Former Head Of Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project Says Thousands Of Troops Are

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Sun, 21 Aug 2005 10:12:45

Former Head Of Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project Says

Thousands Of Troops Are Sick And Dying From Illegal DU Use And

Military's Failure To Admit Responsibility

 

 

 

 

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31934.htm

 

 

 

Former Head Of Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project Says Thousands Of

Troops Are Sick And Dying From Illegal DU Use And Military's Failure

To Admit Responsibility

 

Greg Szymanski

 

After Maj. Doug Rokke went public in 1997 exposing the military's

flawed DU program, his life has been threatened but he still continues

to search for solutions in order to save the lives of those afflicted.

 

August 20, 2005

 

Army Major Doug Rokke has been shot at, run off the road, threatened,

harassed, black- balled, intimidated, called a liar and treated like a

" hated enemy " not by opposition forces in Iraq, but by `secret ops' in

the U.S. government, obviously acting on orders from top military brass.

 

And in May 2000 he was subjected to the biggest scare of his life when

bullets rang through his son's bedroom window while living in

Jacksonville, Alabama, in what he calls " another near miss " by

government hit men bound and determined to remove his presence from

the planet.

 

Maj. Rokke, living in Rantoul, Illinois, and still active in the Army

Reserves, has been a government target ever since going public in a

May 1997 article in the Nation Magazine, criticizing the military for

failing to clean-up depleted uranium used in Iraq during the first

Gulf War.

 

Although Maj. Rokke's accusations have been echoed by many others what

makes his statements so electrifying – so damaging to the military -

is that he was one of the Pentagon's `top boys.' In fact, he was not

only one of the Pentagon's elite, he was " the man " so to speak when it

came to determining the causes and effects of depleted uranium (DU)

used in the battle field.

 

Being so well-respected by the Pentagon brass, Maj. Rokke was the

military expert assigned as director of the 1994 U.S. Army Depleted

Uranium Project in response to congressional inquiries and direct

Department of Defense (DOD) orders.

 

The study was commissioned after it was found the military lacked

adequate preparation to deal with the adverse health and environmental

effects regarding the use of DU in the battle field. This highly

efficient `killing tool,' which amounts to nothing less than a

radioactive nuclear assault, has been extensively used in U.S.

weaponry in the first Gulf War as well as the present Iraqi conflict,

even though it is a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and

United Nation regulations.

 

In simple terms, Maj. Rokke was asked to evaluate the extent of DU

used and asked to advise the military how to adequately comply with

its own existing regulations of training, clean-up and medical care

involving soldiers and civilians contaminated.

 

In his final report, Maj. Rokke, however, didn't beat around the bush

or provide a technical escape for evading regulations. He simply laid

it on the table plain and simple, saying if the military intended to

keep using DU, it needed to address the above problems, as regulations

mandated, or simply cease and desist from its use.

 

And. in hindsight, it was probably the words " cease and desist " or

Maj. Rokke's simple ultimatum of " clean-up or don't use " that

initially ticked-off military brass, since behind the scenes the `big

boys " never really intended to open up a can of worms caused by Maj.

Rokke's report.

 

But when the implacable army officer went public about the extent of

the DU problems in 1997, letting the cat out of the bag about the

military's outright refusal to comply with existing regulations, the

`big boys' put their boxing gloves on and are still trying to punch

Maj. Rokke into submission today.

 

" They have been after me ever since I went public, " said Maj. Rokke in

a telephone conversation this week from his country home in the

heartland of Illinois. " I've been shot at, run off the road several

times, harassed, threatened and whatever else they could think of

doing to discredit me for what I was doing.

 

" They even shot bullets through my son's bedroom window. These guys

don't play around and the first thing I was told when I went public

was to keep my 45 loaded at all times. "

 

Even though Maj. Rokke's obviously right and the military wrong, the

cold and hard truth is that the big brass tried to crucify him for

simply telling the truth. The cold hard truth is that even though the

military admits using DU, it never has admitted to the legal causal

connection between its use and its adverse effects on human and

environmental health.

 

And critics contend that such outright contempt for its own

regulations and the military's failure to provide adequate medical

care for those exposed to DU has left hundreds of thousands of

military personnel and civilians sick or dying, including Maj. Rokke.

 

" It's really very simple, " added Maj. Rokke. " I was asked to report on

what they needed to do about the DU problem. Our team of experts then

reported and provided our recommendations, plain and simple.

 

" But when I realized in 1997 we were being ignored and thousands of

people, including myself, were sick and possibly slowly dying from DU

exposure, I had to go public and blow the whistle. "

 

And Maj. Rokke said his warnings as well as warnings from many other

experts were not only dismissed by the military, but also by every

other bigwig on Capital Hill, including President Clinton, Senator

John Kerry and every other member of Congress, all very much aware of

his position since he even addressed the 2000 Fall Congressional

Coalition Leadership at its quarterly breakfast in Washington D.C.

 

Adding that the DU problem is even worse today, Maj. Rokke pointed out

the military continues to bombard the Iraq and Afghanistan with

" increased levels' of nuclear weaponry, leaving in its wake even

higher levels of nuclear fallout then were present in Gulf War I.

 

And like President Clinton, his predecessor, President Bush has failed

to address or even recognize the problem, leaving behind `hot zones'

in the Middle East while, at the same time, failing to care for

radiation illnesses in returning troops.

 

" President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair must acknowledge and

must accept responsibility for the willful use of illegal uranium

munitions, their own `dirty bombs,' resulting in adverse health and

environmental effects, " wrote Maj. Rokke in recent open letter,

criticizing the two major leaders of the Iraq occupation.

 

And being crystal clear about his demands in compliance with existing

military regulations, he added:

 

" President Bush and Prime Minister Blair need to immediately order

medical care for all DU casualties, order thorough environmental

remediation, issue immediate orders for the cessation and retaliation

against all of us who demand compliance with medical care and ban the

further use of depleted radiation munitions.

 

" They arrogantly refuse to comply with their own regulations, orders,

and directives that require United States Department of Defense

officials to provide prompt and effective medical care " all " exposed

individuals [Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium

Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93, Medical Management of Army

personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters.

 

" U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004), and section 2-5 of AR

70-48. They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive

contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48: " Management

of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted

 

Uranium or Radioactive Commodities " (Headquarters, Department Of The Army,

 

Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin- TB

9-1300-278: " Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And

Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which

Contain Depleted Uranium " (Headquarters, Department Of The Army,

Washington, D.C., JULY 1996).

 

To further bolster Maj. Rokke's accusations, all the following

regulations are being violated, specifically section 2-4 of United

States Army Regulation-AR 700-48 dated Sept.16, 2002, requiring:

 

(1) " Military personnel " identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and

label all RCE " (radiological contaminated equipment).

 

(2) " Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be

implemented as soon as possible. "

 

(3) " Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of

through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or

abandonment " and;

 

(4) " All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be

surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW

Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48. "

 

With the military's blatant violations placed in the public eye due to

Mj. Rokke's courage to buck the system, other experts and scientists

quickly came to Maj. Rokke's side, offering startling information and

detailed statistics showing the seriousness of the DU problem and the

government's failure to take responsibility even though it obviously

caused the problem.

 

Radiation experts Leuren Moret and Marion Fulk, along with others like

Dennis Kyne, Bob Jones and Mark Zeller, have provided documentation

for an explosive video just released, written and produced by Joyce

Riley and William Lewis, called " Beyond Treason, " providing an in

depth look at DU used in the Gulf Wars and its likelihood of causing

numerous civilian and military illnesses.

 

 

" It has been determined that the equivalent of more than 400,000

Nagasaki bombs has been released in the middle east since 1991, " said

Moret, citing a report and subsequent speech at a 2000 depleted

uranium conference given by Professor Yagasaki, a physicist and

well-respected nuclear radiation expert.

 

Moret, who has spent a life time working in the nuclear field, first

as a staff scientist at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in

California, is now a member of The Radiation and Public Health Project

(RPHP), a privately funded group studying the devastating effects of

depleted uranium especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

And the writers of Beyond Treason added more ammunition to Rokke's

accusations regarding the government's failure to recognize the DU

problem 15 years after it was first exposed:

 

" The ailing Gulf War heroes from all 27 coalition countries slowly die

from of " unknown causes, " they wait for answers from their respective

governments, but no satisfying or even credible answers have come

forth from the military establishment. Records that span over a decade

point to negligence and even culpability on the part of the U.S.

Department of Defense and their `disposable army " mentality.

 

" The VA has determined that 250,000 troops are now permanently

disabled, 15,000 troops are dead and over 425,000 are ill and slowly

dying from what the Department of Defense still calls a mystery

disease. How many more will have to die before action is taken? "

 

Although Maj. Rokke has been fighting to save the lives of thousands

of afflicted veterans, he is also trying to save his own life as he

was originally exposed to DU in 1990 and 1991 while deployed in Iraq

and looking into the hazards of DU.

 

" First, I remember experiencing breathing problems, then a rash and

then bleeding sores that never go away, " said Rokke, 56, adding DU

exposure is slowly, day by day, turning him into an invalid. " The sad

thing is that only several hundred military personnel have even been

tested for DU exposure since the beginning when there are literally

hundreds of thousands afflicted.

 

" In fact, it took the military more than two years to even tell me

that I was `hot,' withholding my urine tests and hiding the truth. One

of the reasons I went public is because so many soldiers are dying

from the same symptoms I have and the military simply still refuses to

take medical responsibility and care for them. "

 

Recently, to keep the DU issue alive, Maj. Rokke published an article

in the Nov. 27, 2004 edition of the popular Vanity Fair magazine,

where he updated his concerns with new information about Gulf War II.

 

After the article appeared, he said the Pentagon and others in

military circles immediately unleashed another attack on his

character, accusing him of lying and even saying he never headed up

the Pentagon's DU program in the first place.

 

 

" I guess if I played their game, I would sitting somewhere with a

cushy $100,000 a year job, " said Mj. Rokke. " But I decided to do

what's right no matter what the consequences. But, don't get me wrong,

I'm not a peace-nick. I am a military officer and a warrior. I would

not hesitate to use nuclear weapons only, however, if it was a last.

But I also feel the military should live up to its responsibilities

and follow regulations, which is not the case now and why I am

speaking out. "

 

Although declaring himself a warrior, Maj. Rokke tempered that

statement, writing in September, 2002, what he called a " A Commitment

To Peace. " In this short open letter, however, much is revealed about

the inner-man, his obvious choice of peace versus war and his ultimate

fears about the ramifications of the Iraqi invasion, which at the time

of his writing was just on the horizon:

 

" As I sit here tonight unable to sleep, my mind is considering the

ramifications of potential and ongoing military actions and economic

sanctions. As a disabled warrior with combat experience in two wars,

Vietnam and Desert Storm, I can only hope and pray that the outcomes

of these actions do not leave another trail of adverse health and

environmental problems.

 

" I have concluded that we must unite in a concerted effort to prevent

additional suffering. Throughout the history of the world those who

make a commitment to peace have endured isolation and retaliation when

they challenged the individuals and governments seeking economic and

political advantages. A vision of peace where all nations can live

together for the common good is an ideal dream but may be unrealistic.

 

" War is the ultimate weapon a nation or leaders can use to control the

allocation and use of food, water, terrain, shelter, and mineral

resources. War occurs when nations or individuals fail to reach a

satisfactory compromise on sharing of these limited resources.

 

Today we are reaching another crossroads in history where we must

decide which road we follow. We can select peace or go to war. One

means life the other means death! The prevalent modus operandi at this

time of those seeking power and control is to threaten economic

sanctions or military attacks in order to achieve their goals and

objectives.

 

" This is unacceptable. We must act to with a unified and strong voice

prevent nations and leaders from imposing their demands on others. At

the same time we must make sure that those nations and leaders who

pose a viable threat to peace are checkmated. But that does not mean

that we result to military force.

 

" There are many options but only wise persons are willing to discuss

and mutually select the option most beneficial to all. Today

information control is used to prevent discussion and debate. If a

person does not have adequate and validated information they will be

unable to contribute to the resolution of serious problems. We must

ensure the complete dissemination of information even if that

information reveals illegal or disturbing actions by our own or any

other nation.

 

" These ways to achieve peace will require a commitment of time,

financial resources, knowledge, attitudes, life, liberty, and

willingness to endure and retaliation by any person who wishes to

contribute towards the resolution of local, state, national or

international problems. The choice is ours. We can select a life as a

mushroom or we can select to act. I select action for if peace is to

be achieved then I must let peace begin with me. "

 

 

 

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31934.htm

 

 

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