(#4 Censored Story) High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians

[Guest guest]

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/4.html

 

(#4 Censored Story) High Uranium Levels Found in

Troops and Civilians

 

 

 

URANIUM MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER, January 2003

Title: “UMRC’s Preliminary Findings from Afghanistan &

Operation Enduring Freedom”

and

“Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction-

Indiscriminate Effects”

Author: Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team

 

AWAKENED WOMAN, January 2004

Title: “Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in

Afghanistan”

Author: Stephanie Hiller

 

DISSIDENT VOICE, March 2004

Title: “There Are No Words…Radiation in Iraq Equals

250,000 Nagasaki Bombs”

Author: Bob Nichols

 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, April 5,2004

Title: “Poisoned?”

Author: Juan Gonzalez

 

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, March 2004

Title: “International Criminal Tribune For Afghanistan

At Tokyo, The People vs. George Bush”

Author: Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J.

 

Evaluator: Jennifer Lillig, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Kenny Crosbie

 

Civilian populations in Afghanistan and Iraq and

occupying troops have been contaminated with

astounding levels of radioactive depleted and

non-depleted uranium as a result of post-9/11 United

States’ use of tons of uranium munitions. Researchers

say surrounding countries are bound to feel the

effects as well.

 

In 2003 scientists from the Uranium Medical Research

Center (UMRC) studied urine samples of Afghan

civilians and found that 100% of the samples taken had

levels of non-depleted uranium (NDU) 400% to 2000%

higher than normal levels. The UMRC research team

studied six sites, two in Kabul and others in the

Jalalabad area. The civilians were tested four months

after the attacks in Afghanistan by the United States

and its allies.

 

NDU is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU),

which itself is charged with causing many cancers and

severe birth defects in the Iraqi

population–especially children–over the past ten

years. Four million pounds of radioactive uranium was

dropped on Iraq in 2003 alone. Uranium dust will be in

the bodies of our returning armed forces. Nine

soldiers from the 442nd Military Police serving in

Iraq were tested for DU contamination in December

2003. Conducted at the request of The News, as the

U.S. government considers the cost of $1,000 per

affected soldier prohibitive, the test found that four

of the nine men were contaminated with high levels of

DU, likely caused by inhaling dust from depleted

uranium shells fired by U.S. troops. Several of the

men had traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, that

are produced only in a nuclear reaction process.

 

Most American weapons (missiles, smart bombs, dumb

bombs, bullets, tank shells, cruise missiles, etc.)

contain high amounts of radioactive uranium. Depleted

or non-depleted, these types of weapons, on

detonation, release a radioactive dust which, when

inhaled, goes into the body and stays there. It has a

half-life of 4.5 billion years. Basically, it’s a

permanently available contaminant, distributed in the

environment, where dust storms or any water nearby can

disperse it. Once ingested, it releases subatomic

particles that slice through DNA.

 

UMRC’s Field Team found several hundred Afghan

civilians with acute symptoms of radiation poisoning

along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium

contamination, including congenital problems in

newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust

clouds and smoke plumes rising from the point of

impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the

nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract.

Subjects in all locations presented identical symptom

profiles and chronologies. The victims reported

symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper

shoulders and basal area of the skull, lower

back/kidney pain, joint and muscle weakness, sleeping

difficulties, headaches, memory problems and

disorientation.

 

At the Uranium Weapons Conference held October 2003 in

Hamburg, Germany, independent scientists from around

the world testified to a huge increase in birth

deformities and cancers wherever NDU and DU had been

used. Professor Katsuma Yagasaki, a scientist at the

Ryukyus University, Okinawa calculated that the 800

tons of DU used in Afghanistan is the radioactive

equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The amount of DU

used in Iraq is equivalent to 250,000 Nagasaki bombs.

 

At the Uranium Weapons Conference, a demonstration by

British-trained oncologist Dr. Jawad Al-Ali showed

photographs of the kinds of birth deformities and

tumors he had observed at the Saddam Teaching Hospital

in Basra just before the 2003 war. Cancer rates had

increased dramatically over the previous fifteen

years. In 1989 there were 11 abnormalities per 100,000

births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000—an increase

of over a thousand percent. In 1989 34 people died of

cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths. The 2003

war has increased these figures exponentially.

 

At a meeting of the International Criminal Tribunal

for Afghanistan held December 2003 in Tokyo, the U.S.

was indicted for multiple war crimes in Afghanistan,

among them the use of DU. Leuren Moret, President of

Scientists for Indigenous People and Environmental

Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, testified that

because radioactive contaminants from uranium weapons

travel through air, water, and food sources, the

effects of U.S. deployment in Afghanistan will be felt

in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,

Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China and

India. Countries affected by the use of uranium

weapons in Iraq include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon,

Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and Iran.

 

UPDATE BY BOB NICHOLS: (Oklahoma City) Throughout the

world people are familiar with the " smoking gun "

solution so prized by murder mystery writers. Many

think that once the smoking gun in any mystery is

discovered, it is time for the " bad guys " to give up.

Wish it were only so.

 

The smoking guns are Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos,

Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone from New

York's 442nd Guard Unit—they are the first confirmed

cases of inhaled uranium oxide exposure from the

current Iraq conflict. Dr. Asaf Durokovic, professor

of Nuclear Medicine at the Uranium Medical Research

Centre http://www.umrc.net/ conducted the diagnostic

tests. The story was released April 3, 2004 in the New

York Daily News. There is no treatment and there is no

cure.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html

 

Leuren Moret reports, " In my research on depleted

uranium during the past 5 years, the most disturbing

information concerns the impact on the unborn children

and future generations for both soldiers serving in

the depleted uranium wars, and for the civilians who

must live in the permanently radioactive contaminated

regions. Today, more than 240,000 Gulf War veterans

are on permanent medical disability and more than

11,000 are dead. They have been denied testing,

medical care, and compensation for depleted uranium

exposure and related illnesses since 1991. "

 

Moret continues " Even worse, they brought it home in

their bodies. In some families, the children born

before the Gulf War are the only healthy members.

Wives and female partners of Gulf War veterans have

reported a condition known as burning semen syndrome,

and are now internally contaminated from depleted

uranium carried in the semen of exposed veterans. Many

are reporting reproductive illnesses such as

endometriosis. In a U.S. government study, conducted

by the Department of Veterans Affairs on post-Gulf War

babies, 67% were found to have serious birth defects

or serious illnesses. They were born without eyes

(anophthalmos), ears, had missing organs, missing legs

and arms, fused fingers, thyroid or other organ

malformations. "

 

" LIFE Photoessay: "

http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html

 

Moret concludes, " In Iraq it is even worse where

babies are born without brains, organs are outside the

body, or women give birth to pieces of flesh. In

babies born in Iraq in 2002, the incidence of

anophthalmos was 250,000 times greater (20 cases in

4,000 births) than the natural occurrence, one in 50

million births. Takashi MORIZUMI's photos: in

http://www.savewarchildren.org/ record the tragedy in

Iraq. "

 

For more information on the American President's

continuing campaign of contaminating the land, check

the World Uranium Weapons Conference,

http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/ ,

Check the Uranium Medical Research Center and Dr. Asaf

Durakovic at http://www.umrc.net/ ,

and for updates on the related Nuclear Power Plants

see Russell Hoffman's website at:

http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm .

 

Write Leuren Moret, Independent Scientist and

radiation specialist, City of Berkeley Environmental

Commissioner, Past President, Association for Women

Geoscientists: leurenmoret

 

" Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War " by

Leuren Moret, World Affairs Journal, July, 2004.

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

 

These Groups host discussions about uranium

munitions:

<du-list >du-list

<du-watch >du-watch

<pandora-project >pandora-project

<nucnews >nucnews

<abolition-caucus >abolition-caucus

<earthfirstalert >earthfirstalert

Read Bob Nichols at: www.dissidentvoice.org .

 

UPDATE BY TEDD WEYMAN: UMRC found artificial uranium

in bomb craters, surrounding watercourses and the

bodies of civilians exposed to US Coalition bombing in

Afghanistan. Civilians surveyed presented with the

classical symptoms of internal contamination by

uranium, which began after exposure to the bombing.

The presence of artificial uranium in environmental

and biological samples indicates that the bunker

buster warheads used in Afghanistan are made of

uranium.

 

Uranium is a chemically and radiologically toxic

element, clinically proven to be a cause of various

types of cancer and congenital malformations (birth

defects). Internal contamination of uranium is

responsible for variety of systemic and organ system

problems, which has never been considered or studied

by the Defense Department or Veterans health programs

as possible cause of Gulf War Illness. The symptoms of

internal contamination by uranium in Iraq and

Afghanistan civilians are identical to the symptoms of

US and Coalition veterans complaining of Gulf War

Illness.

 

The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's ability

to have its studies published by managing, a

progressive and persistent misinformation program in

the press against UMRC, and through the use of its

control of science research grants to refute UMRC's

scientific findings and destroy the reputation of

UMRC's scientific staff, physicians and laboratories.

UMRC is the first independent research organization to

find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US, UK and

Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently,

following Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted

Uranium in the water, soils and atmosphere of Iraq as

well as biological samples donated by Iraqi civilians.

 

The United States and several of its Coalition

partners and NATO allies have been deploying in

battlefield and experimenting with chemically toxic

and radioactive heavy metals in various types of

bullets, bombs and warheads since the early 1970s.

Uranium powder is taken from the nuclear fuel

reprocessing cycle, after it has been mixed with

nuclear reactor waste products and spent fuel, to

supply the non-fissile weapons' manufacturing

industry.

 

Uranium is preferred over all other " ballistic " metals

(e.g. lead, iron, tungsten) because it offers a set of

unique metallurgical properties: it is extremely dense

yet ductile metal (not brittle); it is pyrophoric

(uranium dust burns spontaneously at room

temperature); and, solid metal uranium is autoigniting

at 170° F. Uranium metal has a very unusual property

not available in any other metal; it is

" self-sharpening " , meaning that when it hits a target

at high velocities (1 km/sec) it erodes and breaks in

such a way as to continuously re-sharpen its point —

the leading points of all other warhead metals flatten

or mushroom under these conditions. These properties

give uranium a superior performance as a penetrating

warhead alloy capable of breaching the hardest and

thickest armor plating, retaining penetration

capabilities at 15 % greater distances and lower

speeds than the most common alternative metal,

tungsten. Burning uranium is hard to extinguish, and

if doused with water, it will explode. Uranium used in

specially designed high velocity liquid metal

penetrators can bore through 20 feet of

super-reinforced concrete bunkers in classified

weapons called " shaped charges " and " explosively

formed penetrators " . The hard (dense), resilient

(ductile) and heavy (sustaining momentum)

characteristics of uranium also make its optimal in

the warhead of robust earth-penetrating bombs to carry

them into buried targets and caves.

 

The mainstream press in the US and Canada does not

show any general interest in the story, let alone an

investigative interest. European mainstream press is

more interested and follows key developments. The NY

Daily News April 5, 2004 has covered Gulf War II

results by UMRC's studies of US veterans. DoD has lied

and misled the public and the veterans in an attempt

to undermine the significance of the story. There is

significant alternative press and internet press

coverage. The technique for coverage is to approach

the story as a debate between government and

independent experts in which public interest is

stimulated by polarizing the issues rather than

telling the scientific and medical truth. The issues

are systematically confused and misinformed by

government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO, UNEP, IAEA,

CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the

weapons developers and manufacturers).

 

UPDATE BY STEPHANIE HILLER: This is a shocking story

since it suggests that experimental nuclear bombs were

dropped around Kabul at the end of the war Operation

Enduring Freedom. (Did they mean enduring radiation?)

And what have they dropped on Iraq?

 

Continued research shows that we have all been

irradiated here in the United States, at an enormous

cost to the public health. Cancer rates alone show

that genetic mutation has been rapidly increasing

since the first bomb was tested in Almorgordo, NM in

1945. But the effects of low-level radiation have been

systematically hidden from public view!

 

In April after sick vets from the current war got no

help from the Pentagon, the mother of one of the

soldiers went to the papers. Juan Gonzalez of the New

York Daily News launched an investigation. The News

paid for nine men to be tested by Asaf Durakovic. He

found that four of them were contaminated with

uranium. The News got the attention of New York

Senator Hilary Clinton. She held a teleconference— but

Durakovic was not allowed to participate!

 

Amy Goodman interviewed Durakovic later the same month

on Democracy Now!— don't know if it was thanks to my

story. AlterNet rejected the story because their

source on depleted uranium, John Fahey, did not agree

with it.

I don't know of any mainstream media that has picked

up the story, and I don't find any references to the

Gonzalez piece either. The BBC and the Seattle Post

Intelligencer covered it before me.

 

To learn more about uranium weapons search the web!

It's a huge topic. Start with the world Uranium

Weapons Conference held last October in Hamburg:

<http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de> The Power

Point by Dr. Ali shows the most excruciating

consequences of Persian Gulf One -- deformed babies.

Also, Join WBW! Women for a Better World has begun an

information campaign to educate the public about

depleted uranium, especially young people who might be

called to join the military and their families,

regarding the contamination of Central Eurasia. Come

to our web site for more information, flyers, and to

sign a petition opposing the draft for the same

reason. <http://www.awakenedwoman.com/wbw.htm>