[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 80 (Thursday, June 16, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H4564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             DEALING WITH PROBLEMS FACING GULF WAR VETERANS

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural 
said: ``We shall care for him who has borne the battle.'' Today, men 
and women who have served this country in the Gulf War are waiting for 
this Congress to respond affirmatively to their medical needs.
  Congress took steps in the 1990s by authorizing a scientific research 
program that looked into Gulf War Syndrome, and that report from the 
Research Advisory Committee on Gulf Veterans Illness found out that the 
illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans, these often debilitating 
problems, could not be scientifically explained by stress or 
psychiatric illnesses; that veterans were having problems with their 
neurological and immunological systems, and they were having it with a 
frequency that was twice those of peer veterans not deployed.
  They cited a list of possible exposures, which included chemical 
weapons, biological weapons, drugs to protect them from biological and 
chemical weapons, depleted uranium, oil well fire smoke, diesel fuel, 
jet fuel, and on and on and on.
  Today, Congress will have before it a budget-neutral amendment that 
will give us a chance to do something about funding a program to help 
deal with the problems that Gulf War veterans are experiencing.

                          ____________________