[lbo-talk] The Real Dirty Bombs

[Marta Russell]

>Washington's secret nuclear war
>By Shaheen Chughtai
>
>Tuesday 14 September 2004, 22:17 Makka Time, 19:17 GMT
>
>Illegal weapons of mass destruction have not only been found in Iraq  but
>have been used against Iraqis and have even killed US troops.
>
>But Washington and its allies have tried to cover up this outrage  because
>the chief culprit is the US itself, argue American and other  experts
>trying to expose what they say is a war crime.
>
>The WMD in question is depleted uranium (DU). A radioactive by-
>product of uranium enrichment, DU is used in ammunition such as tank
>shells and "bunker busting" missiles because its density makes it  ideal
>for piercing armour.
>
>Thousands of DU shells and bombs have been used in Yugoslavia,
>Afghanistan and - both during the 1990-91 Gulf war and the ongoing
>conflict - in Iraq.
>
>"They're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block with DU -
>it's all over the place"
>
>Major Doug Rokke,
>ex-head of US army DU project
>
>"They're using it now, they're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-
>a-block with DU - it's all over the place," says Major Doug Rokke,
>director of the US army's DU project in 1994-95.
>
>Scientists say even a tiny particle can have disastrous results once
>ingested, including various cancers and degenerative diseases,
>paralysis, birth deformities and death.
>
>And as tiny DU particles are blown across the Middle East and beyond  like
>a radioactive poison gas, the long-term implications for the  world are
>deeply disturbing.
>
>DU has a "half-life" of 4.5 billion years, meaning it takes that
>long for just half of its atoms to decay.
>
>Sick soldiers
>
>Only 467 US soldiers were officially wounded during the 1990-91 Gulf  war.
>
>But according to Terry Jemison at the US Department of Veterans
>Affairs (VA), of the more than 592,560 discharged personnel who
>served there, at least 179,310 - one third - are receiving
>disability compensation and over 24,760 cases were pending by in
>September 2004.
>
>
>A sixth of the Iraq war veterans
>have already sought treatment
>
>This does not include personnel still active and receiving care from  the
>military, or those who have died.
>
>And among 168,528 veterans of the current conflict in Iraq who have  left
>active duty, 16% (27,571) had already sought treatment from the  VA by
>July 2004.
>
>"That's astronomical," says Rokke, whose team studied how to provide
>medical care for victims, how to clean contaminated sites, and how  to
>train those using DU weapons.
>
>Rokke admits the exact cause for these casualties cannot be
>confirmed. But he insists the evidence pointing to DU is compelling.
>
>"There were no chemical or biological weapons there, no big oil well
>fires," he says. "So what's left?"
>
>Cradle to grave
>
>Dr Jenan Ali, a senior Iraqi doctor at Basra hospital's College of
>Medicine, says her studies show a 100% rise in child leukaemia in  the
>region in the decade after the first Gulf war, with a 242%
>increase in all types of malignancies.
>
>The director of the Afghan DU and Recovery Fund, Dr Daud Miraki,
>says his field researchers found evidence of DU's effect on
>civilians in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan in 2003 although  local
>conditions make rigorous statistical analysis difficult.
>
>
>Iraqi and Afghan doctors have
>seen a rise in deformed foetuses
>
>"Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumours
>protruding from their mouths and eyes," Miraki told Aljazeera.net.  Some
>newborns are barely recognisable as human, he says. Many do not  survive.
>
>Afghan and Iraqi children continue to play amid radioactive debris.  But
>the US army will not even label contaminated equipment or sites  because
>doing so would be an admission that DU is hazardous.
>
>This "deceitful failure", says Rokke, contradicts the US army's own
>rules, such as regulation AR 700-48, which stipulates its
>responsibilities to isolate, label and decontaminate radioactive
>equipment and sites as well as to render prompt and effective
>medical care for all exposed individuals.
>
>"This is a war crime," Rokke says. "The president is obliged to
>ensure the army complies with these regulations but they're
>deliberately violating the law. It's that simple."
>
>No remedy
>
>But these blatant violations are practically irrelevant because
>Rokke's Iraq mission found that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is  no
>known medical remedy.
>
>US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair used
>Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of illegal weapons to justify
>invading Iraq. But several prominent jurists hold Bush and Blair
>guilty of war crimes for waging DU warfare.
>
>The vice-president of the Indian Lawyers Association, Niloufer
>Bhagwat, sat on an international panel of judges for the unofficial
>International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan.
>
>Bhagwat and her fellow judges ruled that the US had used "weapons of
>extermination of present and future generations, genocidal in
>properties".
>
>Friendly fire
>
>And not just against defenceless Afghan civilians.
>
>
>Critics say George Bush (R) and
>Tony Blair are 'war criminals'
>
>
>"Bush was guilty of knowingly using DU weaponry against his own
>troops," Bhagwat told Aljazeera.net, "because the president knew the
>effects of DU could not be controlled".
>
>A prominent US international human-rights lawyer, Karen Parker, says
>there are four rules derived from humanitarian laws and conventions
>regarding weapons:
>
>weapons may only be used against legal enemy military targets and  must
>not have an adverse effect elsewhere (the territorial rule)
>weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict and  must
>not be used or continue to act afterwards (the temporal rule)  weapons may
>not be unduly inhumane (the "humaneness" rule). The
>Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 speak of "unnecessary suffering"  and
>"superfluous injury" in this regard
>weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural
>environment (the "environmental" rule).
>Illegal weapons
>
>"DU weaponry fails all four tests," Parker told Aljazeera.net.
>First, DU cannot be limited to legal military targets. Second, it  cannot
>be "turned off" when the war is over but keeps killing.
>
>Third, DU can kill through painful conditions such as cancers and  organ
>damage and can also cause birth defects such as facial
>deformities and missing limbs.
>
>"Use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the
>Geneva Conventions"
>
>Karen Parker,
>human rights lawyer
>
>Lastly, DU cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural
>environment.
>
>"In my view, use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions  of
>the Geneva Conventions," says Parker. "And so its use constitutes  a war
>crime, or crime against humanity."
>
>Parker and others took the DU issue before the UN in 1995, and in  1996,
>the UN Human Rights Commission described DU munitions as
>weapons of mass destruction that should be banned.
>
>Deceit
>
>Despite the evidence, Rokke says Pentagon and Energy Department
>officials have campaigned against him and others trying to expose  the
>horrors of DU.
>
>That charge is echoed by Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who has worked  at
>the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons
>research laboratories in California.
>
>White House denials are part of a long-standing cover-up policy that  has
>been exposed before, she says.
>
>
>President Bush insists warnings
>about DU are merely propaganda
>
>"For example, the US denied using DU bombs and missiles against
>Yugoslavia in 1999," she told Aljazeera.net. "But scientists in
>Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria measured elevated levels of gamma
>radiation in the first three days of grid and carpet bombing by the  US."
>
>Moret says: "A missile landed in Bulgaria that didn't explode and
>scientists identified a DU warhead. Then, Lord [George] Robertson,  the
>head of NATO, admitted in public that DU had been used."
>
>Even the US army expressed concern about the use of DU in July 1990,  some
>six months before the outbreak of the first Gulf war. Those
>concerns were later echoed by Iraqi officials.
>
>Denial
>
>But brushing his own army's report aside - now said to
>be "outdated" - US President George Bush has dismissed such warnings  as
>"propaganda".
>
>"In recent years, the Iraqi regime made false claim that the
>depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused
>cancers and birth defects in Iraq," says Bush on his White House
>website.
>
>"But scientists working for the World Health Organisation, the UN
>Environmental Programme and the European Union could find no health
>effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium," he says.
>
>Bush can point to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2001  that
>said there was no significant risk of inhaling radioactive
>particles where DU weapons had been used.
>
>It said the level of radiation associated with DU debris was not
>particularly hazardous, but it accepted that high exposure could
>pose a health risk.
>
>Scientific studies
>
>WHO also commissioned a scientific study shortly before the 2003
>invasion of Iraq that warned of the dangers of US and British use of  DU -
>but refused to publish its findings.
>
>The study's main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, told Aljazeera.net
>that "the report was deliberately suppressed" because WHO was
>pressed by a more powerful, pro-nuclear UN body - the International
>Atomic Energy Agency. WHO has rejected his claims as "totally
>unfounded".
>
>"[WHO's] report was deliberately suppressed"
>
>Dr Keith Baverstock,
>co-author of WHO report on DU
>
>The study found DU particles were likely to be blown around and
>inhaled by Iraqi civilians for years to come. Once inside a human  body,
>the radioactive particles can trigger the growth of malignant  tumours.
>
>Bush's claim that the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) gives DU
>pollution a clean bill of health is also disingenuous.
>
>UNEP experts have yet to be allowed into Iraq, its spokesman in
>Geneva Michael Williams told Aljazeera.net, citing security
>concerns.
>
>And a scientific body set up in 1997 by Green EU parliamentarians -  the
>European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) - found that DU
>posed serious health risks.
>
>An eminent Canadian scientist involved with the ECRR, Dr Rosalie
>Bertell, says the deadliness of DU derived not just from its
>radioactivity but from the durability of particles formed in the
>3000-6000C heat produced when a DU weapon is fired.
>
>"The particles produced are like ceramic: not soluble in body fluid,
>non-biodegradable and highly toxic," she told Aljazeera.net. "They  tend
>to concentrate in the lymph nodes, which is the source of
>lymphomas and leukaemia."
>
>Known killer
>
>The US military and political establishment cannot plead ignorance.  As
>early as October 1943, Manhattan Project scientists Arthur
>Compton, James Connant and Harold Urey sent a memo to their
>director, General Leslie Groves, saying DU could be used to create  a
>"radioactive gas".
>
>
>DU targets human DNA and may
>thus affect future generations
>
>In 1961, two nuclear experts, Briton HE Huxley and American Geoffrey
>Zubay, informed the scientific community that DU targeted human DNA  and
>"the Master Code, which controls the expression of DNA", Moret  says.
>
>In September 2000, Dr Asaf Durakovic, professor of nuclear medicine  at
>Washington's Georgetown University, told a Paris conference of  prominent
>scientists that "tens of thousands" of US and UK troops  were dying of DU.
>
>Death sentence
>
>"There has to be a moratorium on the manufacture, sales, use and
>storage of DU," geoscientist Moret says, warning that this will not
>happen unless more Americans realise what is happening.
>
>The Middle East has been severely contaminated, warns Moret. "That  region
>is radioactive forever," she says, but worse is yet to come.
>
>Moret says the air carrying DU particles takes about a year to mix  with
>the rest of the earth's atmosphere.
>
>
>Radioactive sites continue to kill
>and contaminate Iraqi children
>
>
>The radiation released by DU nuclear warfare is believed to be more  than
>10 times the amount dispersed by atmospheric testing.
>
>As a result, DU particles have engulfed the world in a radioactive  poison
>gas that promises illness and death for millions.
>
>Rokke went to Iraq a fit and healthy soldier, but the major is now  beset
>with a variety of illnesses and each day is a struggle.
>
>He suffers from respiratory problems and cataracts while his teeth -
>weakened by DU radiation - are crumbling. At least 20 of the 100
>primary personnel he worked with on the US army's DU project have  died.
>Most of the rest are ill.
>
>Meanwhile, WHO says cancer rates worldwide are set to rise by 50% by
>2020, although it does not link this publicly to DU.
>
>"They would never say that - they offered various strange
>explanations," says Moret. "But DU is the key factor. People will  slowly
>die."
>
>
>Aljazeera
>
-- 
Marta Russell
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.martarussell.com/