This is the theme of scores of angry e-mails I have received over the past two weeks. Yet when you venture into the data pool to try to characterize this 19 percent, the numbers tell a different story. These are all absolutely conventional military diagnoses having nothing unique to do with the Gulf War. By contrast, only 13 percent of those on the registries are Air Force and Navy personnel, even though they constituted 35 percent of the force. And similarly though Marines constituted 15 percent of the total force, they are only 11 percent of those on the registries.
Marines are better prepared for combat.
Army troops tend to incur more physical ailments. Hyams says mortality data for Gulf War veterans shows that they are less than half as likely to have died compared to the general population. Hyams is leading a study effort to evaluate the 100,000 combined Gulf War personnel on Defense Department and VA registries. As much as there was a Vietnam Syndrome, there sure is. There are some veterans suffering from undiagnosed illnesses, and more importantly, there are many more who perceive that there is a widespread sickness associated with the Iraq war.