How America nukes its own troops

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What blows around comes around over 2500 tons now in Iraq vaporized
, not counting tons we have used in Afhanistan.
Death By Slow Burn
How America Nukes Its Own Troops
AMY WORTHINGTON / The Idaho Observer (Spirit Lake) 16apr03
What 'Support Our Troops' Really Means

On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: "Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!" That's exactly what George Bush has done. America's mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.

Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a "liberation" gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.

Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.1 Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped.2 The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.3 These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them.4 The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.5

DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.

Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond the war in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II veterans for years as they slowly and painfully succumb to radiation poisoning. U.S and British troops deployed to the area are the walking dead. Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout zone are destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic illness and disability. Kidney dysfunction, lung damage, bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint pain, unsteady gait, memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer and premature death await those exposed to DU.

Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: "As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense against further exposure to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress, caffeine, insect repellent and radiation leftover from the last war. This is a war even the victors will lose."6

When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill.7

The Royal Society of England published data showing that battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can suffer kidney failure within days.8 Any soldier now in Iraq who has not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds.9 Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated debris.

Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of depleted uranium were used against Iraq in 1991.10 A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome.11 The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses.12 To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat in that war.13

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert. He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I. He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine.14 Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings.

In other studies, some sick vets were found to be expressing uranium in even their semen. Their sexual partners often complained of a burning sensation during intercourse, followed by their own debilitating illnesses.15

Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured vicious nuclear chastisement for years.16 U.S. air attacks against Iraq since 1993 have undoubtedly employed nuclear munitions. Pictures of grotesquely deformed Iraqi infants born since 1991 are overwhelming.17 Like those born to Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq will also be afflicted with hideous deformities, neurological damage and/or blood and respiratory disorders.18

As an Army health physicist, Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."19

DU remains "hot" for 4.5 billion years. Radiation expert Dr. Helen Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden winds of DU-contaminated war zones "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time."20 The murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops during the first few days of the current invasion are sure to have significant health consequences.

Rokke and his clean-up team were issued only flimsy dust masks for their dangerous work. Of the 100 people on Rokke's decontamination team, 30 have already "dropped dead." Rokke himself is ill with radiation damage to lungs and kidneys. He has brain lesions, skin pustules, chronic fatigue, continual wheezing and painful fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that anyone exposed to DU should have adequate respiratory protection and special coveralls to protect their clothing because, he says, you can't get uranium particles off your clothing.

The U.S. military insists that DU on the battlefield is not a problem. Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material Command recently told the BBC that complaints about DU "had no medical basis."21 The military's own documents belie this. A 1993 Pentagon document warned that "when soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk."22 A U.S. Army training manual requires anyone who comes within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment to wear respiratory and skin protection.23 The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admitted: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences."24 The Institute also stated that, if the troops were to realize what they had been exposed to, "the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive."25 For pragmatic reasons, DOD chooses to lie and deny.

Dr. Rokke confirms that the Pentagon lies about DU dangers and is criminally negligent for neglecting medical attention needed by DU-contaminated vets. He predicts that the numbers of American troops to be sickened by DU from Gulf War II will be staggering.26 As they gradually sicken and suffer a slow burn to their graves, the Pentagon will, as it did after Gulf War I, deny that their misery and death is a result of their tour in Iraq.

Dr. Rokke's candor has cost him his career. Likewise, Dr. Durakovic's radiation studies on Gulf War I vets were not popular with U.S. officials. Dr. Durakovic was reportedly told his life was in danger if he continued his research. He left the U.S. to continue his research abroad.27

Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely unaware of how deadly their battlefield environment is. Gulf War I troops were kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled DU fragments and some wore these lethal nuggets around their necks. A DU projectile emits more radiation in five hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian radiation exposure standards. "We didn't know any better," Kris Kornkven told Nation magazine. "We didn't find out until long after we were home that there even was such a thing as DU."28

George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war. Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical nuclear weapons including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and shells suited to commando warfare in Afghanistan.29 In late September, 2001, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans.30

Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village Voice: "Built ram tough with a heavy metal casing for smashing through the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes with the force of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one, a boosted plutonium firecracker called the primary and a heavy hydrogen secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb fireball."31

cont'd





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Re: How America nukes its own troops

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Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now contaminated by these nuclear weapons.32 Experts with the Uranium Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population. Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Dead birds still perched in trees are found partially melted with blood oozing from their mouths.33

Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's regime is setting a new record for opium production. Both UN and U.S. reports confirm that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer.34 Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the Bush-Cheney narcotics industry.35 ABC News asserts that keeping the "peace" in Afghanistan will require decades of allied occupation.36 For years to come, "peacekeepers" will be eating, drinking and breathing the "hot" carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that nation for organized crime.

As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill Clinton laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for then vice-president George Bush Sr.37 As a partner in the Bush family's notorious crime machine, President Clinton committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in the Balkans, a prime heroin production and trans-shipment area. DOD's campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for the Bush mafia was yet another nuclear project.

For years, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles, bullets and shells across the Balkans, nuking the peoples of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. As DU munitions were slammed into chemical plants, the environment became hideously toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary. By 1999, UN investigators reported that an estimated 12 tons of DU had caused irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian environment, with agriculture, livestock and air water, and public health all profoundly damaged.38

Scientists confirm that citizens of the Balkans are excreting uranium in their urine.39 In 2001, a Yugoslavian pathologist reported that hundreds of Bosnians have died of cancer from NATO's DU bombardment.40 Many NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans now suffer ill health. Their leukemias, cancers and other maladies are dubbed the "Balkans Syndrome." Richard Coghill predicts that DU weapons used in Balkans campaign will result in at least 10,000 cases of fatal cancer.41

U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for criminal militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous military sites in USA that will require $billions to rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD has been both slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations.42 The Pentagon is now pressing Congress to exempt it from all environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free from liability.43

The Navy uses prime fishing grounds off the coast of Washington state to test fire DU ammunition. In January, Washington State Rep. Jim McDermott chastised the Navy: "On one hand you have required soldiers to have DU safety training and to wear protective gear when handling DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated waters. These policies indicate there is cause for concern....On the other hand the Department of Defense has repeatedly denied that DU poses any danger whatsoever. There has been no remorse about leaving tons of DU equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of your own country."44

DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. After the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, one third of the island's population developed serious illness. Many people show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have filed a class action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming DU contamination has caused widespread cancers.45

The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is a quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target practice zone for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents report bizarre illnesses, including 17 children who have contracted leukemia within five years. A survey of groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area wells are contaminated with radioactive materials.46

The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at three nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where workers handling uranium contaminated with plutonium have suffered for decades with cancers and debilitating maladies similar to Gulf War Syndrome.47

Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush asserts that the U.S. has the right to attack any nation it deems a potential threat. He told West Point in 2002, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."48 Thus, it is certain that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear wars are lined up like idling jetson a runway. Both Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush family's Carlyle Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so endless war is just good business.49

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create special nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's underground nuclear facilities.50 Next August, U.S. war makers will meet to consolidate plans for a new generation of "mini," "micro" and "tiny" nuclear bombs and bunker busters. These will be added to the U.S. arsenal perhaps for use against non-nuclear third-world nations such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon.51

The solution? Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to rule this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains like Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for endless corporate war profits. Saddam was placed in power by the CIA.52 For years U.S. government agencies, under auspices of George Bush Sr., supplied him with chemical and biological weapons.53 Our national nuclear laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear program.54 Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late 90s when its subsidiaries signed $73 million in new contracts to further supply Saddam.55 The wicked villain of Iraq was nurtured for decades as a cash-cow by U.S. military-industrial piranhas.

If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending them into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs. Time is running out. If the DU-maniacs at the Pentagon and their coven of nuclear arms peddlers are not harnessed, America will have no able-bodied fighting forces left. All people of the earth will become grossly ill, hideously deformed and short- lived. We must succeed in the critical imperative to face reality and act decisively. Should we fail, there will be no place to hide from Bush-Cheney's merciless nuclear orgies yet to come or from the inevitable nuclear retaliation these orgies will surely breed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2009 03:13PM by riverhousebill.

Is there any research or studies around regarding what effects if any have been experienced by persons who interact in close proximity on an ongoing basis with those who have been exposed to these chemicals? I'm thinking along the lines of health care workers, family members, co-workers in civilian settings,etc. Since these substances have an extensive radioactive life, besides known issues such as deformed offspring, what else could be happening to others?

Use of "Depleted" Uranium Munitions

NOTICE: Please Read!

Massive Epidemic of Severe Birth Defects Result of America's Attacks Against Iraq

The terrible price of war is not limited to dollars, combat deaths and injuries but includes the horrible human suffering that persists for many years after the shooting war stops.

By James P. Tucker Jr.

In the decade following Gulf War I, the rate of birth defects among newborn Iraqi babies leaped tenfold from 11 per 100,000 births to 116 per 100,000 births. In the wake of Gulf War II, physicians and human rights groups are anticipating further increases in horrible deformities and sick and dying children with which Iraq's shattered medical system will be unable to cope.

Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1)
Adopted on 8 June 1977 by the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law applicable in Armed Conflicts; entered into force 7 December 1979

It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.

Weapon of Mass Deception: What the Pentagon doesn't want us to know about "depleted" uranium.
By Frida Berrigan | 6.20.03

The real threat-not only to U.S. troops but to Iraqis as well-may prove to be a weapon scarcely mentioned before, during or after the war: depleted uranium.

A toxic and radioactive substance, depleted uranium (DU)-otherwise known as Uranium 238-was widely used by U.S. troops as their Abrams battle tanks and A-10 Warthogs thundered through Iraq this spring.

When a DU shell hits its target, it burns, losing anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of its mass and dispersing a fine dust that can be carried long distances by winds or absorbed directly into the soil and groundwater.

Depleted uranium's radioactive and toxic residue has been linked to birth defects, cancers, the Gulf War Syndrome, and environmental damage.

But the Pentagon insists depleted uranium is both safe and necessary

November 11, 2003
President Arafat: Israel Used Depleted Uranium to Suppress the Palestinian People

The Poisoned Battlefield:
View Fact Sheet (.PDF) | View Fact Sheet (.DOC)

- Listening To Veterans of the First Gulf War
- 2 of 5 Gulf War Vets On Disability
- UK Troops in Gulf to use Depleted Uranium Shells
- Study Validates Vets' Syndrome
- Don't Ignore Health Risks of a Gulf War II
- Invading a Toxic Kill Zone
- Iraqi Coverage Fails to Address Health Risks
- From Bosnia, More DU
- Will The US News Media Wake Up?
- Most Media Ignoring 160,000 U.S. Casualties
- U.S. Debates Dangers of Depleted Uranium
- The Fallout of War
- A "Silver Bullet's" Toxic Legacy
- Steve Robinson Executive Director, NGWRC
- May 2002 Gulf War Veterans Information Systems Briefing For:
National Gulf War Resource Center (.PDF)
- DUM: SABOT 120mm, M829 AP Kinetic Energy Round
- DUM: Policy Papers and News
- Types of DUM Weapons
- World Health Organization Fact Sheet on DUM
Environmental Impacts of Gulf War
- More AMMO Data for SABOT

Depleted Uranium Legacy Awaits Our Troops

US rejects Iraq DU clean-up

DEPLETED URANIUM (DU)

The Military is still using this dangerous form of death and destruction which is a dire threat to all of our military personnel in the Gulf. Just look at the history of D U munitions to see how many have been effected by this atrocity

DU is a by-product of nuclear power plant generation. Munition suppliers manufacture it into military projectiles, the preferred weapon due to its abilities to penetrate tank armor and other fortified targets.

All uranium is a toxic radiological element. If DU oxides are inhaled, there is a high probability that residual alpha particles will be distributed throughout the organs of the body and are potential sources of radiation emission. This fact was not thoroughly researched prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Once inside the lungs these particles pass through the lung-blood barrier and circulate freely throughout the body. At this point they act as a heavy-metal poison as well as cause low-level cell irradiation in the bone marrow, brain, kidneys, and reproductive organs. The more immediate heavy-metal oxide damage, i.e. kidney failure, brain damage, is well documented in the scientific literature and the potential for radioactive damage leading to carcinogenic disease is ever present ( Dr Durakovic, et. al. 2002 ).

697,000 American military personnel were deployed in 1991 to Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. According to the official Gulf War Veterans (GWV) briefing, the total casualty count for the 100 hour war was 760: 294 dead and approximately 400 wounded or ill. In the decade following the war, 30,000 Gulf War Vets are dead and 221,000 are receiving medical disability benefits for war related causes (May2002 GWV
Report). Dr Durakovic's findings reveal high DU levels in urine and bone samples in GWVets ten years after the war.

Major Doug Rokke (Rantoul, Illinois) advocates an international ban against DU based upon what happened to many GWVets as well as those
assigned to clean up highly selected DU contaminated areas after the Gulf war in Kuwait. He reports on the incidence of throat and lung cancer among members of his own team. Some are dead, others seriously ill. The number of deaths by cancer recorded on various GWVets Internet sites leads one to question the official position of the Department of Defense that DU is a safe weapon.

DU half-life is 4.5 billion years.

birth defects in southern Iraq, 1989, 11/100,000, 2001, 116/100,000 *

cancer deaths in southern Iraq, 1988, 34, 1998, 450,
2001, 603 *

Is Depleted Uranium Creating a New Nuclear Danger in Iraq? A debate on DU between Nuclear Policy Research Institute President Helen Caldicott, radiation physicist Geoffrey Sea and Dr. Thomas Fasy.

22 February 2004
WHO 'suppressed' scientific study into depleted uranium cancer fears in Iraq Baverstock's study, which has now been passed to the Sunday Herald, pointed out that Iraq's arid climate meant that tiny particles of DU were likely to be blown around and inhaled by civilians for years to come. It warned that, when inside the body, their radiation and toxicity could trigger the growth of malignant tumours. That means Iraqis and "coalition" battle troops are already affected and their replacements are going into a hazardous environment.
See the map of Depleted Uranium facilities and test ranges
The war that keeps on killing American babies "Sixty-seven percent of babies born to the 400,000 vets who suffer from Gulf War Syndrome have birth defects," said Joyce Riley, a former nurse who flew in Iraq and the founder and spokesperson of the American Gulf War Veterans Association. "But the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs do not want America to know the number of sick, dead and deformed kids that vets are having. It's another cover-up."

A chamber of horrors so close to the 'Garden of Eden' in Southern Iraq
01 December 2001

I thought I had a strong stomach - toughened by the minefields and foul frontline hospitals of Angola, by the handiwork of the death squads in Haiti and by the wholesale butchery of Rwanda. But I nearly lost my breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in southern Iraq.

Dr Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were displayed colour photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called "congenital anomalies", but what you and I would better understand as horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies were head-spinningly grotesque - and thank God they didn't bring out the real thing, pickled in formaldehyde. At one point I had to grab hold of the back of a chair to support my legs.

I won't spare you the details. You should know because - according to the Iraqis and in all likelihood the World Health Organisation, which is soon to publish its findings on the spiraling birth defects in southern Iraq - we are responsible for these obscenities.

During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched creatures in the photographs - for they were scarcely human -are the result, Dr Amer said.

He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.

Then the chair-grabbing moment - a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.

Depleted uranium has an incubation period in humans of five years. In the four years from 1991 (the end of the Gulf war) until 1994, the Basrah Maternity Hospital saw 11 congenital anomalies. Last year there were 221.

Then there is the alarming increase in cases of leukaemia among Basrah babies lucky enough to have been born with the full complement of limbs and features inthe right place. The hospital treated 15 children with leukaemia in 1993. In 2000 it was 60. By the end of this year that figure again will be topped. And so it will go on. Forever.

(Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.1 billion years the age of the earth. Total disintegration occurs after 25 billion years.)

And finally, this one is American, a legacy of an illegal and immoral war, if there ever was a war that was legal or moral. This gallery of horror is the beginning of the gathering of evidence for an International War Crimes Tribunal.



AMERICANS TO TEST SUPERGUN IN SCOTLAND

AMERICA is to test a new secret supergun at a defence base in Scotland.

The electromagnetic gun (EM gun) will be tested at an experimental weapons range in Dumfriesshire.

The US Department of Defense believes the range at Dundrennan, near Kirkcudbright, is the only suitable location to test the new supergun.

But the move has sparked fury among concerned locals.

South of Scotland MSP Alasdair Morgan, an outspoken critic of the weapons range, yesterday slammed the US military's plans.

He said: "It is not as if America has a shortage of areas in its own country where they could test their latest weapons. I find it bizarre they need to do it here."

The MoD has faced complaints over its use of the range to fire thousands of shells coated with depleted uranium into the Solway Firth. There are fears the tests could be damaging the health of locals and the environment.

Both the US and the UK were well aware of the dangers of Depleted Uranium ammunition, even before the war began.

"Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. [DU is] a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. [...] Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been linked to cancer. [...] Our conclusion regarding the health and environmental acceptability of DU penetrators assume both controlled use and the presence of excellent health physics management practices. Combat conditions will lead to the uncontrolled release of DU. [...] The conditions of the battlefield, and the long term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators for military applications."
- Excerpts from the July 1990 Science and Applications International Corporation report: ' Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environment and Health Considerations', as included in Appendix D - US Army Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command report: 'Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategy Study, July 1990'

"There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus be deleted from the arsenal. I believe we should keep this sensitive issue in mind when action reports are written."
- Lt. Col. M.V. Ziehmn, Los Alamos National Laboratory memorandum, March 1st 1991

"DU is a low-level radioactive waste, and, therefore, must be disposed of in a licensed repository. [...] No international law, treaty, regulation, or custom requires the United States to remediate the Persian Gulf war battlefields."
- Report by the US Army Environmental Policy Institute: 'Health and Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the US army', June 1995

To date, both the US Defence Department and the British Ministry of Defence deny that there is any link between DU and the unprecedented rise in cancer and birth deformities experienced by Iraqi civilians and Gulf War veterans. The Sanctions Committee continues to prevent Iraq from importing large-scale quantities of anti-cancer medicines, as they contain radioisotopes, and thus constitute '...nuclear materials...' Iraqi requests for decontamination equipment are similarly blocked.

The cancer rate in Iraq has risen between two and ten fold, the deformity rate between four and six fold. The Iraqi Atomic Agency estimates that 48% of the entire population has been exposed to carcinogenic material.

THE GULF WAR SYNDROME - A PARALLEL TO CHERNOBYL:

DOCUMENTATION OF THE AFTERMATH OF THE GULF WAR

by

Professor Siegwart Horst - Gunther

President of YELLOW CROSS INTERNATIONAL

1995


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Professor Siegwart Horst-Gunther founded THE INTERNATIONAL YELLOW CROSS in Austria in 1992. A humanitarian organisation helping suffering children, it has worked closely with the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, amongst others, to deliver food and medicine directly into the hands of the needy in countries all over the world. The bulk of its' activities over the last few years have been focussed on Iraq.

During the course of his investigations in Depleted Uranium, Professor Gunther was arrested by German customs whilst attempting to transport DU shell fragments and dust back into Germany for analysis. The authorities charged him with 'transporting nuclear materials across international borders'. He claims he was severely beaten whilst being held in custody for two weeks, without access to a lawyer or any form of representation, or contact with the outside world.

Article transcribed by Grant Wakefield, and subject to minor editing and grammatical changes for the purposes of clarification and sentence structure.


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Since 1991 I have been constantly warned about the danger of Depleted Uranium for the civilian population [of Iraq]. Many of the DU projectiles spread over the battlefields have been collected by children and were used as toys with possibly devastating consequences. Inhaled Uranium dust is highly toxic and can result in lung cancer.

The conditions in Baghdad hospitals where leukaemia and cancer patients are housed are particularly depressing. The rooms are overcrowded; most come from the South of the country. Their increasing number is attributed to the radioactivity and toxicity of Depleted Uranium ammunitions used by the allied forces during the war and abandoned thereafter.

In natural Uranium, the proportion of the isotope 235 is only about 0.7%, the greater part is Uranium 238. As only Uranium 235 is suitable as fissile material for use in nuclear power stations, the Uranium ore has to be enriched by artificially increasing the proportion of this isotope. As a result there are large quantities of waste produced by this procedure, i.e. the so-called DU, consisting almost solely of isotope 238.

In Europe these waste products from uranium industry are stored in specially shielded deposits at considerable costs because of their high toxicity and radioactivity. In order to reduce costs, DU of the isotope 238 is passed on to interested parties, even free of charge.

DU has properties that make it highly attractive to the armament industry:

1) It is practically the heaviest naturally occurring substance.

2) DU projectiles, the development of which is presumably based on German technology, have a greater penetrating power and are better suited for penetrating steel armour plating than any other weapon.

3) It is also an inflammable material. It ignites immediately on penetration of armour plates, releasing highly toxic and radioactive substances on combustion.

4) After the Gulf War, US tanks are being manufactured with an increased strengthening layer of DU. Ironically these tanks are called 'Radiation Deponies.'

Different types of DU ammunition have been manufactured in the US by HONEYWELL and AEROJET, the latter beginning mass production in 1977. At present such ammunition is also being mass produced in Britain and France, and exported to other NATO countries as well as to Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

The first mass use of DU ammunition was conducted in the Gulf War by the US led coalition, with devastating effects and consequences. At the beginning of March 1991 I detected projectiles in an Iraqi combat area which had the form and size of a cigar and were extraordinarily heavy. At a later point in time I saw children playing with projectiles of this kind. One of them died of leukaemia. As early as the end of 1991, I diagnosed a hitherto unknown disease among the Iraqi population that is caused by renal and hepatic dysfunctions.

My efforts to have one of these projectiles examined brought me into serious trouble with the German police. The projectile, highly toxic and radioactive, was confiscated and carried away under enormous safety precautions and stored in a specially shielded deposit.

During the last five years I have carried out extensive studies in Iraq. The results have produced ample evidence to show that contact with DU ammunition has the following consequences, especially for children:

1) A considerable increase in infectious diseases caused by severe immuno-deficiencies in a great part of the population.

2) Frequent occurrence of massive herpes and zoster afflictions, also in children.

3) AIDS - like syndromes.

4) A hitherto unknown syndrome caused by renal and hepatic dysfunctions, now so-called 'Morbus Gunther.'

5) Leukaemia, aplastic anaemia and malignant neoplasm.

6) Congenital deformities caused by genetic defects; also partly diagnosed in animals.

The results of my studies show similarities to a clinical picture described recently by the term 'Gulf War Syndrome' in allied soldiers and their children. The congenital deformities in American and Iraqi children are identical.

According to US and Pentagon statements, vaccinations against anthrax, botulism, and malaria; benzenes used for delousing, pyridostigminbromides DEET or permethrin, as well as the DU ammunition used, are held responsible for the development of this syndrome. Allied troops were not informed of the dangers of DU until nine days after the war.

Like all heavy metals, such as lead and cadmium, Uranium is highly toxic. The human body must not get into contact with them. Newspapers recorded that many US soldiers in the Gulf felt uncertain and feared that they may have been used as 'guinea pigs' in a radiation experiment. This subject was debated before the US congress. According to American nuclear scientist Leonard Dietz, the arms technology of the Uranium projectiles is as revolutionary as the machine gun was in the World War One. The Gulf War, as he said, was also the most toxic war in the history of mankind.

According to statements by the US army, about 14,000 high-calibre shells alone were fired during the Gulf war. According to estimates by the British Atomic Energy Authority, about 40 tons of this type of ammunition is supposed to be scattered in the frontier area between Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Other experts assume that there is as much as 300 tons of it. Not more than 10% of these projectiles have been detected; most have been blown over and covered by sand, or are lying deep in the ground. During rainfall the toxic substances permeate into the ground water, thus entering the food chain; a source of danger in the long run in these areas.

A British company refused a request to remove this Uranium ammunition because of too great a health risk to their staff.

Bedouins from Kuwait battlefield areas, which US troops used as training grounds, reported hundreds of camels, sheep and birds lying in the desert. Examinations made by American veterinary specialists showed that the animals had died neither from bullets or diseases. Some carcasses were covered with insects, but the insects were also dead.

Saudi Arabia had demanded that all tanks, vehicles and instruments of war destroyed by Uranium ammunition on their territory be collected by the US army. The material was collected and transported to the USA; prior to their request it had been buried in the desert.

The President of the US Gulf War Veterans Association is engaged in research into the so-called 'Gulf War Syndrome.' Symptoms include defects and damage to internal organs, chronic fatigue, loss of endurance, frequent infections, sore throat, coughing, skin rashes, night sweats, nausea, vomiting, diahorrea, dizziness, headaches, memory loss, confusion, vision problems, muscle spasms and cramps, joint pains, loss of mobility, aching muscles, swollen glands, dental problems, and malformation of new born children.

He estimates 50,000 to 80,000 veterans are affected. 39,000 have been dismissed from active service; 2400 to 5000 have died to date. DU contamination engenders cancer risks, and several soldiers reported that upon their return through commercial airports, the Geiger counters had '.become crazy.'. In Britain approximately 4000 soldiers are affected; about 160 have already died, as well as a number of Australians, Canadians and French.

Similar symptoms have occurred in Kuwait and are spreading out. It is believed that as many as 250,000 Iraqis have been affected, with high death rates. An American study in 1993 is said to have shown that approx. 50,000 Iraqi children died during the eight months after the war from the detrimental effects of DU projectiles.

In March 1994, reports published in the US found that of 251 families of veterans living in the state of Mississippi, 67% of the children of these families were born with congenital deformities. Eyes, ears or fingers were missing, or they suffered from severe blood disease and respiratory problems.

A parallel can be drawn with the situation which developed after the accident at the atomic reactor in Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union. Since then a sharp increase in cancer has been recorded, especially among children. Their mortality rate is also very high, as are malformations at birth.

Other incidents of suspected DU contamination occurred in Germany in 1998 when a US A-10 plane crashed at Remscheid. Additionally an Israeli El-Al transport plane crashed in Amsterdam, Holland in 1992. Both planes were suspected of carrying radioactive materials on board. In both cases an increase in skin diseases, kidney dysfunction, childhood leukaemia and birth deformities have been registered.

In November 1996 it was reported that in the former Yugoslavia approx. 1000 children were suffering from an unknown disease: headaches, aching muscles, abdominal pain, dizziness, respiratory problems and others, symptoms highly similar to 'Gulf War Syndrome.' 600 of these children were receiving hospital treatment. In December 1997 and January 1998 the Balkan media reported a dramatic increase of leukaemia and cancer development within the population of Srpska, as well as an increase in malformation of new born children. The cows in this region showed reduced and bloody milk production, while milk production in other animals stopped completely. In Bosnia unusual vegetations are growing and fruits show unusual forms. Investigations by the Nuclear Research Institute in Vinca revealed a dangerous increase of radiation levels after NATO used DU ammunition during bombardments.

There are indications that DU ammunitions have been developed by German based technologists and given for use to 'friendly' countries. As is well known, German industry also developed poisonous gases that were used to kill millions of people in German concentration camps. German scientists again developed rockets that were used during World War Two to kill thousands. These technologies have since been refined and improved, leading to untold human suffering, bitterness and hatred.

In my position as a physician and scientist I call upon all those responsible, as well as the public at large, to see that the use of DU ammunition is banned. This is a very real danger as such weapons are at the disposal of several states at present. It has already been used in one war, with irreparable damages. It is for us, the citizens of the world, to see that such dangerous weapon systems are banned and never used again.

Mysterious Diseases Haunt US Troops In Iraq 7-17-3

BAGHDAD (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) -- Several mysterious diseases were reported among a number of American troops within the vicinity of Baghdad airport, a military source closely close to NATO unveiled.

U.S. soldiers deployed around Baghdad airport started showing symptoms of mysterious fever, itching, scars and dark brown spots on the skin, the source, who refused to be named, said in statements published Thursday, July 17, by the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper.

He asserted that three soldiers who suffered these symptoms did not respond to medical treatment in Iraqi hospitals and were flown to Washington for medication.

The military source reported a media blackout by U.S. officials to hide such information from the public.

The Americans claim the symptoms and the mysterious diseases were resulting from exposure to the scourging sun, which the U.S. troops are not used to, he added.

U.S. officials did not come up with an explanation for the symptoms, which NATO experts tend to believe result from direct exposure to powerful nuclear radiations of the sophisticated B-2 bombs used in the war on Iraq, particularly in striking Iraqi Republican Guards forces who deployed to defend the vicinity of Baghdad airport.

The military source stressed that the shrouds of secrecy imposed by American officials on the issue were prompted by fears of creating waves of panic and anger among the troops, particularly after announcements that American troops would remain in Iraq indefinitely.

He asserted that NATO experts measured levels of radioactive pollution in Iraq and confirmed there were levels of radioactive pollution with destructive impacts on man and environment that may lead to risks suffered by generations to come.

On April 25, the British Observer quoted military sources as affirming that depleted uranium shells and bombs used by U.S. and British troops during Iraq invasion were five times more than the number used during 1991 Gulf war.

The Pentagon had admitted shelling Iraq with about 350 tons of depleted uranium in 1991, aggravating cancerous tumors cases among Iraqis.

On July 16, the News-Leader site operating out of Springfield, Missouri published a detailed report describing the symptoms of one of the soldiers who has died from the alleged pneumonia. Josh Neusche, a 20-year-old, fit and healthy Missouri National Guardsman, collapsed in Baghdad on July 2. He was evacuated to Landstuhl, Germany. His family was informed he was suffering from pneumonia caused by fluid in his lungs. According to his mother, his liver, kidneys and muscles then began to break down. He was placed on dialysis, but fell into a coma and died on July 12.

For anyone familiar with the research into the medical effects of exposure to depleted uranium, the details of Josh Neusche's death would have to ring alarm bells. The 2001 World Health Organization report into the issue notes: "Brief accidental exposure to high concentrations of uranium hexafluoride has caused acute respiratory illness, which may be fatal." [Full report available at [www.who.int]]

WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WAR: WHAT HAVE THEY WROUGHT?

From Jon Rappoport
www.nomorefakenews.com


April 7, 2003
Yesterday, in an attempt to find out more about the death of NBC reporter, David Bloom, I spoke with the former head of the Pentagon Depleted Uranium Investigation Team, Dr. Doug Rokke.

Rokke was the man who went to Iraq a decade ago on a mission to report on depleted uranium (DU). What he found was so horrifying the Pentagon scuttled his work and tried to make him an invisible man. Rokke suffered uranium poisoning himself. But his medical records, and those of who knows how many thousands of other soldiers, do not reflect that. History has been suppressed, has been re-written.

Our conversation began with me asking Rokke if he thought that the announced cause of David Bloom's death, pulmonary embolism, could have resulted from DU. But Rokke stopped me short. He said, "This was the diagnosis they immediately gave out? I don't see how. You can't diagnose that from the battlefield. You really need an autopsy to discover whether that's the cause..."

Which opened up new questions. Rokke began to talk about conditions in the Gulf now. He said that the PR about the US limiting civilian casualties is absurd, because, for example, the Pentagon admits to losing 700 cruise missiles that have been fired at Baghdad in the current campaign. In other words, those missiles strayed off course and no one really knows where they landed and exploded. "700 missiles, each one loaded with DU, is 700,000 pounds of explosives," he said. 700,000 pounds of explosives going off, spreading
cancer-causing uranium in all directions.

Rokke then informed me that, since 1990, and up to the beginning of Gulf War 2, some 260,000 US soldiers have been granted disability. 10,000 have died. I'm relaying these facts to you in a sober way, but of course I was staggered as Rokke talked. He painted a picture of the Iraqi landscape as a toxic soup. DU, yes. But also many other toxins, because as he explained, when bombs and missiles rip up ANY material that is composite or synthetic, like plastics, you get all sorts of poisonous byproducts. And that, for example, is what happened at the WTC on 9/11. Rokke said, "I trained a lot of those first health responders. They're dead now."

Rokke, over the years, together with colleagues, has issued report after report describing what, in essence, are the inevitable consequences of modern warfare as it is carried out. A lingering toxic landscape that kills over time.

When Rokke was in the Gulf a decade ago, one of his fears was confirmed: the masks worn to protect against DU don't work. They can't filter out the smallest and deadliest particles of uranium. "We could taste the stuff [uranium]," he said. Rokke states that the Pentagon is completely aware of the dangers to US solders and combatants, and just doesn't care.

I asked him why DU is used in projectile shells and missiles. He told me it was because uranium is so dense the weight of impact on a target causes a lot more damage. And, he said, these shells are not merely coated or tipped with uranium, as some Pentagon people have stated. They are packed with it. Rokke likened the situation to having uranium rods in your backyard. He went on to explain that the PB pills US soldiers have been taking, as protection against nerve gas, are themselves nerve agents. If taken immediately before a
nerve-gas attack---and then followed up with two other medicines---the soldier might get protection from nerve gas. But the PB pills are being swallowed long in advance of any possible contact with nerve gas. In essence, soldiers are getting "nerve gas" attacks
FROM THE POISON PILLS.

Rokke mentioned a number of sites around the world---Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, and places in the US---where DU is a major problem right now. By this point in our conversation, Rokke was piecing together an emerging picture of modern war as both murder and suicide. He predicted the consequences of the Iraq war are going to be worse than Gulf War 1. Worse, in terms of damage and death to US troops and the Iraqi people.

I hung up the phone stunned. I can only ask that you get this information out to as many people as possible. To give the widest possible benefit of the doubt to mainstream news reporters, THEY JUST DON'T KNOW. They have no idea what they are supporting when they allow the picture of this war to be painted as a careful and controlled campaign. All those maps and arrows and targets---they need to be enveloped in a cloud of MULTIPLE POISONS. Then we would have some concept of what is really going on---and what is going to happen when it's over.

Rokke mentioned that, between Gulf War 1 and the start of Gulf 2, the Iraqis tried to build new water treatment facilities in Basra. To clean up their horrible, illness-causing contaminated water. Each time they tried, he said, those emerging facilities were destroyed...

What is happening in the Gulf is not merely the result of ignorance. It is not only depraved indifference. It is a plan to depopulate and destroy. US soldiers will be sacrificed, in huge numbers, to forward the larger goal; the depopulation and debilitation of Iraq. Yet, the news networks still display that graphic: OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. And DOD spokesmen keep saying the protection of the Iraqi oil fields is being done to preserve "the future wealth of the Iraqi people." That sick joke takes on a new and very ominous meaning.

If 260,000 US vets now on disability from Gulf 1 can be hidden from the stupefied American people, what else can be hidden, here and in Iraq, in the coming months and years? How many cases of cancer? How many birth defects? How many kidney and liver failures? How many
immune-system destructions? How many American families who support their children now doing time in the Gulf will later watch those sons and daughters waste away, while the Pentagon claims it's all post-traumatic stress? How far do all the toxic clouds drift? How many cases of illness are being misdiagnosed as the result of germs?

We are in a time of madness. I can't fault prayer or the
distractions of television or even the desperate accoutrements of so-called patriotism. But somehow we have to live beyond clichés and summon up the outrage equal to the destruction. Equal to the moment.
The wretched hairless generals are striding through the Pentagon thinking they are on a course of victory, thinking whatever they have to think to avoid the truth that is chasing them like a snake.

Let the cardboard floors of lies give way and collapse. Let the voices of the intelligent pro-war advocates incorporate this news.
Let them, finally, arrive at a further shore of conscience that
compels them to take a stand. They are viewing old images, they are seeing a fantasy of war, they are imagining situations that no longer exist.

War is now different. It is a sword you always fall on.

WAKE UP. WAKE UP.

Sites relating to the effects of taking nerve agent antidotes and being in contact with Depleted Uranium...

[www.mindfully.org]
[www.cnn.com]
[www.chronicillnet.org]
[www.gulflink.osd.mil]
[www.af.mil]

From Jon Rappoport
=======================




How Long Can The
Pentagon Lie About
Depleted Uranium?
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
9-16-5

The Pentagon's duplicity about the dangers of depleted uranium has been exposed by a government-funded study confirming that radiation causes cancer.

LIVERMORE, California - The U.S. government's duplicity about the harmful effects of depleted uranium appears to have no limits. While the Pentagon tells U.S. military personnel that the health risks from inhaling depleted uranium are low, a study - sponsored by the Dept. of Defense - confirms that even low-level radiation causes cancer.

A government-funded study has confirmed what nuclear experts have known for decades: Any dose of ionizing radiation poses serious health risks.

The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences published a report in June 2005 confirming that ionizing radiation (IR) causes cancer. The consensus opinion of the 17 independent scientists who signed the report was that exposure to radiation from medical x-rays and nuclear medicine is directly linked to cancer.

The report, the seventh in the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation series, or BEIR VII, studied the health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation, the kind received by thousands of Americans every day in x-rays, mammograms, computed tomography (CT) scans, and other procedures of nuclear medicine.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, nonprofit institution created in 1863 to provide science and technology advice to the government.

Medical x-rays and nuclear medicine account for nearly 80 percent of the man-made radiation exposure in the United States, according to BEIR VII, which focused on the health effects of radiation from medical sources.

The study concluded: "There is a linear dose-response relationship between exposure to ionizing radiation and the development of radiation-induced solid cancers in humans."

Solid cancers are defined as cellular growths in organs such as the breast or prostrate, as opposed to leukemia, a cancer of the blood.

"The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial," Richard R. Monson, chairman of the BEIR committee, said. "The health risks," he said, "particularly the development of solid cancers in organs, rise proportionally with exposure."

Asked why this story has received so little attention in the media, Marion Fulk, a retired staff scientist from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said: "I don't think the media understands the importance of this. And some of the TV stations are owned by companies that are invested in the nuclear industry."

Fulk, who has survived skin cancer, said that as a result of tritium pollution from the national lab, children born in Livermore are 6 times more likely to have skin cancer than other children.

BEIR scientist William C. Dewey, Emeritus Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco, told AFP that 80 percent of the funding came from government agencies that did not see the report until it was completed.

"We had a meeting with the sponsors when it was finished," Dewey said. Asked if the Dept. of Defense accepted the report's conclusions, Dewey said, "As far as I know they've accepted it.

"This is the exactly the kind of independent scientific report that needs to be done with depleted uranium," Dewey said.

To determine the degree of damage caused by the larger alpha particles, like those emitted by DU inside the human body, the absorbed dose is multiplied by a factor of 20. Inhaled DU is extremely harmful because the source of radiation is internal.

Furthermore, the DU particle continues to emit alpha particles over a very short distance, about 50 microns, the distance of about two human cells. The critical target for ionizing radiation is the individual cell.

"The alpha does a tremendous amount of damage in a very short track," Fulk said. "It breaks more bonds and causes more damage in a local area."

The BEIR report confirms the findings of John W. Gofman, the first director of the Biomedical Research Division at the Livermore National Laboratory.

In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission asked Gofman to evaluate the health effects of all types of nuclear activities. By 1969, Gofman had concluded that human exposure to IR was much more serious than previously recognized. The AEC, however, was not pleased and by 1973 his laboratory research on chromosomes and cancer was de-funded.

"Medical radiation is a highly important cause (probably the principal cause) of cancer mortality in the United States," Gofman wrote in 1999. "Medical radiation, received at very low and moderate doses, is an important cause of ischemic heart disease.

"Ionizing radiation is firmly established by epidemiologic evidence as a proven cause of almost every major type of human cancer," Gofman wrote. "Some of the strongest evidence comes from the study of medical patients exposed to x-rays."

X-rays and other forms of IR are a proven cause of chromosomal mutations. The biological damage comes from electrons that are kicked out of their normal orbits within human cells. "Endowed with biologically unnatural energy," Gofman wrote, these wild electrons damage chromosomal DNA and create various species of free radicals.

Free radicals are made and found primarily in the mitochondria, Fulk said. The resulting dysfunction of the mitochondria causes a host of neuromuscular diseases, he said, including: Parkinson's, Hodgkin's, Lou Gehrig's, and Diabetes II.

About 20 percent of cancers are caused by virus, bacteria, and parasites, Fulk said. To boost the immune system and give the body an extra chance to fight back, Fulk recommends a vitamin regimen rich in "free radical gobblers."

Gofman wrote that over 50 percent of the deaths from cancer, and over 60 percent of the deaths from ischemic heart disease, are x-ray induced. "The proof is so solid that it is accepted by even the industries and professions which irradiate people."

"If one can identify a single agent which is a necessary co-actor in a high fraction of cases of cancer and ischemic heart disease, one can make real progress in preventing these diseases by reducing exposure to that cause," Gofman wrote. "The evidence strongly indicates that medical radiation is such an agent.

"Since its introduction in 1896, medical radiation has become a necessary co-actor in most fatal cases of cancer and ischemic heart disease," Gofman concluded. "Reduction of exposure to medical radiation can and will reduce mortality rates from both cancer and ischemic heart disease."

Gofman's 1995 book Preventing Breast Cancer presents evidence to support his thesis that medical radiation is a necessary co-actor in about 75 percent of breast cancer cases.

THE PENTAGON'S DUPLICITY

The government agencies who sponsored the BEIR VII report act as if they had never seen it. The BEIR report was sponsored by the U.S. departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - agencies who consistently deny that exposure to DU poses a serious threat to human health.

Deployment Quarterly, a magazine produced by the Pentagon, citing a study done by a major defense contractor, reported last winter that "chemical and radiological risks to human health from inhaling depleted uranium aerosols in a perforated vehicle are low."

"Exposure levels to depleted uranium in military scenarios are safe," Lt. Col. Mark Melanson, director of the Capstone Depleted Uranium Program, said. "Troops in, on, or near armored vehicles when they are struck with DU munitions have the highest potential for intake and exposure, and we've seen that the intake and doses they receive are below U.S. peacetime standards for radiation and not high enough to cause lasting effects on individuals from their heavy metal toxicity."

The $6 million DU capstone study, however, was prepared for the U.S. government by Battelle, a major nuclear contractor based in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle manages several nuclear facilities for the Dept. of Energy, including the Oak Ridge, Brookhaven, Idaho, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.

In 1979, Battelle conducted a study of DU weapons and found that more than 30 percent of the bulk mass of a DU penetrator was reduced to nano-sized particles, one-tenth of a micron or smaller, on impact. These airborne particles remain suspended until inhaled or rained out. Inside the body, these extremely small particles are able to penetrate the nucleus of the human cell where they do extreme damage.

Battelle certainly knows very well how aerosolized DU works in the body. It has a subsidiary called Ventaira Pharmaceuticals that develops aerosol devices to deliver medications through the lungs.

The disclaimer in Battelle's Capstone DU report says that neither the U.S. government nor Battelle are responsible for the "accuracy, adequacy, or applicability of the contents" or "any consequences of any use, misuse, inability to use, or reliance upon the information."

Neither the Pentagon nor Battelle responded to repeated inquiries about the Capstone DU report.

"SCIENTIFIC PROSTITUTES"

"Scientific prostitutes" is what Fulk calls scientists who have a vested interest in the nuclear industry and whitewash the dangers of ionizing radiation. Fulk, who worked with the pioneers of the nuclear industry since the 1940s, has always opposed open-air testing of nuclear devices.

"Cancer is just the tip of the iceberg of the damage done the biological system caused by ionizing radiation," Fulk said. "There is no safe x-ray or safe level of IR of any kind."

"I think the public should be informed so they can make an informed decision about being exposed," Fulk said. "All I want is this crap cleaned up because it's a wicked business. What I'm trying to do is to prevent this from happening in the first place."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2009 09:32PM by riverhousebill.