Peace groups slam dispatch
By Richard Sproull and Steve Lewis
23jan03
ANTI-war activists stepped up their attack on the Federal Government yesterday, condemning its decision to deploy troops in the Middle East and preparing for protest marches and rallies around the nation.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow led the criticism, saying the decision to send an advance deployment was "contemptuous of the United Nations".
"I don't think Australians generally can understand why it is that our Government is taking an almost subservient pro-American line," she told The Australian.
Ms Burrow questioned the Government's "foreign policy logic" in backing Washington's bid to oust Saddam Hussein while countries such as Pakistan and India were able to build nuclear arsenals.
The peak union body, along with church and community groups, is organising a series of anti-war rallies across Australia next month.
A coalition of 15 prominent musicians, authors and television producers also claimed the Government had failed to tell the community its reasons for being involved in any pre-emptive strike on Iraq.
Prominent children's author Mem Fox said she was "outraged" and felt "nauseous" that Australia was doing the "wrong thing morally".
"We don't want this war," she said.
Fox will speak at a February 16 peace rally in Adelaide and will also take part in a February 22 rally organised by South Australian musician Peter Combe.
Combe said yesterday the children's peace concert in Adelaide's Elder Park would include entertainers Hi-5 and Playschool's Benita Collings, George Spartels and John Hamblin. Children's authors Paul Jennings, Morris Gleitzman and performer Franciscus Henri would also speak at the concert.
"I guess the thing that terrifies me is that here we are talking about trudging into a war and not one person from the Government is prepared to make the case," Combe said.
Gillian Deakin, convenor of the Australian Medical Association for the Prevention of War - which has 700 members - said she was also keen to debate against any case for war.
"We have to remember this, we are a tiny, tiny percentage of the actual force that has been thrust upon the innocents of Iraq," Dr Deakin said.
The Walk Against War Coalition, which represents 50 anti-war organisations, will mobilise in Sydney today with an emergency protest in Woolloomooloo as part of its campaign against the Government's military strategy.
Spokeswoman Hannah Middleton said the "vast majority" of Australians opposed war but it was "important to stress that we are not critical of the young men and women that are going".
"They are obeying orders. We would say that we are opposed to what the Government is telling them to do," Ms Middleton said.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5877342%255E421,00.html
In the decade that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, the chronic illnesses that tens of thousands of veterans described ultimately marred the US victory. The long investigation of what came to be known as Gulf War syndrome eroded trust in the military and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
As US troops prepare to face the same enemy in the same place, military planners hope that this time they can keep the perplexing phenomenon at bay. Their weapons include health surveys, epidemiological studies, soil-sampling kits, a new generation of detectors for nerve gas and biological threats, and millions of tubes of stored human serum.
Colonel Robert DeFraites, an army epidemiologist who investigated the first vague physical complaints that Gulf War veterans reported 10 years ago, said the army feared the syndrome could return.
It is not too much to say that, in a small way, Gulf War syndrome is remaking modern warfare. No longer is it enough to deploy well-trained fighters; now the military is determined to document each soldier's sense of his own health, counsel him on what to fear beyond bullets and bombs, and to test the air he breathes and the soil below his billet.
"Our focus used to be only on winning the battle, and that still is the focus," said Lieutenant Colonel Karl Friedl, the army's director of operational medical research. "But now there's this greatly increased attention on post-deployment health. We didn't use to think about that."
The sheer number of people complaining of illness after the Gulf War helped change that view. Perhaps as many as 160,000 of the nearly 700,000 men and women who served in Operation Desert Storm may have suffered lingering physical symptoms in its aftermath. Over a decade, the government funded 224 research projects, costing $213 million, to try to uncover the cause, extent and best treatment for the illness.
Britain's Ministry of Defence admitted this week that a number of soldiers set to leave for the Middle East had been given multiple inoculations that were suspected of making 1991 Gulf veterans ill.
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told MPs on Monday that one lesson learnt from the 1991 war was that "it was not sensible to inflict our forces with a large number of inoculations at once".
But the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association said a number of servicemen and women had contacted its helpline after being given multiple inoculations. The mother of one sailor, 17, who had just received a multiple inoculation, asked if her son should agree to have the anthrax inoculation. An 18-year-old woman soldier rang to say that after the inoculation she was made to sign a waiver saying she would not sue the ministry if she became ill.
- Washington Post, Telegraph
http://theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/22/1042911435663.html
