[WeThePeopleUnited] Depleted Uranium- Iraq & Beyond

[Guest guest]

Every reason given for attacking Iraq was based on lies. That is an opinion.

There were no WMD's, Saddam (yes he is a terrible man) was not tied in with Al

Quieda, and had no intention of attacking us.

 

Roger

-

Misty L. Trepke

Sunday, January 30, 2005 11:06 AM

[s-A] [WeThePeopleUnited] Depleted Uranium- Iraq & Beyond

 

 

 

Didn't we go there partially on the basis of Iraq having weapons of

mass destruction- no weapons were found. And we, the USA, are the

ones actually using weapons of mass destruction.

I can't help but think- do unto others as... Or for non-Christians

(I DON'T want to spark a religous debate)- Karma...

Comments?

Misty L. Trepkle

http://www..com

 

http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/116499/index.php

 

CoopRadio.org : Leuren Moret Updates on Depleted Uranium

by Alfred Lambremont Webre JD MEd

Email: info (at) peaceinspace.com (unverified!)

 

29 Jan 2005

Modified: 30 Jan 2005

 

DU-The horror of Depleted Uranium is not limited to Iraq - it may

well be at our doorsteps.

 

Monday January 31, 2005 - Noon-1 PM Pacific Time

COOP RADIO - CFRO - 102.7 FM Vancouver, B.C.

LISTEN ONLINE TO COOP RADIO: http://www.coopradio.org/

 

GUEST: Leuren Moret - Expert Witness at the International Criminal

Tribunal For Afghanistan At Tokyo. She is an independent scientist

and international expert on radiation and public health issues. She

is on the organizing committee of the World Committee on Radiation

Risk, an organization of independent radiation specialists,

including members of the Radiation Committee in the EU parliament,

the European Committee on Radiation Risk. She is an environmental

commissioner for the City of Berkeley. Ms. Moret earned her BS in

geology at U.C. Davis in 1968 and her MA in Near Eastern studies

from U.C. Berkeley in 1978. She has completed all but her

dissertation for a PhD in the geosciences at U.C. Davis. She

has traveled and conducted scientific research in 42 countries. She

wrote a scientific report on depleted uranium for the United Nations

sub commission investigating the illegality of depleted uranium

munitions.

 

Marian Falk, a former Manhattan Project scientist and retired

insider at the Livermore Lab, who is an expert on radioactive

fallout and rainout, has trained her on radiation issues.

BIO: http://www.zi-activism.net/downloads/nonZi/leurenbio.htm

 

HOST: Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd

 

PART I - DEPLETED URANIUM: UPDATE

 

http://www.caduceus.info/articles/denver.htm

The horror of Depleted Uranium is not limited to Iraq. it may well

be at our doorsteps

James Denver - Caduceus January 22, 2005

 

The information which some governments are concealing is presented

here.

 

'I'm horrified. The people out there, the Iraqis, the media and the

troops risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from

depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to

destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We

all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl

reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the

Sahara on your car.

 

The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr Chris Busby,

the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool

in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European

Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best kept secret of

this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of

depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely

endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these

weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic,

radioactive particles in such abundance that whipped up by

sandstorms and carried on trade winds #65533; there is no

corner of the globe they cannot penetrate #65533; including Britain.

For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the

radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause

cancer, leukaemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth

defects killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime

against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the

worst atrocities of all time.

 

These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic,

radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of

the globe they cannot penetrate including Britain.

 

Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a

dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who

needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people

of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if

our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as

the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

 

 

Depleted uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For " depleted " sounds

weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is

dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb

production. However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and

DU packs a Tyson's punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and

bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so,

and burning people alive.

 

Crispy critters is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough

to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a

greater distance he wrote: The children's skin had folded back, like

parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while

the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited. (Daily Mirror)

 

The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it

burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even

be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against

them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible

killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies

in the womb and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn

babies. A terrible legacy

 

Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by

2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and

leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in

1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these

sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi

children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to

166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia

more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing at an

alarming rate. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach

cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases

were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (.1)

 

On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic

Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defence a special report on

the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it

could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10

years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons

of DU #65533; although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true

figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread

across Iraq by this year#65533;s war. The devastating damage all

this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq

now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.

 

The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing

millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against

humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

 

We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies.

Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU

contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were

only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still

excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100

times the so called safe limit of uranium in their urine. The lack

of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is

reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but

informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in

their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have

three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who

did not go there.

 

Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would

break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs,

with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging

tumours where their eyes should be, or with a single eye like

Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads.

Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside

textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the

Pacific. Doctors report that many women no longer say Is it a girl

or a boy?but simply, Is it normal, doctor#65533; Moreover this

terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have

been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present.

 

 

What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people

of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And

they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick

with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by

bombing. Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU

but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols,

experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and organophosphate

pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards of DU were known,

British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were

they given thorough medical checks on their return #65533; even

though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove

some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became

seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation

damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.

 

Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now

invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq

that's 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government's failure to

fully assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their

health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely

ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans#65533; associations

say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active

service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and

5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their

own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments

which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality,

their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to

breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are #65533;on

DU death row, waiting to die#65533;.

 

Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are

strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For

example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in

a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known

to have been directly exposed to DU dust. They too have fathered

children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically

associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and

leukaemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers

in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukaemia rate

has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the

use of DU.

 

 

Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on

both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits

only low level radiation DU is harmless. Award winning scientist, Dr

Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied low

level radiation for 30 years.(2 )She has found that uranium oxide

particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes

their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells like flashes

of lightning again and again in a single second.(2) Like many

scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she

has found that such lightning strikes can damage DNA and cause cell

mutations which lead to cancer. Moreover, these particles can be

taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more

than one organ. To compound all that Dr Bertell has found that this

particular type of radiation can cause the body#65533;s

Communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many

vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking

fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from

innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments.

 

In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of

Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have

shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than

has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by

radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell

generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and

birth defects.) This radiation induced genomic instability is

compounded by #65533;the bystander effect by which cells mutate in

unison with others which have been damaged by radiation

rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two

mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source

of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that

there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond

to radiation with some being far more likely to develop cancer than

others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem

relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU

did not damage others.

 

 

That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research

findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US

report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, The potential for

health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed

in perspective... the financial implications of long-term disability

payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.(3)

 

Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least

a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge

disability claims might be made not only against the governments of

Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There

might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and

some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White

House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for

speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to

British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12

years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning

troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them,

may be purely to save money.

 

The possibility that financial considerations have led the

governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking

responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the people of

Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons

weren't used by the other side and no other explanation fits the

evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU

in war its hazards were no secret.(4) One American study in 1990

said DU was linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to]

chemical toxicity #65533; causing kidney damage#65533;. While

another openly warned that exposure to these particles

under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and

bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive

disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.(5)

 

 

In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for

illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as weapons

of mass destruction#65533; incompatible with international

humanitarian and human rights law#65533;. Since then, following

leukaemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and

Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU

weapons to be banned.

 

Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their

denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more

troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in

the Balkan and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no

coincidence. In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which

84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the

lungs, Dr Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear

Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as

saying, #65533;The [uS government#65533;s] Veteran Administration

asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in

the human body. He concluded, uranium does cause cancer, uranium

does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the

irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the

fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium,

then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth,

disservice to God and to all generations who follow.#65533; Not

what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly

blocked.

 

During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities

have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been

specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in

treating DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the

insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans

are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite

all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons

briefing paper on DU hazards says #65533;it is judged that any

radiation effects from#65533;possible exposures are extremely

unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently

being experienced by some Gulf war veterans. Note how over a

quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called some.

 

 

Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they

dramatically increased its use from a minimum of 320 tons in the

previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time

the use of DU wasn't limited to anti-tank weapons as it had largely

been in the previous Gulf war #65533;but was extended to the guided

missiles, large bunker busters and big 2000 pound bombs used in

Iraq#65533;s cities. This means that Iraq's cities have been

blanketed in lethal particles #65533; any one of which can cause

cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs

which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of

smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high

into the air again and again and again as the bombs rained down

ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.

 

The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive

decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For

decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the

risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For

DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every

nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad How can they

decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which

cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from

border to border And how can they clean up all the countries

downwind of Iraq and, indeed, the world?

 

So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime

against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical

care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those

who served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their

suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and

sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history #65533; along with

slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime against

humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly

bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.

 

References:

 

1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998.

 

2. Rosalie Bertell#65533;s book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of

War was reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28.

 

3.www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TABL_ResearchRepo

rtSummaries

 

4.www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm

The secret official memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves from

Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War Department Manhattan district

dated October 1943 is available at the website

www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-MoretGenGroves21feb03.htm

 

5.www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TABL_ResearchRepo

rtSummaries

Last updated 29/01/2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

For those who are interested in mor info on the subject of invading Iraq,

you can download an hour long video from the net:

" Why.Bush.REALLY.attacked.Iraq " . Those are interviews with peaple who worked

for many years in CIA, FBI and other agencies, a whole lot of onteresting

info. Here is a link to emule:

 

<a

href= " ed2k://|file|UNCOVERED.-.Why.Bush.REALLY.attacked.Iraq.(56.minutes).av

i|148393164|5024AB8CC3CF5B75886F341DFDD1745A|/ " >UNCOVERED.-.Why.Bush.REALLY.

attacked.Iraq.(56.minutes).avi</a>

Or try to search and download by some other sharing P2P program.

 

 

 

> Every reason given for attacking Iraq was based on lies. That is an

opinion. There were no WMD's, Saddam (yes he is a terrible man) was not

tied in with Al Quieda, and had no intention of attacking us.