Depleted Uranium: Lessons in Humanitarian and Other Warfare

[Guest guest]

S

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:43:16 -0700 (PDT)

Depleted Uranium: Lessons in " Humanitarian " and Other Warfare

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/106502.html

 

 

Depleted Uranium: Lessons in " Humanitarian " and Other Warfare

 

by Jeremy R. Hammond

 

June 2, 2005

 

(Updated June 10, 2005)

 

 

 

Depleted uranium, or DU, is produced through the process of

enrichment, in which the concentration of the U235 isotope of uranium

is increased. For every 1 ton of enriched uranium resulting from the

process, another 7 tons of " depleted " uranium are produced as a

byproduct. Several hundreds of thousands of tons of DU are currently

stockpiled in the United States.[1]

 

 

 

DU is heavy, nearly twice as dense as lead, and is used by weapons

manufacturers because its properties allow munitions tipped with DU to

effectively penetrate armor, and also because the use of such

munitions also relieves governments of the responsibility to properly

store DU.[2] And while the adjective " depleted " is used to describe

the material because of its lower concentration of the U235 isotope,

it is still both radioactive and chemically toxic. As Dan Fahey, a

leading expert on DU, has put it, " The adjective depleted by no means

diminishes the chemical and radioactive properties of DU, but it can

affect how people perceive DUs risks. " [3] When a DU weapon strikes its

target, it forms a fine aerosol of uranium oxides, which can be spread

by the wind and inhaled by humans into the lungs, from where it can to

other areas in the body.[4]

 

 

 

Weapons manufacturers and Pentagon officials are quick to point out

that " depleted " uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium and

claim that there are no adverse effects from exposure to DU. They are

equally quick to make claims about its incredible effectiveness on the

battlefield. In a briefing on DU, a Defense Department spokesperson

explained that uranium was preferred over tungsten because it " has a

characteristic that allows it to sharpen itself as it penetrates the

target. The uranium shreds off the sides of the penetrator instead of

squashing or mushrooming. " [5] Its first major use in combat was during

the 1991 Gulf War. The Pentagon has acknowledged that at least 320

tons of DU remained on the ground after the war.[6]

 

 

 

But while the Pentagon claims that DU poses no significant health

risk, Iraqi doctors have long claimed that the numbers of cancer cases

and birth defects have increased dramatically since the war, and that

the increase is due to the use of DU munitions.[7] Kudhim Ali, an

oncologist at a cancer clinic in Basra, said in 1998 that " Since 1991

the number of cancer cases has increased five to six times over what

it was. " [8] Abdel Karim Hassan Sabr, deputy director of the Hospital

for Maternity and Children in Basra reported that the rate of birth

defects at the hospital rose from 1.8 percent in 1993 to more than 4

percent by 2001.[9]

 

 

 

But reports from the Iraqi government on the health effects resulting

from the use of DU weapons have been long dismissed by the US as

propaganda. In one instructive example, the White House website

published a report entitled " Apparatus of Lies " that states, " In

recent years, the Iraqi regime has made substantial efforts to promote

the false claim that the depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition

forces have caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq. Iraq has

distributed horrifying pictures of children with birth defects and

linked them to depleted uranium. " This " campaign has two major

propaganda assets " , which are that " Uranium is a name that has

frightening associations in the mind of the average person, which

makes the lie relatively easy to sell " , and that " Iraq could take

advantage of an established international network of antinuclear

activists who had already launched their own campaign against depleted

uranium. " [10] There is little doubt that the Iraqi government has

exploited the issue for propaganda purposes, but the possibility that

there might be some truth to the Iraqi claims is, in such a manner,

totally disregarded by the US government.

 

Cotinued:

http://www.yirmeyahureview.com/articles/depleted_uranium_lessons_in_humanitarian\

_and_other_warfare.htm

 

 

Depleted Uranium: A Scientific Perspective

 

 

An Interview With LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist

Interview Conducted By W. Leon Smith and Nathan Diebenow

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who works almost around the clock

educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and

other officials on radiation issues. She became a whistleblower in

1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after witnessing fraud on

the Yucca Mountain Project. She is currently working as an independent

citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the

world, and contributed to the U.N. subcommission investigating

depleted uranium. According to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Moret

testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in

Japan in 2003, presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons

Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and spoke at the World Court of Women

at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India, in January 2004.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: What are the latest developments with reducing depleted

uranium exposures on U.S. troops?

MORET: A young veteran named Melissa Sterry of Connecticut has

introduced a bill into the Connecticut Legislature requiring

independent testing of returning Afghan and Gulf War veterans going

back to 2001. She said that she did it because she's sick, and her

friends are dead, and that's from serving in the 2003 conflict. I have

been following the bill and talking to her. Yesterday, she testified

twice at the United Nations. I said, " Why don't we get this bill all

over the U.S. in state legislatures because it informs the public and

get the local media to cover it. " The U.S. has blocked any

accountability at international and national levels. There's a total

cover-up just like with Agent Orange, the atomic veterans, MKULTRA,

the mind control experiments the CIA did. This is more of the same,

but the issue is much, much worse because the genetic future of all

those contaminated is effected. Now vast regions around our world, as

well as our atmosphere, are contaminated with the depleted uranium.

They've used so much. It's the equivalent number of atoms, as the

Japanese professor calculated it, to over 400,000 Nagasaki bombs that

has been released into the atmosphere. That's really an underestimate.

I went to Louisiana in April. I was invited to speak at the University

of New Orleans for three days. One of the veterans asked me to be in

their April 19 protest and rally through the City of New Orleans. He

took the Connecticut bill straight to the Legislature, and he got two

legislators to sponsor it, and he said, " Just whiteout the name

`Connecticut' and write in `Louisiana' on the bill. " You're not going

to believe it. It passed 101 to 0 yesterday in the Louisiana House.

I want you to write about it because we want it (the DU testing bill)

in Texas. Nevada is going to introduce it. Congressman Jim McDermott

is going to put it into the Washington legislature. We want to get the

governor of Montana to do it because he's the first governor to demand

his National Guard be returned. I think half of them are back. He

said, " I need them in the state. " The DU issue is just really, really,

really, really so awful. I don't think there's any greater tragedy in

the history of the world in what they've done.

ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in

weaponry over there, spreading by air over here?

MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. It's

completely mixed in one year. I'm an expert on atmospheric dust. I'm a

geoscientist, a geologist, and that's what I studied and did my

research on. It's really a fascinating subject. We have huge dust

storms that are a million square miles and transport millions of tons

of dust and sand every year around the world. The main centers of

these dust storms are the Gobi Desert in China, which is where the

Chinese did atmospheric testing, so that's all contaminated with

radiation, and it gets transported right over Japan, and it comes

straight across the Pacific and dumps all its sand and dust on the

U.S., North America. It's loaded with radioactive isotopes, soot,

pesticides, chemicals, pollution -- everything is in it -- fungi,

bacteria, viruses.

The Sahara Desert is another huge dust center, and it goes up all over

Europe and straight across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, and up the

East Coast. Of course, you get it in Texas with those hurricanes. They

all originate in the Sahara Desert.

The third region is the Western United States, which is where the

Nevada test site is located. We did 1,200 nuclear weapons tests there,

so all this radiation that is already there, which is bad enough, has

caused a global cancer epidemic since 1945. All of that radiation was

the equivalent of 40,000 Nagasaki bombs. We're talking about 10 times

more.

In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect

global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.

Infant mortality is going up again all over the world. This is an

indicator of the level of radioactive pollution.

When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963,

the infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal. Now

they are going up again. It's the global pollution with this radiation.

ICONOCLAST: I had one of our correspondents send me a series of

photographs of the Al-Asad dust storm in Iraq on April 28.

MORET: That dust is what I'm talking about.

ICONOCLAST: In the picture you can see a gigantic wall of sand.

MORET: I have 16 pictures of that storm. They're posted with photos

from Iraqi doctors of the children of people with cancer and leukemia.

So what did you think of that dust storm?

ICONOCLAST: I thought it was really dramatic.

MORET: It remobilizes all the radiation, but those are the larger

chunks. The DU burns at such high temperatures. It's a pyroforic metal

which means it burns. The bullets and big caliber shells are actually

on fire when they come out of the gun barrel because they are ignited

by the friction in the gun barrel. Seventy percent of the DU metal

becomes a metal vapor. It's actually a radioactive gas weapon and a

terrain contaminant.

I'll email you the URL of the 1943 memo to General Leslie Grove under

the Manhattan Project. It's the blueprint for depleted uranium. They

dropped the atomic bombs, but they did not use the DU weapons because

they thought they were too horrific.

I've toured and gone all over Japan with a pediatrician in Basra and

an oncologist, a cancer specialist. These poor doctors -- their whole

families are dying of cancer. He has 10 members of his family with

cancer now that he's treating, and this is just from Gulf War I.

They've used much, much, much more in 2003. All over the whole country.

ICONOCLAST: What can soldiers expect when they come home?

MORET: If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, they're coming home

with rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young women

are reporting terrible problems with endometriosis. That's the lining

of the uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed and bleed.

Some of them have uterine cancer -- 18 and 19 and 20 year olds. The

Army will not even diagnose it. They send them back to the

battlefields. They won't treat them or diagnose them. A group of 20

soldiers pushed from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 in all the fighting.

Eight of those 20 soldiers have malignancies.

ICONOCLAST: Does exposure to depleted uranium effect their

psychological background when they come home?

More- http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6232

Lung cancer rates, according to Swartz in earlier post , are running 6

times ahead of last year in USA; could they be higher in England,

also? Beware the needle, Mudville Rose

 

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/weapons_poison_europe.html

 

 

U.S. WEAPONS POISON EUROPE

 

RADIATION FROM IRAQ WAR DETECTED IN UK ATMOSPHERE

 

By Leuren Moret

Updated March 4, 2006

 

A shocking new scientific study by British scientists Dr.

Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan asks: " Did the use of uranium

weapons in Gulf War II result in the contamination of Europe? "

 

High levels of depleted uranium (DU) have been measured in the

atmosphere in Britain, transported on air currents from the

Middle East and Central Asia. Scientists cited the U.S.

bombing of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in 2001 and the " Shock and

Awe " bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003 as one of the

main reasons.

 

In the 1950s the British government had established an air

monitoring facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE)

in Aldermaston to measure radioactive emissions from British

nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities.

 

Ironically, AWE was taken over three years ago by Halliburton,

which at first refused to release key data as required by law

to Busby.

 

An international expert on low-level radiation, Busby serves

as an official advisor on several British government

committees. He recently co-authored an independent report on

low-level radiation with 45 scientists with the European

Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) for the European Parliament.

 

Busby was eventually able to get Aldermaston's air monitoring

data from Halliburton by filing a freedom of information

request using a new British law that became effective Jan. 1,

2005. Critical data from 2003 was missing, however, so he had

to obtain the information from the Defence Procurement Agency.

 

Aldermaston is one of many nuclear facilities throughout

Europe that regularly monitor atmospheric radiation levels

transported by sand, dust storms and air currents from

radiation sources in North Africa, the Middle East and

Central Asia.

 

After the " Shock and Awe " campaign in Iraq in 2003, very fine

particles of depleted uranium were captured along with larger

sand and dust particles in filters in Britain. These particles

traveled in seven to nine days from Iraqi battlefields as far

away as 2,400 miles.

 

The radiation measured in the atmosphere quadrupled within a

few weeks after the beginning of the 2003 campaign, and at one

of the five monitoring locations, the levels twice required an

official alert to the British Environment Agency.

 

In addition, according to Busby, the Aldermaston air

monitoring data provided a continuous record of depleted

uranium levels in Britain from other recent wars.

 

Extensive video news footage of the 2003 Iraq war, including

Fallujah in 2004, provided evidence that the United States has

illegally used depleted uranium munitions on civilian

populations. These military actions are in direct violation

of not only international conventions but also violate U.S.

military law because the United States is a signatory to The

Hague and Geneva conventions and the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol.

 

Depleted uranium weaponry meets the definition of a weapon of

mass destruction (WMD) in two out of three categories under

U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 40 Sec. 2302. After action

mandates have also been violated such as U.S. Army Regulation

AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278, which requires treatment of

radiation poisoning for all casualties, including enemy

soldiers and civilians.

 

In the mainstream press, British officials have attempted to

counter the study by blaming the elevated uranium levels on

" local sources. " Anonymous statements by government scientists

used by the media thus far, however, have been contradicted by

evidence disclosed in the report.

 

Naturally occurring uranium in the crust of the Earth is only

2.4 parts per million and could not become concentrated to the

high levels measured in Britain. As far as nuclear power

plants are concerned, the lowest levels of uranium measured at

monitoring stations around Aldermaston were actually taken at

the facility, which designs and tests nuclear weapons --

meaning this could not possibly be a source.

 

Atomic weapons facilities would be more likely to produce

plutonium contamination, which was not reported as a

contaminant.

 

This wasn't the first time a noted scientist has discussed

global pollution from the use of DU.

 

Dr. Keith Baverstock, an expert on radiation, exposed a World

Health Organization (WHO) cover-up on depleted uranium.

Baverstock leaked an official WHO report that he had written

for the organization but was never published. He warned in

the report about the environmental contamination from tiny

DU particles formed from U.S. munitions.

 

In addition, Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, a Japanese physicist at the

University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, estimated that the

atomic equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs has been

released into the global atmosphere since 1991 from the use of

DU munitions. He said it is mixed in the atmosphere in one

year.

 

 

DU PROFITS

 

As if Busby's report is not bad enough, a new book by a

leading scientist notes who is making billions from nightmare

armaments.

 

Dr. Jay Gould revealed in his book The Enemy Within that the

British royal family privately owns investments in uranium

holdings worth over $6 billion through Rio Tinto Mines in

Australia. The mining company was formed for the British royal

family in the late 1950s by Roland Walter " Tiny " Rowland, who

was known as the queen's banker and the master financial

manipulator behind billionaire Robert Maxwell's fortune.

 

The Rothschilds are also profiting enormously from their

control of the price and supply of uranium globally.

 

The ubiquitous Halliburton just recently finished construction

of a 1,000-mile railway from the mining area to a port on the

north coast of Australia to transport the ore.

 

The queen's favorite American buccaneers, Dick Cheney and the

Bush family, are tied to her through uranium mining and the

shared use of DU munitions in the Middle East, Central Asia

and Kosovo.

 

The role that such diverse groups and individuals -- as the

Carlyle Group, George H.W. Bush, former Carlyle CEO Frank

Carlucci, Los Alamos and Livermore labs, and U.S. and

international pension fund investments -- have played in

proliferating depleted uranium weapons is not well known.

God save the queen from her complicity in turning planet

Earth into a death star.

 

-------

 

Leuren Moret is an international expert on the environmental

effects of depleted uranium and has worked at two U.S. nuclear

weapons laboratories.