NEWLY POSTED BUSH ATROCITIES ARTICLE 1D
Tuesday 31st August 2004 :
Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War
The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying
all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on
earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to
do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.
by LEUREN MORET
Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using depleted
uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties,
conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military law.
The continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has
already contaminated vast regions with low level radiation and will
contaminate other parts of the world over time, is indeed a world
affair and an international issue. The deeper purpose is revealed by
comparing regions now contaminated with depleted uranium - from
Egypt , the Middle East, Central Asia and the northern half of India -
to the US geostrategic imperatives described in Zbigniew
Brzezinski's 1997 book The Grand Chessboard.
The fact is that the United States and its military partners have
staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under the wire" by using
dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US needs to control.
Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently contaminate vast regions
and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those
regions, where there are resources which the US must control, in
order to establish and maintain American primacy.
Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is
the weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5
billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into
daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into
lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is
no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets
the US Government's own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium oxide
particles on the battlefield, they remain suspended in air and
travel around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric
dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing,
maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow
and moisture remove it from the atmosphere. Global radioactive
contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000
Hiroshima bombs, and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower
orbital space today. The amount of low level radioactive pollution
from depleted uranium released since 1991, is many times more
(deposited internally in the body), than was released from
atmospheric testing fallout.
A 2003 independent report for the European Parliament by the
European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), reports that based on
Chernobyl studies, low level radiation risk is 100 to 1000 times
greater than the International Committee for Radiation Protection
models estimate which are based on the flawed Atomic and Hydrogen
Bomb Studies conducted by the US Government. Referring to the
extreme killing effects of radiation on biological systems, Dr.
Rosalie Bertell, one of the 46 international radiation expert
authors of the ECRR report, describes it as:
"The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift,
deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological
reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the
gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it:
omnicide."
1943 MANHATTAN PROJECT BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED URANIUM
In a declassified memo to General Leslie R. Groves, dated October
30, 1943, three of the top physicists in the Manhattan Project, Dr
James B Conant, A H Compton, and H C Urey, made their
recommendation, as members of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive
Committee, on the `Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military
Weapon':
"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into
particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed
by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In
this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to
cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small ...
There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty ... it
will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough
to be extremely damaging."
As a Terrain Contaminant:
"To be used in this manner, the radioactive materials would be
spread on the ground either from the air or from the ground if in
enemy controlled territory. In order to deny terrain to either side
except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful
radiations ... Areas so contaminated by radioactive material would
be dangerous until the slow natural decay of the material took
place ... for average terrain no decontaminating methods are known.
No effective protective clothing for personnel seems possible of
development. ... Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food
poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of
dust or smoke."
Internal Exposure:
"... Particles smaller than 1΅ [micron] are more likely to be
deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely
or be absorbed into the lymphatics or blood. ... could get into the
gastro-intestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air. ...
may be absorbed from the lungs or G-I tract into the blood and so
distributed throughout the body."
Both the fission products and depleted uranium waste from the Atomic
Bomb Project were to be utilised under this plan. The pyrophoric
nature of depleted uranium, which causes it to begin to burn at very
low temperatures from friction in the gun barrel, made it an ideal
radioactive gas weapon then and now. Also it was more available
because the amount of depleted uranium produced was much greater
than the amount of fission products produced in 1943.
Britain had thoughts of using poisoned gas on Iraq long before 1991:
"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized
tribes. The moral effect should be good... and it would spread a
lively terror..." (Winston Churchill commenting on the British use
of poison gas against the Iraqis after the First World War).
GUIDED WEAPONS SYSTEMS
Depleted uranium weapons were first given by the US to Israel for
use under US supervision in the 1973 Sinai war against the Arabs.
Since then the US has tested, manufactured, and sold depleted
uranium weapons systems to 29 countries. An international taboo
prevented their use until 1991, when the US broke the taboo and used
them for the first time, on the battlefields of Iraq and Kuwait .
The US military admitted using depleted uranium projectiles in tanks
and planes, but warheads in missiles and bombs are classified or
referred to as a `dense' or `mystery metal'. Dai Williams, a
researcher at the 2003 World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference,
reported finding 11 US patents for guided weapons systems with the
term `depleted uranium' or `dense metal', which from the density can
only be depleted uranium or tungsten, in order to fit the dimensions
of the warhead.
Extensive carpet bombing, grid bombing, and the frequent use of
missiles and depleted uranium bullets on buildings in densely
populated areas has occurred in Iraq , Yugoslavia , and Afghanistan .
The discovery that bomb craters in Yugoslavia in 1999 were
radioactive, and that an unexploded missile in 1999 contained a
depleted uranium warhead, implies that the total amount of depleted
uranium used since 1991 has been greatly underestimated. Of even
greater concern, is that 100 per cent of the depleted uranium in
bombs and missiles is aerosolized upon impact and immediately
released into the atmosphere. This amount can be as much as 1.5 tons
in the large bombs. In bullets and cannon shells, the amount
aerosolized is 40-70 per cent, leaving pieces and unexploded shells
in the environment, to provide new sources of radioactive dust and
contamination of the groundwater from dissolved depleted uranium
metal long after the battles are over, as reported in a 2003 report
by the UN Environmental Program on Yugoslavia. Considering that the
US has admitted using 34 tons of depleted uranium from bullets and
cannon shells in Yugoslavia , and the fact that 35,000 NATO bombing
missions occurred there in 1999, potentially the amount of depleted
uranium contaminating Yugoslavia and transboundary drift into
surrounding countries is staggering.
Because of mysterious illnesses and post-war birth defects reported
among Gulf War veterans and civilians in southern Iraq , and
radiation related illnesses in UN Peacekeepers serving in
Yugoslavia , growing concerns about radiation effects and
environmental damage has stirred up international outrage about the
use of radioactive weapons by the US after 1991. At the 2003 meeting
of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, discussing the
U.S. desire to maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile, the Hiroshima
Mayor Tadatoshi AKIBA stated,
"It is incumbent upon the rest of the world ... to stand up now and
tell all of our military leaders that we refuse to be threatened or
protected by nuclear weapons. We refuse to live in a world of
continually recycled fear and hatred".
ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Four reasons why using depleted uranium weapons violates the UN
Convention on Human Rights:
LEGALITY TEST FOR WEAPONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
TEMPORAL TEST - Weapons must not continue to act after the battle is
over.
ENVIRONMENTAL TEST - Weapons must not be unduly harmful to the
environment.
TERRITORIAL TEST - Weapons must not act off of the battlefield.
HUMANENESS TEST - Weapons must not kill or wound inhumanly.
International Human Rights and humanitarian lawyer, Karen Parker,
determined that depleted uranium weaponry fails the four tests for
legal weapons under international law, and that it is also illegal
under the definition of a `poison' weapon. Through Karen Parker's
continued efforts, a sub-commission of the UN Human Rights
Commission determined in 1996 that depleted uranium is a weapon of
mass destruction that should not be used:
RESOLUTION 1996/16 ON STOPPING THE USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM - DU
The military use of DU violates current international humanitarian
law, including the principle that there is no unlimited right to
choose the means and methods of warfare (Art. 22 Hague Convention VI
(HCIV); Art. 35 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva (GP1); the
ban on causing unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury (Art. 23
§le HCIV; Art. 35 §2 GP1), indiscriminate warfare (Art. 51 §4c and
5b GP1) as well as the use of poison or poisoned weapons.
The deployment and use of DU violate the principles of international
environmental and human rights protection. They contradict the right
to life established by the Resolution 1996/16 of the UN Subcommittee
on Human Rights.
FOUR NUCLEAR WARS
Although restricted to battlefields in Iraq and Kuwait, the 1991
Gulf War was one of the most toxic and environmentally devastating
wars in world history. Oil well fires, the bombing of oil tankers
and oil wells which released millions of gallons of oil into the
Gulf of Arabia and desert, and the devastation from tanks and heavy
equipment destroyed the desert ecosystem. The long term and far
reaching effects, and dispersal of at least 340 tons of depleted
uranium weapons, had a global environmental effect. Smoke from the
oil fires was later found in deposits in South America, the
Himalayas and Hawaii . Large annual dust storms originating in North
Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia will quickly spread the
radioactive contamination around the world, and weathering of old
depleted uranium munitions on battlefields and other areas will
provide new sources of radioactive contamination in future years.
Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq , Israel is also
suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and
childhood diabetes.
RADIATION RESPECTS NO BORDERS, NO SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS, AND NO
RELIGION
The expendability of the sanctity of life to achieve US political
ends was described by US soldiers on the ground, and from the air,
along the Highway of Death in Iraq in 1991:
"Iraqi soldiers [whether they] be young boys or old men. They were a
sad sight, with absolutely no fight left in them. Their leaders had
cut their Achilles' tendons so they couldn't run away and then left
them. What weapons they had were in bad repair and little ammunition
was on hand. They were hungry, cold, and scared. The hate I had for
any Iraqi dissipated. These people had no business being on a
battlefield." ( S Hersh , New Yorker, May 22, 2000)
American pilots bombing and strafing, with depleted uranium weapons,
helpless retreating Iraqi soldiers who had already surrendered,
exclaimed:
"We toasted him.... we hit the jackpot....a turkey shoot....shooting
fish in a barrel....basically just sitting ducks... There's just
nothing like it. It's the biggest Fourth of July show you've ever
seen, and to see those tanks just `boom', and more stuff just keeps
spewing out of them... they just become white hot. It's wonderful."
(L A Times and Washington Post, both February 27, 1991)
Nearly 700,000 American Gulf War Veterans returned to the US from a
war that lasted just a few weeks. Today more than 240,000 of those
soldiers are on permanent medical disability, and over 11,000 are
dead. In a US Government study on post-Gulf War babies born to 251
veterans, 67 per cent of the babies were reported to have serious
illnesses or serious birth defects. They were born without eyes,
ears, had missing organs, fused fingers, thyroid or other
malfunctions. Depleted uranium in the semen of the soldiers
internally contaminated their wives. Severe birth defects have been
reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq ,
Yugoslavia , and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of
defects is increasing over time. Women in Yugoslavia , Afghanistan
and Iraq are afraid now to have babies, and when they do give birth,
instead of asking if it is a girl or a boy, they ask `is it normal?'.
KNOWN ILLNESSES INFLICTED BY INTERNALIZATION OF DEPLETED URANIUM
PARTICLES
Soldiers who served in Bradley fighting vehicles, where it was
common to sit on ammunition boxes where depleted uranium ammunition
was stored, are now reporting that many have rectal cancer.
For the first time, medical doctors in Yugoslavia and Iraq have
reported multiple in situ unrelated cancers developing in patients,
and even in families who are living in highly contaminated areas.
Even stranger, they report that cancer was unknown in previous
generations. Very rare and unusual cancers and birth defects have
also been reported to be increasing above normal levels prior to
1991, not only in war torn countries, but in neighbouring countries
from transboundary contamination.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, a senior radiation advisor who was on the
staff of the World Health Organization, co-authored a report in
November 2001, warning that the long-term health effects of depleted
uranium would endanger Iraq's civilian population, and that the dry
climate would increase exposure from the tiny particles blowing
around and be inhaled for years to come. The WHO refused to give him
permission to publish the study, bowing to pressure from the IAEA.
Dr. Baverstock released the damning report to the media in February
2004. Pekka Haavisto, Chairman of the UN Environment Program's Post-
Conflict Assessment Unit in Geneva , shares Baverstock's anxiety
about depleted uranium but UNEP experts have not been allowed into
Iraq to assess the pollution.
"DEPLETED URANIUM SCARE" - Claimed by President George W. Bush on
the official White House website:
"During the Gulf War, coalition forces used armor-piercing
ammunition made from depleted uranium, which is ideal for the
purpose because of its great density. In recent years, the Iraqi
regime has made substantial efforts to promote the false claim that
the depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused
cancers and birth defects in Iraq . Iraq has distributed horrifying
pictures of children with birth defects and linked them to depleted
uranium. The campaign has two major propaganda assets:"
"Uranium is a name that has frightening associations in the mind of
the average person, which makes the lie relatively easy to sell; and
Iraq could take advantage of an established international network of
antinuclear activists who had already launched their own campaign
against depleted uranium."
"But scientists working for the World Health Organization, the UN
Environmental Programme, and the European Union could find no health
effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium."
The US war in Afghanistan made it clear that this was not a war IN
the third world, but a war AGAINST the third world. In Afghanistan
where 800 to 1000 tons of depleted uranium was estimated to have
been used in 2001, even uneducated Afghanis understand the impact
these weapons have had on their children and on future generations:
"After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we
also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have
endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had
not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I
realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good,
different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even
though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time,
however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us
by America , a silent death from which I know we will not escape."
(Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003)
In 1990, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) wrote a
report warning about the potential health and environmental
catastrophe from the use of depleted uranium weapons. The health
effects had been known for a long time. The report sent to the UK
government warned "in their estimation, if 50 tonnes of residual DU
dust remained `in the region' there could be half a million extra
cancers by the end of the century [2000]." Estimates of depleted
uranium weapons used in 1991, now range from the Pentagon's admitted
325 tons, to other scientific bodies who put the figure as high as
900 tons. That would make the number of estimated cancers as high as
9,000,000, depending on the amount used in the 1991 Gulf War. In the
2003 Gulf War, estimates of 2200 tons have been given - causing
about 22,000,000 new cancer cases. Altogether the total number of
cancer patients estimated using the UKAEA data would be 25,250,000.
In July of 1998, the CIA estimated the population of Iraq to be
approximately 24,683,313.
Ironically, the UN Resolution 661 calling for sanctions against
Iraq , was signed on Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1990.
THE PARALLELS
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since
an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
Ludwig von Mises
The parallels between Iraq , Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are
startlingly similar. The weapons used, the unfair treaties offered
by the US , and the bombing and destruction of the environment and
entire infrastructure. In every city of Iraq and Yugoslavia , the
television and radio stations were bombed.
Educational centres were targeted, and stores where educational
materials were sold were destroyed on nearly the same day. Under UN
sanctions, Iraq was not even allowed pencils for schoolchildren.
Cultural antiquities and historical treasures were targeted and
destroyed in all three countries, a kind of cultural and historical
cleansing, a collective national psychic trauma.
The permanent radioactive contamination and environmental
devastation of all three countries is unprecedented, resulting in
huge increases in cancer and birth defects following the attacks.
These will increase over time from unknown effects due to chronic
exposure, increasing internal levels of radiation from depleted
uranium dust, and permanent genetic effects passed on to future
generations. Clearly, this has been a genocidal plan from the start.
What has happened to Human Rights, to the Rights of the Child, to
civil society, and to common humanity?
It is up to the citizens of the world to stop the depleted uranium
wars, and future nuclear wars, causing irreversible devastation.
There are just a few generations left before the collapse of our
environment, and then it will be too late. We can be no healthier
than the health of the environment - we breathe the same air, drink
the same water, eat food from the same soil.
"Our collective gene pool of life, evolving for hundreds of millions
of years has been seriously damaged in less than the past fifty. The
time remaining to reverse this culture of `lemming death' is on the
wane. In the future, what will you tell our grandchildren about what
you did in the prime of your life to turn around this death
process?" (Rosalie Bertell, 1982)
THE DEEPER PURPOSE: G*O*D* [Gold, Oil, and Drugs]
"We must become the owners, or at any rate the controllers at the
source, of at least a proportion of the oil which we require."
(British Royal Commission, agreeing with Winston Churchill's policy
towards Iraq 1913).
"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and
more of our imports come from overseas." (US President George W.
Bush, Beaverton , Oregon , Sep. 25, 2000).
"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn
SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We
own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And
that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing,
especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need."
(US Brig. General William Looney in 1999, referring to Iraq).
Millions of years ago, before India crashed into the Eurasian
continent and uplifted the Himalayas, the ancient shallow Tethys sea
stretched from the Atlantic across what is now the Mediterranean,
Black, Caspian and Aral seas. Rich oil deposits are now located
where ancient life accumulated and `cooked' under just the right
conditions to form large oil deposits in the ancient sediments. Long
before 1991, Unocal in Afghanistan , Amoco in Yugoslavia , and various
oil companies interested in Iraq oil deposits, had conducted
extensive exploration and characterisation of oil deposits in the
Middle East and Central Asian regions, including the northern half
of India .
Britain has maintained an interest in Middle Eastern oil deposits
for a century, and has been the staunchest military partner of the
US since the first depleted uranium war in 1991 in Iraq . Germany ,
another military partner in Yugoslavia with forces now in
Afghanistan , was one of the major economic beneficiaries of the
breakup of Yugoslavia and the colonisation of the Balkans. US
interest in Yugoslavia had much to do with building pipelines from
Central Asia to the Mediterranean warm water ports in Yugoslavia . A
silent and hidden partnership between the US and Japan provided
large amounts of cash from Japan to finance the 1991 Iraq and
1995/1999 Yugoslavian wars, with additional help in Afghanistan by
providing not only cash, but fuel for the war, from Aegis warships
of the Japanese Self Defense Forces in the Indian Ocean. Nippon
Steel, Mitsubishi, and Halliburton are now partners in a Central
Asian oil pipeline project. In 2004, despite much citizen opposition
in Japan , the Japanese government has sent Self Defense Forces to
Iraq for `reconstruction'. This action taken by the Japanese
government, of placing troops on the ground in a war zone, will lead
to rescinding Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which forever
prohibits military aggression by Japan .
THE IRON TRIANGLE (all under one roof): MILITARY, BIG BUSINESS,
POLITICS
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the
growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than
their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism --
ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any
controlling private power.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
But what do oil, military partners, depleted uranium wars, and US
foreign policy have to do with nuclear weapons? The answer came to
me in 1991 when I became a whistleblower at the Livermore Nuclear
Weapons Laboratory near San Francisco , California . Richard Berta,
the Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy, told
me "The Pentagon exists for the oil companies... and the nuclear
weapons labs exist for the Pentagon."
Depleted uranium was used beginning in 1991 for three reasons: To
test the radiobiological effects of 4th generation nuclear weapons,
which are still under development To blur and break down the
distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons To make it
easier to reintroduce nuclear weapons into the US military arsenal
Today, the US is number one in 4th generation nuclear weapons
research and development, followed by Japan and Germany tied for
number two, and Russia and other countries follow.
The Carlyle Group, a private massive equity firm, the 12th largest
defense business with an obscenely high profit margin, is a
business "arrangement" between the Bush and Bin Laden families,
wealthy Saudis, former British Prime Minister John Major, James
Baker III, Afsaneh Masheyekhi, Frank Carlucci, Colin Powell, other
former US Government administrators, and Madeleine Albright's
daughter. The Carlyle Group is the `gatekeeper' to the Saudi
investment community. It owns 70 percent of Lockheed Martin
Marietta, the largest military contractor in the US , and because
Carlyle is privately owned, has no scrutiny or accountability
whatsoever. A journalist who calls himself `a skunk at the garden
party' described investigating the Carlyle Group, he said `it's like
shadow boxing with a ghost'. The Group hires as lobbyists the best
known politicians from around the world, in order to influence the
politics of war, and privately profit from their previous public
policies. The conflict of interest is obvious: President George W.
Bush is creating wars as his father, former President George Bush,
is globally peddling weapons and "protection". Lockheed Martin
Marietta now owns Sandia Laboratories, a private contractor that
makes the trigger for nuclear weapons, with a Sandia laboratory
facility across the street from Los Alamos and Livermore National
Laboratories, where the nuclear bombs are made.
At the May 2003 University of California Regents meeting which I
attended, Admiral Linton Brooks was present and newly in charge of
the nuclear weapons programme under the Department of Energy.
Admiral Brooks informed California Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante and
the UC Regents that the management contract for the nuclear weapons
laboratories, held unchallenged by the University of California for
over 60 years, will be put up for competitive bid in 2005. The
favoured institution, with a faculty member on the `blue ribbon
committee' making the contract award, is the University of Texas .
This privatisation and management contract transfer of the US
nuclear weapons programme will put control of the US nuclear weapons
programme close to the Carlyle Group. The incestuous relationship
between the US government, private companies, and the Bush and Bin
Laden families in a way answers many of the lingering questions in
everyone's minds about many of the ill fated decisions and policies
that have been implemented.
Leuren Moret has worked at two US nuclear weapons laboratories as a
geoscientist. In 1991 she became a whistleblower at the Livermore
nuclear weapons lab, and since then has worked as an independent
citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the
world, and contributed to the UN subcommission investigating
depleted uranium. Her research on the environmental and public
health effects of low level radiation from atmospheric testing
fallout, nuclear power plants, and depleted uranium weaponry, is
available on the internet and at http://www.mindfully.org. In 2003,
she testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan
held in Japan , and presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons
Conference in Hamburg , Germany , and at the World Court of Women at
the World Social Forum in Bombay , India in January 2004. She is a
Contributing Editor to GLOBAL OUTLOOK, a City of Berkeley
Environmental Commissioner , and the Past President of the
Association for Women Geoscientists.
More info here:
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm
by : LEUREN MORET
Tuesday 31st August 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3123