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Date sent: Sat, 1 May 1999 01:01:38 +0300 (EEST)
From: Wasted Mind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: IUFO: [IWAR] MIL Pentagon stance on DU a moving target (fwd)
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Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 21:33:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: 7Pillars Partners <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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To: g2i list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, IWAR list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [IWAR] MIL Pentagon stance on DU a moving target
Pentagon stance on DU a moving target
Amid official attempts to nail down 'protection guidelines' for those
confronting depleted uranium, Gulf War veterans press for clarity. And
the prospect of DU's use in Kosovo raises the stakes.
By Scott Peterson, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
A soldier's boots are often treated with sacred regard, once they carry
a warrior safely through combat.
But for one US soldier, who volunteered for his Gulf War tour, Mark
Panzera, his boots were the first sign that something was very wrong.
He was an Army mechanic in the 144th Service and Supply Company of
New
Jersey, which in 1991 prepared US tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles
that had been hit by "friendly fire" for shipment home.
This front-line equipment had been inadvertently hit by American
gunners shooting radioactive depleted-uranium (DU) bullets at what they
thought were Iraqi tanks.
For weeks after the mistake, the 144th worked at a salvage site in
Saudi Arabia, getting into every corner of every vehicle to recycle
equipment, wearing T-shirts and shorts, eating on and sleeping beside
the vehicles.
Suddenly one morning, Mr. Panzera recalls, before his team began work,
two experts arrived looking like astronauts, wearing hooded masks and
suits - and carrying radiation detectors.
Before the two unexpected visitors approached the vehicles, they first
ran their instruments over the awestruck mechanics. Their clothes were
contaminated, but Panzera's boots especially set the detectors
crackling.
The dust left over from the impact of DU bullets hitting the tanks had
clung to the cleanup crew.
"'You're hot,' they told us, and I asked: 'What do you mean?' " Panzera
remembers. "I was angry. Nobody tells you nothing, and the next day you
are contaminated."
Later, Panzera received an official letter confirming his exposure to
DU radiation. He has been seeking government compensation for what
he
says is DU-related illness.
Mixed messages from the top
By the Pentagon's own admission, its policy toward use of DU weapons
has been inconsistent. Several military and independent reports
describe the potential danger of DU particles trapped inside the body,
though most deem the overall risk to be "acceptable." Strict federal
and military rules govern every aspect of DU use and decontamination.
But the Pentagon today calls its own regulations - based on US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) guidelines, which require masks and suits
when dealing with DU contamination - "total overkill."
In 1993, a report from the US General Accounting Office, the
government's investigative arm, found that Army officials "believe that
DU protective means can be ignored during battle."
Then, in 1995, all four branches of the US military approved a
multimedia DU training kit. In January 1998 it was endorsed as
"impressive" by the deputy secretary of defense, John Hamre.
The kit, obtained by the Monitor through the Freedom of Information
Act, said "the greatest threat is during open-air, live-fire testing.
We can call combat a great big open-air, live-fire test." An area hit
by DU "remains contaminated, and will not decontaminate itself."
The kit was never issued, and it is now under review.
"They [the NRC] have their own standards. The military's [standards]
are under review," says Bernard Rostker, the Pentagon's special
assistant for Gulf War illnesses. He first raised doubts publicly only
last August. He said the "extremely restrictive" NRC rules are "poorly
suited" to war, and "need to be rewritten."
Reasons for backing DU
Critics say the Pentagon has reasons for its apparent downgrading of DU
dangers: The bullet pierces enemy armor like no other, it's cheap, and
any confirmed link with health problems could trigger a flood of
compensation and reparations claims.
And the cost of cleaning up DU residue in the Gulf would be
prohibitive, as well. The price tag for removing 152,000 pounds of DU
in the now-closed, 500-acre Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana has
been estimated to be $4 billion to $5 billion. More than four times
that amount of DU was spread during the Gulf War, over a significantly
larger area.
"The government is institutionally incapable of telling the truth on
this matter," says Bill Arkin, a former military intelligence analyst
and columnist for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His analysis:
DU is too troublesome for the Pentagon to keep in its arsenal.
In January 1998, Rostker reported that "failure" to alert troops to DU
hazards "may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures," but
said those exposures "had not produced any medically detectable
effects."
Angry veterans say that DU could be a reason that an estimated 1 in 7
of them report a set of symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome, and have
pushed their case on Capitol Hill. They estimate that hundreds of
thousands of troops were exposed to DU during the fighting or on
post-battle tours of the front line. Climbing on destroyed Iraqi tanks
was a favorite activity, along with collecting war souvenirs. Among
other sources, the veterans point to a 1990 report commissioned by the
US Army that links DU to cancer and also makes clear that "there is no
dose so low that the probability of effect is zero." They also remember
Pentagon reluctance to divulge health hazards in the Vietnam War.
"This [DU] is the Agent Orange of the 1990s - absolutely," says Doug
Rokke, a former Army health physicist who was part of the DU
assessment
team in the Gulf War, and DU project director for the training package.
Underscoring the official inconsistencies, Sen. Russell Feingold (D) of
Wisconsin said in September that the Pentagon's "assertion that no Gulf
War veterans could be ill from exposure to DU ... contradicts numerous
pre- and postwar reports, some from the US Army itself."
As much politics as science
In a sign of the Pentagon's own confusion, Rostker told a White House
oversight panel last November that he was "misguided" to issue so
strong a statement - that ruled out DU as a cause of Gulf War Syndrome
- in an August report. "I stand corrected," he stated.
The problem seems as political as it is scientific: "Misinformation
disseminated by both the Iraqi government and the US Department of
Defense has made analysis of DU impacts difficult," notes Dan Fahey,
Gulf War veteran and author of an extensive DU report for veterans'
groups published last year.
Protection guidelines for handling DU are as difficult to establish as
a single speed limit for every American road, says Ron Kathren,
director of the US Transuranium and Uranium Registries in Richland,
Wash. But NRC guidelines "are in fact adequate" for DU, he says, and
"if they are 'overkill,' that's OK, too. I'd rather err on the side of
safety."
Col. Eric Daxon, a senior Pentagon radiation expert with the Armed
Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, said in an interview that the
military needs to come up with its own "acceptable risks" of DU,
compared to the other threats of combat.
Protecting soldiers from DU can also put them at risk during battle, he
said. Gas masks and suits can overheat a soldier and impair vision. The
goal today is to keep exposures "as low as reasonably achievable," he
adds.
"Reducing the total risk ... of getting shot, of getting wounded, of
getting long-term cancers" is the new aim, he says. "We are really
trying to balance all of those things."
As the Pentagon now weighs the use of DU munitions in NATO's war
against Yugoslavia, the debate about the risks of DU is certain to
escalate.
"I think we have been inconsistent," says the Pentagon's Rostker in the
interview. "We published a standard ... that is inconsistent with the
hazards of DU."
Disillusioned
As those arguments continue, Panzera has had several operations and
health problems that he attributes to his DU exposure. Worried about
taking contamination home before he left the Gulf, Panzera cut holes in
his uniform and exchanged it for a new one. He left his soldier's boots
"in the middle of the desert."
"I guess they are waiting until half of us are dead before they give
in," he says, echoing the view of many US veterans whose patriotism has
long since given way to cynicism. "My volunteering days are over."
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