Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4: They called me Bed, and we're joined as always with
Speaker 4: our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. And most importantly,
Speaker 4: you are you.
Speaker 2: You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: War? What is it good for? No, we're not gonna
Speaker 2: do the song? Well, there's absolutely nothing. But then it
Speaker 2: also makes me think of the quote from the Fallout Games,
Speaker 2: war never changes, you know all of that? Those are
Speaker 2: my two top War quotes. Is the song and the
Speaker 2: I also love a band that has a song like
Speaker 2: named after the name of their band, and that's such
Speaker 2: a really sick flex like Radiohead. Or no, that's not true.
Speaker 2: There is a talking Head song called Radiohead. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 2: not good for much except for you know, well, it's
Speaker 2: good for the population over all, great.
Speaker 4: Medical innovation, scientific progress, technological breakthroughs.
Speaker 2: And you make it sound awesome. It's a number.
Speaker 4: It's a number one pick for unintended consequences as well. Uh,
Speaker 4: we've heard of agent Orange, and if you are a
Speaker 4: longtime listener of the show, you have heard about it
Speaker 4: as well, and the horrific effects that substance wrought upon
Speaker 4: civilians and military alike during the Vietnam War. In a
Speaker 4: previous conversation on Listener Mail, an anonymous conspiracy realist reached
Speaker 4: out to us to ask us about something called p
Speaker 4: B pills. It's a disturbing substance, little known outside of
Speaker 4: the military or medical school. We had not heard of
Speaker 4: it before our listener reached out. However, according to firsthand sources,
Speaker 4: this may be the real explanation behind the notorious, still
Speaker 4: not fully understood collection of symptoms called Golf War syndrome.
Speaker 4: Here are the facts. We have to talk about the
Speaker 4: Golf War. It's something that happened in recent history, right
Speaker 4: in the nineteen nineties early nineteen nineties. It's sometimes called
Speaker 4: the Persian Gulf War, sometimes in a very dystopian way.
Speaker 4: It's referred to as the First War because there was
Speaker 4: another one. But what happened for anybody who is unfamiliar
Speaker 4: with Saddam Hussein, well.
Speaker 2: The United States led a coalition of forty two countries
Speaker 2: against Iraq, which at that point was under the control
Speaker 2: of the dictator Saddam Hussein. You might have heard of
Speaker 2: him kind of the first maybe not the first, but
Speaker 2: it was a really important moment for war coverage. So
Speaker 2: he almost attained this like celebrity status in a weird way,
Speaker 2: as this like big bad. He was elevated by the
Speaker 2: press and the video of the television media. If you
Speaker 2: want to hear more about this guy, please do check
Speaker 2: out Robert Evans's excellent series on Behind the Bastard Bastards.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, he's one particular bastard.
Speaker 3: Here, But in the end, at least my understanding is
Speaker 3: that it was between Iraq and Kuwait, right, There was
Speaker 3: conflict there. It had something to do with being in debt, right,
Speaker 3: so Iraq actually owed a ton of money to Kuwait
Speaker 3: and rather than you know, coming through with the payments,
Speaker 3: they came through with tanks and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, right now, speculation about the logic behind Iraq's invasion
Speaker 4: of Kuwait it still thrives.
Speaker 2: But you're correct.
Speaker 4: I would say, Matt, that it does seem to go
Speaker 4: down to money, because in all I think it was
Speaker 4: August second of nineteen ninety, Husain's forces invaded Kuwait and
Speaker 4: they overran the country in like forty eight hours or less.
Speaker 4: It was very much one sided conflict there.
Speaker 3: And you know how George W. Bush described the second
Speaker 3: like the second invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's just gonna be like forty eight hours that actually
Speaker 3: happened in this case.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, Now, Hussein did not call it a crusade,
Speaker 4: give him that. He was also an inspiring romance novelist.
Speaker 4: Again behind the bastards check out the series It's Wild.
Speaker 4: The Iraqi forces declared ownership over Kuwait's northern territory and
Speaker 4: all of the rest of it came under the governance
Speaker 4: of a puppet state, you know, similar to Japan's actions
Speaker 4: on the Chinese mainland. And you know, here's why most
Speaker 4: people agree. Money was the impetus for Hussein. Iraq had
Speaker 4: borrowed the equivalent of fourteen billion US dollars from Kuwait
Speaker 4: to finance another war against Iran, and Kuwait, like most creditors,
Speaker 4: wanted to be paid back. They wanted their bag. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, Kuwait and the United Arab Immirates
Speaker 4: were overshooting the quotas that OPEC sets for oil production,
Speaker 4: and there's a big deal to Iraq because they're an
Speaker 4: oil export reliance country at the time. So the main
Speaker 4: way that they can pay back this debt is being
Speaker 4: aggressively devalued, and in the government's statements at this period
Speaker 4: of time, they're pretty blunt about it. The Iraqi government
Speaker 4: says Kuwait is doing this on purpose to make it
Speaker 4: difficult or impossible to pay back their debt. They wanted
Speaker 4: to put Iraq in a financial hole and keep it there.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but like Iraq also massive oil production operations, right, yes,
Speaker 2: so why was Kuwait a to exceed those quotas. It
Speaker 2: seems like they were bending the rules a little bitter like,
Speaker 2: how how are they able to go about that in
Speaker 2: such a seemingly passive aggressive way.
Speaker 4: Yet OPEC is a cartel, you know, and I know
Speaker 4: cartel has some sinister connotations, but OPEK essentially exists to
Speaker 4: slow the faucet of oil and.
Speaker 2: Regulate prices the very least, yeah, even the mout.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, right, so it's price fixing and it is
Speaker 4: focused on providing predictability and stability for oil exporting nations.
Speaker 2: However, they it's a paper.
Speaker 4: Basically, they sign a piece of paper saying we'll do this,
Speaker 4: we'll agree to this, and there's not a way to
Speaker 4: stop them from going back on their word.
Speaker 3: Well, and there there are real world constraints on an
Speaker 3: oil producing country, right, and all of it's measured in
Speaker 3: barrels per day, which is the thing OPEC can can
Speaker 3: kind of control, right, how much money can you get
Speaker 3: for that single barrel of oil? And you know, if
Speaker 3: you can only make x number of barrels when that
Speaker 3: price fluctuates, you're in the The economics of your country
Speaker 3: can fluctuate wildly, right, which is what's happening here and
Speaker 3: why it feels. It felt like, let's say to a
Speaker 3: rock that Kuwait had its boot on its neck.
Speaker 2: And so it's a good example of putting all your
Speaker 2: economic eggs in one basket. Even if that basket or
Speaker 2: those eggs are incredibly valuable, it's still one thing, right,
Speaker 2: and that can hamstring you down the line if you
Speaker 2: don't have a diverse, more diverse economic outlook. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like Rizza said in the Chappelle Show, you got
Speaker 4: to diversify your portfolio.
Speaker 3: And this diverse bonds I will with portfolio because it's
Speaker 3: not a little more economically minded.
Speaker 4: The shout out to Chappelle's show, So did huseaning take
Speaker 4: a lesson from our pal, King Philip Street name heavy
Speaker 4: P because that he handles Kuwait the way that Philip
Speaker 4: handles the templar. He says, the best way to resolve
Speaker 4: this massive debt is to remove the creditor from the board.
Speaker 4: The US disagreed, as did most of the world. The
Speaker 4: United Nations and the Security Council specifically adopted to separate
Speaker 4: resolutions in the beginning, and they imposed economic sanctions against
Speaker 4: the Rock. The United Kingdom and the US deployed forces
Speaker 4: into Saudi Arabia literal boots on the ground, and at
Speaker 4: the same time they urged other nations to follow their example. Eventually,
Speaker 4: as you said, Noel, they ended up with a coalition
Speaker 4: of forty two different nations involved in some way and
Speaker 4: the wallets were opened. Billions of dollars are powering this endeavor.
Speaker 4: Officially it was an estimated sixty billion dollars. However, we
Speaker 4: know war is messy and so a lot of that money.
Speaker 4: The real toll financially is probably much higher and were
Speaker 4: never and a note, the full extent of expense here,
Speaker 4: but we do know the bombing begins in January of
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety one, and for any students of warfare, there
Speaker 4: are several notable aspects of this conflict. There are a
Speaker 4: lot of first time things here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you guys have memories of watching the Iraq War,
Speaker 3: like the invasion and the green cameras, the night vision stuff.
Speaker 3: And I just have clear visions of CNN showing you know,
Speaker 3: all of this stuff and watching it with my parents
Speaker 3: just trying to understand what the heck's going on.
Speaker 2: Well, and I sort of alluded to that earlier, just
Speaker 2: about this being you know, or Saddam being almost like
Speaker 2: elevated to this big, bad level by this kind of coverage,
Speaker 2: And I guess I didn't realize until I was looking
Speaker 2: at some of the research that Ben did here that
Speaker 2: this really was a first and that this kind of
Speaker 2: coverage prior even with like the Vietnam War, there were
Speaker 2: no embedded journalists. It was all stuff sent to the
Speaker 2: news stations that was very much controlled by the military,
Speaker 2: and of course even the embedded journalists were very much
Speaker 2: controlled and handled by the media, but this was still different.
Speaker 2: It was very different, and yes, I do remember all
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, real time updates. The media forces and the government
Speaker 4: forces could attempt to sanitize what was depicted, but just
Speaker 4: like how live programs can have curse words slip through,
Speaker 4: you can't clean all of the footage. So for many,
Speaker 4: many citizens of the US and the world entire they
Speaker 4: were seeing the unedited reality of conflict and it's a
Speaker 4: very very ugly, strange, dangerous thing.
Speaker 2: This is also.
Speaker 4: I didn't know this, three of the largest tank battles
Speaker 4: in all of US history also took place at this time.
Speaker 4: This is also the first time people deployed depleted uranium
Speaker 4: in a large scale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, and head over to our YouTube channel and
Speaker 3: scroll all the way back to August twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: to watch our special on It's the Gulf War, syndrome,
Speaker 3: Agent orange and depleted uranium. There's three separate videos, so
Speaker 3: definitely check that out. But guys, this is also Nurse Narayah, right, yes,
Speaker 3: the testimony in nineteen ninety I guess it's right around
Speaker 3: the time of Iraq and invading Kuwait is when we
Speaker 3: got the Nurse Narayah testimony that we've talked about on
Speaker 3: the show a couple of times. That turned out to
Speaker 3: be not true, dealing with what was it child babies
Speaker 3: being taken out of incubators.
Speaker 4: Incubator Yep, yeah, we cover it in our book as well.
Speaker 4: I think it's chapter five, I want to say propaganda,
Speaker 4: or maybe it's oh, it might be chapter eight political corruption,
Speaker 4: bangor hit. Check out the art from our pal Nick
Speaker 4: Turbo Benson.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 4: It's something that people have been talking about for quite
Speaker 4: a long time. And this would also not be the
Speaker 4: last of these wars. In two thousand and three, the
Speaker 4: battle begins anew in the US. This was known as
Speaker 4: Operation Iraqi Freedom at this point. Still, even in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, in the grand scheme of things, the tragedies
Speaker 4: heartbreak of war are comparatively fresh. We as a civilization
Speaker 4: simply do not know the full consequences of these interventions.
Speaker 4: We do know the threats were real. There were clear
Speaker 4: and present dangers. The West was very concerned with the
Speaker 4: Hussein administration's interest in biological and possibly nuclear warfare, and
Speaker 4: as previous lessons had proven time and time again, it
Speaker 4: is exceedingly rare, if not virtually impossible, for any government
Speaker 4: to walk back those ambitions once they get past a
Speaker 4: certain threshold is super uncommon. So the US and its coalition,
Speaker 4: their ideas were going to cut this off of the
Speaker 4: butt or at least that's there, or cut this off
Speaker 4: of the route, nip it in the butts what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, also, I mean people will certainly recall this
Speaker 2: obsession with disarming Iraq. You know, in this idea of
Speaker 2: weapons of mass destruction was sort of the mcguffin behind
Speaker 2: the whole Iraqi freedom operation, and it ended up like
Speaker 2: not being the case. That sort of comes back in
Speaker 2: a way in this story, this idea of this sinister
Speaker 2: secret thing that may or may not actually exist.
Speaker 4: And the US sought to prepare its forces in advance
Speaker 4: for the possibilities of nasty things like nerve agents, biological weapons,
Speaker 4: et cetera. Like the Gulf War itself. We would not
Speaker 4: know the full consequences of these preparations for some time.
Speaker 4: In the decades after the First Gulf War, more and
Speaker 4: more veterans from all sides of the conflict began experiencing
Speaker 4: a collection of strange symptoms that they could not expel
Speaker 4: lane fatigue, insomnia, rashes, diarrhea, intense cognitive issues. You know,
Speaker 4: we would call it brain fog today and muscle pain
Speaker 4: like all around. The kind of things where you would
Speaker 4: know that you were seriously sick, but you wouldn't have
Speaker 4: a name to put on the thing, right, you would know,
Speaker 4: you would be able to name all the stuff it
Speaker 4: was not. It was not the flu. You know, you
Speaker 4: would test negative for other things, but you are clearly sick.
Speaker 4: And this became known as Gulf War syndrome for sure.
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, well, there isn't a name
Speaker 2: exactly for this kind of thing. There's sort of a vague,
Speaker 2: foggy name for a thing that we don't know the
Speaker 2: name of. I mean, in this case, it was deemed
Speaker 2: or dubbed Golf War syndrome or Golf War illness. But
Speaker 2: according to a report released by the Institute of Medicine
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, about a third of Gulf War veterans
Speaker 2: suffer from what is referred to as a CMI or
Speaker 2: chronic multi symptom illness, which, like you said, is a
Speaker 2: series of symptoms that cannot be medically explained. And if
Speaker 2: anyone has ever had to deal with anything like this,
Speaker 2: or even just an illness that won't go away, and
Speaker 2: the doctors don't believe you, or they keep treating it
Speaker 2: with the wrong thing. It can be so frustrating, you know,
Speaker 2: because Western medicine doesn't always get it right.
Speaker 3: You know, Well, there's a thing where depending on how
Speaker 3: rare the illness you've got or the disease you've got,
Speaker 3: it's like if you imagine the graph, the more rare
Speaker 3: it is, the less likely you know, a general practitioner
Speaker 3: is going to say, oh, this is it right, because
Speaker 3: you're going to go through the checklist of all the
Speaker 3: other things that could cause all those different symptoms with
Speaker 3: this Gulf War syndrome. It is so strange because it
Speaker 3: is so there's so many human beings that are experiencing
Speaker 3: similar symptoms right that are i don't know, broad spectrum right,
Speaker 3: dealing with exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's tough because this is not saying that
Speaker 4: the medical professionals were purposely bearing this, but a lot
Speaker 4: of times these guys are these guys feel like there
Speaker 4: is a conspiracy of foot to suppress what is actually
Speaker 4: happening to them. And unfortunately, there is a great deal
Speaker 4: of validity to that concern. We will see as we
Speaker 4: continue this evening that veteran advocacy groups had to fight
Speaker 4: tooth and nail to get this acknowledged to not be dismissed.
Speaker 4: The public is still searching for an official explanation behind
Speaker 4: Gulf War syndrome. What could cause these otherwise inexplicable series
Speaker 4: of ailments? Is it possible people were asking that the
Speaker 4: US government, in a rush to protect their soldiers, accidentally
Speaker 4: poison them. This is the story of PB pills. We're
Speaker 4: going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 4: then we'll dive right in. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: Paridistigmine bromide worked on that one for a seconds.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a doozy, the bromide part alone. I
Speaker 2: mean anything anything I've heard bromide attached to usually isn't
Speaker 2: something that you necessarily want to jest. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm thinking of like potassium bromides.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the last one I remember, which is the
Speaker 3: Mountain Dew guy.
Speaker 2: A good right, and was a brominated vegetable oil.
Speaker 4: Orange. Yeah, we're here to ruin the things you enjoy.
Speaker 4: So right now, I could just picture how many people
Speaker 4: drink orange Fanta? Do you think while they listened to
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 3: Oh, somebody had it in their mouth when you said that.
Speaker 2: We are sorry to you. But but the potassium bromide
Speaker 2: was apparently used as a sedative in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but I believe it was
Speaker 2: discovered to not be great for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it happens. It happens, And that might be the
Speaker 4: story with PB pills as well. This stuff dates back.
Speaker 4: It was clearly established well before the Gulf War. It
Speaker 4: was patented in nineteen forty five. It's been used in
Speaker 4: civilian medicine since nineteen fifty five, and primarily then as now,
Speaker 4: it is used to treat an extraordinarily rare autoimmune neuromuscular
Speaker 4: condition called myasthenia gravis.
Speaker 3: Guys, is it weird to you at all? My asthenia gravis?
Speaker 3: So let's stay right there. But just as an aside,
Speaker 3: is it weird to you guys hearing that medicine is
Speaker 3: patented in nineteen forty five? Just considering I guess there's
Speaker 3: chemical warfare occurring in World War two, right, with all
Speaker 3: kinds of gases and things that people are going to
Speaker 3: be exposed to, it would make sense that this is
Speaker 3: around the time when it gets patented and deployed.
Speaker 2: But it is just I don't know, it seems like yeah,
Speaker 2: oh for sure, but you know, you know, so many
Speaker 2: things they figure out down the line that's been around
Speaker 2: for asias. You can prescribe off label and it does
Speaker 2: other things. But I'm always suspicious when I hear off
Speaker 2: label thrown around. It's like, hey, just so happens that
Speaker 2: it kind of sort of does this other thing that
Speaker 2: we didn't really realize, and let's let's prescribe it for that,
Speaker 2: even though it's not for that.
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of a lot of medicine. And indeed,
Speaker 4: great invention is trial and error and finding something that
Speaker 4: you didn't intend when you were trying to do another
Speaker 4: thing unsuccessfully. Shout out to alchemy, which created chemistry. Shout
Speaker 4: out to viagra, which was supposed to help with heart
Speaker 4: with heart problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the microwave, right with something to do with the
Speaker 2: chocolate that melted in the guy's pocket, Like that was
Speaker 2: an accident, and then they realized they could harness.
Speaker 4: That, and I guess, tech, I guess if we're waxing poetic,
Speaker 4: viagra can help with heart problems, I mean hard problems.
Speaker 2: Of the hearts.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but Okay, So here's here's the thing. Here's why
Speaker 4: PB pills matter. So this substance is what's known as
Speaker 4: a cholinesterase inhibitor. There is a protein in your body
Speaker 4: if you're human, called calinesta RaSE and it breaks down
Speaker 4: a chemical called aceta. Calling wildly mispronouncing this maybe, but
Speaker 4: the reason this chemical is important, this aceta colding, is
Speaker 4: because it helps your nerve cells and your muscles talk
Speaker 4: to each other. It's like a zoom call for them
Speaker 4: or a telephone for them. And as a result, this
Speaker 4: PB substance helps that useful protein stay in your system longer.
Speaker 4: It helps your body activate the muscle. It lessens muscle weakness.
Speaker 4: So if you have a condition like my esthenia gravis,
Speaker 4: this is a godsend for you. It just keeps your
Speaker 4: body running the way it should. So it's preventative.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Since this stuff helps your nerves and your muscles communicate,
Speaker 4: then the theory is the logic is that if another
Speaker 4: substance interferes with that communication, these PB pills can sort
Speaker 4: of hold the line. They can lessen the impact of
Speaker 4: some very nasty stuff. It sounds good, Oh yeah, it
Speaker 4: sounds great. I think we're done for today.
Speaker 3: Are there a lot of people in the military that
Speaker 3: have myasthenia gravis?
Speaker 4: Uh not, actually not a time, not disproportionately.
Speaker 2: Maybe with the rest of the population. The weird, it
Speaker 2: is a little weird, but like you know, of course
Speaker 2: I was, you know, sorry, this isn't we're not talking
Speaker 2: about patasium bromi. But I did look it up just
Speaker 2: to see what I was thinking about, and it was
Speaker 2: taken off of the market. It's used in veterinary medicine,
Speaker 2: but it's taken off the market for human use because
Speaker 2: of a litany of side effects that just outweighed any positives,
Speaker 2: and it was used as a sedative, and other they
Speaker 2: call them hypnotics had come out that were far more effective.
Speaker 2: So it was fully pulled for human use, and now
Speaker 2: it's apparently only used to you know, sub do pooches
Speaker 2: and kiddies. But let's talk about the side effects of
Speaker 2: these this other bromide situation, these PB pills.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's got them. Like every good drug, he's got
Speaker 3: side effects. And it's the scary stuff you gotta read
Speaker 3: in the ad.
Speaker 2: It's the fine print that they say really really fast.
Speaker 3: But in this case, there's no ad for this. You
Speaker 3: just get handed some you know as a person in
Speaker 3: the military. But let's talk about them. There's uncommon side
Speaker 3: effects as again or always read in the ads.
Speaker 4: Well, let's currently welcome to the welcome to the good
Speaker 4: guys marine take these. Make sure you don't get a
Speaker 4: hit with nerve gas, but just in case you do,
Speaker 4: you're gonna want to take some PB pills. Oh, thank
Speaker 4: you sir. Currently these are uncommon side effects, but include
Speaker 4: stuff like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and cramps, twitching,
Speaker 4: or weakness of the muscles.
Speaker 3: Wait, how is it going to cause weakness of the muscles?
Speaker 3: It's supposed to do the opposite.
Speaker 4: Wow, is your specialty questions? Get out of here, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? Like that's and also there's a
Speaker 4: hell of a ven diagram right between again slowly nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
Speaker 4: stomach cramps, muscle cramps, twitching, and muscle weakness. That's pretty
Speaker 4: similar to Gulf War syndrome.
Speaker 2: Is this an antidote situation?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Do you only supposed to take these if you're exposed
Speaker 2: to nerve gas? Now it's any it's a mephyl.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh button, it's preventative.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, uh yeah, sorry, I have a very specific
Speaker 3: image of that word.
Speaker 2: I think most people do.
Speaker 3: But tech tech.
Speaker 4: It is preventative, but it's not a vaccination. The idea
Speaker 4: is that if you are in a conflict situation, right,
Speaker 4: if you're in the armed services, you're out there in
Speaker 4: the Middle East, you might get exposed to nerve gas
Speaker 4: from Hussein's force, stuff like Sarah or Soman, and then
Speaker 4: this stuff will It won't cure you, but it will
Speaker 4: make it more likely that if you are exposed to
Speaker 4: a nerve agent, you have a higher chance of surviving
Speaker 4: with no long lasting ill effects.
Speaker 2: Quick quick review, what are the effects of these agents
Speaker 2: or some maybe hit lists of some particularly gnarly effects.
Speaker 2: If you get hit with a nerve agent.
Speaker 3: It's gonna mess with your body's ability to have your
Speaker 3: nerves connect to your bid. It's the communication that the
Speaker 3: pbpills are actually supposed to be helping out here, right,
Speaker 3: and the concept of taking them every day. The way
Speaker 3: that we were told by our anonymous listener is that
Speaker 3: you never know when a chemical attack could occur. It
Speaker 3: could be in you know, the place where you're sleeping,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden there's a nerve agent or
Speaker 3: something that you're going to be affected by, so you've
Speaker 3: got to make sure it's in your system, just continually cycling.
Speaker 3: So sorry, I didn't mean a derail, but let's get
Speaker 3: back here.
Speaker 2: Why not at all? I think that's it's incredibly important important,
Speaker 2: But it's funny how some of the side effects of
Speaker 2: nerve agents are kind of similar to the side effects
Speaker 2: of these bills, right exactly.
Speaker 4: And again, a lot of people who are taking these
Speaker 4: they are trusting the authorities. They are not themselves medical professionals.
Speaker 4: But like most people listening to tonight's show, they would
Speaker 4: like to not die. And so this is where it
Speaker 4: gets tricky. Right, Like many substances, this was always thought
Speaker 4: to be non harmful below a certain threshold, And that's
Speaker 4: where it gets tricky. How can we keep track of
Speaker 4: how much an individual person ingested? And when the VA Veterans'
Speaker 4: Affairs has a lot of information on this, we pulled
Speaker 4: some quotes directly from them.
Speaker 2: Yes we did, and here goes one. PB pills were
Speaker 2: supplied to service members as twenty one tablet blister packs
Speaker 2: with prescribed dosage as one thirty milligram tablet every eight hours.
Speaker 2: Veterans actual exposure is not known because pills were self administered,
Speaker 2: and there are few examples in individual or unit health
Speaker 2: records from the Department of Defense. And we're all get
Speaker 2: to a real weird reason why that's the case, are
Speaker 2: we ben there are some very interesting instructions that were
Speaker 2: given when people were handed these pills.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's a huge caveat in there that we
Speaker 4: have to spend some time on the VA then and
Speaker 4: now is saying that soldiers were left on their own
Speaker 4: when it came to the dosage. They were given recommendations
Speaker 4: like we outlined, but administering the PB pills was up
Speaker 4: to the individual themselves. And so if we asked scurselves
Speaker 4: how the dosing worked, like you said, one thirty milligram
Speaker 4: tablet every eight hours. So that is, for some quick math,
Speaker 4: that's ninety milligrams every day. And the FDA recommends that
Speaker 4: people who have my esthenia gravis take up to six
Speaker 4: hundred milligrams of PBE pills or the PP substance every
Speaker 4: twenty four hours, depending on the needs of the patient.
Speaker 2: And I saw this in a couple of places, but
Speaker 2: not everywhere. About this stuff. There was some indication from
Speaker 2: folks that they were asked to destroy records of who
Speaker 2: received these and whether or not they were taking them.
Speaker 2: Or again, if it's self administer, the would necessarily be
Speaker 2: a record of how many times or how often they
Speaker 2: were taken. But I did hear in a couple of
Speaker 2: talks and in some articles that there was this sense
Speaker 2: that they didn't want a record of like how these
Speaker 2: were distributed.
Speaker 4: Right, similar to burn pits or documentary that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, and just to go back to our
Speaker 3: anutomous listener again, this person said that they chose not
Speaker 3: to self administer the PB pills, or at least they
Speaker 3: began just a little bit and then stopped. But then
Speaker 3: this person witnessed a whole bunch of other people in
Speaker 3: the same platoon who are taking it religiously, like just
Speaker 3: won't like, oh it's eight hours, I'm taking my pill.
Speaker 2: Well, there were apparently a lot of bullying tactics deployed
Speaker 2: by commanding officers as well, saying if you didn't take them,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get you know, have to scrub the or
Speaker 2: whatever you know, or not be court martialed. But just inconvenient,
Speaker 2: mean spirited kind of tasks.
Speaker 4: Right, and from their perspective, by the way, these commanding
Speaker 4: officers are kind of doing like a tough love thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, take care medicine, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm saving your life, maggot.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 4: It's like that's kind of the energy that they had.
Speaker 4: They weren't purposely trying to poison. And also, you know,
Speaker 4: another thing about the horrors of conflict is that it
Speaker 4: creates superstition, right, very quickly. So even if you are
Speaker 4: not going to be evolved with any kind of nerve agent,
Speaker 4: you can feel a sort of safety by taking the thing,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like every so often I
Speaker 4: do this, and this is somehow a safety measure, even
Speaker 4: if I don't know how it works totally. Yeah, And look,
Speaker 4: not everyone here's the thing. Not everyone who took these pills,
Speaker 4: these PB pills got sick. And not everyone who fought
Speaker 4: in the Gulf War returned with Gulf War syndrome. There
Speaker 4: is therefore a mystery afoot, and to those who believe
Speaker 4: the government may be covering up something, this leads to
Speaker 4: a series of increasingly disturbing allegations.
Speaker 2: It does, indeed, first and foremost and probably the most plausible.
Speaker 2: Let's just start from where they where they stemmed from.
Speaker 2: These were from veterans and veteran advocate groups, which includes
Speaker 2: a lot of different individuals, whether it be family members
Speaker 2: trying to go to bat for their loved ones and
Speaker 2: speaking out publicly. I saw really really great TED talk
Speaker 2: from a woman named Jennifer Jackson Gorillas gay G K
Speaker 2: O U R I, L L A S who had
Speaker 2: a loved one and she does this talk as an
Speaker 2: advocate for that individual. But then there's also you know,
Speaker 2: veterans affairs groups and less so maybe the veteran the VA,
Speaker 2: but there are advocates groups that sort of exist to
Speaker 2: improve the way the VA functions. Right, So the most
Speaker 2: plausible that comes out of these various sources is that
Speaker 2: Uncle Sam administered PB pills without proper oversight, methodology and research.
Speaker 2: Because this was put out without FDA approval, they were
Speaker 2: given something called a waiver, which I believe is very
Speaker 2: similar to what happened with COVID nineteen vaccines.
Speaker 3: Guys. I found that the waiver again, I have it
Speaker 3: on my refrigerator.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I think we've mentioned this several episodes back, but it's
Speaker 3: the waiver that you got in place of actual consent
Speaker 3: and information about a drug because of that Emergency Act.
Speaker 3: And it's just basically you're saying, look, I understand this
Speaker 3: is an experimental drug. There could be side effects that
Speaker 3: we don't know about yet, haven't gone through clinical trials,
Speaker 3: but we're taking it anyway, and I'm doing it on
Speaker 3: my own volition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that counter to like the Nurmberg Treaty or
Speaker 2: whatever it was. I forget if it's a treaty, but
Speaker 2: there was some official document that makes it illegal to
Speaker 2: experiment on vulnerable populations. And you could very much class
Speaker 2: people in the heat of battle who are terrified for
Speaker 2: their lives and to your point, Ben, wanting that safety blanket,
Speaker 2: even if it's just a feeling, they'd be more compelled
Speaker 2: to take something like this if they're in that situation,
Speaker 2: therefore making them vulnerable. Doesn't this go completely counter to that?
Speaker 4: Well, they didn't. In their opinion, this was not an experiment.
Speaker 4: This was not human experimentation. Their opinion, this was a
Speaker 4: kind of like a band aid rollout of something, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. Like you would say, hey, we
Speaker 4: understand the concept of parachutes. Therefore it is not human
Speaker 4: experimentation to have people jump from a plane with a parachute.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and theoretically this is almost a piece of
Speaker 3: technology that it is a piece of technology that can
Speaker 3: be deployed with your troops to lessen the effect your
Speaker 3: enemy's weapons have on them.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a greater good argument, and that leads
Speaker 4: us to just to follow that first allegation. They didn't
Speaker 4: do their homework. That's the first allegation, right, The intentions
Speaker 4: were good, but there wasn't enough due diligence applied before
Speaker 4: this was rolled out to a ton of people. The second,
Speaker 4: more sinister allegation is that someone in the halls of
Speaker 4: power may have known full well that there was potential
Speaker 4: or ill side effects and they either buried it or
Speaker 4: ignored the research.
Speaker 3: That's tough, that's the old fodder viewpoint, right, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: Like we know that these guys are going to be
Speaker 3: down there with the enemy tanks, they might be in
Speaker 3: tanks themselves. There is a much higher chance that one
Speaker 3: or an entire group of these human beings gets killed
Speaker 3: in combat. Let's take this precaution, even though it's dangerous,
Speaker 3: because it is also likely that they will get killed anyway.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: If that's true, that means the US government ran a
Speaker 4: brutal cost benefit calculus, right or calculation, and they concluded, Look,
Speaker 4: the potential for harm is below a certain percentage, so
Speaker 4: it's an acceptable risk. And that might sound morally repugnant,
Speaker 4: because you know it is. Yeah, but we have to
Speaker 4: admit there is a contextual logic to it. Would you
Speaker 4: rather risk injury to say, one out of three soldiers
Speaker 4: or do you want to roll the dice on Saddam
Speaker 4: Hussein in nerve gas knowing that if you don't try
Speaker 4: to prevent that deployment it will kill thousands of people
Speaker 4: very quickly.
Speaker 3: Esh Man, I don't want to be the one making
Speaker 3: those kinds of decisions, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Do we have evidence that that nerve gases were deployed,
Speaker 2: that definitely were deployed or is this all preventative for
Speaker 2: a thing that made like I was asking earlier, may
Speaker 2: or may not have actually been on the tablet at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 4: At the time, they were in a little bit of
Speaker 4: a black box, but they were pretty sure that saren cyclo,
Speaker 4: sarin and mustard gas were possessed by the husay In administration,
Speaker 4: and if they were possessed, then they would be used.
Speaker 4: That was the only logical conclusion they could make. And
Speaker 4: I'm not defending them, but I'm just saying from their perspective,
Speaker 4: we can see the steps that they walked through.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh, well there, I mean, there was an extensive chemical
Speaker 3: weapons program in Iraq, right, and we know that from history,
Speaker 3: like this was a thing in the eighties specifically, So
Speaker 3: it's I don't know there. If you listen to Immortal Technique,
Speaker 3: the you know, we knew they had chemical weapons because
Speaker 3: we helped them get them to them.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I totally forgot about that detail in that
Speaker 2: previous conflict, right, I believe what they're on We had
Speaker 2: sold there are allies at that point, and we sold
Speaker 2: them these various agents, which is what led us to
Speaker 2: do the research to figure out how to use the
Speaker 2: PB pills in the first place.
Speaker 3: Right now, you're right, all right, History, sometimes, you guys,
Speaker 3: is such a he said, She's a kind of thing.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: History is written by the victors, which is a terrible
Speaker 4: editorial standpoint, but it's the standard operating procedure.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: There's a third, unproven and more sinister allegation wartime profiteering.
Speaker 4: We know that pharmaceutical companies have an outsized lobbying influence,
Speaker 4: and just like defense companies, they make a lot of
Speaker 4: money from government contracts. Then, as now, so is it
Speaker 4: possible then that private pharmaceutical companies successfully lobbied to get
Speaker 4: their products sold consequences be damned.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even think about that. Just the contract,
Speaker 3: that government contract to buy all the pills.
Speaker 4: And none of this is proven, right, I mean, we
Speaker 4: know that they did sell the pills to the government,
Speaker 4: but we can't ascribe motive. There's no smoking gun for it,
Speaker 4: and that leaves us with the first allegation as the
Speaker 4: most likely scenario. Because there may be some science to
Speaker 4: back up this idea. There were discoveries made about PB
Speaker 4: pill exposure far after it was given to America's fighting forces.
Speaker 4: Suggests we take a pause for a word from our
Speaker 4: sponsors and then put on our house stuff works hats
Speaker 4: and dive into some disturbing science.
Speaker 3: And we've returned, so let's just get into it, guys.
Speaker 3: Veterans Affairs officially says that these PB pills that we're
Speaker 3: describing in this entire episode are not connected to the
Speaker 3: thing that is recognized as Gulf War syndrome. Right, that's
Speaker 3: the official stance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's the official conclusion, but the science appears
Speaker 4: to go back and forth. In twenty fifteen, or we
Speaker 4: found a study from twenty fifteen at Baylor University, a
Speaker 4: pretty small study, but it found something revolutionary. It linked
Speaker 4: the use of anti nerve agent pills PB pills to
Speaker 4: Gulf War syndrome and it also found a missing link,
Speaker 4: a possible genetic factor that would result in sickness. There's
Speaker 4: an article from the Military Times that puts it this way,
Speaker 4: quote genetic factors may contribute to a veteran's risk for
Speaker 4: Golf War illness, which they were calling at the time.
Speaker 4: And this study links the PB pills and their adverse
Speaker 4: effects to the genetic makeup of individual soldiers.
Speaker 2: So there's a.
Speaker 4: Gene variant that, to put it very simply, because we're
Speaker 4: not geneticists, there's a gene variant that complicates your body's
Speaker 4: ability to metabolize chemicals in these PB pills. And if
Speaker 4: you have this variant, then you are going to be
Speaker 4: up to forty times more likely to have Gulf War
Speaker 4: syndrome symptoms. And people who don't have this variant, are
Speaker 4: gonna be fine. Wow, it's something, you know, It's something
Speaker 4: no one like the idea of searching for cyanide poisoning
Speaker 4: or attempting to diagnose an illness. It's something people just
Speaker 4: didn't think to look for, is the argument.
Speaker 3: Jeez, guys, I'm just thinking about for what forty times
Speaker 3: actually means. So I was just imagining someone telling me, hey, Matt,
Speaker 3: you have two times the chance of getting in a
Speaker 3: car wreck if you leave in if you leave your
Speaker 3: house in your car today. So I would be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm not not going to do that. But if somebody say, hey, Matt,
Speaker 3: you have a forty times larger chance of getting in
Speaker 3: a car wreck today, I'd be like, hmmm, car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: This it's it's weird too, because you know, it reminds
Speaker 4: me of the genetic factors and things like the taste
Speaker 4: of cilantro. You know, this genetic variant is likely something
Speaker 4: that most people will never know about themselves. It simply
Speaker 4: won't come up because genes are very complicated and you
Speaker 4: don't think about it most of the time.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: No, And well, and this drug, these chemicals that are
Speaker 3: in this drug were meant to be administered only to
Speaker 3: people who were dealing with a pretty rare problem, right, So,
Speaker 3: like I'm just thinking about the number of the number
Speaker 3: of people that it would have gone to if it
Speaker 3: weren't being used for this purpose, we never would have
Speaker 3: known that there are any major issues and.
Speaker 2: The original thing was rare, like right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Because if you think about a clinical trial with side effects,
Speaker 3: like any any drug that gets tested, there are a
Speaker 3: few people that develop cancer. There are a few people
Speaker 3: that develop things, and it may have nothing to do
Speaker 3: with the actual drug that's being administered. It may be
Speaker 3: what that individual was going through prior to getting the drug,
Speaker 3: but because it was involved in the trial, you have
Speaker 3: to list it, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And we're talking about people that had goal war
Speaker 2: illness or goal for syndrome, whatever that is. It's it's
Speaker 2: within a niche specific community obviously, and people I believe
Speaker 2: that even interacted with some of those folks, like family members,
Speaker 2: I believe even could have received some effect from this.
Speaker 2: But it's it's not a tiny number. It's a what
Speaker 2: we're talking like in the dozens of thousands, Like, like,
Speaker 2: do do we have that? Yeah, it's a little hazy,
Speaker 2: and it's not certainly not really confirmed by the government
Speaker 2: per se.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, yeah, government is uh. The government is still
Speaker 4: disagreeing with veterans and their advocates. And originally they were
Speaker 4: out of sight, out of mind about it, and they
Speaker 4: discredited a lot of things that they should have been
Speaker 4: looking at. That's just that's not political statement, no ideology
Speaker 4: applied objectively.
Speaker 2: That is true.
Speaker 4: And even now the US government officially considers what we
Speaker 4: call Gulf War syndrome to be a quote cluster of
Speaker 4: medically unexplained chronic systems end quote, meaning they acknowledge something exists,
Speaker 4: but they don't conclude much else about it. They don't
Speaker 4: even like using the term Gulf War syndrome. They say
Speaker 4: the symptoms vary far too widely.
Speaker 2: That's the thing too, right, Like these are unrelated symptoms
Speaker 2: that don't usually get lumped in with the same malady.
Speaker 2: That's another thing that made it difficult for medical practitioners
Speaker 2: to kind of figure out based on the normal clues
Speaker 2: they would usually have. It's like a set of symptoms
Speaker 2: that equals something like a particular condition or adjacent conditions,
Speaker 2: but these were it was a real mystery.
Speaker 3: Who what if PB pills are one part of a
Speaker 3: much larger equation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what if history is not super cut and dried.
Speaker 4: What if real life is kind of complicated, just like
Speaker 4: people's genetic code. This is something that the VA seems
Speaker 4: to tacitly acknowledge because they say the following quote, certain chronic,
Speaker 4: unexplained symptoms existing for six months or more are related
Speaker 4: to golf war service without regard to cause. So if
Speaker 4: you are a veteran and you are in theater during
Speaker 4: that time, then you can apply for disability for compensation
Speaker 4: for assistance without specifically without the VA having to specifically
Speaker 4: say golf syndrome is real and you have it, they
Speaker 4: can just say unexplained things you happen to be in
Speaker 4: the Gulf War.
Speaker 2: We know the government is all about plausible deniability, both
Speaker 2: internally and you know publicly, especially publicly, they have whole
Speaker 2: divisions that are designed to do damage control control about
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. And we know that they're not
Speaker 2: gonna treat somebody or give them extra treatment because that
Speaker 2: would acknowledge the thing exists in the first place and
Speaker 2: that it was their fault.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: A lot of the conspiracies that you see in the
Speaker 4: world of government are someone messed up and then someone
Speaker 4: tried to cover it up or cya. Right, and there
Speaker 4: are to your point, Matt, there are other possible causes,
Speaker 4: and they likely did affect people. We're talking about things
Speaker 4: like burn pits, oil well fires because this is a
Speaker 4: resource war, right, oil wells are set on fire and
Speaker 4: Kuwait by the Iraqi army as they're retreating. They're doing
Speaker 4: this scorched stirth thing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: If I can't have it, you can't either. And the
Speaker 4: smoke from those fires was inhaled by a lot of
Speaker 4: soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and a lot
Speaker 4: of those folks went on to have acute pulmonary consequences
Speaker 4: like you know asthma, bronchitis, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Has to do with your lungs, right pullmaner, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: other chronic evict Just throwing that out there in case
Speaker 3: anybody didn't catch it.
Speaker 2: When did we talk about burn pits recently? It feels
Speaker 2: like a blur, but I swear it came up very
Speaker 2: recently about the kind of nasty stuff that they were burning,
Speaker 2: you know, near camps or in the midst of camps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this wasn't this wasn't goal for war. We
Speaker 3: were talking about Iraqi freedom, we're.
Speaker 2: Talking about talking about the thing. You know, they got
Speaker 2: a for sure. And I think I had mentioned earlier
Speaker 2: the idea of the peb pills there being some obfuscation
Speaker 2: going on in terms of the records. I think that
Speaker 2: was less. I think I was maybe misconstruing that more
Speaker 2: with what you were saying then that the locations uses
Speaker 2: and the proximity of these burn pits. They have a
Speaker 2: very hard time producing any records about that, as well
Speaker 2: as medical records for the folks that were around them.
Speaker 2: So DOA did a pretty crappy job of tracking this stuff. Well.
Speaker 4: Also, it's kind of it's not outright covered it up right,
Speaker 4: It's kind of a supply chain dilemma as well. You know,
Speaker 4: one of the most expensive parts of fighting a conflict
Speaker 4: abroad is you have to build the logistics out. You
Speaker 4: have to build the supply chain. So when you have
Speaker 4: a bunch of trash and things that you need to
Speaker 4: throw away, you don't have your you know, the city
Speaker 4: garbage truck to come by.
Speaker 3: Halliburton doesn't send in a you know, a chinook and
Speaker 3: pick up all the garbage.
Speaker 4: They're a little expensive, oh weird.
Speaker 3: But guys what we received, I don't know. I would
Speaker 3: estimate a dozen personal accounts from different individuals who talk
Speaker 3: to us about burn pits at very specific camps, very
Speaker 3: specific bases that in it was the range of like
Speaker 3: a very large forward operating base to just a place
Speaker 3: where when you first arrive in a rack camp was
Speaker 3: on the side.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I don't know that it seems like it was
Speaker 3: just it seems like they could figure out where there
Speaker 3: was burn pit, because if there were troops there, there
Speaker 3: was probably a burn pit.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that you guys saw this in your
Speaker 2: research as well. But I did find a full text,
Speaker 2: I guess versions very no bells and whistles of the
Speaker 2: second report by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
Speaker 2: which is indicated as a you know, investigation into Gulf
Speaker 2: War veterans illnesses. It says VA D O D continue
Speaker 2: to resist strong evidence linking toxic causes to chronic health effects.
Speaker 2: And if you do a search for the word records
Speaker 2: in this seventy six instances of that occur, and almost
Speaker 2: every one of them tied to there are none. So
Speaker 2: just that's where I got that information. It's a real
Speaker 2: report from nineteen ninety seven from Congress.
Speaker 4: And there are there's a lot of research on the
Speaker 4: part of legislative bodies regarding this, and it continues because
Speaker 4: you know these individuals for a long time. Or again
Speaker 4: we're being roundly ignored, and we're going to get to
Speaker 4: something here another possible cause that should bother you. But first,
Speaker 4: actually they should all bother you. But first let's talk
Speaker 4: about depleted uranium. The Gulf Wars the first time this
Speaker 4: stuff is used on a large scale as a weapon, right,
Speaker 4: in military applications, du or depleted uranium is ideal for
Speaker 4: use in armor penetrators. As one marine Front of the
Speaker 4: Show put it, it shoots through stuff good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially tanks, the armoring on tanks, right, which we
Speaker 3: know in the Gulf War that was an issue. There
Speaker 3: were big tanks that were coming at you. The US
Speaker 3: had larger tanks, more technologically advanced tanks and depleted uranium rounds.
Speaker 2: And this is just a byproduct of nuclear energy creation
Speaker 2: or where is this stuff coming from? They US have
Speaker 2: all this depleted uranium laying around, is that right? It
Speaker 2: is kind of just like a trash that they're re
Speaker 2: using to blow up tags.
Speaker 4: Yeah, depleted uranium is naturally occurring uranium, and it's been
Speaker 4: stripped of most of but not all, of the radioactive goodies.
Speaker 4: And it is a byproduct it comes from preparing uranium
Speaker 4: for nuclear application.
Speaker 2: That makes perfect sense. And how lucky for them they
Speaker 2: were able to make lemons to lemonade or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, and it does stick around, right, it's uranium. It
Speaker 3: doesn't just naturally decay real quick. Now it's a radioactive substance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's great for shooting stuff, is the thing.
Speaker 2: Real good.
Speaker 4: It's really good at it. It's also really not good
Speaker 4: for humans. And if you ever are hanging out with
Speaker 4: some friends on the weekend and they're like, hey, do
Speaker 4: you want to play with depleted uranium, you should say no,
Speaker 4: I hope that's not a hot take.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know.
Speaker 3: Well, just imagine though, if you're in that situation in
Speaker 3: there are du rounds going off all over the especially
Speaker 3: in a large battle in maybe a somewhat urban environment,
Speaker 3: right where you're now going through that same city that
Speaker 3: you just shot up like crazy. That stuff's in the
Speaker 3: air via like dust, that stuff's on the ground.
Speaker 2: It's so there're SOPs for wearing gas masks or protection
Speaker 2: when circling back through these areas. I'm sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's always going to be a standard operating procedure
Speaker 4: or like an order of operations for stuff, but that
Speaker 4: can fall to the wayside very quickly in the chaos
Speaker 4: of a hot conflict. Multiple studies by the US government
Speaker 4: appear to show that, yes, depleted uranium is nasty stuff,
Speaker 4: but they conclude it does not itself cause what we
Speaker 4: call Gulf War syndrome double however, so that's two howevers
Speaker 4: for US played along at home. Since twenty eleven, US
Speaker 4: combat veterans can still claim disability compensation for any health
Speaker 4: problems related to depleted uranium, and this is up to
Speaker 4: the VA. They decided on a case by case basis,
Speaker 4: which means, yet again you're at the mercy of bureaucracy, right.
Speaker 4: And this is not to disparage the people working at
Speaker 4: the VA. It's the system that's the problem.
Speaker 3: Hip because it really does become bureaucratic. As you said,
Speaker 3: where were you deployed, when were you there? What you know,
Speaker 3: battalion and blah blah blah blah blah, all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and then you can basically the VA could say, well,
Speaker 3: there's an x percent chance that you were actually exposed
Speaker 3: to du right, which could be good or bad.
Speaker 4: And it's like, do you have the right form from
Speaker 4: the right medical professional. Oh, do you need to see
Speaker 4: the medical professional. Okay, that'll be like a couple of years.
Speaker 4: I mean, hopefully it's not that extreme. But there are
Speaker 4: systemic problems here. This is another cause that we personally
Speaker 4: don't care for, and it was it was bandied about
Speaker 4: a lot in the early days. Factions of the US
Speaker 4: government were going to veterans and saying, well, you think
Speaker 4: you have Golf War syndrome, Even before they had a
Speaker 4: name for it, they said, what you really have is
Speaker 4: PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Now gaslighting, Yeah, before we continue,
Speaker 4: PTSD is very real. It can affect absolutely anyone civilian
Speaker 4: or military alike. Given the right circumstances, it happens. It
Speaker 4: is a real thing. We're not dismissing that, but we
Speaker 4: are saying lumping all of those proven physiological symptoms of
Speaker 4: Gulf War syndrome into one umbrella and saying it's just PTSD.
Speaker 4: That can seem profoundly offensive to some people. It is
Speaker 4: like gaslighting. It feels like that it's dismissing a genuine
Speaker 4: health condition as being quote all in your heads.
Speaker 2: And that is messed up. Yeah cool, and again we
Speaker 2: you know, I mean I should get but like you know,
Speaker 2: my kid has as aversion to certain types of antibiotics
Speaker 2: were particularly penicillin. It causes a severe psychological reaction. There
Speaker 2: was this time where they were given penicillin and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, like we're acting like they were having
Speaker 2: an emotional, uh, you know, anxiety attack basically. But that's
Speaker 2: a really hard thing to convince doctors to believe in
Speaker 2: because they don't. There's not a whole lot of exact
Speaker 2: precedent for it, but it happens every time. So this
Speaker 2: is like that, but with even more documented cases. And
Speaker 2: you've basically got people saying, sorry, I don't know what
Speaker 2: you're talking about. That's all in your head, buddy.
Speaker 3: I would say, I've I have personally been diagnosed with
Speaker 3: PTSD one time by a neurologist, and it was not
Speaker 3: that huge collection of symptoms that are you know, those
Speaker 3: that are described as Gulf War syndrome. So if this
Speaker 3: for my money, guys, it makes sense that PTSD is
Speaker 3: a component of all that other stuff. Yes, oh, but
Speaker 3: it is not.
Speaker 2: Yes, portfolio, as I believe he.
Speaker 4: It's an ocean's eleven of terrible stuff. You know, it's
Speaker 4: a heist crew on your health. And the question is
Speaker 4: it aided? Has this heist grew been aided and embedded
Speaker 4: by the US government? Unfortunately at certain points in the
Speaker 4: narrative that appears to be the case, right, and the
Speaker 4: VA and other research organizations have concluded that evidence does
Speaker 4: not support an association a causual connection between PB pills
Speaker 4: and what they call chronic multisymptom illness and what the
Speaker 4: rest of the world calls Gulf War syndrome. But the
Speaker 4: VA still again says, if you have chronic, unexplained symptoms
Speaker 4: existing for six months or more that are related to
Speaker 4: your time in the Gulf War, then you are deserving
Speaker 4: of assistance, compensation, and resources, regardless of what the cause is,
Speaker 4: what the official cause is. So really, what they're saying
Speaker 4: again is agree to disagree on the specifics of what's happening,
Speaker 4: but we will help you in theory. And this like
Speaker 4: it seems like I don't know after looking into this, folks,
Speaker 4: we believe the most likely factor for PB related GWS
Speaker 4: Golf War syndrome, it has to hinge on that previously
Speaker 4: unknown genetic variant. And again there are people who never
Speaker 4: took PB pills who do have golf war syndrome because
Speaker 4: as we've as we've shown, there are other factors that
Speaker 4: can create this.
Speaker 3: Yep, and I do gosh, I do wonder how many
Speaker 3: of those factors add up to create Wait, how many
Speaker 3: do you need?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Do you need the burn pits and the PB pills
Speaker 3: and then you're in golf war syndrome territory? Do you
Speaker 3: need PTSD in burn pig? You know? Like, just what
Speaker 3: is what are the things?
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the stuff with AstroTurf giving people
Speaker 2: cancer where it was really difficult to show the correlation
Speaker 2: or maybe cause that I can't remember. I always get
Speaker 2: those confused. I know the difference, But there was something
Speaker 2: with that where it was very tricky to show that
Speaker 2: these people that got cancer definitely got it because they
Speaker 2: were rolling around an AstroTurf.
Speaker 4: Right, because there were other factories yea, yeah, And this
Speaker 4: is all unfortunately true. We know that the idea of
Speaker 4: a genetic variant can explain why some people ingested these
Speaker 4: pills with no lasting effect, while others may have incurred
Speaker 4: lifelong medical consequences as a result, even when following official
Speaker 4: guidelines to the letter. And just like the VA decides
Speaker 4: stuff on a case by case basis, the causes of
Speaker 4: Golf War syndrome for a lot of individuals in the
Speaker 4: Armed Services may vary case to case as well. To
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, and the most important thing here is
Speaker 4: that if you served in the Gulf War in Operation
Speaker 4: Desert Shield or Desert Storm anytime after August second, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 4: the VA wants you to know that you may be
Speaker 4: at risk of certain health conditions. So they are admitting
Speaker 4: that something is up, and that is, as strange as
Speaker 4: it sounds, that's actually progress from the nineteen nineties. Now
Speaker 4: they're admitting the house is haunted.
Speaker 2: And like you said, Man, I mean, that's a big deal,
Speaker 2: because that just doesn't happen unless they've got no other route,
Speaker 2: you know, And at that point it's like damage.
Speaker 3: Control really quickly. Guys. Imagine twenty three years after that
Speaker 3: August date in nineteen ninety, we made our video series,
Speaker 3: right and then what ten years later, a little yeah,
Speaker 3: less than ten years, less than ten years later, we're
Speaker 3: talking about it again, and it's still a problem. Just
Speaker 3: the span of time. And there are people out there
Speaker 3: who have been dealing with this since nineteen ninety or
Speaker 3: at least, you know, nineteen ninety one ninety two, after
Speaker 3: they were exposed to all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we haven't really talked about personal experiences
Speaker 2: or personal accounts of people that actually suffer from this,
Speaker 2: but they are out there. And that Ted Talk I
Speaker 2: mentioned Ted x talk. If you want to hear someone
Speaker 2: describing how debilitating this is for a loved one, that's
Speaker 2: a good source. And just just search for you know,
Speaker 2: golf for syndrome testimonials. There they're out there, and this
Speaker 2: is stuff that literally is causing people's quality of life
Speaker 2: to just be just absolutely in the tank.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there are you can find just through a
Speaker 4: quick YouTube search. You can find some contemporaneous reporting. I'm
Speaker 4: thinking especially about an interview out of KMOVTV four in
Speaker 4: Missouri that was from like nineteen ninety six, and they
Speaker 4: interviewed veterans about this before the VA reached its current conclusions.
Speaker 4: So you can see the pendulum moving in the right direction.
Speaker 4: But for many veterans, leaving combat only led to another battle,
Speaker 4: a battle for their conditions and injuries. To be acknowledged
Speaker 4: rather than buried under paperwork or swept under a bureaucratic rug.
Speaker 4: It is tragically a battle that many of our fellow
Speaker 4: listeners in the audience tonight continue to fight one day
Speaker 4: at a time. But the VA, as imperfect as it is,
Speaker 4: it exists to help. So if you are a loved
Speaker 4: one or experiencing medical conditions physiological, psychological as a result
Speaker 4: of your time in the service, contact the VA at
Speaker 4: the following number eight seven seven two two two eight
Speaker 4: three eight seven. You might be on hold for a while,
Speaker 4: but that's why they're there to help you, not to
Speaker 4: put you on hold. Just to clarify, and with that,
Speaker 4: we want to hear your experiences to your point about
Speaker 4: personal stories. Tell us about your your encounters with golf
Speaker 4: or syndrome as well as other potential conditions related to combat,
Speaker 4: and let us know whether you think there's a cover
Speaker 4: up a foot. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 2: That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
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Speaker 2: video content galore rolling out every single week, and also
Speaker 2: on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We exist
Speaker 2: at the handle conspiracy stuff show.
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