By AP/KWMU
Washington – Republican Missouri Senator Jim Talent is sponsoring a bill that would set up a new tracking system for the health of U.S. troops.
Talent says he has heard complaints from veterans' groups for years that soldiers were not given complete physical examinations before and after their deployment.
He says his legislation would require pre-and-post-deployment blood and tissue samples for every member of the armed forces.
"We have overseas deployments, we do not get an adequate baseline read on our men and women before we send them there and then they come back and develop symptoms and we really don't have any ground to stand on in terms of trying to determine what it is that's wrong with them," Talent said. "And this was, I think, the problem, one of the reasons it took so long to track down the Gulf War syndrome and what it was."
Talent announced the legislation Tuesday along side Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.