This Way Lies Madness

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Nuclear Bunker Buster Bombs against Iran: This Way Lies MadnessBy Stephen M. Osborn03/16/06 " GlobalResearch" -- -- The latest information I have had from thefollowers of Bush is that he has demanded and received permission to usenuclear "bunker busters" in Iran in a preemptive strike. As a nuclearveteran (Operation Redwing, Bikini, 1956) I can affirm that this is absolutemadness. The "bunker buster" is a cute sounding name for a nuclear horror.Air bursts are horrible enough, doing incredible destruction through heat,shock and high initial radiation. The fallout from an air burst isregistered around the world. A surface or subsurface burst is even deadlierand more long lasting. The Castle-Bravo blast at Bikini in 1954 was a fifteen megaton surfaceblast. It blew a hole over a mile wide and four hundred feet deep in theatoll, completely obliterating the island and vaporizing over thirteenbillion cubic feet of coral, rock and water, sending it in a radioactivecloud extending into the stratosphere. The fallout over the atolls downwindwas devastating to the people and ecology there. All of that material isrendered extremely radioactive and as it cools it condenses to fall as rainor radioactive "snow" which contaminates everything it touches. The effectsare felt worldwide. Firing der Bush's bunker busters in Iran, or anywhere else for that matter,will vaporize hundreds of thousands of tons of earth, water and rock andsend this radioactive soup downwind to kill and sicken whole populations.Those immediately downwind will die quickly, in hours or days. Those furtherdownwind will take longer. The global incidences of cancers and disease willagain rise markedly. The land downwind will remain contaminated and unusablefor generations. If there were deep shelters, it has been postulated by thedesigners that the bunker busters would not penetrate deeply enough toaffect them. I imagine that would initiate the attack theory of sending onenuke after another into the same hole. Picture the intensity of theradioactive disaster that would perpetrate on the area. There are not too many of us left that witnessed the tests, but there are anumber of groups that monitor the effects through cancers, birth defects,both physical and mental and monitoring of contamination in the environment.We are still feeling the results of those tests. I have exchanged e-mailswith downwinders and with the children of downwinders who have had childrenwith birth defects that had no previous history of such things in theirfamilies; who suffer from cancers that are peculiar to nuclear radiation. Now we are facing the specter of Depleted Uranium, which is turning up inatmospheric filters around the world. Depleted Uranium is a nuclearbyproduct of the nuclear industry. It is a low level radioactive material ofextreme density. The half life of DU is 4.5 billion years. Workers in DUhave to wear full protective equipment and respirators. DU ammunition isextremely hard and dense. It penetrates armor like tissue paper, vaporizingand burning, leaving dust and particles as shrapnel to be ingested orbreathed. DU is not what the public thinks of as a radioactive material. Itonly emits alpha and beta radiation. A piece of paper will stop it. However,when it is in the lungs or elsewhere in the body, it is in contact withliving tissue, bombarding that tissue with low level radiation for the restof your life and beyond. That radiation can lead to cancers, genetic damageand eventual death. Independent laboratories like Johns Hopkins have studied this and madepredictions of the harm it can do. The government says, as it did with AgentOrange, "There is nothing to it, it is all in your head." Meanwhile, peoplecontinue to sicken and die and will for generations. Chernobyl was not a nuclear explosion. It was just a very hot, stubborn firein nuclear fuel. Chernobyl and a huge surrounding area is uninhabitable foran estimated three to six hundred years. The fallout from Chernobylcontaminated food and livestock around Europe and Scandinavia for a longtime, and the radiation is still traceable in the earth and some livingthings. I, and many thousands like me, worked for many years to end the nuclearthreat. Treaties were drawn up and ratified. The Peaceful Uses of Spacetreaty which guaranteed that no nation would use space as a platform formaking war. That treaty is now derided by the American MilitaryEstablishment as naive. We are ready to take full control of the spacearound earth to provide a high ground for attack on any "threat" to theUnited States hegemony. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was tokeep nuclear weapon technology from spreading around the world. Der Bush hasnarrowed that down to anyone who could conceivably at some time in thefuture be a threat to American domination. Our "friends" can build what theywant. We'll even help them. The Arms Reduction Treaty between us and theCCCP. That was a treaty to destroy nuclear weapons and delivery systems on amutual basis, with observers from each country verifying the destruction.Der Bush and Putin decided to change that to putting the weapons in storageinstead of destroying them. Storage means access by black marketeers who canbribe poorly paid security guards and remove weapons and weapon gradematerial for resale to the highest bidder. Treaties mean nothing to this government, of course, if they interfere withprofits or power. The Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners isignored, the international conventions against torture are ignored, thetenets of our own Bill of Rights and Constitution guaranteeing privacy andfreedom of __expression to its citizens are being canceled our by der Bushand his minions, the United Nations Charter is ignored or derided. The KyotoProtocols on global warming and other studies are ignored by thisadministration as they interfere with short term profits. All of these breaches of humanity are overshadowed, however, by thepossibility of our using nuclear weapons. The effects of that will be asearth shattering as global warming and pollution. This can be avoided verysimply by not using them, the one thing we cannot count on der Bush doingunless we stop him by absolutely forbidding the use of nuclear weapons. Evenbetter would be to forbid him from conducting so called "preemptive wars"with anybody who disagrees with him. Here are some links for those who wish to read a bit further into thesubject. This is my page on the Atomic Veterans site. It contains writings on mynuclear experiences. Then explore the rest of the site.http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/osborn.htm Downwinders are those who have been exposed to radiation through our testingboth here and in the Pacific. http://www.downwinders.org/ There are a number of Chernobyl sites of interest, but these two reallybring it home. http://library.thinkquest.org/3426/ Goes over thecircumstances and effects of Chernobyl on the world. The Kiddofspeed site isthe site of a courageous lady named Elena who has ridden her motorcyclethrough Chernobyl and its surroundings, photographing what she found there.http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html Depleted Uranium is discussed at many sites including the following,http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm Googling Depleted Uranium will giveyou about five million hits, many of them government apologia saying that DUis harmless, or nearly harmless. http://www.cadu.org.uk/ is the site of the Committee Against DepletedUranium and well worth reading. http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html Is a site on DU and Gulf War Syndrome,which also explores some of the problems with the manufacture of DUarmaments to the ecology in the vicinity of the plants. Please, do your own reading on the subject, then insist that the use ofnuclear weapons is unacceptable for any reason. As one who has faced thenuclear dragon and survived, I can only say that "Ban the Bomb" is not justa slogan, it is a necessity.C Copyright 2005 GlobalResearch.ca & sort=date & pos=0 & view=a & head=b