By **Nora Eisenberg** Ask most Americans over the age of 20
what’s the shortest and most successful war in our history, and
chances are they’ll say the 1991 Gulf War. Short and to the
point, it was over in 43 days with only 148 U.S. fatalities in
battle, a third from friendly fire. But ask Paul Sullivan,
Executive Director of Veterans for Common Sense and a Gulf War
veteran, and he’ll quickly inform you that the Gulf War actually
never ended and continues to take its toll every day. Sullivan,
who suffers himself from Gulf War Illness—a multi-symptom
disease caused by wartime toxins and affecting most every bodily
system—doesn’t mean only that the war lingers in the bodies of
stricken veterans who battle the disease every day. He means
literally the war never ended. A January 1991 legislative
resolution authorized the war, and then an April 1991 resolution
post facto established its dates. By design or neglect, this
later legislation’s definition of the war (38 USC (101) (33)
left the door open for continuing