Sergio, my company was one of the first in and one of the longest serving at the time. We set up all of those Convoy Support Centers. Remember the CSC camps? Each had a name, CSC Vulture, CSC Wombat etc. I drove through Hafr al Batn every day or two. I spent a lot of time between Dharan, KKMC, Riyadh and west towards Jordan where the French were at. I also was there for the "Death Valley" destruction and drove through the oil fires frequently. Some of us saw nearly everything that happened, others were left to sit for month after month without ever leaving their camp. Yet very high proportions of personnel grouped around KKMC, Hafr al Batn and CSC Vulture, and most of those that went in with them on the feint to the west, the actual thrust to the north and the sweep to the east exhibit confirmed symptoms at a rate of 42 percent. The rest of the deployed report and confirm at a rate of about 16 percent.

Deployed personnel that were not vaccinated with experimental vaccines (our AZ Guard unit received as many as 70 different vaccines, for some people) only report at about 3 percent, less than the general population. Those that received vaccines- but did not deploy -report and confirm at about 12 percent.

It's not commonly known, but the Dept of Defense was ordered by a Federal judge to cease use of the experimental Anthrax vaccine after failing to report to Congress that over 20,000 hospitalizations resulted from complications attributed to the experimental Anthrax vaccine. The Army was banned from using that vaccine, and was forced to develop another and to obtain FDA approval. That new vaccine, being used on today's troops, is not the same Anthrax vaccine we were given in the Gulf War.

In addition, my best friend, even though he is 16 years younger than I am, was in that unit with me. He suffers from the same symptoms, for the same length of time, and we both share the same rare vitamin D deficiency, developed since our return. He was in charge of the M9 chemical alarms. They went off over 25 times a day, over 18,000 times for the American military and over 9,000 times for the British. The official response when an alarm was reported was that it was a false alarm caused by "diesel fuel and exhaust".