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Radioactive Bombs Rain Down on
Asia
Glowing
Reports
President Bush may have frightened most of America with big talk about nuclear war, but people in Afghanistan and Pakistan think they've already been nuked by depleted-uranium (DU) bombs.
"The use of reprocessed nuclear waste in the U.S. air strikes against the Taliban poses a serious risk of radiation poisoning to the human lives in Afghanistan and Pakistan," said the Pakistan Weekly Independent last November. Added Dawn, Pakistan's big English-language paper, on November 12: "A leading military expert told Dawn that since October 7 the United States Air Force has been raining down depleted uranium shells at targets inside Afghanistan, especially against the Taliban front lines in the north. . . . 'There is widespread radiation in many areas that could adversely affect tens and thousands of people in the two countries for generations to come,' he said."
The U.S. reportedly employed munitions containing depleted uranium during the Gulf War in 1991 and more recently during NATO's campaign in the Balkans and in Vieques, as part of military exercises. In Afghanistan, there have been reports of DU in bunker bombs and other munitions; some contain a "mystery" metal, either tungsten (most of which comes from China) or depleted uranium.
A 1994 report to Congress by the secretary of the army said, "Like naturally occurring uranium, DU has toxicological and radiological health risks." The report goes on to say that "in combat, DU wound contamination and fragment implantation become more significant pathways of entry. Based on the lessons learned in Desert Storm, the army is developing procedures to better manage the internal exposure potential for DU during combat."
Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Washington, told the Voice that while experts argue, it seems possible that depleted uranium inhaled by a child could result in cancers later in life. He, too, suspected that hundreds of DU bombs are being used. He noted that chances are that depleted uranium is being used, if only because it's cheaper than tungsten.
But who's using it? In January 2001, a French TV documentary reported that the DU in munitions may come from a contaminated reprocessing plant in Paducah, Kentucky. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a French publication in January that the U.S. had found radiation in Afghanistan—but that it was from DU warheads belonging to Al Qaeda. On Monday a spokesperson for the U.S. Central Command said that it has "not used depleted uranium in Afghanistan." Dai Williams, a DU researcher, has told reporters that if Al Qaeda is responsible, there may be even more of a risk: That could mean the DU might have come from Russia, and it could be even dirtier than that from Paducah.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0212/ridgeway.php
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