Depleted Uranium – Far Worse Than 9/11
Depleted Uranium Dust - Public Health Disaster For The People Of Iraq
and Afghanistan
Global
Research, May 03, 2006
In 1979, depleted uranium (DU)
particles escaped from the National Lead Industries factory near Albany,
N.Y.,which was manufacturing DU weapons for the U.S military. The particles
traveled 26 miles and were discovered in a laboratory filter by Dr. Leonard Dietz,
a nuclear physicist. This discovery led to a shut down of the factory in 1980,
for releasing morethan 0.85 pounds of DU dust into the atmosphere every month,
and involved a cleanup of contaminated properties costing over 100 million
dollars.
Imagine a far worse scenario.
Terrorists acquire a million pounds of the deadly dust and scatter it in
populated areas throughout the U.S. Hundreds of children report symptoms. Many
acquire cancer and leukemia, suffering an early and painful death. Huge increases
in severe birth defects are reported. Oncologists are overwhelmed. Soccer
fields, sand lots and parks, traditional play areas for kids, are no longer
safe. People lose their most basic freedom, the ability to go outside and
safely breathe. Sounds worse than 9/11? Welcome to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dr. Jawad Al-Ali (55), director of the
Oncology Center at the largest hospital in Basra, Iraq stated, at a recent (
2003) conference in Japan:
“Two
strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The
first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and
cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 cancers – one in his stomach
and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney–he
had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in
families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by
cancer. Dr Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin
affected with cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members
suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer”.
“Children
in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher
absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones
and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be
diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system which can
develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is
now also common.”,
“We
were accused of spreading propaganda for Saddam before the war. When I have
gone to do talks I have had people accuse me of being pro-Saddam. Sometimes I
feel afraid to even talk. Regime people have been stealing my data and calling
it their own, and using it for their own agendas. The Kuwaitis banned me from
entering Kuwait – we were accused of being Saddam supporters.”
John Hanchette, a journalism professor
at St. Bonaventure University, and one of the founding editors of USA TODAY related the following to DU
researcher Leuren Moret. He stated that he had prepared news
breaking stories about the effects of DU on Gulf War soldiers and Iraqi
citizens, but that each time he was ready to publish, he received a phone call
from the Pentagon asking him not to print the story. He has since been
replaced as editor of USA TODAY.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health
Organization’s chief expert on radiation and health for 11 years and author of
an unpublished study has charged that his report ” on the cancer risk to
civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust ” was also
deliberately suppressed.
The information released by the U.S.
Dept. of Defense is not reliable, according to some sources even within the
military.
In 1997, while citing experiments, by
others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer
of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear
Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying,
“The
[US government’s] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of
incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.”
At that time Dr. Durakovic was a
colonel in the U.S. Army. He has since left the military, to found the
Uranium Medical Research Center, a privately funded organization with
headquarters in Canada.
PFC Stuart Grainger of 23 Army
Division, 34th Platoon. (Names and numbers have been changed) was diagnosed
with cancer several after returning from Iraq. Seven other men in the
Platoon also have malignancies.
Doug Rokke, U.S. Army contractor who
headed a clean-up of depleted uranium after the first Gulf War states:,
“Depleted
uranium is a crime against God and humanity.”
Rokke’s own crew, a hundred employees,
was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. He stated:
“When
we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy,”
After performing clean-up operations in
the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 members of his staff died,
and most others”including Rokke himself”developed serious health problems.
Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and
kidney problems.
“We
warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is
beyond comprehension.
Yet
the D.O.D still insists such ingestion is “not sufficient to make troops
seriously ill in most cases.”
Then why did it make the clean up crew
seriously or terminally ill in nearly all cases?
Marion Falk, a retired chemical
physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore
Lab, was asked if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a
dirty bomb.
“That’s
exactly what they are. They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”
According to Falk, more than 30 percent
of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles
one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on
impact. “The larger the bang” the greater the amount of DU that is
dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs,
nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the
“micron size” or smaller, he said.
When asked if the main purpose for
using it was for destroying things and killing people, Falk was more specific:
“I
would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”
When a DU round or bomb strikes a hard
target, most of its kinetic energy is converted to heat ” sufficient heat to
ignite the DU. From 40% to 70% of the DU is converted to extremely fine
dust particles of ceramic uranium oxide (primarily dioxide, though other
formulations also occur). Over 60% of these particles are smaller than 5
microns in diameter, about the same size as the cigarette ash particles in
cigarette smoke and therefore respirable.
Because conditions are so chaotic in
Iraq, the medical infrastructure has been greatly compromised. In terms
of both cancer and birth defects due to DU, only a small fraction of the cases
are being reported.
Doctors in southern Iraq are making
comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in WWII. They have numerous photos of infants born without brains,
with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without
spines, and the list of deformities goes on an on. Such birth defects
were extremely rare in Iraq prior to the large scale use of DU. Weapons. Now
they are commonplace. In hospitals across Iraq, the mothers are no longer
asking, “Doctor, is it a boy or girl?” but rather, “Doctor, is it
normal?” The photos are horrendous, they can be viewed on the
following website
Ross
B. Mirkarimi, a spokesman at The Arms Control Research Centre stated:
“Unborn
children of the region are being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity
of their DNA.”
Prior to her death from leukemia in
Sept. 2004, Nuha Al Radi , an accomplished Iraqi artist and author of the
“Baghdad Diaries” wrote:
“Everyone
seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or
friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not
know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots
of kids with leukemia.”
“The
depleted uranium left by the U.S. bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a
cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the
uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas.”
This excerpt in her diary was written
in 1993, after Gulf War I (Approximately 300 tons of DU ordinance, mostly in
desert areas) but before Operation Iraqi Freedom, (Est. 1,700 tons with
much more near major population centers). So, it’s 5-6 times worse now
than it was when she wrote than diary entry!! Estimates of the
percentage of D.U. which was ‘aerosolized’ into fine uranium oxide dust are
approximately 30-40%. That works out to over one million pounds of dust
scattered throughout Iraq.
As a special advisor to the World
Health Organization, the United Nations, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr.
Ahmad Hardan has documented the effects of DU in Iraq between 1991 and
2002.
“American
forces admit to using over 300 tons of DU weapons in 1991. The actual
figure is closer to 800. This has caused a health crisis that has
affected almost a third of a million people. As if that was not enough,
America went on and used 200 tons more in Bagdad alone during the recent
invasion.
I
don”t know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to document that.
“In
Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we
now know what to look for and the results are terrifying.”
By far the most devastating effect is
on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds
of preserved fetuses ” scarcely human in appearance. Iraq is now seeing babies
with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies,
with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like
Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads.
Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing
the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.
Dr. Hardan also states:
“I
arranged for a delegation from Japan’s Hiroshima Hospital to come and share
their expertise in the radiological diseases we
Are
likely to face over time. The delegation told me the Americans had objected and
they decided not to come. Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist
agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to
enter Iraq.”
Not only are we poisoning the people of
Iraq and Afghanistan, but we are making a concerted effort to keep out
specialists from other countries who can help. The U.S. Military doesn”t
want the rest of the world to find out what we have done.
Such relatively swift development of
cancers has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following
NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the US military invasion of
Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this
phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown
until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.
Just 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War now have medical problems.
Just 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War now have medical problems.
Although not reported in the mainstream
American press, a recent Tokyo tribunal, guided by the principles of International
Criminal Law and International Humanitarian Law,
found President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes. On March 14, 2004, Nao
Shimoyachi, reported in The
Japan Times that President Bush was found guilty “for attacking
civilians with indiscriminate weapons and other arms,”and the “tribunal also issued recommendations for
banning Depleted Uranium shells and other weapons that indiscriminately harm
people.” Although this was a “Citizen’s Court” having no legal
authority, the participants were sincere in their determination that
international laws have been violated and a war crimes conviction is warranted.
Troops involved in actual combat are
not the only servicemen reporting symptoms. Four soldiers from a New York Army
National Guard company serving in Iraq are among several members of the same
company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent
physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
“I got sick instantly in June,” said
Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. “My health kept going downhill
with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach.”
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC founder, and
nuclear medicine expert examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says
that four “almost certainly” inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American
shells manufactured with depleted uranium. Laboratory tests revealed traces of
two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.
If so, the men – Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt.
Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone – are the first confirmed
cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
The 442nd, made up for the most part of
New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg,
Rockland County. Dispatched to Iraq in Easter of 2003, the unit’s members had
been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police.
The entire company is due to return home later this month.
“These are amazing results, especially
since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle,”
said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing.
In a group of eight U.S. led Coalition
servicemen whose babies were born without eyes, seven are known to have been
directly exposed to DU dust. In a much group (250 soldiers) exposed during the
first Gulf war, 67% of the children conceived after the war had birth
defects.
Dr. Durakovic’s UMRC research
team also conducted a three-week field trip to Iraq in October of 2003. It
collected about 100 samples of substances such as soil, civilian urine and the
tissue from the corpses of Iraqi soldiers in 10 cities, including Baghdad,
Basra and Najaf. Durakovic said preliminary tests show that the air, soil and
water samples contained “hundreds to thousands of times” the normal levels of
radiation.
“This high level of contamination is
because much more depleted uranium was used this year than in (the Gulf War of)
1991,” Durakovic told The Japan Times.
“They are hampering efforts to prove
the connection between Depleted Uranium and the illness,” Durakovic said
“They
do not want to admit that they committed war crimes” by using weapons that kill
indiscriminately, which are banned under international law.”
(NOTE ABOUT DR. DURAKOVIC; First,
he was warned to stop his work, then he was fired from his position, then his
house was ransacked, and he has also reported receiving death threats.
Evidently the U.S. D.O.D is very keen on censoring DU whistle-blowers!)
Dr. Durakovic, UMRC research
associates Patricia Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in the
August 2002 issue of Military Medicine
Medical Journal. The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled
DU among Gulf War veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal
ionization mass spectrometry, which enabled them to easily distinguish between
natural uranium and DU. The study, which examined British, Canadian and
U.S. veterans, all suffering typical Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that,
nine years after the war, 14 of 27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU
also was found in the lung and bone of a deceased Gulf War veteran. That no
governmental study has been done on inhaled DU “amounts to a massive
malpractice,” Dietz said in an interview.
The Japanese began studying DU effects
in the southern Iraq in the summer of 2003. They had a Geiger counter which
they watched go off the scale on many occasions. During their visit,a local hospital was treating upwards of 600
children per day, many of which suffered symptoms of internal poisoning by
radiation. 600 children per
day? How many of these children will get cancer and suffer and early
and painful death?
“Ingested
DU particles can cause up to 1,000 times the damage of an X-ray”, said Mary
Olson, a nuclear waste specialist and biologist at the Nuclear Information and
Resource Service in Washington D.C.
It is this difference in particle size
as well as the dust’s crystalline structure that make the presence of DU dust
in the environment such an extreme hazard, and which differentiates its
properties from that of the natural uranium dust that is ubiquitous and to
which we all are exposed every day, which seldom reaches such a small size.
This point is being stressed, as comparing DU particles to much larger natural
ones is misleading.
The U.S. Military and its supporters
regularly quote a Rand Corp. Study which uses the natural uranium inhaled by
miners.
Particles smaller than 10 microns can
access the innermost recesses of lung tissue where they become permanently
lodged. Furthermore, if the substance is relatively insoluble, such as the
ceramic DU-oxide dust produced from burning DU, it will remain in place for
decades, dissolving very slowly into the bloodstream and lymphatic fluids
through the course of time. Studies have identified DU in the urine of Gulf War
veterans nine years after that conflict, testifying to the permanence of
ceramic DU-oxide in the lungs. Thus the effects are far different from
natural uranium dust, whose coarse particles are almost entirely excreted by
the body within 24 hours.
The military is aware of DU’s harmful
effects on the human genetic code. A 2001 study of DU’s effect on DNA done by
Dr. Alexandra C. Miller for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in
Bethesda, Md., indicates that DU’s chemical instability causes 1 million times
more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone.
Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles
are far more toxic than micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical
composition. British toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the
increased toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size.
For example, when mice were exposed to
virus-size particles of Teflon (0.13 microns) in a University of Rochester
study, there were no ill effects. But when mice were exposed to nano-particles
of Teflon for 15 minutes, nearly all the mice died within 4 hours.
“Exposure pathways for depleted uranium
can be through the skin, by inhalation, and ingestion,” writes Lauren
Moret, another DU researcher. “Nano-particles have high mobility and can easily
enter the body. Inhalation of nano-particles of depleted uranium is the most
hazardous exposure, because the particles pass through the lung-blood barrier
directly into the blood.
“When inhaled through the nose,
nano-particles can cross the olfactory bulb directly into the brain through the
blood brain barrier, where they migrate all through the brain,” she wrote.
“Many Gulf era soldiers exposed to depleted uranium have been diagnosed with
brain tumors, brain damage and impaired thought processes. Uranium can
interfere with the mitochondria, which provide energy for the nerve processes,
and transmittal of the nerve signal across synapses in the brain.
Based on dissolution and excretion rate
data, it is possible to approximate the amount of DU initially inhaled by these
veterans. For the handful of veterans studied, this amount averaged 0.34
milligrams. Knowing the specific activity (radiation rate) for DU allows one to
determine that the total radiation (alpha, beta and gamma) occurring from DU
and its radioactive decay products within their bodies comes to about 26
radiation events every second, or 800 million events each year. At .34
milligrams per dose, there are over 10 trillion doses floating around Iraq and
Afghanistan.
How many additional deaths are we
talking about? In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the UK Atomic Energy
Authority came up with estimates for the potential effects of the DU
contamination left by the conflict. It calculated that “this could cause “500,000 potential deaths”. This was “a
theoretical figure”, it stressed, that indicated “a significant problem”.
The AEA’s calculation was made in a
confidential memo to the privatized munitions company, Royal Ordnance, dated 30
April 1991. The high number of potential deaths was dismissed as “very far from
realistic” by a British defense minister, Lord Gilbert. “Since the rounds were
fired in the desert, many miles from the nearest village, it is highly unlikely
that the local population would have been exposed to any significant amount of
respirable oxide,” he said. These remarks were made prior to the more
recent invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, where DU munitions were used on
a larger scale in and near many of the most populated areas. If the
amount of DU ordinance used in the first Gulf War was sufficient to cause
500,000 potential deaths, (had it been used near the populated areas), then
what of the nearly six times that amount used in operation Iraqi Freedom, which
was used in and near the major towns and cities? Extrapolating the U.K.
AEA estimate with this amount gives a figure of potentially 3 million extra deaths
from inhaling DU dust in Iraq alone, not including Afghanistan. This is about
11% of Iraq’s total population of 27 million. Dan Bishop, Ph.d chemist for
IDUST feels that this estimate may be low, if the long life of DU dust is
considered. In Afghanistan, the concentration in some areas is greater
than Iraq.
What can an otherwise healthy person
expect when inhaling the deadly dust? Captain Terry Riordon was a member of the
Canadian Armed Forces serving in Gulf War I. He passed away in April 1999 at
age 45. Terry left Canada a very fit man who did cross-country skiing and ran
in marathons. On his return only two months later he could barely walk.
He returned to Canada in February 1991
with documented loss of motor control, chronic fatigue, respiratory difficulties,
chest pain, difficulty breathing, sleep problems, short-term memory loss,
testicle pain, body pains, aching bones, diarrhea, and depression. After his
death, depleted uranium contamination was discovered in his lungs and bones.
For eight years he suffered his innumerable ailments and struggled with the
military bureaucracy and the system to get proper diagnosis and
treatment. He had arranged, upon his death, to bequeath his body to the
UMRC. Through his gift, the UMRC was able to obtain conclusive evidence
that inhaling fine particles of depleted uranium dust completely destroyed his
heath. How many Terry Riordans are out there among the troops being
exposed, not to mention Iraqi and Afghan civilians?
Inhaling the dust will not kill large
numbers of Iraqi and Afghan civilians right away, any more than it did Captain
Riordan. Rather, what we will see is vast numbers of people who are chronically
and severely ill, having their life spans drastically shortened, many with
multiple cancers.
Melissa Sterry, another sick veteran,
served for six months at a supply base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92.
Part of her job with the National Guard’s Combat Equipment Company “A” was to
clean out tanks and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war,
preparing them for storage.
She said she swept out the armored
vehicles, cleaning up dust, sand and debris, sometimes being ordered to help
bury contaminated parts. In a telephone interview, she stated that after
researching depleted uranium she chose not to take the military’s test because
she could not trust the results. It is alarming that Melissa was
stationed in Kuwait, not Iraq. Cleaning out tanks with DU dust was enough
to make her ill.
In, 2003, the Christian Science Monitor
sent reporters to Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium.
Staff writer Scott Peterson saw children playing on top of a burnt-out tank
near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been
destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his
mask and protective clothing, he pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It
registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation. If the troops were on a
mission of mercy to bring democracy to Iraq, wouldn”t keeping children away
from such dangers be the top priority?
The laws of war prohibit the use of
weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor
can weapons be legally deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or
cause harm after the war concludes. It is no surprise that the Japanese
Court found President Bush guilty of war crimes.
Dr. Alim Yacoub of Basra University
conducted an epidemiological study into incidences of malignancies in children
under fifteen years old, in the Basra area (an area bombed with DU during the
first Gulf War). They found over the 1990 to 1999 period, there was a 242%
rise. That was before the recent invasion.
In Kosovo, similar spikes in cancer and
birth defects were noticed by numerous international experts, although the
quantity of DU weapons used was only a small fraction of what was used in Iraq.
FIELD
STUDY RESULTS FROM AFGHANISTAN
Verifiable statistics for Iraq will
remain elusive for some time, but widespread field studies in Afghanistan point
to the existence of a large scale public health disaster. In May of 2002, the
UMRC (Uranium Medical Research Center) sent a field team to interview and
examine residents and internally displaced people in Afghanistan. The
UMRC field team began by first identifying several hundred people suffering
from illnesses and medical conditions displaying clinical symptoms which are
considered to be characteristic of radiation exposure. To investigate the
possibility that the symptoms were due to radiation sickness, the UMRC team
collected urine specimens and soil samples, transporting them to an independent
research lab in England.
UMRC’s Field Team found Afghan
civilians with acute symptoms of radiation poisoning, along with chronic
symptoms of internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in
newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and smoke plumes
rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the
nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations
presented identical symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported
symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal area
of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle weakness, sleeping
difficulties, headaches, memory problems and disorientation.
Two additional scientific study teams
were sent to Afghanistan. The first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the
Jalalabad region. The second arrived four months later, broadening the study to
include the capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 million people.
The city itself contains the highest recorded number of fixed targets during
Operation Enduring Freedom. For the study’s purposes, the vicinity of three
major bomb sites were examined. It was predicted that signatures of depleted or
enriched uranium would be found in the urine and soil samples taken during the
research. The team was unprepared for the shock of its findings, which
indicated in both Jalalabad and Kabul, DU was causing the high levels of
illness. Tests taken from a number of Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations
400% to 2000% above that for normal populations, amounts which have not been
recorded in civilian studies before.
Those in Kabul who were directly
exposed to US-British precision bombing showed extreme signs of contamination,
consistent with uranium exposure. These included pains in joints, back/kidney
pain, muscle weakness, memory problems and confusion and disorientation. Those
exposed to the bombing report symptoms of flu-type illnesses, bleeding, runny
noses and blood-stained mucous. How many of these people will suffer a
painful and early death from cancer? Even the study team itself complained of
similar symptoms during their stay. Most of these symptoms last for days or
months.
In August of 2002, UMRC completed its
preliminary analysis of the results from Nangarhar. Without exception,
every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium
contamination. The specific results indicated an astoundingly high level of
contamination; concentrations were 100 to 400 times greater than those of the
Gulf War Veterans tested in 1999. A researcher reported. “We took both soil and biological samples,
and found considerable presence in urine samples of radioactivity; the heavy
concentration astonished us. They were beyond our wildest imagination.”
In the fall of 2002, the UMRC field
team went back to Afghanistan for a broader survey, and revealed a potentially
larger exposure than initially anticipated. Approximately 30% of those
interviewed in the affected areas displayed symptoms of radiation
sickness. New born babies were among those displaying symptoms, with
village elders reporting that over 25% of the infants were inexplicably
ill.
How widespread and extensive is the
exposure? A quote from the UMRC field report reads:
“The
UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident
with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are
ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms
consistent with internal contamination
by uranium.”
In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab
results indicated high concentrations of NON-DEPLETED URANIUM, with the
concentrations being much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was
used as a testing ground for a new generation of “bunker buster” bombs
containing high concentrations of other uranium alloys.
“A significant portion of the civilian
population”? It appears that by going after a handful of terrorists in
Afghanistan we have poisoned a huge number of innocent civilians, with a
disproportionate number of them being children.
The military has found depleted uranium
in the urine of some soldiers but contends it was not enough to make them
seriously ill in most cases. Critics have asked for more sensitive, more
expensive testing.
————————————
According to an October 2004
Dispatch from the Italian Military Health Observatory, a total of 109 Italian
soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium. A
spokesman at the Military Health Observatory, Domenico Leggiero, states “The total of 109 casualties exceeds the
total number of persons dying as a consequence of road accidents. Anyone
denying the significance of such data is purely acting out of ill faith, and
the truth is that our soldiers are dying out there due to a lack of adequate
protection against depleted uranium”. Members of
the Observatory have petitioned for an urgent hearing “in order to study
effective prevention and safeguard measures aimed at reducing the death-toll
amongst our serving soldiers”.
There were only 3,000 Italian soldiers
sent to Iraq, and they were there for a short time. The number of 109
represents about 3.6% of the total. If the same percentage of Iraqis get
a similar exposure, that would amount to 936,000. As Iraqis are
permanently living in the same contaminated environment, their percentage will
be higher.
The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with
UMRC’s ability to have its studies published by managing, a progressive and
persistent misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the
use of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC’s scientific
findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC’s scientific staff, physicians and
laboratories. UMRC is the first independent research organization to find
Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US, UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and
has subsequently, following Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in
the water, soils and atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated
by Iraqi civilians. Yet the first thing that comes up on Internet searches are
these supposed “studies repeatedly showing DU to be harmless.” The
technique is to approach the story as a debate between government and
independent experts in which public interest is stimulated by polarizing the
issues rather than telling the scientific and medical truth. The issues are systematically
confused and misinformed by government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO, UNEP,
IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the weapons developers
and manufacturers).
Dr. Yuko Fujita, an assistant professor
at Keio University, Japan who examined the effects of radioactivity in Iraq
from May to June, 2003, said : “I doubt that Iraq is fabricating data
because in fact there are many children suffering from leukemia in hospitals,”
Fujita said. “As a result of the Iraq war, the situation will be desperate in
some five to 10 years.”
The March 14, 2004 Tokyo
Citizen’s Tribunal that “convicted” President Bush gave the following summation
regarding DU weapons: (This court was a citizen’s court with no binding legal
authority)
1. Their use has indiscriminate
effects;
2. Their use is out of
proportion with the pursuit of military objectives;
3. Their use adversely
affects the environment in a widespread, long term and severe manner;
4. Their use causes
superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.
Two years ago, President Bush withdrew
the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court’s statute,
which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House
actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely.
It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American
nationals.
CONCLUSIONS:
If terrorists succeeded in spreading
something throughout the U.S. that ended up causing hundreds of thousands of
cancer cases and birth defects over a period of many years, they would be
guilty of a crime against humanity that far surpasses the Sept. 11th attacks in
scope and severity. Although not deliberate, with our military campaigns in
Iraq and Afghanistan, we have done just that. If the physical environment
is so unsafe and unhealthy that one cannot safely breath, then the outer
trappings of democracy have little meaning. At least under Saddam, the Iraqi
people could stay healthy and conceive normal children. Few Americans are aware
that in getting rid of Saddam, we left something much worse in his place.
The
original source of this article is Vital Truths and Information
Clearing House
Copyright ©
Doug Westerman,
Vital Truths and Information
Clearing House, 2006
- See more
at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/depleted-uranium-far-worse-than-9-11/2374#sthash.LW6fS89d.dpuf
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