleted uranium was used or tested or mined, people were getting sick. I thought, What about Desert Storm soldiers? Could this be the major cause of our illness? Looking at how many Desert Storm soldiers were sick and dying, I thought, Okay, my best bet is to go back to Iraq and see if we can find if it's still radioactive six years later after the war, because its half-life is 4.1 billion years. I went back to Iraq and went through the same battle zone that I had originally gone through during the war. We tested some of the tanks with alpha rays and gamma rays, and realized that they were still radioactive six, seven years later. I met with some Iraqi soldiers that were there in that battle zone, and they had brain tumors just like my friends had brain tumors. They had Lou Gehrig's Disease. They had developed thyroid problems just like I did. They developed muscle loss. They were having the same symptoms we were. They didn't take the anthrax or the botulinum or the pyridostigmine, but they were exposed to all the chemical fallouts that we were. HUSTLER: Has the rate of leukemia gone up in Iraq? PICOU: The amount of cancer that has risen in Iraq is phenomenal. They had a one-percent prewar cancer rate, and when I went back in 1997, their cancer rate was like 17%. [There were] children with leukemia. I met women who were in the bomb areas outside the Al-Rashid Hotel [in Baghdad], and they started developing breast cancer, which is unusual for them because they didn't have a high rate of cancer prior to the war. We dropped thousands of pounds of depleted uranium in the Iraqi land. It's highly radioactive. When I went back, the animals were mutating, camels were born with birth defects. The water chain was contaminated; the food chain was contaminated. We've left them in massive devastation. HUSTLER: Won't it be dangerous for our soldiers if we invade Iraq again? PICOU: Oh, yeah, because it's still radioactive. Not only are we exposing them, but we're still using the same weapon system. They will have a double dose of what they're gonna be exposed to. If we use the Abrams tanks and the A-10 [aircraft]-one out of every five rounds in the helicopters is a depleted-uranium round. It is an armor-piercing round, and it stops everything. Our generals will gladly tell you that they'll use it again. And the United States has. If this is a chemical and biological and radioactive weapon, according to the Geneva Code of Conventions, it should not be used. We're in violation of the Geneva Code of Conventions, because we've used a radioactive weapon without anybody's knowledge. HUSTLER: The VA now admits that 36% of Gulf War veterans have filed claims? PICOU: Yes. As a matter of fact, that number's rising. I think they had over 236,000 claims, maybe even more. It was such a short battle; it was, what, a four-day battle? HUSTLER: What would you say to soldiers today who might be on their way to Iraq? PICOU: Take care of yourself. Wear your protective stuff. Take notes. Take photos. Write down everything that you see that is suspicious. And cover your butt. We say, "CYA," cover your ass, because nobody else is going to. |