Cord Byrd: “one year ago tomorrow, on June 21, 1996, in a hastily called press conference, the Department of Defense revealed that…”

“one year ago tomorrow, on June 21, 1996, in a hastily called press conference, the Department of Defense revealed that United States troops may have been exposed to Iraqi chemical nerve and mustard agents as a result of the post-war demolition of an Iraqi ammunition storage depot at Kamisiyah, Iraq. By September 1996, the DOD estimate of the number of soldiers who may have been exposed had climbed to just over 20,000, and the DOD announced that studies were still under way that could push that number even higher. This announcement raised new fears that Iraqi chemical warfare agents may have played a role in causing the illness among United States and coalition veterans of the Persian gulf war that has come to be called gulf war syndrome, and it exposed flaws in the manner in which the Department of Defense tracked the locations and medical histories of units and individual troops. The Department of Defense and the Presidential Advisory Committee on gulf war illnesses have subsequently attempted to address this and many other possible causes of gulf war syndrome, as have a number of congressional committees. There is still considerable uncertainty and controversy surrounding this issue.”