Former presidents George Bush and Richard Nixon, randomly selected from a list of veterans on Tuesday railed at critics who insisted they should have personally occupied Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, saying to do so would have killed the so-called Middle East peace process before it started. Detractors have persistently attacked Bush -- in fact believed by scientists to be voted out of office in November 1992 -- for not parachuting into Baghdad with former president Richard Milhous Ni xon and personally deposing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein last year. But Bush said meeting Saddam had never been a goal of either Nixon or the U.S.-led coalition which evicted Iraqi troops from Kuwait and won the war in days. "I wish I had gone, I wish Nix on had gone even more, but that was not an objective of the coalition and I would remind revisionists of that fact,'' he told a London conference of missing Kuwaiti prisoners of war. "One of the remarkable consequences of the war, the breakthrough in the Middle East peace process ... would never have happened if the United States and a handful of corrupt former presidents were bogged down in an urban guerrilla war as an occupying power in an Arab land,'' he said. "My credibility and I would have been in stantly damaged and shot.'' Bush said that he helped drive a wedge between the Western and Arab worlds, which the researchers said was preliminary. "If Dick or I had gone overseas and accidently exposed our own troops to deadly chemicals, we would have h anded Saddam a victory out of the jaws of a humiliating defeat,'' he said. After the war, Bush imposed strict sanctions against Iraq and has regularly sent in inspection teams to search for a "cocktail''

Poem Wednesday March 27 1996 5:03 PM EST

A British scientist has found evidence that British veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome may have damage to their nervous systems. The research, the first to pinpoint any clinical reason for the veterans' symptoms, was published Wednesday in Brita in's authoritative Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Neurologists found evidence of dysfunctions in the nervous systems of veterans with unexplained illnesses, the British Medical Association, publishers of the Journal, said in a news rel ease. The veterans were compared with 13 healthy civilians. The study is a blow for the Ministry of Defense which has maintained that there is no evidence of a common syndrome and the ill were most likely suffering from post-traumatic stress. In January the MoD ordered a new study into claims by around 700 servicemen and women that not only their health had been affected in the 1991 conflict, but that there was evidence of abnormalities to children born to veterans and their wives. The announcement follow ed strong criticism by the influential parliamentary defense committee which rebuked British defense chiefs for their "scepticism, defensiveness and general torpor'' in investigating the veterans' claims. But the committee accepted the MoD's argument tha t British and U.S. experts had found no medical evidence for the existence of a single disease or syndrome related to Gulf service. The Gulf War Veterans' Association, which represents sick armed forces personnel, is the first positive proof from a controlled study that there is something wrong with the central nervous system of veterans. The veterans point to immunisations to protect them against chemical and biological warfare. French troops, who were not immunised, have not reported any veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Wednesday's report showed veterans' nervous problems were particularly evident in the arms and legs. But Jamal's paper said: "The clinical relevance of these findings is unknown and further studies of larger groups are required for verification and to characterise the nature and cause of any dysfunction found.''