ARE DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS SICKENING U.S. TROOPS? --

[Guest guest]

Kevin

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:12:53 -0400

ARE DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS SICKENING U.S. TROOPS? --

 

 

 

 

http://vawatchdog.org/old%20newsflashes%20AUG%2006/newsflash08-11-2006-1.htm

 

 

 

ARE DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS SICKENING U.S. TROOPS? --

 

" And when we first asked to be tested, [the VA] told us there

 

wasn't one. They've lied to us all along. I'm just

 

a zombie walking around. "

 

 

 

 

Herbert Reed

 

 

 

We have two stories. The first, from today, is a well-written and researched

piece from the Associated Press. I find it interesting because it stays away

from the political hype and non-science that surrounds so much of the DU

" information. "

 

The second story is from late last year and center's on Herbert Reed and his

lawsuit.

 

First story here... http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/060810d_wire.aspx

 

Story below:

 

---------------

 

Are Depleted Uranium Weapons Sickening U.S. Troops?

 

By Deborah Hastings

AP National Writer

 

 

 

NEW YORK (AP) - It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice

to wash down all the pills - morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an

antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. And Valium for

his nerves.

 

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the

pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day

is done.

 

Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more

blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A

tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so

badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints

ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.

 

There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what

it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for

him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.

 

In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many

caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a

psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist.

 

He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact

a high price.

 

" I'm just a zombie walking around, " he says.

 

Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life. He now walks

point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon's arsenal of it - thousands of shells

and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically

toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.

 

A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through

butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno. As tank armor, it repels

artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a

half-life of 4.5 billion years.

 

Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear

weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium.

The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous waste

storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as

highly effective.

 

Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah,

Iraq. He was med-evaced out in July 2003, nearly unable to walk because of

lightning-strike pains from herniated discs in his spine. Then began a strange

series of symptoms he'd never experienced in his previously healthy life.

 

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from

his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between

doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.

 

" We all had migraines. We all felt sick, " Reed says. " The doctors said, 'It's

all in your head.' "

 

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight

sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made

up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.

 

But the medic knew something the others didn't.

 

Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which

was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd

brought radiation-detection devices.

 

The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert

rather than live in the station ruins.

 

" We got on the Internet, " Reed said, " and we started researching depleted

uranium. "

 

Then they contacted The New York Daily News, which paid for sophisticated urine

tests available only overseas.

 

Then they hired a lawyer.

 

Reed, Gerard Matthew, Raymond Ramos, Hector Vega, Augustin Matos, Anthony

Yonnone, Jerry Ojeda and Anthony Phillip all have depleted uranium in their

urine, according to tests done in December 2003. For months during that time,

they bounced between Walter Reed and New Jersey's Fort Dix medical center,

seeking relief that never came.

 

The analyses were done in Germany, by a Frankfurt professor who developed a

depleted uranium test with Randall Parrish, a professor of isotope geology at

the University of Leicester in Britain.

 

The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army,

claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the

risks.

 

The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe, and not

that worrisome.

 

Four of the highest-registering samples from Frankfurt were sent to the VA.

Those results were negative, Reed said. " Their test just isn't as

sophisticated, " he said. " And when we first asked to be tested, they told us

there wasn't one. They've lied to us all along. "

 

The VA's testing methodology is safe and accurate, the agency says. More than

2,100 soldiers from the current war have asked to be tested; only eight had DU

in their urine, the VA said.

 

The term depleted uranium is linguistically radioactive. Simply uttering the

words can prompt a strong reaction. Heads shake, eyes roll, opinions are yelled

from all sides.

 

" The Department of Defense takes the position that you can eat it for breakfast

and it poses no threat at all, " said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War

Resource Center, which helps veterans with various problems, including

navigating the labyrinth of VA health care. " Then you have far-left groups that

.... declare it a crime against humanity. "

 

Several countries use it as weaponry, including Britain, which fired it during

the 2003 Iraq invasion.

 

An estimated 286 tons of DU munitions were fired by the U.S. in Iraq and Kuwait

in 1991. An estimated 130 tons were shot toppling Saddam Hussein.

 

Depleted uranium can enter the human body by inhalation, the most dangerous

method; by ingesting contaminated food or eating with contaminated hands; by

getting dust or debris in an open wound, or by being struck by shrapnel, which

often is not removed because doing so would be more dangerous than leaving it.

 

Inhaled, it can lodge in the lungs. As with imbedded shrapnel, this is doubly

dangerous - not only are the particles themselves physically destructive, they

emit radiation.

 

A moderate voice on the divisive DU spectrum belongs to Dan Fahey, a doctoral

student at the University of California at Berkeley, who has studied the issue

for years and also served in the Gulf War before leaving the military as a

conscientious objector.

 

" I've been working on this since '93 and I've just given up hope, " he said.

" I've spoken to successive federal committees and elected officials ... who then

side with the Pentagon. Nothing changes. "

 

At the other end are a collection of conspiracy-theorists and Internet

proselytizers who say using such weapons constitute genocide. Two of the most

vocal opponents recently suggested that a depleted-uranium missile, not a

hijacked jetliner, struck the Pentagon in 2001.

 

" The bottom line is it's more hazardous than the Pentagon admits, " Fahey said,

" but it's not as hazardous as the hard-line activist groups say it is. And

there's a real dearth of information about how DU affects humans. "

 

Reed and the seven brothers from his unit hate what has happened to them, and

they speak of it at public seminars and in politicians' offices. It is something

no VA doctor can explain; something that leaves them feeling like so many spent

shell rounds, kicked to the side of battle.

 

But for every outspoken soldier like them, there are silent veterans like

Raphael Naboa, an Army artillery scout who served 11 months in the northern

Sunni Triangle, only to come home and fall apart.

 

Some days he feels fine. " Some days I can't get out of bed, " he said from his

home in Colorado.

 

Now 29, he's had growths removed from his brain. He has suffered a small stroke

- one morning he was shaving, having put down the razor to rinse his face. In

that moment, he blacked out and pitched over.

 

" Just as quickly as I lost consciousness, I regained it, " he said. " Except I

couldn't move the right side of my body. "

 

After about 15 minutes, the paralysis ebbed.

 

He has mentioned depleted uranium to his VA doctors, who say he suffers from a

series of " non-related conditions. " He knows he was exposed to DU.

 

" A lot of guys went trophy-hunting, grabbing bayonets, helmets, stuff that was

in the vehicles that were destroyed by depleted uranium. My guys were rooting

around in it. I was trying to get them out of the vehicles. "

 

No one in the military talked to him about depleted uranium, he said. His

knowledge, like Reed's, is self-taught from the Internet.

 

Unlike Reed, he has not gone to war over it. He doesn't feel up to the fight.

There is no known cure for what ails him, and so no possible victory in battle.

 

He'd really just like to feel normal again. And he knows of others who feel the

same.

 

" I was an artillery scout, these are folks who are in pretty good shape. Your

Rangers, your Special Forces guys, they're in as good as shape as a professional

athlete, " he said. " Then we come back and we're all sick. "

 

They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time,

with no hope for relief from a multitude of miseries that has no name.

 

---------------

 

Second story here...

http://www.northcountynews.com/archives_2005/11-9-05/news5.htm

 

Story below:

 

---------------

 

Veterans charge illnesses tied to new form of Agent Orange

 

U.S. officials accused of knowingly putting soldiers in contaminated areas

 

by Rita J. King

 

 

 

With the approach of Veteran's Day, millions of Americans are preparing to rally

for the troops, and some of those soldiers are asking Americans to support them

by learning about depleted uranium (DU), used by the United States to strengthen

weapons detonated in Iraq.

 

DU is considered by many who feel they've been exposed to be Desert Storm and

Operation Iraqi Freedom's version of Agent Orange. The nebulous " Gulf War

Syndrome, " some sick veterans say, is actually the side effects of DU exposure.

 

Herbert Reed, 51, was at the end of a 20-year military career when he

transferred from the Coast Guard Reserves to the Army National Guard. A month

later, Reed, who worked as an assistant deputy warden with the New York City

Corrections Department, was called to active duty and put in charge of the

reconstruction effort of a prison in Iraq where murderers, rapists and thieves

were being held.

 

Some " intelligence gathering " took place, he said, but because he was " solely in

charge " of the prison, he ensured that no torture took place.

 

While the Iraqi criminals under American watch were being treated humanely, Reed

said the American military didn't offer its own soldiers the same fair play.

 

In April 2003, Reed was sent to Iraq. In June, a speed bump caused his head to

smash against the roof of a vehicle with such force that he was airlifted out of

Iraq for medical treatment. At Walter Reed Army Hospital, a titanium plate was

implanted in his neck after extensive operations on a bi-level herniated disc,

among other injuries.

 

Physical therapy and various other treatments continued for Reed until November

2004, at which time he received a medical retirement from the military.

Methadone is now necessary every six hours and morphine every four, along with

other muscle relaxants, that make it nearly impossible for him to play with his

two young children.

 

" Due to the injuries I sustained and the permanent medication I now receive, I

was unable to return to my prior employment, " Reed said. " I also found out that

myself and several of my comrades in arms were exposed to DU, which we believe

is responsible for a lot of the aliments we now suffer from. Depleted uranium is

our Agent Orange. They knew we would be serving in an area contaminated by DU,

and they didn't tell us. "

 

Along with nine members of his prior unit, Reed filed a lawsuit against the

government.

 

" They knew prior to our deployment that Iraq was contaminated with DU after the

first Gulf War when soldiers started returning home ill. At that time they named

it the Gulf War Syndrome after many denials that there was anything wrong, " Reed

said.

 

Reed and his fellow troops are not the first to sound the alarm bell about

depleted uranium. Like Chernobyl, a 1986 nuclear disaster that gave rise to a

twisted wake of horrifying birth defects across a widening radius of Belarus,

Russian Federation and Ukraine, similar events have been reported in Iraqi hot

zones.

 

While DU might strike targets with unparalleled precision, it doesn't know not

to penetrate the strikers, or other unintended victims.

 

Some soldiers returning from Iraq who have been exposed to DU have seen their

children born eyeless, or with other birth defects often attributed to DU.

 

In September 2004, the New York Daily News reported Gerard Darren Matthew, who

had served in Iraq with the Harlem-based 719th Transportation Company, had

tested positive for DU after suffering migraines, fatigue, and a burning

sensation when urinating. His wife became pregnant following his return, and

their daughter was born missing three fingers.

 

Reed, who met Matthew while both were being treated at Walter Reed Medical

Center, said Matthew is now in Japan, on a lecture circuit to discuss the

hazards he believes are associated with DU. However, tens of thousands of

American soldiers are experiencing the same symptoms these men and countless

others share, and they've never heard of DU.

 

Depleted Uranium

 

Depending on who's talking, DU is either a weapon of mass destruction, crippling

adults and infants with side effects too complicated and debilitating to pin

down, or an " ideal " war tool, capable of wiping out targets with a level of

effectiveness coveted on the battlefield.

 

In 2002, DU was declared a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations

Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Use of DU became

a breach of international law. DU, culled from nuclear fuel processors, is a

by-product of enriching uranium for reactor fuel.

 

Deployment Health Support advises the United States Undersecretary of Defense on

health issues related to troops and " assesses deployments to understand and

communicate information concerning non-traditional threats to health. " According

to the organization's assessment, " DU that remains outside the body cannot harm

you. "

 

" A common misconception, " according to Deployment Health Support, is that

" radiation is depleted uranium's primary hazard. This is not the case under most

battlefield exposure scenarios. "

 

According to Deployment Health Support, DU emits alpha particles that are

blocked by skin, and beta particles blocked by boots and battle dress, and a low

amount of gamma rays.

 

" Thus, depleted uranium does not significantly add to the background radiation

that we encounter every day, " according to Deployment Health Support. But they

go on to confirm what experts and critics contend, which is that the particles

pose a low threat when they remain outside the body, yet when they enter in

large doses, as through ingestion or inhalation, DU " may pose a long-term health

hazard. "

 

Dust storms, Reed pointed out, are extremely common in Iraq. In hot zones

contaminated with DU, it isn't hard to imagine how particles might be inhaled or

ingested.

 

In October 2004, an early draft of a study by the Research Advisory Committee on

Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, a scientific panel run by the V.A., was leaked to

the New York Times. The Times reported the panel had concluded there was a

" probable link " between veterans' illnesses and exposure to neurotoxins,

including a drug given to troops in 1991 to protect them from nerve gas, and

nerve gas itself, which was released when U.S.-led forces destroyed an Iraqi

arms depot.

 

Asked why there was no mention of DU in the report, Dr. Lea Steele, the panel's

scientific director, said her group plans to address it in a later report:

" We've only just begun work on this topic. We are certainly not ruling it out. "

 

That information was reported in the November 2004 issue of Vanity Fair, in

Contributing Editor David Rose's article, " Weapons of Self-Destruction. "

 

" Even before Desert Storm, the Pentagon knew that DU was potentially hazardous.

Before last year's Iraq invasion, it issued strict regulations designed to

protect civilians, troops, and the environment after the use of DU. But the

Pentagon insists that there is little chance that these veterans' illnesses are

caused by DU, " Rose wrote.

 

But while Pentagon spokesman Dr. Michael Kilpatrick said Gulf War veterans are

no less healthy than soldiers who were stationed elsewhere, the Veterans

Administration acknowledged at the time of Rose's article a third of all living

Gulf War veterans, 181,996 (only 167 died in fatal combat casualties), were

collecting service-related disability pensions.

 

Now the same thing is happening to veterans of " Operation Iraqi Freedom, " Reed

said.

 

" I feel betrayed. I spent 20 years in the military, " Reed said. " When I first

joined I thought I was doing the right thing, protecting my country and family.

I never thought I'd participate with the activists speaking out against the

government, but it turns out they're telling the truth, many of the

organizations, and people need to know to keep their sons and daughters home.

The government didn't give us the information and equipment we needed. I'm

appalled. "

 

And he's very sick.

 

Lawsuit against the Government

 

Reed said he had never heard of DU prior to his deployment in Iraq. In fact, he

said he never heard of it until after he returned, and was moved to Fort Dix in

New Jersey when Walter Reed Medical Center outside Washington, D.C., filled up.

 

Other members of Reed's unit, also sick and injured, started showing up in Fort

Dix and Walter Reed, where he was transported for treatment. All of the men

suffered from matching symptoms to varying degrees: constant diarrhea, nausea,

memory loss, dizziness, vertigo, horrible migraines, sensitivity to light and

constant body aches, to name a few of the debilitating symptoms.

 

Eventually, the unit's medic from Iraq was also sent in for treatment, and he

shared a piece of disturbing news with his fellow soldiers. Americans who had

been serving in that area of southern Iraq had thinned out so considerably that

Dutch and Japanese military personnel were scheduled to relieve them. They came

in first with Geiger counters first to test for radiation, Reed said, and found

the area so contaminated they refused to deploy troops.

 

" The United States government said nothing to us about being in a contaminated

area, " Reed said. " So we started to talk. We got together as a unit. "

 

The soldiers informed their doctors at Fort Dix that they believed they had been

exposed to DU, and Reed said the suggestion was met with a blasé response. DU,

the soldiers were told, was not the cause of their symptoms. By then, the

soldiers had begun to conduct research on the Internet.

 

" We knew it was a lie, " Reed said. " We learned that the United States government

has been experimenting with DU since the first bomb was dropped on Japan. The

military refused to test us. "

 

Reed said his unit then approached Senator Charles Schumer, who held a press

conference at which he pledged to " get to the bottom " of the mystery. After the

press conference, Reed said, nothing came of the meeting with Schumer.

 

The soldiers then approached Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had

participated in a committee after Operation Desert Storm, writing procedure that

would require troops to submit to a physical before and after deployment.

 

Such physicals, Reed said, did not occur for him.

 

" The United States military knows we're contaminated, so they don't want to do

the physicals and confirm it, " Reed contended.

 

On top of that, he said, the testing that is used lacks the sophistication to

detect microscopic particles, Reed said.

 

The Daily News conducted a special investigation, published on April 4, 2004,

about the 442nd Military Police who served, as Reed did, in Samawah. The

publication announced definitively that four soldiers were contaminated after

funding laboratory tests for the special report.

 

Reed said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, a former Army Reserves Colonel who served in the

1991 Persian Gulf War, examined the soldiers.

 

" He's the one who first diagnosed Gulf War Syndrome, " Reed said, adding

Duracovic was eventually " pushed into retirement, " which hasn't slowed down his

work. Duracovic's tests, funded by The Daily News, concluded that four soldiers

" almost certainly " inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells

manufactured with depleted uranium.

 

Urine samples collected by Duracovic were passed on to Professor Axel Gerdes, a

geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, who specializes in

analyzing uranium isotopes. His laboratory is one of roughly 100 in the world

capable of such refined testing methods.

 

At this time, lawyers representing Reed and members of his unit who believe

their health has been stripped bare by exposure to DU, are hashing it out with

the United States government.

 

" DU goes through whatever object it strikes, " Reed said. " The molecules start a

fire. Children come along later and play with this stuff, pure depleted uranium.

It's like you ran Drano through them. None of this was ever mentioned to us at

all. "

 

After a lifetime of military devotion, Reed said he has come to see the war in

Iraq as senseless, and based on deception.

 

" I'm aware of what is taking place out there, " Reed said. " But there are

thousands of soldiers who have been brainwashed that there's nothing wrong with

them. The military won't take responsibility, and that's why we have this

lawsuit. We want medical treatment for ourselves and our families. We want the

government to admit the dangers of DU. We want them to stop using it, and we

want them to clean up Iraq. "

 

It took 30 years, Reed said, before the United States government acknowledged

the effects of Agent Orange. Even now, he said, the full spectrum of that lethal

chemical is still being minimized.

 

The Pentagon's Position

 

On March 14, 2003, Kilpatrick and Army Colonel James Naughton from the United

States Army Material Command gave a briefing on DU, ostensibly to correct some

of the " misinformation out there, " according to the event's moderator.

 

Naughton, at that time, was the director for munitions in the Army, after a long

career " developing and buying munitions. "

 

" During the Gulf War, we fired ammunition weighing approximately 320 tons. That

sounds like an awful lot of depleted uranium, but when you actually put it

together and measure it, it's a cube about eight feet on the side. It isn't

really a lot of material. "

 

The Air Force was a " principal user " during the Gulf War. They fired the

ammunition from their A-10 aircraft, 30 millimeter gun system. The Army was the

second largest user, firing ammunition from the Abrams tank, approximately 50

tons. The remaining 11 tons of ammunition was fired by the Marine Corps, again

principally from tanks and the Harrier aircraft, the AV-8.

 

" We have two military uses for depleted uranium, " Naughton explained. " The first

one is to make penetrators…what we use to penetrate armored vehicles, kinetic

energy weapons like the MA-29 series, ammunition for the Abrams tank, use the

energy that's created when the bullet is launched from the bore of the canon to

breach the armor on the other end. So you want something that's very dense and

very hard, so that when it reaches the other end, instead of splattering like

you would expect a lead bullet to do, it actually retains its shape and drives

through the target. "

 

This quality of penetration is what gives DU its appeal. High speed x-ray

pictures of " penetration " were used by Naughton to prove his point.

 

" What we want to be able to do is strike the target from farther away than we

can be hit back, and we want the target to be destroyed when we shoot at it, "

Naughton said. " We don't want to see rounds bouncing off.

 

Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead,

and DU gives us that advantage. We can hit, and they can't hit us. We don't want

to give that up, and that's why we use it. "

 

Kilpatrick's argument in favor of DU is similar to that used by the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission when describing bananas as radioactive when attempting to

downplay the possibility of contamination.

 

" Natural uranium is in the soil around our world, " Kilpatrick said. " It

certainly is something that we eat and drink and breathe in every day, because

it is in our environment. We all secrete natural uranium in our urine to a

certain level. "

 

Kilpatrick's claim was that 90 Gulf War veterans have been monitored after being

present on an armored vehicle when it was struck by uranium during a " friendly

fire " incident.

 

" And we do not see any kidney damage in those individuals -- and this is using

very sophisticated medical evaluation of kidneys. They were also followed for

other medical problems…and they've had no other medical consequences of that

depleted uranium exposure, " he said.

 

" Now, some of these individuals had amputations, were burned, had deep wounds,

so that these individuals, some of them of course do have medical problems, " he

added. " But as far as a consequence of the depleted uranium exposure, we are not

seeing anything related to that either from a chemical or radiological effect. "

 

He said there have been " no cancers, " and " no leukemia. "

 

The Department of Defense's claim DU exposure isn't the cause of Gulf War

syndrome, cancer, birth defects in children and other, more nebulous maladies

plaguing vets who served in Iraq has been scrutinized by the United States

General Accounting Office (GAO).

 

In June 2004, the GAO issued a report to Congress that was highly critical of

government research into Gulf War syndrome and veterans' cancer rates. The

studies on which federal agencies were basing their claim that Gulf War Veterans

were no sicker than the veterans of other wars " may not be reliable " and had

" inherent limitations, " with " big data gaps and methodological flaws, " according

to GAO.

 

Since slow-growing cancers can take years to fully manifest, the GAO stated, " it

may be too early " to draw any conclusions.

 

" That's just the opinion of a group of individuals, " said Kilpatrick in

dismissing the report.

 

Yet another Pentagon-funded study suggested that DU might have effects on unborn

children. After finding that pregnant rats transmitted DU to their offspring

through the placenta, the study concluded: " Fetal exposure to uranium during

critical prenatal development may adversely impact the future behavioral and

neurological development of offspring. "

 

Blowing in the Wind

 

Experts around the world are critical of American use of DU, and some feel it's

a " crime against humanity, " according to an April 29, 2005, article by James

Denver in Vive le Canada, that " ranks with the worst atrocities of all time. "

 

Denver's article, " Horror of USA's Depleted Uranium in Iraq Threatens World, "

claims United States Iraq military vets are " on DU death row, waiting to die. "

 

British radiation expert Dr. Chris Busby, fellow of the University of Liverpool

in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on

Radiation Risk, said DU is the " best-kept secret of this war: the fact that by

illegally using hundreds of tons of DU against Iraq, Britain and America have

gravely endangered not only the Iraqis, but the whole world. "

 

" I'm horrified, " Busby said. " The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and

the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted

uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of

thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can

travel.

 

Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust

from the Sahara on your car. "

 

John Pilger, former chief foreign correspondent for the British publication the

Daily Mirror, witnessed the punch packed by DU. He said some United States

servicemen refer to victims at close range as " crispy critters, " and when he saw

children who had been killed from a greater distance he said their " skin had

folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood,

while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. "

 

Pilger said he vomited at the sight of the carnage.

 

" Since DU darkened the land, " Denver wrote, " Iraq has seen birth defects which

would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with

their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes

should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs,

and even without heads. "

 

" Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl or a boy?' but

simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The

genes of their parents may have been damaged forever, and the damaging DU dust

is ever-present, " Denver said, adding that what the governments of the United

States and Britain have done to the people of Iraq, they have also " knowingly "

done the same to their own soldiers.

 

" Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they dramatically

increased its use-from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war to a minimum of

1,500 tons in this one, " Denver wrote. " And this time the use of DU wasn't

limited to anti-tank weapons—as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war—but

was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big 2,000-pound

bombs used in Iraq's cities. "

 

This means that Iraq's cities, Denver said, have been " blanketed in lethal

particles—any one of which can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the

use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in

huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried

high into the air—again and again and again as the bombs rained down—ready to be

swept worldwide by the winds. "

 

Those winds, Reed believes, are already blowing hard.

 

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