From: "John Ryan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Du
Date sent: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 15:38:32 -0600
DU
#124a ECONEWS SPECIAL ISSUE FEBRUARY 2003
DEPLETED URANIUM
It's dirty, and it's deadly.
When you coat a shell with it, it slices through armoured
plating as
if it was cheese, turning tanks, buildings and bomb shelters into
exploding incinerators. It causes cancer among people who
breathe
its dust, or touch it. It causes horrible birth defects among the
babies of pregnant women who breathe it or touch it. It causes
a
host of chronic ailments and sicknesses among returning
troops.
It was used by the US army in Iraq, in Kosovo, and
Afghanistan. The
United Nations wants a worldwide ban on it. The US plans to
use it
again, in its war on Iraq.
What is it? It's a waste product that arises during the
production
of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors. It's
called
depleted uranium.
It has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years. The Earth is
4.5 billion years old. This means that the cities, battlefields,
and
locations where depleted uranium is used will be radioactive
and
remain radioactive for the next 4.5 billion years.
That's as long as the Earth has existed.
That's twice as long as the entire evolution of life on Earth.
Seventy times longer than the time since the dinosaurs became
extinct.
Depleted uranium is extremely dense; that's what makes it
capable
of slicing into heavily armoured vehicles. That's why the
American
military likes it.
In the Gulf War, in 1991, the US army fired off a million rounds
of
depleted uranium, totalling 300 tons. In Baghdad, where they
thought
they were attacking a secret bunker, they sliced into it with
depleted uranium and incinerated 800 women and children who
were
hiding in a shelter. Along the "highway of death", outside
Basra, in
southern Iraq, they incinerated every tank, every soldier.
Along that road, the shell-holes in the blown-up tanks are 1000
times more radioactive than the background. The desert near
the
vehicles is 100 times more radioactive.
70% of the uranium burns on impact, turning into as a fine
ceramic
dust of depleted uranium oxide particles which gets blown on
the
wind, and washed into the groundwater. In the Basra region,
there
has been a 100-fold increase in uranium in the groundwater.
And then there's the birth defects.
Children born with fingers missing.
Children born with legs missing.
Children born with parts of their face missing.
Children born with their eyes missing.
Children born with grossly deformed skulls.
Children born with enormous distended bellies.
Children born with no hands.
Children born with no genitals.
Children born with no skin over their bellies.
Children born with open holes in their backs.
Children born whose bodies are beyond words, in their pitiful
awfulness.
There has been a 10-fold increase in such birth defects in the
Basra
region since 1988. I have seen the photos of these children.
You can
see them for yourself at
http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html. But be
warned
- these photos are not for the squeamish, and may give some
people
nightmares. They are also at
http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm
There has also been a 17-fold increase in cancer in southern
Iraq
since 1988, and a sudden increase in childhood leukemia.
That was Iraq. Then there was Afghanistan.
The data is still sketchy, but tests on residents in Jalalabad
have
found a level of uranium in the urine of residents that is 400% to
2000% higher than normal. The contamination is also present in
Kabul.
A scientific team from the Uranium Medical Research Centre
that went
to Kabul in September 2002 found that people who had been
exposed to
debris from the US/British precision bombing were reporting
pains in
their joints, back and kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory
problems, confusion, and disorientation. Members of the team
began
to complain of the same symptoms. They found that 25% of
new-born
infants were suffering from congenital and post-natal health
problems that appeared to be associated with uranium
contamination.
So what happened to the US and British troops who were
exposed to
the same dust?
It's hard to sort out, because the troops who served in the Gulf
were exposed to a cocktail of injections and chemical and
biological
hazards, as well as depleted uranium. But the symptoms are
telling.
There were 700,000 US troops who served in the Gulf War in
1991. 50%
were black or Latino. Many were women. 260,000 have applied
for
medical benefits. 159,000 have been awarded disability
allowances.
Many are probably on low incomes, who cannot afford
expensive
medical insurance.
They call it Gulf War Syndrome; nobody in the military wants
to talk
about it. The returning troops are suffering from reactive airway
disease; neurological damage; cataracts; kidney problems;
lymphoma;
skin and organ cancer; neuropsychological problems; uranium
in their
semen; sexual dysfunction; and birth defects in their offspring.
Birth defects are turning up four times more often in the children
of those who served in the Gulf than normal. (see
www.chronicillnet.org/online/lifemag.html)
That was Afghanistan. Now a new war on Iraq looms.
A new round of death.
A new nightmare.
Unless we stand together, work together, pray together, and
call out
together to stop it, and to outlaw depleted uranium forever, as
the
United Nations has recommended.
Four and a half billion years.
Sources:
Afghanistan: The Nuclear Nightmare Starts:
www.truthout.org/docs_02/011103E.dpltd.urnim.htm
Born Soldiers: Birth Defects from Depleted Uranium in the Gulf?
http://www.chronicillnet.org/online/lifemag.html International
Action Center's Depleted Uranium Education Project:
http://www.iacenter.org Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on
U.S.
depleted uranium. Seattle Post Intelligencer:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/95178_du12.shtml
National
Gulf War Resource Center:
http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm
Written and compiled by Guy Dauncey, Victoria, B.C., Canada
Author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate
Change.
Editor of EcoNews. http://www.earthfuture.com.
Please feel free to post.
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