AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. And we’re joined now by Carol Picou, a retired Army nurse and veteran of the Persian Gulf War. She served with the 41st Combat Support Hospital during the Gulf War and worked among miles of incinerated Iraqi vehicles on the Highway of Death out of Kuwait City. She co-founded MISSION Project afterwards, MISSION Project, Military Issues Surfacing in Our Nation.

And we welcome you to Democracy Now!

CAROL PICOU: Good morning, ma’am.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you are one of the contributors to this book that is being released today, along with the news conference that’s being held in Washington at the National Press Club that you’ll be speaking at, Metal of Dishonor: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with Depleted Uranium Weapons. What was your exposure to what they call DU?

CAROL PICOU: I was not only a nurse for the intensive care ward going into Iraq, I drove a five-ton truck tow in the first operating room behind it. And as we came out of the desert, of course, there was a lot of shrap metal and debris in the desert, but once we entered onto the highway heading into Basra going towards Kuwait, I saw a lot of armored vehicles that — the Iraqi armored vehicles that were penetrated. And these vehicles were extremely burnt. They were black. The people were so burnt that they were even melted to the sides of the vehicles and inside the vehicles. I’ve never seen anything like that, even when I experienced tank accidents when I was serving in Germany and we received those patients. They weren’t like this at all. So, I had an alarm go off in my mind saying, “You know, guys, something’s wrong here. This shouldn’t be looking like this. This isn’t normal.” These vehicles were still burning as we were passing by in the convoys, and then we stopped for two hours in that heavy traffic and continued to see all the burning vehicles that were taking place there and being destroyed. And then we moved down the road and only like a quarter of a mile off of the highway to set up our hospitals to start taking care of casualties,

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what happened subsequently to the other members of your unit as time went on?

CAROL PICOU: Hello?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes. What happened subsequently to the other members of your unit as time went on? You talk about the illnesses and the problems that they then encountered.

CAROL PICOU: A hundred and forty people — 150 people went to the front, and 40 of us became seriously ill. When we returned back, we started reporting our illnesses. And so far, six people in our unit have died from homicide, suicides and natural death.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened to you?

CAROL PICOU: Right away I noticed I started having bowel and bladder incontinence, and I started having memory impairment. I started catheterizing myself in January of '92, and I wear diapers to this day, because I have lost a lot of my muscle control. I have no bladder control, no rectal control, no vaginal control. All my muscles have deteriorated. And now I've developed a joint deterioration in my wrists. I have thyroid problems now. I’ve developed neurological problems, toxicity, chemical toxicity. I have a toxic encephalopathy of the brain and a migrant of other illnesses.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, there’s been speculation, obviously, over the past few years that there were other causes for the Gulf War syndrome, from the vaccines that were used against anthrax to experimental drugs that were used. Why do you think that it’s uranium poisoning from depleted uranium that you’re suffering from?

CAROL PICOU: Not only we were — there’s a migrant of exposures, you’re right, that we did receive the anthrax, the pyridostigmine, the — all those migrants of vaccines and, of course, the environmental exposures. But depleted uranium was the first time it was used on the battlefield, and we were never warned of it. We were never protected of it. We didn’t receive what depleted uranium was at all, until long after the war was over, when an atomic veteran called me and felt that my symptoms were very similar to his, and he suffered from uranium poison. So I started questioning our Department of Defense and calling for answers. Why has my health — see, I didn’t have the migrant of diseases, like most of the soldiers came back, complained of the headaches, muscle aches and pains, the rashes and the fatigue. I immediately lost control of my bowels, my bladder, and my memory started failing. So I felt that maybe this could be the cause of my illness, so I was asking questions: Could this be the cause of my health effects?

AMY GOODMAN: Supposedly today, the Senate Intelligence Committee will be asking George Tenet some questions about Persian Gulf War illness, about why the CIA did a poor job of keeping the military informed about the threat of chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War. What do you understand is the CIA’s involvement in suppressing information?

CAROL PICOU: I’ve been attending hearings, and I was one of the first active-duty soldiers to attend the first hearings in June of 1993. I tried bringing the depleted uranium to Capitol Hill with a press release in March of 1993, and we went to different hearings from ’93 on: National Institute of Health, the congressional hearings, Senate hearings.

And we reported — even in my early testimonies, I showed — I had photos of the bunkers being blown around us, these tanks that were destroyed. I took photos of what I saw over there on the frontlines and brought it to question. And we were all told that this didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. No, the animals weren’t dead around us, these vehicles. It was no — no type of contamination was a threat to us.

We sat in Iraq for over 15 days unprotected. We weren’t even in our MOPP suits until the last day when, we were ordered by General McCaffrey, who came to give us a debriefing on the war, and we were ordered to be in our chemical suits as we drove out of Iraq. We were not informed of any of the hazards on the frontlines at all. They blew up the bunkers around us. We supported those bunkers being blown up. But they never informed us of the health effects. Soldiers were getting sick over there. And we have documentations in our records indicating this, and all those records seem to have disappeared.

They have in — since 1993, have said that this didn’t exist, this just didn’t happen. Well, all of a sudden, this year and last year, they decide that Khamisiyah did happen and that the soldiers were exposed, so — and the soldiers experienced it in 1991.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the Iraqis or Kuwaitis that you came in contact with? And what do you — what is your sense from what you saw over there has been the effect on their populations?

CAROL PICOU: What was interesting is, I was in charge of the intensive care ward, and I can remember one of the soldiers — we had to medevac them out and sent them to the hospitals further back. And I can remember one we tried catheterized, and he had this abdominal distension, and he had a lot of fluid retention, and it took us a long time to get his kidneys function to go ahead and catheterize him. And I remember them complaining of muscle aches and pains and the joint pains, and you could see their health effects. And now this one came to mind, it’s because I started losing control of my bowels and my bladder and had excessive — I retain all my urine, so I have no urge to urinate, so I have to catheterize myself to relieve myself. And I think back and see the similarities of their illnesses, the rashes that they had on their bodies when we saw them.

My concern is, in recent reports, we’ve learned about the children, how they are affected and their birth defects. And in my support organization in San Antonio at the time, our children have the same birth defects as the Iraqi children are now demonstrating. Now, the Iraqi soldiers, that I’m not aware of, didn’t take the pyridostigmine, the anthrax, the botulinum. However, the frontline soldiers and the people that are getting sick over there were exposed to depleted uranium. How much of their illnesses are related to depleted uranium? I don’t know if we’ll ever find that out, because the American soldiers can’t even find out if our illness is related to depleted uranium, because they’re only tested, the soldiers that are afflicted with the shrapnel in their bodies, the ones that were hit with friendly fire. So, trying to get testing on inhaling it or ingesting these particles, which we did in the area that I was in, has been like an act of Congress. And it literally took my congressman from San Antonio, the late Frank Tejeda, to order testing for depleted uranium for me.

And I was tested in February of 1994, and I got my test results back in September of 1994, indicating that I have low levels of radiation. And the doctor said it was just indicative of living in San Antonio. However, I only lived in San Antonio two months prior to my deployment to war. I came back from Germany and was ordered to go back to the Persian Gulf immediately. So —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Carol Picou, retired Army nurse and veteran of the Persian Gulf War, as she describes what she was doing there and how sick she and many in her unit got after they worked along the highway of incinerated Iraqi vehicles known as the Highway of Death. I wanted to ask you, Carol Picou, about not only the fatigue of going through what you’re going through and dealing with these inquiries, but how you get through, after all of these years, how you get through to the truth. I mean, I think the American people are suffering from scandal fatigue in this situation. I mean, you keep getting reports and reports, but more and more of you, tens of thousands of soldiers, are sick. You’re holding a news conference this afternoon. What exactly are you demanding?

CAROL PICOU: We’re demanding an inquiry into the effects of depleted uranium. We’re asking for an international ban on the depleted uranium. And the reason why I feel so strong about this is, until the government can prove to us that this is not hazardous to our health, it needs to be banned.

I’ve been following the Native Americans that are affected of this, whether it’s been mined from their land, to the miners, to the workers in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and to the testing sites around the communities where these plants actually are, to the Persian Gulf soldiers and to the illnesses in Iraq. And it seems to be a trail of people that are suffering from these cancers, a form of cancer, the bone and joint problems. And it’s just a migrant of the same symptoms that I am experiencing.

Now, my concern is, let’s test this on — let’s test our soldiers to make sure. Let’s give them a full body count. Let’s, let’s take a lung count. Let’s test them and see if we inhaled it or ingested, if this is the cause of our illness. And, you know, there, then, we have a ground to try and help these soldiers to get well.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, as I was saying to Dr. Caldicott and Michio Kaku, it seems that the embargo against Iraq has served two purposes. One is to prevent anything going through to the people of Iraq to help them, but also has also been an information embargo on getting news out of Iraq about what has happened to people there, both civilians and soldiers, that might be helpful in also helping you and your fellow and sister soldiers here.

CAROL PICOU: Yes, ma’am. The embargo is something that I have a hard time dealing with, because I see these children and the people suffering over there with their illnesses. And to receive the medical care that they are so greatly denied, it really is a criminal act. I have a great concern for not only our soldiers and American people that are affected with depleted uranium, but also what we left in that desert glow. We used a sophisticated weapon, and we have a sophisticated illness, but yet we don’t have any sophisticated answers or treatment protocol for this.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you very much, Carol Picou, for joining us. Again, Carol Picou, Army nurse, retired veteran of the Persian Gulf War. And if you want to get listeners information on Carol Picou’s experience, as well as the whole issue of depleted uranium, you can call a toll-free number to get a copy of this book, Metal of Dishonor, Depleted Uranium: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU Weapons. That number is 1-800-247-6553. That’s 1-800-247-6553. The book _Metal of Dishonor — that’s M-E-T-A-L — is published by the International Action Center based in New York City. The news conference today that Carol Picou will be participating in, along with Ramsey Clark and Helen Caldicott and others, will take place at the National Press Club.