Buried Stories: Scientists Challenge Bush Admin Claim that DU is Harmless
http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=205
 Anonymous writes: It is estimated that already about 300 tons of radioactive debris from DU weapons were deposited in target areas during the 2003 Iraq War, affecting over 250,000 Iraqis. By comparison, Saddam Hussein -- who Bush had called an evil murderer -- gassed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988. But by Bush launching his war on Iraq with DU weapons of mass destruction, he multiplied the casualties to the Iraqis, and also to American troops, by factors of hundreds relative to the infamous gassing of the Kurds.
By the time American troops finally pull out of Iraq, Bush will have poisoned hundreds of thousands more humans with depleted uranium than he has accused Saddam Hussein of poisoning with gas.
When this war ends, George Bush will have caused the poisoning of hundreds of thousands more humans than he said Saddam Hussein poisoned.
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=604
By Frederick Sweet
In its 110,000 air raids against Iraq, the US A-10 Warthog aircraft launched 940,000 depleted uranium shells, and in the land offensive, its M60, M1 and M1A1 tanks fired a further 4,000 larger caliber also uranium shells. The Bush administration and the Pentagon said there is no danger to American troops or Iraqi civilians from breathing the uranium oxide dust produced in depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions.
DU is the waste residue made from the uranium enrichment process. This radioactive and toxic substance, 1.7 times as dense as lead, is used to make shells that penetrate steel armor.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, an opponent of DU weapons use since 1996, again raised his call for a ban on the use of these weapons in 2001. Since then DU weapons conferences, ironically, in Baghdad in 1999 and Gijon, Spain in 2000 had demanded a ban on DU use. "This new outbreak of leukemia among European [NATO] soldiers has reinforced what we said before," said Clark from New York in January 2001. "Is it acceptable by any human standards that we would permit one shell of depleted uranium to be manufactured, to be stored, to be used? No! Stop it now!"
According to a May 2003 article in the Christian Science Monitor, the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman admitted that A-10 Warthog aircraft -- the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry -- fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 -- a mix that had left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.
A Monitor reporter had seen only one site where US troops had put up handwritten warnings in Arabic for Iraqis to stay away. A 3-foot-long DU warhead from a 120-mm tank shell had been found to produce radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels.
"If you have pieces or even whole [DU] penetrators around, this is not an acute health hazard, but it is for sure above radiation protection dose levels," says Werner Burkart, the German deputy director general for Nuclear Sciences and Applications at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. "The important thing in any battlefield -- especially in populated urban areas -- is somebody has to clean up these sites."
Many scientists believe that uranium oxide dust inhaled or ingested by U.S. troops in the Gulf War is the cause, or a contributing cause, of the "Gulf-War Syndrome." Of the approximately 697,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Gulf during the war, more than 100,000 veterans are now chronically ill. Cancer rates in southern Iraq have increased dramatically. For example ovarian cancer in Iraqi women of the southern region has fully increased by 16-fold.
More recently, the Bush administration's reassurances were vigorously challenged by nuclear physicists and physicians at a scientific meeting, the World DU/Uranium Weapons Conference held in Hamburg, Germany during October 2003. The data presented in Hamburg of the long-term medical effects from DU exposures during the 1990s in Kosovo, Sarajevo, southern Iraq, and from American veterans of the Gulf War, reveal a frightening reality.
According to the Conference, the mobility of the ceramic uranium oxide particles from DU weapons explosions is due to their re-suspension in dry weather. Measuring isotope ratios of U-238 and Pa-234m/Th-234 in water and air measurements by UNEP in Kosovo, Bosnia and Montenegro has showed this. Uranium oxide particles are available for inhalation long after the war is over. Anyone in the general area of their prior use is at risk, several years after their use or contamination. This had been proven by urine measurements in Kosovo in 2001. All of the people sampled showed contamination from DU. This was also shown by urine tests of Gulf War veterans made 10 years after their exposure.
Conference scientists criticized as decades obsolete the Pentagon models used for reassuring the public about the long-term effects of inhaling uranium oxide particles from DU weapons. Citing the Pentagon model, the official 2003 Conference Statement concluded: "The knowledge on which this [Pentagon] model is based is faulty and outdated. This is like comparing [someone] sitting in front of a fire with [them] eating a hot coal."
After the Gulf War, Iraqi and international epidemiological investigations enabled the environmental pollution due to using this kind of weapon to be associated with the appearance of new, very difficult to diagnose diseases (serious immunodeficiencies, for instance) and the spectacular increase in congenital malformations and cancer. This had been found both in the Iraqi population and also among several thousands of American and British veterans and in their children, a clinical condition now called Gulf War Syndrome. Similar symptoms to those of the Gulf War have been described for a thousand children living in Bosnia where American aviation similarly used DU bombs in 1996, the same as in the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia in 1999.
It is estimated that already about 300 tons of radioactive debris from DU weapons were deposited in target areas during the 2003 Iraq War, affecting over 250,000 Iraqis. By comparison, Saddam Hussein -- who Bush had called an evil murderer -- gassed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988. But by Bush launching his war on Iraq with DU weapons of mass destruction, he multiplied the casualties to the Iraqis, and also to American troops, by factors of hundreds relative to the infamous gassing of the Kurds.
By the time American troops finally pull out of Iraq, Bush will have poisoned hundreds of thousands more humans with depleted uranium than he has accused Saddam Hussein of poisoning with gas.
Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. You can email your comments to Fred@...
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