Déjà vu, all over again

Abstract

If you're old enough to remember the Pentagon's escalating body counts during the Vietnam War, then its now spiraling estimate of U.S. troops possibly exposed to chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War rings familiar. More than 20 years separate the two wars, but the Pentagon's public pronouncements prompt the same question: Coverup or ineptitude? During the brief gulf conflict, alarms on chemical warfare agent detectors went off frequently. False positives, said the Pentagon. A Czech chemical warfare unit—part of the alliance massed by the U.S.—using highly sophisticated Russian equipment, detected chemical agents on two occasions. False readings, poor equipment, said the Pentagon initially. For five years, from 1991 to 1996, Pentagon brass insisted that no U*S. troops had been exposed to chemical weapons. None. Then, in June 1996, the Pentagon reluctantly admitted that after the war, on March 10,1991, U.S. forces had blown up an Iraqi weapons storage depot at Khamisiyah in southern Iraq. ...