I'm not panicking, and I'm not scared, I've been through the Gulf War, the Asia crisis, and the Russian crisis.
Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement.
What some of us believe is that it is possible that if chemicals are related to Gulf War illness that some of the more severe symptoms may not erupt until 10 or 20 years down the line.
I've had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.
It took the Gulf War to demonstrate that America did want more than one friend in the Mideast, and also was willing to take and make major risks to prevent a small Muslim country, Kuwait, from being overrun and in effect stolen by Iraq.
I don't think there is one cause of Gulf War illness.
But Gulf War Syndrome is not one cause, not one illness. It is many causes, many illnesses.
It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted.
In fact, my mom would have gone to the Persian Gulf War had she not been pregnant with me.
I was born in Karachi, where my father used to work in the sales department of a pharmaceutical company. The nature of his job required him to travel, so we moved to Athens, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh and then went to Manchester during the Gulf War, moving back to Lahore closer to my father's retirement.
