-Caveat Lector-
Nuking Iraq
by William Thomas
May 28, 2003
Lifeboatnews.com
http://freepress.org/departments.php?strFunc=displaystrID=234strYear=2003strDept=13
American troops arriving to reinforce divisions already bogged down in the agony and
anarchy of post-liberation Iraq are advised to bandage all cuts, keep their
overheated
rubber suits zipped tight, and stop breathing. It is dust, not sniper bullets that will
likely pose the most lethal consequences to their invasion of Iraq.
Much of Iraq remains radiologically hot following undeclared nuclear attacks that
have
randomly distributed lethal air and food-borne radiation without any mushroom clouds.
The same type of Depleted Uranium-tipped cruise missiles that have carried cancer into
Bosnia and Afghanistan have only added fresh rems to the radioactive dust of this
distant desert land.
JUST A DAB WILL DU YOU DU shells retain 60% of the radioactivity of unspent hot
uranium. Radiobiologist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that it can be breathed in by
anyone:
a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick.
A speck of Uranium-238 from these radiological dispersion devices sends atomic
particles shoot out in all directions to penetrate steel, flesh, and human cells. If
the
cell is in the process of division it can be knocked into a rogue state of random
proliferation cancer results.
Foremost expert on radiation sickness, Dr. Helen Caldicott explains that DU dust is a
potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a heavy alpha particle that can lodge in open
wounds, the lungs or the stomach depending on its pathways of ingestion.
Caldicott warns that these tiny particles travel long distances when airborne
infecting distant populations, peacekeepers, and the entire food chain. Pentagon
studies
prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions
could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease,
neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects, she told the San
Francisco Chronicle. [Oct. 10, 2002]
These devastating diseases are already surfacing in Afghanistan and Bosnia, while
continuing to decimate the survivors of what the City Council of Detroit condemns as
genocide in Iraq. With a half-life of 4.5 million years, Caldicott says that
dust-laden
winds in Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and Afghanistan will remain effectively radioactive for
the rest of time.
Dr. Alim Abdul-Hamid, dean of medicine at a major medical college in Baghdad, says he
has
plenty of first-hand experience with Iraq's unprecedented plague of cancers and birth
defects. Dr. Alim is seeing breast cancer among women in there 20s. In their 20s! he
repeats. There are increased incidences of colon cancer, thyroid cancer in addition
to, of course, leukemias and lymphomas. [Counterpunch Dec. 28, 2001]
TARGETING CHILDREN Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of
radiation
than adults. Today more than half of all cancers in Iraq are occurring among children
under the age of five.
Since the misnamed end of Desert Storm, pediatricians in Basra have watched childhood
leukemia and cancer increase up to 12-times peacetime rates. Hospitals throughout Iraq
have reported as much as a 10-fold increase in birth defects since cities and
countryside
were strafed with radioactive munitions.
Pointing to a map of Basra, Dr. Abdul-Hamid demonstrated the dose-response relationship
between DU and cancers, saying, Areas which have got the higher level of background
radiation have higher levels of cancers.
GRUNTS EAT URANIUM Because Depleted Uranium is unmatched as a shield and a weapon,
international efforts to ban DU continue to be ignored by the U.S., Canada and Britain.
Young grunts deployed to Iraq have been told that ingesting and inhaling radioactive
uranium is perfectly safe. So, they were told, was being injected with
mycoplasma-spiked
anthrax vaccine during Desert Storm. Today, at least 200,000 veterans on record as
suffering from Gulf War Illness I are about to be joined by tens of thousands more
comrades afflicted with GWI II. [Bringing The War Home by William Thomas]
ROKKE'S RADIATION Dr. Doug Rokke was an American physician in charge of dealing with DU
contamination in post-war in Iraqi. 'Oh my God' is the only way to describe it.
Contamination was all over, he told reporters after Desert Storm. That whole area is
still trashed. It's hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away.
Rokke says the biggest danger is the dust given off when a Depleted Uranium shell
detonates. In heat fierce enough to melt armor plating, up to 70% of a DU round
oxidizes.
This aerosolized power - uranium oxide - is the really dangerous stuff. Particularly
when it is inhaled.
Over the past decade, 30 members of Rokke's 100-man decontamination team have dropped
dead. Rokke's own radiation counts are 5,000 times maximum safe levels. The
physician
suspects that, like hundreds of thousands of
