Dealing with Problems Facing Gulf War Veterans
Kucinich gave the following speech in Congress on June 16, 2005
"Mr. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural said: ‘We shall care for him who has borne the battle.’ Today, men and women who have served this country in the Gulf War are waiting for this Congress to respond affirmatively to their medical needs.
"Congress took steps in the 1990s by authorizing a scientific research program that looked into Gulf War Syndrome, and that report from the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf Veterans Illness found out that the illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans, these often debilitating problems, could not be scientifically explained by stress or psychiatric illnesses; that veterans were having problems with their neurological and immunological systems, and they were having it with a frequency that was twice those of peer veterans not deployed.
"They cited a list of possible exposures, which included chemical weapons, biological weapons, drugs to protect them from biological and chemical weapons, depleted uranium, oil well fire smoke, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and on and on and on.
"Today, Congress will have before it a budget-neutral amendment that will give us a chance to do something about funding a program to help deal with the problems that Gulf War veterans are experiencing."
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