Your continued reports on veteran’s interests are comforting. Your article “Powell–no proof Gulf War Syndrome exists” (Main news, May 30), though, was disappointing to read but not surprising given the source.
Gen. Colin Powell has retired from military service and has donned a pinstripe suit and travels around the country espousing his beliefs about leadership: leadership in the family, community and in self-sacrifice and volunteerism.
But leadership begins with one’s self and one’s ability to deal with truth and consequences. In typical fashion Powell reverts to his Pentagon roots and takes up the banner of denial so often waved by Pentagon officials. He denies mismanagement during the Gulf War, denies miscalculations during troop dispersements, denies our troops served in harm’s way, and he adopts the same old nonsense that the veterans’ illnesses are the norm for the general population.
This is the same argument used for the veterans who served during the nuclear testing years and for those exposed to Agent Orange.
Now come our Gulf War vets, nearly 12,000 of whom have died, not from bullets or blunt trauma but from illnesses and wounds that do not heal.
Gen. Powell may now enjoy the fortunes of his current lifestyle, but he has no place as a civilian making speeches that deny the causes of the illnesses and deaths of our soldiers. He has reverted to his Pentagon ways. And that is not leadership. That is denial.
