AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY / MILITARY USE OF DU

[Guest guest]

Dr. Allen Roland hits the proverbial bulls eye once again in an unflinching

analysis of the disastrous fire and explosive destruction of the huge Ammo

Dump in Southern Baghdad: Forward Camp Falcon. A Billion Dollars worth of

American manufactured machined uranium fashioned into shells, missiles and

bombs

blew the ammo dump to pieces. October 10, 2006

 

Bob Nichols Project Censored Award Winning Writer

 

Allen L Roland, Ph.D.

 

AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY / MILITARY USE OF DU

 

" By illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq

~ Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the

whole world: " Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert and UK

representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk .

 

I originally posted this on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 but with the recent

October forward Camp Falcon DU explosions ~ it is now even more pertinent.

 

The game is up for Bush , Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the Republicans ~ we

have not only fought an illegal war and occupation but we have endangered the

whole world in the process.

 

Reporter James Denver, who writes and broadcasts internationally on science

and technology, shares the terrible legacy of DU ( Depleted Uranium ) as well

as the vital evidence and the enormous harm done by the government of the

United States and Great Britian ~ who are both still officially in denial.

 

Excerpt: " 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 at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. 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

2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities .... In 1997, while citing experiments,

by

others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer

of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear

Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [uS

government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of

incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.' He concluded, 'uranium does

cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we

continue

with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact

that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are

doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and

to

all generations who follow.' "

 

Allen L Roland _http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/10/31.html_

(http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/10/31.html) Horror Of US Depleted Uranium

In Iraq

Threatens World

 

American Use Of DU is " A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of

historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time. " US Iraq Military Vets

" are on DU death row, waiting to die. "

 

By James Denver

4-29-05

 

_http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa_

(http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa) ? threadID=200082971 &

;tstart=0 & mod=1114828895160

 

" I'm horrified. 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. "

 

The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby, the

British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty

of

Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk,

talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally

using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq ~ Britain and

America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world.

 

For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic,

radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and

carried on

trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including

Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the

radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer,

leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing

millions

of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in

the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

 

Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty

story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It

is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical

care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to

suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted

uranium was used.

 

A Dirty Tyson

 

'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted' sounds weak.

The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap,

toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is

one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's punch, smashing

through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching

fire

as it does so, and burning people alive. 'Crispy critters' is what US

servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger

encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: " The children's

skin had

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

blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited. " (Daily

Mirror)

 

The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns

can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they

pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small

is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men,

women, children and even babies in the womb-and do the gravest harm of all to

children and unborn babies.

 

A Terrible Legacy

 

Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by

2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and

leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said

that

as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and

sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age

increased

from 23 per 1000 in

1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia

more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing 'at an alarming rate'.

In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed the

highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in breast and bladder

cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.1

 

On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy

Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report on the potential damage

to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million

additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities

only admitted to using 320 tons of DU-although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates

the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread

across Iraq by this year's war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to

the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to

come, is beyond imagining.

 

The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing millions of

every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity which may

rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

 

We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody

knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world.

But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief

period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and

some had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of uranium in their urine. The

lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is

reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but informal

research

has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the

wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the

wives of servicemen who did not go there.

 

Since DU darkened the land 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. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside

textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.

 

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 for ever, and the damaging DU

dust is ever-present.

 

Blue on Blue

 

What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq

they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they have done it

knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and soldiers have

had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover, their bodies have

not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which

violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and

organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards of DU were

known,

British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given

thorough medical checks on their return-even though identifying it quickly

might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a

growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts

in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.

 

Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out

with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq-that's 1 in 3. In

contrast, the British government's failure to fully assess the health of

returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many

have

died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans'

associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active

service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be

ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to

bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away

their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even

their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are

'on DU death row, waiting to die'.

 

Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly

similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also

fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose

babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust.

 

They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities

classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and

leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the

Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukemia rate has been so high

that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.

 

The Vital Evidence

 

Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides

of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only 'low level'

radiation DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell who has

led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level' radiation for 30 years. 2

She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm

cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells

'like flashes of lightning' again and again in a single second.2 Like many

scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found

that such 'lightning strikes' can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which

lead

to cancer.

 

Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through

the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that, Dr. Bertell has

found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body's

communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital

organs of the

body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of

the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments.

 

In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental

Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which such

radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is that a cell

which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations

several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and

birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic instability' is compounded by

'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate in unison with others which have

been damaged by radiation-rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put

together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single

source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that

there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to

radiation-with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the

fact

that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their

exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.

 

The Price of Truth

 

That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research findings

of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report, leaked in

late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health effects from DU exposure

is real; however it must be viewed in perspective... the financial

implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be

excessive.'3

 

Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a

quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability claims

might

be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm

done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against

companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely

close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for

speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to British trade.

So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that

governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them,

and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money.

 

The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of

Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the harm they

have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem

outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no other

explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first

used

DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American study in 1990 said DU was

'linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical

toxicity-causing kidney damage'. While another openly warned that exposure to

these

particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and

bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders,

chromosomal damage and birth defects.5

 

A Culture of Denial

 

In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for

illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as 'weapons of mass

destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights

law'.

Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans

and Afghanistan

(where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be

banned.

 

Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of

the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Gulf

war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan have

become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing

experiments,

by others, in which

84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs,

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at

Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [uS

government's]

Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating

depleted uranium in the human body.' He concluded, 'uranium does cause cancer,

uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the

irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human

life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice

to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all

generations who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his

research was

suddenly blocked.

 

During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have

abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research

on

the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built

up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling

symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many.

For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons

briefing paper on DU hazards says 'it is judged that any radiation effects

from possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to

the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.' Note how

over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called 'some'.

 

The Way Ahead

 

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

at

minimum of 1500 tons in this one. 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 2000-pound bombs

used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's cities 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.

 

The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in

Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely

expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it

cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you

clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they

decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be

detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how

can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq-and, indeed, the world?

 

So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against

humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people

of

Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war

and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war,

and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history-along with

slavery and genocide.

 

Then, and only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the

tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of

the world.

 

References

 

1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998.

 

2. Rosalie Bertell's book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War was reviewed

in Caduceus issue 51, page 28.

 

3. _http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1_

(http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1) . htm#TAB L_Research Report

Summaries

 

4. _www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm_

(http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm) The secret

official memorandum to

Brigadier General L.R.Groves from Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War

Department

Manhattan district dated October 1943 is available at the website

_www.mindfully.org/_ (http://www.mindfully.org/)

Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Grove

s21feb03.htm

 

5. _http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11_

(http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11) . htm#tab L_research report summaries

 

Further information

 

The Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to arrange a limited

number of private urine tests for those returning from the latest Gulf war. It

can

be contacted at: The Knoll, Montpelier Park, Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LW.

01597 824771. Web: _www.llrc.org_ (http://www.llrc.org)

 

James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on science and

technology.

 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also

shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website

allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on

Conscious talk radio _www.conscioustalk.net_ (http://www.conscioustalk.net)

 

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