Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops

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Wed, 1 Jun 2005 20:59:24 -0700 (PDT)

WOMEN GETTING MYSTERIOUS CANCERS FROM US SOLDIERS!!

 

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Fri May 20, 2005 5:41 am

 

 

 

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http://www.sierratimes.com/03/05/02/article_io.htm

 

Death By Slow Burn -

How America Nukes Its Own Troops

What 'Support Our Troops' Really Means

By Amy Worthington - The Idaho Observer

.........................................

 

Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted

uranium (DU) weapons, a " liberation " gift that will keep on giving.

Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored

at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.

 

Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal

waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying

Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds

per minute.(1) Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are

DU-tipped.(2) The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.(3) These and

British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which

continually irradiate troops in or near them.(4) The A-10 " tank

buster " aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the

battlefield.(5)

 

DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as

illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all

international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned

weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.

 

 

Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond the war

in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II veterans for years

as they slowly and painfully succumb to radiation poisoning. U.S and

British troops deployed to the area are the walking dead.

 

Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout zone are

destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic illness and disability.

Kidney dysfunction, lung damage, bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint

pain, unsteady gait, memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer

and premature death await those exposed to DU.

 

Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: " As the last Gulf

conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems reeling from

multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense against

further exposure to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress,

caffeine, insect repellent and radiation leftover from the last war.

This is a war even the victors will lose. " (6)

 

When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus

traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic

particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in

the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU

lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system

according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill.(7)

 

The Royal Society of England published data showing that

battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can

suffer kidney failure within days.(8) Any soldier now in Iraq who has

not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two

weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each,

blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds.(9)

Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible

because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated

debris.

 

Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of depleted

uranium were used against Iraq in 1991.(10) A 1998 report by the U.S.

Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms

identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War

Syndrome.(11) The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least

300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating

illnesses.(12) To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability

benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat

in that war.(13)

 

...........................................

 

In other studies, some sick vets were found to be expressing

uranium in even their semen. Their sexual partners often complained of

a burning sensation during intercourse, followed by their own

debilitating illnesses.(15)

..

 

 

Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth

defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured vicious nuclear

chastisement for years.(16) U.S. air attacks against Iraq since 1993

have undoubtedly employed nuclear munitions. Pictures of grotesquely

deformed Iraqi infants born since 1991 are overwhelming.(17) Like

those born to Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq

will also be afflicted with hideous deformities, neurological damage

and/or blood and respiratory disorders.(18)

 

As an Army health physicist, Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the

Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His

Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were

contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma

radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha

radiation. Rokke recently told the media: " The whole area is still

trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't

go away. " (19)

 

DU remains " hot " for 4.5 billion years. Radiation expert Dr. Helen

Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden winds of DU-contaminated war

zones " will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time. " (20)

The murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops during the

first few days of the current invasion are sure to have significant

health consequences.

 

..................... He has brain lesions, skin pustules, chronic

fatigue, continual wheezing and painful fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that

anyone exposed to DU should have adequate respiratory protection and

special coveralls to protect their clothing because, he says, you

can't get uranium particles off your clothing.

 

..................................

 

Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely unaware of

how deadly their battlefield environment is. Gulf War I troops were

kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled DU fragments and some wore these

lethal nuggets around their necks. A DU projectile emits more

radiation in five hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian

radiation exposure standards. " We didn't know any better, " Kris

Kornkven told Nation magazine. " We didn't find out until long after we

were home that there even was such a thing as DU. " (28)

 

George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war.

Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical

nuclear weapons including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and

shells suited to commando warfare in Afghanistan.(29) In late

September, 2001, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed that

the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin

would employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans.(30)

 

Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George

Smith writes in the Village Voice: " Built ram tough with a heavy metal

casing for smashing through the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes

with the force of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang

for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one, a boosted

plutonium firecracker called the primary and a heavy hydrogen

secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb fireball. " (31)

 

Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now

contaminated by these nuclear weapons.(32) Experts with the Uranium

Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show the

highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population.

Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after

suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal

bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Dead

birds still perched in trees are found partially melted with blood

oozing from their mouths.(33)

 

Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed

by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's

regime is setting a new record for opium production. Both UN and U.S.

reports confirm that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes

Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer.(34) Thanks to nuclear

weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the Bush-Cheney narcotics

industry.(35) ABC News asserts that keeping the " peace " in Afghanistan

will require decades of allied occupation.(36) For years to come,

" peacekeepers " will be eating, drinking and breathing the " hot "

carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that

nation for organized crime.

 

 

 

As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill Clinton

laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for then vice-president

George Bush Sr.(37) As a partner in the Bush family's notorious crime

machine, President Clinton committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in

the Balkans, a prime heroin production and trans-shipment area. DOD's

campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for the Bush

mafia was yet another nuclear project.

 

For years, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles, bullets and shells

across the Balkans, nuking the peoples of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

As DU munitions were slammed into chemical plants, the environment

became hideously toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania,

Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary. By 1999, UN

investigators reported that an estimated 12 tons of DU had caused

irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian environment, with agriculture,

livestock and air water, and public health all profoundly damaged.(38)

............................

 

U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for criminal

militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster. The General

Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous military sites in USA

that will require $billions to rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD

has been both slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations.(42)

The Pentagon is now pressing Congress to exempt it from all

environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free from

liability.(43)

 

The Navy uses prime fishing grounds off the coast of Washington

state to test fire DU ammunition. In January, Washington State Rep.

Jim McDermott chastised the Navy: " On one hand you have required

soldiers to have DU safety training and to wear protective gear when

handling DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated

waters. These policies indicate there is cause for concern....On the

other hand the Department of Defense has repeatedly denied that DU

poses any danger whatsoever. There has been no remorse about leaving

tons of DU equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there

appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of your own

country. " (44)

 

DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana,

Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. After

the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, one

third of the island's population developed serious illness. Many

people show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have

filed a class action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming

DU contamination has caused widespread cancers.(45)

 

The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is a

quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target practice zone

for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents report bizarre illnesses,

including 17 children who have contracted leukemia within five years.

A survey of groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area

wells are contaminated with radioactive materials.(46)

 

The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at three

nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where workers handling

uranium contaminated with plutonium have suffered for decades with

cancers and debilitating maladies similar to Gulf War Syndrome.(47)

 

Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his

administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush asserts that the

U.S. has the right to attack any nation it deems a potential threat.

He told West Point in 2002, " If we wait for threats to fully

materialize, we will have waited too long. " (48) Thus, it is certain

that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear wars are lined up like

idling jets on a runway. Both Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush

family's Carlyle Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so

endless war is just good business.(49)

 

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create special

nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's underground nuclear

facilities.(50) Next August, U.S. war makers will meet to consolidate

plans for a new generation of " mini, " " micro " and " tiny " nuclear bombs

and bunker busters. These will be added to the U.S. arsenal perhaps

for use against non-nuclear third-world nations such as Iran, Syria,

Lebanon.(51)

 

The solution? Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to

rule this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains like

Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for endless corporate

war profits. Saddam was placed in power by the CIA.(52)

 

For years U.S. government agencies, under auspices of George Bush

Sr., supplied him with chemical and biological weapons.(53) Our

national nuclear laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and

Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear program.(54)

 

Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late 90s when its

subsidiaries signed $73 million in new contracts to further supply

Saddam.(55) The wicked villain of Iraq was nurtured for decades as a

cash-cow by U.S. military-industrial piranhas.

 

If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending them

into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs. .................

 

THIS ARTICLE IS FULL OF ENDNOTES AND FOOTNOTES>>CLICK ON THE LINK

TO READ THEM IF YOU NEED MORE CONVINCING!

 

M

 

Amy Worthington is a reporter for The Idaho Observer

 

http://www.sierratimes.com/03/05/02/article_io.htm