Gulf War sickness behind gruesome US crimes?

There are too many unanswered questions to draw broad conclusions about whether the men connected with these crimes were suffering from the illnesses that research has shown afflict some 25 to 30 per cent of the 697,000 US Gulf veterans.

However, studies have turned up evidence of injury to the brain in some ill veterans of the conflict, including damage to the deep brain structures where personality is determined.

What caused this damage, and other symptoms veterans describe, isn’t clear, but researchers have said possibilities could include environmental toxins, low-level nerve agents, depleted uranium, oil fires, mustard gas, stress as well as vaccines given to soldiers to guard against biological warfare and nerve gas.

Dr William Baumzweiger, a California neurologist and psychiatrist who specialises in Gulf War ailments, said he was not surprised that so many of the high-profile crimes were tied to Gulf veterans. ‘‘Gulf War veterans have a very high frequency of turning to violence to deal with frustration,’’ he said.

Baumzweiger testified for the defence at the trial of Gulf veteran Jeffrey Hutchinson, convicted last year of the 1998 murders of his girlfriend and her three children in Florida.

September and October of this year brought two more high-profile cases involving veterans.

John Allen Muhammad, along with a young accomplice, has been accused of killing 10 people in and around Washington D.C. He is also charged with shootings in Louisiana and Alabama and could be linked to others.

Then in late October, failing Arizona nursing student Robert Flores, who served in the Army during the Gulf War, mowed down three of his professors before shooting himself.

Earlier in 2002, four servicemen allegedly killed their wives at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Three of the four were Gulf War veterans.

Last week, a military team probing the Fort Bragg deaths blamed marital woes, deployment stress and reluctance to seek counselling. Privacy Act rules make it impossible to find out if any of the Gulf veterans in these crimes ever officially complained of symptoms. (Reuters)