Gulf War illness and Joyce Riley

 Joyce Riley came from a military family. Her father had been a belly gunner on a B-17. Every night before she went to bed, he played the US Air Force song:

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,

Climbing high into the sun

Here they come zooming to meet our thunder

At ’em boys, Give ’er the gun!

Down we dive, spouting our flame from under

Off with one helluva roar!

We live in fame or go down in flame. Hey!

Nothing can stop the US Air Force!

Wanting to improve the world by helping the sick, Joyce studied nursing at the University of Kansas and graduated with a Bachelor of Science. As a director of nursing in four institutions, she specialised in medical surgical nursing and organ transplantation. She assisted in heart, lung, liver and kidney transplants and helped cancer patients. She flew around the US transporting organs to operating rooms. 

By 1990, the year of Bush’s Gulf War, Joyce was in the military serving as a flight nurse, but she wasn’t dispatched to the Middle East. In one day, she received ten injections and wrote in her journal, “I would have taken a hundred shots today just to save my country.” She knew about people passing out receiving shots, but she didn’t know what it meant. 

Six months after the vaccinations, Joyce became so ill that she could barely walk or function. After the Gulf War ended in February 1991, Joyce was hospitalised in Houston and told that she had an illness like MS. As she hadn’t been deployed to the Middle East and therefore hadn’t been exposed to oil-well fires or chemical or biological weapons, she suspected that her illness might be related to the vaccines. She decided never to take a vaccine again as long as she lived or to give any vaccines. 

Within six months of taking their vaccines, other nurses became sick. When Joyce told her superiors, she was told she had a mental problem. “There are so many of us who are sick here,” Joyce said. “So many! What are we gonna do?”

“They’re not sick,” said Colonel Mountain, the commander of the unit. “You’re not sick. Nobody’s sick.”

Joyce and the sick nurses went to the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA told them that because they were in the reserves, they were ineligible for treatment. Joyce was shocked, not because of the lack of treatment, but because she wanted to find out why they were all sick. 

Further research led her to discover that the Reagan-Bush administration had sold chemical and biological weapons worth billions to Iraq before the Gulf War. Aware that Saddam Hussein had repeatedly used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and Iraq’s Kurdish minority, the Reagan-Bush administration helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Joyce even obtained the batch numbers and dates that the weapons were sold. With billions from oil revenues and loans from its Arab neighbors, Iraq became one of the biggest arms importers in the world. Countries competed to sell arms to Saddam Hussain as he built a million-man army and spent over $50 billion on military hardware.

By attacking Iraq, a country that Bush had helped to arm – a manoeuvre that probably made Prescott Bush smirk in his grave – US weapons manufacturers reaped billions of dollars from US taxpayers and money staked by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Destabilising the Middle East made the price of a barrel of oil soar from $15 to $42, generating billions in revenue for the multinational oil companies controlling the oilfields in which the Bush family and their associates held investments. 

Joyce also discovered that huge profits were being made from the Gulf War by pharmaceutical companies – another fertile area of Bush family investments and directorships. She found out about secret vaccine trials undertaken by the Tri-Service Vaccine Task Force, and that the Bush government was doing experiments with the same chemical and biological weapons they’d sold to Iraq in order to develop a vaccine that would be effective against what they knew the troops would be exposed to.

Joyce believes that anthrax, hepatitis B and experimental vaccines made numerous soldiers sick, a situation that was exacerbated in cases were the shots had been administered on the same day. The military introduced a new policy. You could get compensation for MS if you reported it within one year of leaving the military. MS is rarely seen in the male population from seventeen to twenty, but numerous Gulf War veterans in that age bracket started to have symptoms of a demyelinating disease – a disease in which the myelin sheath comes off the nerve ending and it misfires horribly. It’s like having a seizure where you’re awake and alert, but your body can’t stop doing the things it’s doing.

Joyce took all of the documents to her attorney and spread them out on a big table.

Examining the documents, he turned pale. “I’m no longer your attorney. I will not watch after you. I cannot do anything for you. I couldn’t handle the tax audit that I’d get if I helped you.” She never saw him again.

Joyce travelled across the country speaking at veterans’ groups such as the American Legions and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Her tour infuriated Bush’s Department of Defense. The commander of the American Legion in Washington DC issued a memo banning Joyce from any American Legion venue on the grounds that she was falsely trying to make veterans think that they were sick. They ejected her from their facilities. Other organisations tried to destroy her credibility. She had a sign on her car: American Veterans Gulf War Association. She got stopped by the police so much that she had to remove the sign.

In one state, a highway-patrol pulled her over. 

“What’s wrong, officer?” she said.

“Ma’am, I could get fired for what I’m doing,” the policeman said. “I’m not supposed to stop you. I don’t have a reason to stop you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Ma’am, I think I’ve heard you. Are you the nurse on Art Bell [a radio show]?”

“Yes.”

“I just had a baby born that’s deaf. I wanna know have you heard about any other babies that have been born deaf because their parents had served in the Gulf War?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to tell you.”

The officer’s eyes filled with shock and sadness. “Because I called the DOD and the VA, and they told me that no other babies had been born deaf.”

“They’re lying to you.”

He began to cry. 

She received a letter from a veteran, who’d been a highway patrolman for twenty-nine years. Never in his career had he felt the need to shoot anybody. After Desert Storm, he had an urge to kill himself or someone else. Thinking he was crazy, his wife left him after over twenty years of marriage. He felt his life was ruined and wanted to die. Joyce offered to contact his wife. She explained about the prevalence of Gulf War syndrome. It wasn’t her husband’s fault. He needed help. They reconciled and sent Joyce a thank-you letter with a picture of them.

In California, Joyce was speaking at a Veterans auditorium about the large amount of veterans coming home from the Gulf War with herpes, yet they hadn’t been unfaithful. The audience was shocked. A couple on the third row began to cry and hold each other. Joyce stopped the meeting. “Can I help you? What’s going on?”

“I’m a pastor of my local church here,” the man said. “I was a chaplain in the Gulf War. I came home from the Gulf War with herpes and I was never unfaithful to my wife. My wife and I have gone through hell because she could never trust me. She never believed me.”

“Now we have a marriage again,” his wife said, in-between sobbing. “If only I would have known this.”

In Indiana, Joyce was talking to a group about veterans’ children who had been affected by Gulf War illness. Uniforms brought home from the Gulf War were contaminating kids. The uniforms contain depleted uranium and traces of chemical and biological weapons, none of which washed out. 

“If anybody brought home uniforms,” Joyce said, “be very careful of the equipment that you have and where you store it. The chemicals in the uniforms and equipment can affect your family members, and make them ill.” 

At the back of the room, a lady started crying. Joyce called a break and approached the lady. “What’s going on?”

“When my husband came back from the war,” she said, “shortly after that, my son started behaving really bizarre and started throwing up and being sick. They told me he was just imagining it and acting out. He was really sick and he’s only four, but they put him in a psychiatric facility and started giving him all these drugs. He got worse and worse on the drugs and he’s in that psych facility now. He’s been there for two months and they’re saying that it’s just because he wants to be sick for whatever reason. Now I know why my son is really sick, but I can’t get him out of there.”

“Do you have any of your husband’s equipment?” The woman began to get hysterical and couldn’t talk. “What’s the matter?”

“All of my husband’s uniforms and all of his equipment are stored under my boy’s bed.”

“Oh dear God! You’ve got to get that out of there.”

“I’m going to the hospital right now. I’m going to tell them what you just told me and I’m going to get my son out of the hospital.” The mother was able to retrieve her son.

A US representative sent his team to see her talk. During the meeting, five team members furiously scribbled notes. At the half-time break, they called her over. “The representative has a message for you.”

“Really,” Joyce said.

“The representative wants you to know that he’s not gonna support you.”

“Well, nobody else has either… But why is he not gonna support this?”

“He says you know a lot about this, but you don’t know it all. If you knew the rest of the story and the public knew, it would bring down this country as we know it. His message to you is, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t stop.’”

Joyce helped make a documentary, Beyond Treason, about Gulf War illness. It included testimony from Lieutenant Doug Rokke, a US Army Health Physicist Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer with expertise in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare operations. He stated that exposure to depleted uranium was a major cause of his Gulf War illness. The US military granted him disabled status due to depleted uranium and other exposures. “All of the Iraqi equipment and a lot of the US equipment contained radiological components. When that equipment was blown up, the radiological materials were released into the environment, exposing and contaminating. And then to top it all off, we used uranium munitions known as depleted uranium. They’ve been used back in 1973 by the Israelis against the Egyptians, but during Gulf War One, Desert Shield and Desert Storm, we took it to a totally new level. The use of radioactive materials on the battlefield. Deliberately taking tons and tons, actually taking over 350 tons of solid radioactive materials and dispersed it across Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Taking our radioactive waste and throwing it in somebody else’s backyard.”

 Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. Iraq and all of the countries contaminated with it since the Gulf War will be toxic for a while – exacerbated by Bush’s son who employed the same war strategies as his father. Dust storms recycle the DU onto civilian populations. DU is invisible and the particles are so small that they get through the protective masks and clothing issued by the military. 

Birth defects and cancer rates, including leukaemia, have skyrocketed in Iraq. In 2004, Fallujah was bombarded, causing cancer and infant mortality rates to exceed those reported after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Babies have been born with organs outside their bodies, one eye on the forehead, known as Cyclops babies, limbs growing out of heads, multiple heads, spina bifida, brain dysfunction, spinal conditions, unformed limbs and cleft palate… The first question parents in Iraq have started asking isn’t about the sex of their baby, but rather, whether it’s normal. Many mothers have watched their babies die shortly after birth. Some women in Fallujah have avoided pregnancy. 

Joyce got a call from a navy commander at the Pentagon about her documentary, Gulf War Illness Fact or Fiction. “I want you to know that you are not to give out that documentary to anyone in the military.”

“Pardon,” Joyce said. “What’s inaccurate in it?”

“It’s not that. It’s that you are one of us. It’s not allowed to be given out.”

“No, sir. If you think I’m going to participate in the wholesale manslaughter of our military, you’re wrong. Until you can show me what’s inaccurate, I’m going to continue to give it out.” Immediately, Joyce had a thousand extra DVDs made because she feared her home would be raided and her inventory seized. 

Bush’s Department of Defense tried to sabotage her talks. Joyce was asked to speak at a college in Michigan. The night before, Joyce received a call from the college: “Joyce, we’ve got a problem. The DOD has called here three times. They don’t want you to speak and they told us not to allow you to speak.”

“Really! What are you going to do?”

“We’ve decided that if they would call three times to tell us that we shouldn’t hear it, we probably need to hear it.”

“Great. I’ll be there.”

Joyce arrived at the college at 4 pm for dinner with the PR people and the alumni. The PR director was summoned to the phone. When he returned, he told Joyce, “We’ve got a problem. The DOD just landed at the airport in a DOD plane. They’re coming to the meeting.” 

“Fantastic. That is the best thing that I could imagine.”

Before the talk, he said, “Are you sure you want to do this? Three people from the DOD are here.”

“Absolutely! Everything I have to say is true and accurate or I wouldn’t be saying it.”

Joyce entered a full auditorium. After introducing herself, she said, “How many of you are students?” Numerous hands shot up. “How many of you are professors?” They raised their hands. “How many of you all were paid to be here tonight?” Not one hand went up. “I understand there are three people from the DOD here, from the Secretary of Defense’s Office and I’d like to have them recognised.” No hands went up. “Since I’m only a captain and I understand that Lieutenant Colonel Thompson is here, I defer the rank. I’d like for you to be recognised, sir. I don’t want to continue until you’re recognised.” For a few seconds, it remained quiet until suddenly, three people stood up on the back row. “I want to welcome you here tonight and I want you to know that I’m going to say some of the most damning evidence ever against the Department of Defense and I’m going to prove it with your own documents. But before I begin, I want you to agree that if there is anything that I say that’s inaccurate here tonight, I want you to stop me or it will stand as accurate.” Joyce began to speak and go through all of the documents. Not once did any of the men stand. At the end of the three hours, they scurried away.

Upset by Joyce, the DOD called a press conference. They invited media people who’d attended Joyce’s talk. In a light blue uniform, Colonel Thompson did a PowerPoint on the magnificence of the military and how wrong Joyce Riley was. 

After ten minutes, an investigative reporter stood up. “Colonel Thompson, I think I need to stop you and tell you that I don’t think there’s one person in this audience who believes a word that you’re saying. Is it true, like Captain Riley said, that the US sold weapons to Iraq before the Gulf War. Is that accurate?”

“There’s no way that we could possibly know that because that’s all compartmentalised information. I’m sure Joyce doesn’t have anything that could prove that.”

“You saw her show the evidence of the sale of those biologicals to Iraq last night. There’s not a person believing anything that you are saying here.”

An aide emerged from the side of the curtain. “Colonel Thompson, you’re needed in Washington immediately. Your plane is ready to leave.”

The colonel abandoned the press conference. 

As an increasing amount of troops got sick from Bush’s Gulf War, Joyce refused to shut up. She started her own radio show, The Power Hour, talking about Gulf War illness. She received letters from thousands of ill people, who were being told there was nothing wrong with them. The government had lied to them so continuously that they didn’t understand their situations. They’d served their country their whole lives. They were told to obey and take orders and if they got sick they’d be taken care of. After registering as sick, they were told they had mental problems and placed on psychotropic drugs manufactured by companies that had contributed to Bush’s election campaign. This didn’t make any sense to them. It made financial sense to the companies supplying vaccines and drugs. SSRI drugs were being used to keep veterans quiet and so their illnesses could be classified as mental. The abandonment by the military is one of the causes of so many veterans committing suicide.

“They’re just writing me off,” a veteran said on a call to Joyce. “I’m non-commissioned. I’ve been in the military for twenty-seven years and they won’t take care of me. I’m going to be going over to the VA one last time because now I’m in a wheelchair. I cannot walk. So now they’re gonna have to listen to me. My wife is gonna take me over there and our children are gonna go over there and we’re gonna get an answer today regardless.”

“Great. Call me after you go the meeting with them and let me know.”

He went to the meeting. “I’m in a wheelchair. Now will you guys believe me that I am sick and I don’t have a mental problem?”

The doctor went over to the veteran’s wife. “Look, I hate to have to tell you this, but we gave your husband a psych evaluation and we think he’s a latent homosexual and that’s why he’s doing this to himself.”

Angry, the veteran’s wife grabbed the physician’s white jacket. “How dare you say that to my husband in front of his family! You know that is so far from being true!” The family was ejected from the VA hospital.

Joyce became familiar with the tricks of the medical staff who’d stop at nothing to convince veterans that their problems were psychological. The first thing they did was to give psych evaluations, so they could always find a fall-back reason for the illness. If that didn’t work, they humiliated or embarrassed them. 

While the Bush dynasty fortune increased from war profiteering, officials continued to tell veterans that the government had played no role in their Gulf War illness, even though the government knew it was a lie.

From: American MadeWho Killed Barry Seal? Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush

War on Drugs Book 2

by Shaun Attwood