An investigation by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service shed little light on how that could have happened. Low levels of nerve gas were detected during the Persian Gulf War, but most American troops did nothing to protect themselves. Their commanders had been told that low levels would cause no harm, and they were afraid of causing panic. But the Government Accounting Office subsequently identified numerous deficiencies. These include shortages in individual protective equipment, inadequate detection devices and lack of training and supplies.
Conventional wisdom has a way of becoming policy.
Three years ago, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses charged that the Pentagon's battlefield surveys, research and analysis had hopelessly biased conclusions against the possibility that low-level exposures to chemical agents were a factor. Former Sen. Warren Rudman was named to chair the panel. The Rudman panel has kept a low profile over the past three years, and will go out of business in January 2001. Its last open meeting on Oct. 27 featured a Pentagon announcement that 30,000 more Persian Gulf War servicemen and women are about to be told that they may have been exposed to sarin. The approach was vintage Pentagon, reminiscent of the artificial ceilings imposed on counts of enemy forces in Vietnam.