Veterans’ Rare Cancers Raise Fears of Toxic Battlefields
WASHINGTON - In the wake of an Iraqi official last month blaming America’s use of depleted uranium munitions in its 2003 “Shock and Awe” campaign for a surge in cancer there, the Defense Department is facing an October deadline for providing a comprehensive report to Congress on the health effects of such weapons.
The report is required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, which President Bush signed into law last year.
The request for the study is an outgrowth of claims by Iraq war veterans that exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic substances there has negatively affected their health and that, therefore, their illnesses should be recognized as war-related and the treatment covered by the Veterans Administration.
Currently, the State Department’s Web site says fears about adverse health effects of depleted uranium, or DU, are “unwarranted,” and it lists worries about DU under a section called “identifying misinformation.”
The site says the American military uses the material in ammunition “to take advantage of its unsurpassed ability to penetrate armored vehicles,” and it cites four separate studies - by NATO, the Rand Corporation, the European Commission, and the World Health Organization - that found no evidence of adverse health effects from depleted uranium.
Even so, worries persist. According to Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat of Washington who pushed for the report from the Pentagon, “There are countless stories of mysterious illnesses, higher rates of serious illnesses, and even birth defects. We do not know what role, if any, DU plays in the medical tragedies in Iraq, but we must find out.”
Modern wars have produced a number of specific medical complaints, ranging from “Gulf War Syndrome” - a group of immune disorders and cancers whose connection to service in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict is being studied - to the long-term effects of a defoliant, Agent Orange, for which some Vietnam veterans obtained a settlement in 1984.
While their causes can’t be pinpointed definitively, some soldiers who have avoided being killed or wounded in the current Iraq conflict are returning to America to find they have debilitating illnesses or cancers that they suspect are related to battlefield conditions, whether it is the depleted uranium used in projectiles, the remains of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, or the smoke from burning oil wells.
An Army chaplain, Captain Fran Stuart of the 101st Airborne was based in Mosul, Iraq, where “Shock and Awe” bombings occurred, for a year beginning in March 2003. In March 2006, the 40-year-old chaplain - who is this reporter’s sister - was diagnosed with a rare condition only seen in teenage girls: Stage IV dysgerminoma, an ovarian germ cell cancer. She was flown from Germany to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where doctors removed a volleyball-sized tumor from her abdomen and she faced daily battles with the side effects of an aggressive chemotherapy regimen - 35 rounds to date.
“My body isn’t mine anymore. I can feel the other tumors inside of me. I look like a monster,” Captain Stuart said last May as patches of her strawberry blond hair fell out.
A Bronze Star-winning Vietnam Veteran and reservist, Army Sergeant First Class James Lauderdale Jr. of Tuscon, Ariz., was activated to serve in Iraq in January 2005 and was deployed to Camps Doha and Arijhan in Kuwait, where oil refineries released clouds of brown smoke from their stacks.
“I knew what the pollutants in the air meant, and what I would be exposed to - as well as the brown water I bathed and washed my clothes in,” he told a reporter.
In March 2005, Lauderdale developed a sore throat and began having difficulty sleeping on his right side because his jaw hurt. After seeing two medics, one prescribed a root canal, but rather than alleviating the pain, it only worsened, he said.
At the end of the month, Lauderdale saw a dentist in Kuwait City, who lifted his tongue and found a lesion. Biopsy results came back as Stage II squamous cell cancer of the mouth floor and tongue.
On April 1, 2005, Lauderdale was sent to Walter Reed, where a doctor said, “The sergeant is in a unique group. We don’t know what would stimulate him to have this type of cancer since he isn’t a smoker.” Another doctor added, “I saw a 21-year-old here who just came back from Iraq with the same type of cancer.”
When his family asked if the cause could have been something Lauderdale was exposed to in Kuwait - the air pollutants, contaminated brown water, or depleted uranium, for which he was never tested - the doctors said they couldn’t be certain of the cause, family members said.
By June 2006, the cancer had spread to his neck and jaw, lungs, ribs, and spinal column, and Lauderdale had undergone five surgeries, including a tongue reconstruction, right and left radical neck resections and a tracheotomy, two rounds of chemo, and 39 rounds of radiation. Within a month, “hundreds and thousands of lesions appeared, canvassing the entire part of his upper body,” his wife of 34 years, Dixie Lauderdale, said. The doctors were dumbfounded by how aggressive his cancer was, she added.
After a valiant fight, Lauderdale, 59, died at Walter Reed on July 14, 2006. His final wish was to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
In April 2005, Army Sergeant Charles Lewis, who saw combat in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, was diagnosed with Stage II testicular cancer.
“There was no family history. We asked the doctors if being in Iraq had anything to do with it, but most weren’t sure,” he said. “We had been told to contact the VA to see if there were any other soldiers returning with cancer, but they would not give us any information.
“Four different people we know and who have been in combat with me have either had tumors removed or have been tested for cancer,” Sergeant Lewis continued. “So we have often questioned if Iraq or vaccinations could have played a part in this cancer.”
Army Sergeant First Class Charles Frenzel has served in the military for more than 30 years; during the last four years, he has been stationed at Forts Jackson and Lee in America and at Camp Caldwell in Iraq. While he was on assignment in Iraq in October 2005, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and evacuated to Walter Reed, where an 8.5-by-4.5-inch nonmalignant meningioma was removed.
Asked what he thought had caused his tumor, Sergeant Frenzel offered several possibilities. “I think Saddam had a lot more advanced chemical programs than what was originally suspected,” he said. “I was exposed to daily oil smog. Iraq burns straight nonprocessed crude oil, and the smog was horrific. The water was contaminated, and we were bathing and washing our clothes in it.”
In June 2006, while undergoing a chemo treatment on Ward 65 at Walter Reed, Captain Stuart met Army Staff Sergeant Frank Valentin of the Transportation Battalion, a 34-year-old Brooklyn native who had been based at Camp Spearhead in the port of Kuwait City on the Iraq-Kuwait border for two years.
Situated amid two oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine factory, and a sulfuric acid factory, Sergeant Valentin and other soldiers who assisted at the camp knew immediately that their bouts of burning eyes, hot, red facial skin, and unrelentingly runny noses were caused by a cesspool of noxious fumes, he said.
The soldiers tried complaining, Sergeant Valentin said, “but nobody wanted to hear it - we just stayed quiet. They just wanted us to do our job.”
Sergeant Valentin was diagnosed with hemorrhoids eight times and sent back to work, but when the pain and discomfort did not abate, he instinctively knew something was wrong, he said. Finally, a reservist who was an oncologist diagnosed Sergeant Valentin with colon cancer.
The reservist oncologist told him that there were six other soldiers with newly found cancers in his unit, Sergeant Valentin said. The sergeant said he personally knew of two that had been diagnosed with cancer: one with leukemia and one with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And a third had had a nonmalignant brain tumor.
“Between the chemicals in the air overseas, the shots they give you, and not eating well or sleeping more than four hours a day … your body just isn’t strong enough to fight anything off.
“Right now, it’s cancer, cancer, cancer. A lot of these kids, 21 years old, are coming back with cancer. How did they get it? How did it happen to me when I was healthy?” he asked.
In 2005, Sergeant Valentin underwent surgery at Walter Reed. It was during that surgery that the doctors discovered the cancer had advanced. He woke to find himself with a colostomy bag and prognosis of incurable colon and lung cancer.
In contrast to soldiers who have lost limbs to explosive devices in Iraq, who qualify for Traumatic Servicemembers Group Life Insurance injury benefits of up to $100,000, “people like us don’t get benefits,” Sergeant Valentin said.
“Because cancer is a disease and not a war wound, we don’t qualify. No one even knows we’re on the oncology ward. The press, celebrities, and politicians go to the third floor when they want publicity shots with the amputee soldiers. But what about the seventh floor, Ward 71, with soldiers that are coming back with cancer?” he asked.
On July 23, Iraq’s environment minister blamed “at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing” with depleted uranium weapons for about 140,000 cases of cancer there and for between 7,000 and 8,000 new cases each year.
A U.N. Environment Program report states that depleted uranium poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground. However, no major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq, the report added.
© 2007 The New York Sun
BURNING ‘DEPLETED’ URANIUM: AN ENDLESS MEDICAL DISASTER
Issues on the Use and Effects of Depleted Uranium Weapons
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/ud_main.html
================================================
The leaders of the so called “department of defense” cannot be trusted - they are some of the biggest terrorists on the globe, in terms of numbers of human beings who they’ve had killed, maimed, and horrified. ALL the money that we Americans spend on so called “defense” is used for WRONG human relations (for F’ing up our karma) and to make insanely greedy billionaires even ‘richer’.
To learn about the effects of DU, see:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/ud_main.html
Some gruesome photographs of the horrific effects of DU:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html
The USA’s so called department of defense should be shut down forever. Terrorizers of the people who are killers, liars, and servants of the ruling elite run the show there and have been doing so for a long time.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/PentagonPoison.html#Overview
Here are just two, of more than one million, three hundred thousand articles on the web about the subject of Depleted uranium and how the use of DU is going to eventually and fairly soon, kill every living thing on this planet.
If you saw a madman running towards your house carrying a shotgun, and you knew he was coming to kill you and your entire family, would you do anyting at all about it?
Of course you would.
Our government is using DU in the Mid-East and here in the states at many military bases firing ranges. The trillions of deadly uranium 238 isotopes fill the air, where the winds blow the microscopic poison all over the country. Inhaling only one of the microscopic specks of poison will insure you or a member of your family will suffer from lung cancer.__ Just one speck.
Using DU for anything is the same as a madman coming to kick your door down and blow your brains out with twelve gage 00 buckshot. Do we do anything about using DU for weapons of war?
Of course not. We can’t see invisible, microscopic specks of poison floating in the air, or getting into our drinking water, a poison that will be deadly for billions of years,__ laying in wait to kill any and every living thing,___ even microbes.
Are we, the public going to do anything about it? Probably not, the vast majority of humans don’t react to danger, until we are personally hit in the face, or until a bridge falls, or a sports hero is caught using steroids. Guess one has to set their priorities.
Read these and see what you think about DU use.
www.protecthawaii.ws/page2.html
http://usinfo.stategov/media/archives/2006/jan/12-623470.html
In Govspeak: Remember, it is all in your mind, just like Agent Orange and Agent Purple, and any other horror this government can come up with in the name of killing people or landscapes or environments.
As a Nuclear Veteran, (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll, 1956) I mark every August 6th and 9th with sorrow. I have seen the horror of nuclear weapons at first hand. I am, so far, a survivor, but have watched many die from cancers, have corresponded with many whose children have been born with birth defects, or stillborn.
My heart goes out to the Marshal Islands People whose lives are still devastated by the Castle-Bravo test in 1954 at Bikini.
The Nuclear Dragon never goes away. We can only hope to keep him chained up, far from humanity. DU is just the malevolent breath of the dragon, slowly poisoning the lives of the people it touches, perhaps unto generations.
To keep this “Fair and Balanced,” remember, DU is a very profitable use of nuclear waste by the war munitions industry.
Gomenasai, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the very least it should have ended there. It need not have ever happened.
libertas Fugit–Took the words out of my mouth except to add “Gulf War Syndrome” which I am willing to bet when all is said and done will be nothing more or less than the DU Stormin’Norman & Co ordered used on the Iraqis and whose fire enabled dust was later inhaled by the Americans and other coalition troops.
I saw an article explaining that increasingly large numbers of troops are making semen deposits at sperm bnks in order to lower the risk of birth defects in their eventual off spring.
The only problem with that strategy is that it still does not decontaminate either the returning personnel or their equipment which is then free to spread that toxic stuff all around otherwise unexposed people.
“DU is just the malevolent breath of the dragon”
Beautiful and horribly true
Poet: The Gulf war “syndrome” IS radiation poisoning. Of the 600,000 ground troops who served in the first Gulf war, as of last year, more than 400,000 are permanently disabled or dead. Those are still young people.
Two thirds of the children born to them have serious medical problems, and or birth defects, such as brain damage, missing arms, legs, eyes, sex organs etc.
We don’t have complete or accurate medical data of those who served in the Second Gulf war as yet and the symptos of radiation poisoning usually take from three to five years to surface. Inhaling DU will insure a long slow death. Any who have been to Iraq, are dead men and women walking, depending upon the dose, it may take up to thirty years before their funeral.
Background radiation readings for DU should be zero. The readings in Baghdad are near 2,000. It is impossible to clean up microscopic dust, we have used thousands of TONS of it there and a like amount here in this country, testing it on military firing and bombing ranges. More than 30 other counties now use DU, as Ibertas noted, selling DU for weapons is very profitable.
None of what I write about DU is my opinion, I relate what I believe the doctors and scientists, who have thoroughly studied the subject say and write concerning DU use.
This was written in February, 2003 Reprinted by permission
Depleted Uranium
by
Steve Osborn
Depleted Uranium, the new panacea
The Arms Maker’s choice with a half-life of only 4.5 billion years.
Workers in DU must wear exposure suits and respirators
Just a creative use of atomic leftovers.
Dense, hard, it punches through armor like tissue,
Vaporizes and fragments into dust and tiny chunks.
Dust to be breathed and chunks to be imbedded
As shrapnel or become buried in earth.
Battle tested in Desert Storm and Kosovo,
Now everyone is making them, and selling them,
To armies around the globe, eager for the latest thing.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi desert and Kosovo are laden with tons.
Pay no attention to the sick and the dying.
The Government says it is anything but DU.
Agent Orange was all in the mind, too.
Birth defects and cancer are coincidence in Govspeak.
A hundred or a thousand years from now,
When Hussein and Imperial America are long forgotten,
Or are but spooky tales told around the campfire,
As a new civilization tries to grow.
Peasants, trying to coax food from the ground will stir up clouds of dust.
They, their children and their animals will slowly sicken and die,
And they will know not why.
Just collateral damage from a weapon long ago.
19 February 2003
I think of Pete Seeger’s “Where have all the Flowers Gone?”
“When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?”
“to take advantage of its unsurpassed ability to penetrate armored vehicles,”
I wasn’t aware that the Iraqis had armored vehicles.
If DU is a non-threat, let’s see Tony Snow and Robert Gates and Rumsfeld, Cheney, juggling some in their hands.
Glad to see the Defense Department is studying this question. I was worried that the study might not be objective, but who is more objective than the war department about a critical tactical weapon in its arsenal?
God forbid we would ask a group of independent scientists to study it. This reminds me of the incident in Israel of an American crushed by an Israeli tank a few years ago. Don’t worry, we were told, the incident is being investigated by the Israeli Defense Forces. Then, surprise, they found no wrongdoing.
Or, the shooting of an Italian journalist at a checkpoint. Don’t worry, Italy, the Defense Department will investigate itself and you can be completely reassured when they tell you DoD made no error.
On another note, cigarettes are also not harmful, and the planet is going through a normal cycle of warming.
“The site says the American military uses the material in ammunition “to take advantage of its unsurpassed ability to penetrate armored vehicles”
since when are the Iraqi insurgents using armour vehicles?
Idavin, Canuckchuck: They had plenty of them in the First Gulf War and plenty left for the second. We also now use DU in rifle and machine gun bullets. When the bullets, bombs or shells hit a target, the realatively safe, solid uranium projectiles burn. The DU then becomes deadly smoke and dust. It remains deadly for billions of years and nothing destroys it. Just one microscopic, invisible to the naked eye speck of DU in your body,__ you are dead. There are trillions of specks in the air now,___ everyplace on our planet. Got children,___ love them?
“… what about the seventh floor, Ward 71, with soldiers that are coming back with cancer?”
Heartbreaking.
And you think you’re eating organic food? Think again. How much of this DU has seeped into rivers that take it out to the ocean that end up in the fish you eat?
How much of the remains of each nuclear ‘experiment’ ends up in your air, your water, your “organic” food. We’ve already breathed the ‘just one speck’ that KEM PATRICK talks about. And we’ve eaten it and drunk it, too. Multiple times.
If DU scares you, just go to HAARP.net and see what military testing in years of peacetime has done to the environment.
We MUST stop this madness. We MUST stop ALL military activities - current wars AND experiments for future ones. Let’s try a different experiment. Let’s kill each other with kindness, care, and compassion.
Write to your congresspeople. Stop funding the killing machine.
I heard this all before, Agent Orange wasn’t something they needed to worry about either…
Iraq = Vietnam War II
One site out of many is http://www.downwinders.org They/ve been working on this since the Nevada tests. You want cancer statistics? As they say, “We’re all downwinders, now.”
Since Iraqis don’t have armored vehicles, maybe they use the shells on Iraqi homes and buildings like schools and hospitals. Why waste a perfectly good DU shell on a Toyota?
KEM
I expected the first comment on this DU article to be yours! Well glad to see you were right behind with the 2nd comment. People need to know the truth about radioactive substances such as Depleted Uranium. The ultrafine particles produced in the explosion of munitions find their way into the lungs of anyone in the area of the blast, and the fine dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years is picked up by the wind and deposited far away potentially exposing other populations for generations to come.
Interestingly, if it is so safe, why did aircraft companies such as Boeing phase out the use of DU as counterweights in their aircraft in the 1980s, opting for more expensive Tungsten alloy instead?
Isn’t the use of DU (a WMD) on a nation that was accused of having WMD’s where none existed…….well isn’t that what is referred to as a war crime?
The neocons have breathed new life into the nuclear industry and are throwing boatloads of taxpayer money at it.
More uranium mining, processing, nuclear power plant construction, nuclear waste transporatation and disposal are zealously supported as a solution to climate change by most 2008 presidential hopefuls and many other politicians.
This is slightly off topic, but my wife just came in raging over this morning’s headlines that the Pentagon has “lost” a shipment of 190,000 small arms, shipped to Iraq.
As Common Dreams has run several articles referring to the fact that we are supplying insurgents through third parties to stimulate the civil war (with Americans as collateral damage) I find it interesting that they could lose a shipment of that size, but not surprising. I wonder if there is any DU ammo in the shipment? (There, back on topic)
Perhaps der Bush should confiscate the Pentagon’s assets. God, the dry rot runs deep.
The missing weapons is an article posted here today on Common Dreams.
The DOD’s claim as to DU’s harmlessness directly contradict their own U.S. Army documents!
This document here:
www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf
prescribes all kids of precuationary measures includung full MOPP equipment, like this:
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/mopp/fig1.htm
for anyone working around or operating a vehicle that was hit with DU rounds, or has damaged DU armor - even in combat situations.
So, the DOD PR people aren’t even very skillful liars!
There is no gas mask filter made that can trap microscopic DU and prevent it from entering the lungs. One of the Pentagoon hand books for our troops states: If in the vicinity where a DU shell was expended, (do not inhale.)___ That’ll work.
Please read those website articles listed in prior comments posted. It is not good.
For anyone interested on our thoughts on this matter (Kem Patrick aka Evelyn Smith, Siouxrose, LindaRN, and others) go to the Common Dreams archive and pull up any article dealing with DU or nuclear power over the past several months. Kem (Evelyn) and I have had a running battle going on with a blogger Billy_4d, a completre advocate of anything nuclear.
After awhile we reesolved he must have been some sort of right wing ‘plant’, trying their usual game of misinformation, disinformation, and flat out lies in an attempt to obfuscate the deleterious effects of DU usage and/or the potentially disasterous effects of expanding the number of nuclear power generating plants.
As far as this goes: “….four separate studies - by NATO, the Rand Corporation, the European Commission, and the World Health Organization - that found no evidence of adverse health effects from depleted uranium.”
I think you will find ample evidence these organizations have a stake in seeing the neo-CON agenda go foward so are they to be trusted? Follow the money!!!
As a bit of information that helps put two and two together it should be noted that the Atomic bomb, depleted uranium, and Agent Orange were all products of the WWII Manhattan Project. Real nice guys those scientists, weren’t they? They gave the world gifts that just keep on giving, and giving, and giving. The only thing they take in return is our lives.
I have been reading, studying, & writing regarding depleted uranium for about several years now, and am convinced it has the potential to eventually turn the Earth into a dead piece of rock, devoid of life forms, and drifting through the void of space for eternity. Answer yourselves this question. Has BushCo given you any reason to believe they wouldn’t lie to you on this matter, also…and try to cover it up as well?
One of PNAC’s stated goals is to reduce world population by about two billion people. Can you think of a better way to de-populate the entire Middle-East than through the use of war as an excuse to shoot off depleted uranium, causing the DNA to change and dwindle the population. I can just picture the greedy oil barons rubbing their chubby hands together with glee, can’t you?
More to come on this thread, right Kem? Here’s a link to look at:
http://www.cadu.org.uk/intro.htm
HI there Vanishing Earth.
The use of DU in weapons is a violation of five of the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions. It’s use IS a flagrant disregard of the Geneva Conventions and a serious war crime. Actually, DU is the final word for the term, “weapons of mass destructon”.
Many of the rescue workers who were at the site of the World Trade Center and are now suffering from serious medical problems, are likely suffering from radiation posioning. Some have been treated in Cuba, for free BTW, they could not get treatment here in the U.S.
(Don’t you just love it!)
The two aircraft which struck the Twin towers had DU counter-weights and those weights burned for several days, gas masks would not have helped.
Actually, I believe it is also absorded, so not breathing, and held long enough, might be the cure!
Am I ever glad to see another swell person show up here. Paul M. Smith, who is a retarded genius, got me started on my DU kick. I wrote a novel which related the dangers of plutonium and I didn’t know about DU until recently.
Plutonium is perhaps deadlier than DU, but most of that poison is strictly controlled. There are only a thousand tons or so of plutonium missing, presumed to be LOST in the industrial process. Please read these web sites offered by the bloggers, and pass the word. Of course, no one wishes to hear it. Take Care all.
P/S, Paul is a genius, he won’t say it though.
Time4peace: What!!!??? No!!! There is NO cure and don’t think that.
Read the articles in the web sites I put on the second comment here. In solid form, the radiaton from DU will not penetrate human skin. When it is inthe isotope form and in the lungs, the radiation kills human cels and causes cancers and alters DNA.
The altered DNA can also be passed onto a fetus.
RE: libertas fugit August 6th, 2007 3:52 pm
“This is slightly off topic, but my wife just came in raging over this morning’s headlines that the Pentagon has “lost” a shipment of 190,000 small arms, shipped to Iraq.”
Actually, it’s not as off-topic as you might imagine, libertas, since these issues are related. The Pentagon has a history of ‘losing’ war materials. In fact, the day before 911 (Sept 10, 2001 to be exact), an article came out stating the Pentagon couldn’t account for $2.3 Trillion (not typo, that’s with a ‘T’) in military supplies. Bang!!! 911 happens the very next day and attention is distracted. Convenient timing, wouldn’t you say?
The events of 911 give BushCo the excuse to go to the Middle-East and shoot DU all over the place, and uncovering the ‘missing’ $2.3 Trillion could be the real cause of 911. Even since then the Pentagon has not had a full & complete audit.
Did those 190,000 weapons really go to the middle east, or were they ordered, paid for with taxpayer dollars, not delivered at all, and someone in the MIC (military industrial complex), (after bribes & pay-offs of course) just pocket the money?
Depleted Uranium is nulcear waste from power plants that the military discovered could be used as armor piercing tips for munitions. Problem is that when they penetrate an object it gioves off a small cloud of radioactive dust. For a single bullet fired the amount is really nothing to be concerned about anywhere. The problem is that on a normal battlefield millions of rounds are fired off, sometimes billions. Soldiers from the first Gulf War experienced this in the form of Gulf War Syndrome. A nice phrase created to distract us from the reality of it all. I say we take Cheney and drop him in a cooling tank at 3 mile Island for a weeks free vacation. He’d probably screw up the water somehow. Or send the First family a nice set of dishes made of DU with pictures of the countries they have bombed and raped. Rob a bank - do 20 years - grow marijuana - do 20 years - steal a pension from thousands of taxpayers - get a Presidential Appointment or Pardon or whatever is necessary to keep you in the game. Send men and women to war based on a pack of lies and half truths - make millions for you and your friends. Pretending you have done nothing wrong - priceless.
Welcome to the United States of Criminals.
Thanks, Kem, you’re flattery is too kind. Actually I prefer to think of it like Einstein stated, “Genius is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration”.
RE: time4peace August 6th, 2007 4:58 pm
“Actually, I believe it is also absorded…(I assume you meant absorbed)”
You can safely handle a chunk of DU for awhile (I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it too long, though). It burns when flying in a projectile, and vaporizes into an airborne areosol particulant upon striking something. It invades the body as a piece of flak or through the lungs, works its way through the body to other organs, or is passed out through waste products of urine & feces.
The smaller the particle the more difficult it is to dislodge. Through semen it can be tranferred from a returning male soldier to his female partner, polluting her also. I’m not sure of the implications of transferring it orally by means of kissing or oral sex, but it is important to remember all indications are (at the moment anyway) it can be considered innocuous outside of the body. If anyone finds any information to the contrary please post it.
This doesn’t mean, however, that it cannot wreak havoc on lesser life forms in a solid state, and it is claimed capable of killing organisms down to a microbial level. They don’t even have lungs, so I would suspect there are other means of transfer.
Here’s a scary thought. Suppose it alters the DNA of some virus we have no defense for.
DU and DEATH… Ya THINK??
(duh!)
See this important video on the matter:
http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html
Sorry folks but the people who are getting sick from DU are all volunteers, excpet for the Iraquis, Afghans and now the Somlais yemenis and Phillipinos.
the 1990’s was not the world of 1945 through 1950’s when dumb and dumber were sefving in the military and believed radiation was good for you and that your government would never lie to you either and the effects of DU were known, as was the disorder of Delayed etc etc before the majority of these military folks even joined.
That the military had let die thousands of viet era men and let their children be born deforemd or denied medical help to not just a few hundred thousands but over a million claims was also known.
Our pilots for over 16 years have lived the good life of no danger from ground forces and enjoyed the killing fields in Iraq and Afghanasitan and if by chance they have killed or injured many hundreds of thousasnds of their own tropops well lets chalk it up to friendly fire.
Our artillary and tank crews got a blast out of blowing up empty tanks rtrucks and armored personell carriers the Iraqui Army parked conveniently alongside roads empty of course instead of fighting US military and every dead Irtaqui from one of theose shells was cheered on its way and when it hit.
No I shed my tears for the people not of our United States and those in Iraq who had plead to the white world of Eurocentircs for the over 500.000 deths of children under age of 8 and no American other than a traitor or unpattiotic person was mentioning.
I also will shed tears for the children born with defects of those munitons here in states but with no more emotion greater than those innocnets in Iraq and elsewhere in world who have and are being born daily form USA actions.
DU was noted at very beginning fo Balkans by all of Euro countires and later denied under US pressure.
To think that anyone can vote for the people in power Demcoratic and Republican partys and all their corproate lobbyist and ass kissing mebers in chrucehes and offcie buildings within the huge bureaucracys they lead; without thinking of the horrendous slaughter they have unleashed not just upon foreign but upon their own people , has to be either saidism unreigned or group insanity.
Paul,
Agent Orange came from the Manhattan Project??? What is your reference for this claim?
In your list of organizations and governments conspiring to hide the ‘truth’ of widespead DU poisoning, you may want to include the German and Netherland governments who found no evidence of uranium poisoning in the Balkans. (This was at a time when the German government was adamantly antinuclear.)
iowarish:
Natural seawater contains uranium at several parts per million. Depleted uranium is no more hazardous than natural uranium if dissolved in water (actually it it less because the amount of radioactivity is lower).
Kem:
No gas mask can stop uranium dust? A gas mask might not stop it but a good dust mask will.
Truth should not be a victim of political passion.
http://www.ericblumrich.com/pl_lo.html
That’s an old one, but a good one..very powerful statement on DU….
Maybe Uranium 238 (depleted Uranium) can enter the skin after it disintegrates into another radioactive element. DU gives off alpha particles, a very energetic Helium 3 atom. But it then becomes a different radioactive element which may give off the more deadly beta particle (a very energetic electron). this one, in turn gives off another particle for maybe 5 to 7 different elements until it finally becomes a stable particle, namely Lead. And I am none too keen on lead, either.
Think about this, folks: Hitler only killed about 6 - 12 million. Bush/Cheney/Millitary-Industrial complex could wipe out 6 billion.
When 2/3s of the first Gulf war vets are either sick or dead after only serving 100 days in Iraq, what are the chances of survival for all those service people with multiple and very lengthy tours of duty in Iraq today?
“Asked what he thought had caused his tumor, Sergeant Frenzel offered several possibilities. “I think Saddam had a lot more advanced chemical programs than what was originally suspected,” he said. “I was exposed to daily oil smog. Iraq burns straight nonprocessed crude oil, and the smog was horrific. The water was contaminated, and we were bathing and washing our clothes in it.””
Note: “The water was contaminated, and we were bathing and washing our clothes in it.”
Haven’t we spent untold $$Billions on no-bid contractors who were and are supposed to take care of our military? Why was our military bathing in contaminated water? Where the hell was Halliburton and the other contractors this Executive Branch hired to take care of our military?
When are the depleted rods pulled from the chambers?
When they decrease output to below 50% of time when first inserted.
This is not depleted exposure levels but by energy levels needed to produce.
In almost 15% of cases of this reprocessed uranium the amount of radiation coming out front end is at level of that at back end, that 15% is extremely hazardous to life and limb and it is not carted away but coninues on in the process, spread out in hopes it further delutes by percentage of bad to good material.
Same as they did with autos who polluted by parts per million so how did they claen it up they just added more air to knock down the harmfull per cent.
DU and Uranium is not oxides fronm an auto exhaust.
Instead fo just listening to some on hwo harmfull this is go to soem of the sites listed and their links and even e-mail the authors.
Remeber the US government Security Intelligence and Penatgon under Executive ordrs, along with your GOP neocon or religous wahckos partys hires bloggers for disinformation.
I went through this after the Nam with the same denying bureaucrrats and sycophant politcal droolers as we have today over Agent Orange and later all they did was change color, to purple, and then use it in Mexico, Latina America, and along railroad tracks plus rural highways in the Good OL US of A.
They wouldn’t kill you deliberately just plead they did it ignorantly is all.
Words escape me. I’m going out to the whipping tree. Seems to be all the fuck anybody can do about it. Isn’t that right Congress?
Anyone out there with exposure to high levels of lead contaminants should seek out Doctors who use CHELATION THERAPY. This therapy was used many years ago for people working in the lead and battery and paint industries; and children who ate lead paint chips from the window sills, etc. of old homes were also treated with chelation to rid their bodies of the deadly lead.
It worked then, and it works now! Your insurance company will not cover this therapy but the cost is minimal and could save you from suffering many years of acute illness.
Psst. As for missing weapons who knows but as for supplying others with thrid world munitions it is a common practice and even making up story about AK’s in Nicaragua they haad bought from Yugoslavia under Regan.
Aslo the weapons used to day by Ethiopeia were bothg tby U S permission, though illegal under Un charters and US was from N. Korea and Iran.
The Islamics got their weapons from same sources that we supplied in balkans to cause civil unrest.
We supplied the Aghans with money to buy arms from Iran, and China to kill Russians while we supplied the higher tech munitions heavy stuff beyond iranian mortars.
Neoconned, a tank shell is ten pounds of solid DU, a 30mm cannon shell is 3.5 pounds of solid DU, a 30cal bullet is solid DU. It is a false statement, made year ago by the DOD, that that DU ammo was ‘tipped’ with DU they are almost solid DU.
The bunker buster bombs are over a hundred pounds of DU. We have fired off thousands of tons of DU since the late 70s, much of it right here in the states. A SINGLE micoscopic speck entering your lungs will eventually kill you!___ Dead! It kills children faster, their immune systems are not as developed as adults. DU attacks the human immune system too, forgot to mention that.
It is impossible to clean up DU dust. It would be like vacumning the entire country, and the filter bags wouldn’t contain it anyway. This is the most serious problem humanity has ever encountered. Number ONE problem. We are permanently KILLING all life on this little blue and white, one of a kind water planet. The only water planet known to exist in the entire universe is Earth__ and hunanity is destroying it.__ Fast too.
Will DU kill off the Phytoplankton in our oceans? We better pray it dooesn’t. Those trillions of tiny plants produce 70 % of our oxygen and something is killing them off and no one knows what it is. I will correct myself there. It is now 60%, the ammount of oxygen produced by phytoplankton dropped ten percent since 1975. Because their numbers have dropped ten percent. It is a “rather” serious problem, no matter what is killing them.
Billy__y4. It has taken you a long time, but you have finally done it.___I hate you.
These atrocities being perpetrated on US citizens and foreigners alike are the responsibility of every single person!
Stop paying your taxes; without which rogue governments are POWERLESS!
Rebuild your communities!
Billy __y4:___ Don’t put out your bull shit about such a damn serious subject. The DU-238 uranium isotpes are so small, nothing made, except perhaps labratory filters will trap them. Stop your over educated sounding crap and read the scientific evidence about DU written by men who understand what they are writing. Go back to your atomic energy work place, get your blood money and sniff a few specks of DU dust and tell us it’s safe.
Read this you puffed up solipist. I don’t know how people like you can stand to show your face to your families.
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/archives/2006/jan/12-623470.html
Folks,___ please do not take MY word as gospel, or Paul M. Smiths or any others here who are only repeating what top level scientists say are the facts. Read the articles or websites offered. Water does not nullify the danger of DU-238 uranium isotopes. Nothing except time will kill it and the time is at least four billion years. Some uranium is not deadly.___ Some is.
The Hiroshima article posted today made me cry, just thinking about all the deformed children and how it is that human beings put their intelligence to making weapons that can distort life to such an inhuman extent?! In any case, to take in so much pain (via empathy) my psyche flashes to other possibilities. It’s interesting that in the story of Pandora’s Box the ONE gift left for mankind is HOPE. I do not question the seriousness of the DU or Plutonium particles. And it’s likely that MANY will know cancer or pass mutation onto the next generation. I can almost see in my head pictures that resemble a bad sci-fi flick of the aberrant body forms, heads with 3 eyes, bodies with an extra limb, etc emerging. BUT… there are and have been stories of adepts in India who could drink poison and experience NO effect. Their bodies, a kind of Zen version of biology, let the toxic substance just pass on through. There were people who walked among those stricken by the Plague, but did not become ill. Certainly I am not advocating for this atrocity already in slow motion, but the part of me that resonates with HOPE believes some will manage to survive, and is it possible that our DNA will adjust to radiation exposure? It’s NOT a good thing, but isn’t it possible that a small percentage of human beings will somehow manage to avert the effects? I cannot picture Divine Intelligence allowing an end to this marvelous long-term experiment in evolution that led to mankind, the creature gifted with free will, if the “free” will of the worst threatens the beauty and grace of those that came to this world to learn more about love, an understanding of their fellow beings, and to marvel at the incredible textures of mountains, streams, clouds, and the WONDERS given to us by CREATOR… a gift that has been passed to us for sound stewardship. Have the most care-less among us really poisoned everything? I cannot take that in and still live and breathe. It is a cancer, and it may be spreading, and the US had NO right to perpetrate this slow murderous crime on others… but I cannot accept that it will kill all human beings, or all plankton, or all life. How can we entertain any hopes if we believe that? Maybe some giant sun spot activity will create a vacuum that sucks all those particles back into itself (yeah, I know, that one IS sci-fi)… I have to imagine an escape clause!
I guess because today is the anniversary of one of the worst atrocities ever committed. How quickly Japan and Vietnam forgave the U.S. only to become its partners in trade, all in salutation to mammon. Is it even comprehensible that after SEEING what the bomb did to HUMAN beings, our military could say, “Gee! That was great. Let’s do it again! Let’s design more!” I cannot imagine the type of mind that can look into the abyss and see so much suffering, and from that conclude it is worth doing more of same. When Christ said “Go and sin no more,” that was a spiritual commandment. How could the U.S. as the richest nation in the world squander its bounty in the furtherance of weapons that cast such widespread misery? And atop this, it’s a “religious” nation? My God, the spiritual schizophrenia is breathtaking!!!!
Siourrose, you are hope. At least whenever I read your comments, I feel much better.
There is a California based company that plans to seed a large area of the South Pacific with iron dust, to feed the phytoplankton. There are other scientists who are afraid of the plan. Of course, when scientists play with nature, anything may happen and usually it isn’t good happenings.
Our nephews and nieces live in Florida and after WW11, my two brothes once had a camp deep in the Everglades. They were naturalists and loved to relax out there. They owned a small aircraft overhaul facility and once customized a seaplane, a Catalila or CAT, for Jacques Costeau. When he and his family came to town it was a swell time. We went out on the Calipso twice and saw then what humanity was doing to our oceans. Costeau gave us sixty years to stop polluting the oceans and clean it up, that was about forty years ago. Costeau was a scientist, an inventor, a writer, a seaman, a pilot and an explorer. He was a swell guy too. He warned us___ but few listened. One of my favorite books was his, “The Ocean World”.
If we believe in a God, and I won’t get into religion here, except to state I do, and that I have a firm belief, due to an experience we once had, that we do have hope. In the meantime, things are going to get very nasty on our rare and once beautiful blue and white water planet. The only water planet known to exist in the entire, endless universe is Earth. Humanity is destroying it and doing so as fast as we possily can. __Sad.
Kem,
Sorry my post was so distressing. I happen to disagree with you and believe that massive disability of veterans by DU poisoning is urban legend. I have not seen any scientifically sound data saying otherwise.
I do believe that a large number of veterans of Gulf Wars 1 and 2 are ill. I just haven’t seen solid data to say that it is uranium rather than another environmental toxin. Oil tars released by the fires during the first war are a very powerful carcinogen and mutagen.
I did make a mistake in my post: Seawater contains 3 parts per billion of uranium, not 3 parts per million. Natural uranium (as found in seawater) is 99.3% U-238. Depleted uranium is 99.7% U-238. There is not much difference. Uranium is water soluble; depleted uranium in sea or river water would not long remain as particulates.
I have read several links from CD on the DU subject and the authors have rather consistently blurred the discussion of DU munitions with other environmental toxins; injury and death from the WW2 atomic bombings of Japan; and fallout from the accident at Chernobyl. I have read documents containing a great deal of passion (like much of this string). I have no problem with passion; it is just not a substitute for accuracy and truth.
Your latest link does not work by the way.
DU becomes lead after nine billion years.
In eqrly 1960’s a young enelisted man after undergoing nuclear warhead trang and computer guidance systems was sent to an Iairborne Division in he south US of A to show and be able to arm an Honest John missle , realy more of a larger rocket and used as an artillary piece. Attached but not assigned he soon finds he is out of a job, Honest john becomes gone so assigned to a Chemical Biological and Radoictive group, crossed deusch bags on his lapels( realy beakers an inside joke as was the job because they put old deuschje bags in it who wouldn’t be good for anything else.
Once when going through records he finds nuclar biological and chemical reocrds. some dating before WWII including nuke, and begins to read.
Today he sat with spouse and wateched Nuke story on Japan and as it went on he added comments of what was being left out for his wife to better understand, right down to how military helped pay for plastic surgery so they could further studyt subjects and why most irradiated people got no help by Japanese or US immediately after event: too study effects upon populaiton as to how long it took them to ide, amount of effort to nurse and feed, but not to extend their lives except in smaller test cases.
Later as secret rating grew he read of test upon US subjects in 50’sd including military prisoners ansd civilian or even active military volunteers.
He read fo what to tell the troops, and how to convince those who volunteeered that yes death was a possavbility but unlikely when they knew well it was a death sentence.
Tehn he also read of radiaton effects upon humans from the time of Maddame Curie until evven the limited exposure upon those at work in the 40’s.
We knew pretty well before hand what effects of radiation would be and with the mathematics we knew just about the explosive efects and amount of material sent upwards and how high.
He read about the chemicals used and under study from WWI the Brits in Iraq in the 20″S, mustard gas and a couple of others, the Germean of pre war and the American post war usage upon volunteer prisoners promised reduced sentences to study effects and treatmetns and of the unauthorized ones as well. He read of stockpiles and amounts if they were needed and the types under developeemnt.
He became so good at hsi trade that during a nation wide war game of all serivces he was the only enlisted man in the planning Blue Room qand responsible for showing range and weather conditons that cuased damage here and when to use there of chemical rdiolobgical and biological weaponty and later to train national guard Chem warfare students.
From a realtive who took part in Hanford releases and New Mexcio studies he learned more and so disgusted did he become he volunteered to go to Viet Nam as a grunt.
He survived that green hell but always since befroe that time he knew his own country had devils within it who could make life hell not just for our enemies but for our own peoples they used as human gueine pigs.
They lied to the young men, made him promise to lie also, and they even lied to most of our political powers.
Powers that took one very brave man who released the Pentagon Papers to show cracks within the system that to this day majority of people do not like to read because they will not want to confront their ideas of a benign government.
Too bad!
they lied to their kids, got them killed in Viet Nam and made them beleive that killing a peasant in Latin America or even a fellow american but a nun was worth the price of protecting their military leaders over the morals and Rights of their own peoples until today we end up with warriors who love the killing supported by hordes of peoipole80% are support staff, who say well it is just a job and it does pay well and to never question the military and the powers they represent.
Then one reads that WWIi was indeed an enforced and planned war on Japan and that the dropping of a NUke was nto so much to end Jpanese war, they had already made three request for ending but to impress upon or Soviet
Comrades to not mess with us because we had the Nuclear Bomb.
Power is its own justifier and has been long before today in this country and yet the people continue to elect their countrys and soon to be Irans executioners.
“Oft times, the words of an old sage began, knowledge of an act of violence even if you are not the perpetrator will kill you before your assassin can strike; for your heart may already be dead.”
Each day I wonder if this nations heart is still alive or not.
Kem,
Because of the DU controversy, I do think it would be wise to do urinalysis on all troops exiting Iraq and Afganistan for uranium. It would provide a good data base to clarify the extent of exposure to uranium and, if the soldier were later to become ill, provide a point of reference.
That’s exactly the point of reference that the armed forces want to make sure never exists.
A friend of mine went to an event at Venice Beach on Memorial Day this year and there were soldiers there speaking at an event. After they finished speaking, as people were mingling and talking, my friend confronted one of the soldiers about the use of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq. The soldier said, “They told us it would only affect the Iraqi’s.”
My friend looked at him hard, then the soldier got a stupified look on his face and said, “Oh….right.”
How many different ways can you spell DUH?? Notice the DU in DUH??
On another note….I spent some time this evening watching Dr. Wayne Dyer. After many troubling days reading Commondreams articles and comments, (and adding my own to the mix), his wise words helped me immensely. His newest book is called “Change Your Thoughts….Change Your Life”. Now, I realize all of us changing our thoughts won’t help the fact that our government/military has poisoned the Earth forever with depleted uranium….
Which brings me to the other program I watched. It was the HBO special about our bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan with atomic bombs in World War II. It’s called, “White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.
There were many survivors interviewed in the course of the documentary. At one point a woman, who was around 12 at the time of the bombing said, “I had to choose between two kinds of courage. The courage to live, or the courage to die. My sister stepped in front of a speeding train. She had the courage to die. I tried and I couldn’t do it. I had the courage to live.”
All of us on these pages need to find the courage to live. To live the lives we were sent here to live. For me, that is to try to right what those in positions of power have made drastically wrong. Not only for us, but for those we love and all those we have harmed and killed, and for all the future generations who are still unborn.
If we can only get over the shame.
What is appalling to me as a Canadian is that the majority of the processed uranium that goes into the various reactors and becomes DU unfortunatley comes from Manitoba. So, we are guilty of genocide by proxy.
Yay us.
Billy, I am cetain that all of the articles I have read on the web are wrong when they give the figure of 2/3 of the first Gulf War vets are permanently disabled, there are a lot of lying scientists and doctors.
If dunking depleted uranium in water will stop it from being radioactive, render it harmless, why do we store thousands of tons of it in nuclear waste dumps? the natural uranium in sea water was not burned, DU in fired ammo has been burned. You are wrong with your comments and you shoud be ashamed. obviously ___ you are not.
Hide Behind, you are right. I was researching the declassified material on Castle-Bravo in ‘54. My conclusion is that they knew what would happen. If you read the reports, you can see the regret that they did not have a laboratory control group, so they had to measure the effects by extrapolating the pre-bomb birth rate and infant survival rates against the post-bomb birth and survival rates to figure out what the actual effects were. They felt that the pre-bomb records on an isolated island were far too casual for accurate scientific data.
I have never been able to read that through to the end. The cold callousness makes me weep, and I am seventy, an atomic veteran and have seen it all. If you read between the lines, the Rongalapese were lab rats. Techs came to the island in exposure suits and took rad readings, then evacuated them TWO DAYS later.
Folks, Billy up there, always writes in a very pleasant, sane and sensible manner. He is as smooth as silk, or an insurance salesman who knows his company will beat the odds and earn a very nice profit on the policy he is hawking to you. Not to besmirch insurance sales people, but they are good at selling. So is Billy__y4. Bill never angers, never loses his cool and he lies like a Nixon/Bush combo. That is to make me and others look bad to the reader, for we are angered in replys to him, because the subject is so deadly serious and he shrugs it off with his deception and half truths. Like the “Great Deciever”. Do not allow him to decieve you. Go to Google and ask for depleted uranium and read the articles.
Here is an excellent one and it does work. Read it all and see if you agree wth the author, who has nothing to gain by lying.
www.protecthawaii.ws/page2.html
Who owns the uranium mines Galen? Check it out and stop feeling guilty.
Go to www.amoralamerica.info and download or read (for free) the DU chapter that starts on page 264.
Aloha all from Hilo,
This is another very distrubing article. In Hawai’i there has been 3 legislative bills in two years to test our Hawai’i Nat’l Guard for DU. They have failed or stalled. We’ll be trying again next year.
I don’t put yellow ribbon magnets on my car. But I do want to PROTECT our Gulf War veterans and see them get proper screening and health care if and when they need it. I know some states have this legislation in place already. There is so much disinformation coming from the military we must reach out and educate more of our veterans.
Billy_y4
I firmly disagree with you about your comments: “Uranium is water soluble; depleted uranium in sea or river water would not long remain as particulates.”
Comparing natural uranium or natural (solid form) depleted uranium U238 and depleted uranium munitions is comparing apples and oranges. Once DU munitions are launched, catches fires and explodes on impact burning through anything; it changes the DU into a ceramic glass; a microscopic particle that is still a radioactive heavy metal but is not NOT WATER SOLUBLE. That’s why Gulf War I Veterans urinate DU 10 years after their exposure, like Doug Rokke for one.
Kem
Glad to see you here working hard to spread the truth about this DU monster plague.
I hope the members of our government wind up before the War Crimes Tribunal [specifically called to hear the cases from Iraq] and are convicted and hanged like the Nazis at the end of WW2
And I am against the death penalty…
Maybe we should just ship them to Guantanamo and practice some of the interrogation techniques perfected by these maniacs!
Three comments
1) There seems to be some confusion about what the term “isotope” means. Several persons commenting on this article seem to be using it to mean particle. Actually, an isotope is a variant form of a particular element. Some elements have several variants with different atomic weights. Each of these different variants is the result of different numbers of neutrons in the atoms of the element. Some isotopes are “stable” i.e. non-radioactive, some are “unstable” i.e. radioactive. The naturally-occuring isotopes of uranium are all radioactive. Uranium 238 is the isotope of uranium with an atomic weight of 238.
2) While it is true that Uranium 238 is harmless unless ingested (since it emits only alpha particles which cannot penetrate the skin), most depleted uranium contains minute amounts of uranium 235, which emits gamma rays which can pass through the whole human body as well as just about anything but lead. Gamma radiation destroys the chemical bonds in the body’s proteins–for example, its DNA, causing cell death, sterility, and cancer. Theoretically, at least, this means that one might receive a harmful dose of radiation just by being around depleted uranium in a solid form. However, as many others have noted, even uranium 238 can cause radiation poisoning if ingested or inhaled. It would probably take more than one small particle to cause health problems, since all of us breathe in a small number of particles of naturally occurring Uranium 238 during our lifetime, as have our ancestors for as long as humans have been around. There is DEFINITELY a health risk if you breathe in a lot at one time, however, or breathe in a little over a long time. The biggest problem is that nobody knows what a safe level is for ingested or inhaled Uranium 238.
3) It is also important to note that uranium left in the environment forms compounds that are toxic, in addition to being radioactive. If you ingest or inhale a uranium salt, even if the radiation doesn’t kill you, uranium toxicity may.
It is not contagious, so there is nothing to worry about.
RE: Billy_y4 August 6th, 2007 6:51 pm
Billy, I can’t find the file about Agent Orange & the Manhattan Project right now since it is in my other laptop & I have just moved. Another time for sure, but in the meantime here is some stuff about DU that definitely sprang from the Manhattan Project. Forget Agent Orange for now. It doesn’t have the potential to eradicate life on this planet like DU.
“Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.
Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry’s father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.
Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.
They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.
The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.”
And yet another comment from another source (easily Googled):
http://www.awakenedwoman.com/moret_nuclear.htm
“In May, 2003, the United States dumped 2,200 tons of depleted uranium on Iraq, according to reliable sources, and it’s logical to assume that more depleted uranium is being employed in the current attacks on Faluja that began April 8 to put down Iraqi resistance to the American presence there.
According to independent geoscientist Leuren Moret, the war on Iraq - like the war on Afghanistan - is a nuclear war. “Depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon and it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U. S. government’s definition of weapons of mass destruction,” Moret says.
The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that DU is harmful, despite the symptoms of half the returning veterans from the first Persian Gulf Wars who are now disabled. But researchers have shown that the Pentagon has been fully aware of the consequences of what is called “low level radiation” since 1942, when depleted uranium was first suggested for development as a military weapon under the Manhattan Project.”
So how much proof do you need, Billy, to finally admit DU is a nuclear WMD, deadly, and very lethal to all manner of life forms? Your obstinance is going to kill you, your family, and all those you care about. Do you care, or will you put the money people are paying you to defend an indefensible position (or your pride) above the ‘prime directive’ of survival? Where will you hide when the world is thoroughly polluted & poisoned? I say BUSH FOR PRESIDENT…of Mars, but are you going to go with him? Where can BushCo & all the billionaires he has created go if life is unsustainable on this planet? They, and you, will die here just like the rest of us if we keep doing what we have been doing, and don’t call a halt immediately to this madness. Get a grip, man, come to the reality of the situation.
RE: Billy_y4 August 6th, 2007 10:21 pm
“Kem,
Because of the DU controversy, I do think it would be wise to do urinalysis on all troops exiting Iraq and Afganistan for uranium. It would provide a good data base to clarify the extent of exposure to uranium and, if the soldier were later to become ill, provide a point of reference.”
Billy, this is about the most sensible & reasonable thing I think you have said in all our contentious debates about nuclear issues. It’s always good to have a ‘devil’s advocate’ around to keep the discussion honest & factual. Keep asking the hard questions and maybe we will all learn from the experience.
kem patrick, i thought that was you, evelyn smith and then someone confirmed it. anyway, i’ve just looked at your link to the gov website and guess what, document not found. significant design changes occuring !!!!! very interesting,(but isn’t about time you got the children to bed lucy??) and wow, you met my hero jacques cousteau and i believe he knew what he was talking about. and i know he said the earth has 50, 100, max 150 years to go. it’s really scary about the insects and bees and birds and yes, that has to be an indicator of the seriousness of the problem. but what really is causing it? is it climate change or du. either way, it makes no difference i suppose. we are still f…..cked. but i want to know WHY? why are they doing this? what is their plan? don’t they realise they will kill themselves too? rhetorical questions here kem. i’ve watched the videos suggested. all great. but worthless unless everyone on the planet sees them. how do we do that?? but keep up the good posts everyone. and peace and joy to all.
For several years I worked in a children’s rehab hospital. We cared for many thalidimide babies and children with severe birth defects. There is nothing sadder in this whole world to see children trying hard to adjust to life without arms or legs,or in some cases with neither. To deliberately use anything that would cause defects to children is worse than a war crime. Poetic justice would serve those making war decisions if they were all saddled with the sorry and the expense of deformed children or grand children.
PaulMagillSmith - Billy_y4 - Kem, I need to remind you all - there is NO DU Controversy. It is a fact this shit kills and alters your DNA. Trust me the military already has the data from their own tests completed in 1991 in Iraq. They just won’t admit to it - shocking!
I feel the need to post the link from NatureBoy here - this is intense and not for the weak minded either. It is time folks to take back our nation from the criminals - political parties mean nothing since they have been reduced to 2 and both are paid for. It is time. Enough is enough. If this were happening in the Western world their would be outcries of war crimes and such. Our corporate owned media here refuses to tell the real story about what our government is doing in our name.
http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html
KEM: It’s nice to be called “hope.” Gracias. And I thank you for your tireless commitment to raising awareness about this ghastly subject. Can chelation clear our bodies/bloodstreams of DU? When faced with the slow spread of this dread thing produced by professional killers, a/k/a agents of weaponry, all I can to is wonder about human nature; and if mankind survives, do what I can to help educate our descendants that such action NEVER be taken up again. It is so hard for me to understand how it is that the religions of the world developed theoretically modeling after the TEACHINGS of such high spiritual adepts, but degenerated to not only allow, but encourage the pursuit of weapons that do to others what no master could ever countenance, and do it in such an efficient, disgusting way. As the nurse above commented, who can look on children deformed and not get sick inside? Who could observe photos of EXACTLY this, and as several people have commented, the bombs were done in part as a guinea pig operation to witness how they would slowly destroy human beings… how then to NOTE the calamity and elect to repeat the process? These are people without souls is the only conclusion. Several months ago CD published an article that spoke about evil as a viable entity in our world. One can conclude nothing less when intelligent persons (it takes a brain to build these monstrosities, after all) choose to put their energy in the direction of something that is indisputably DIABOLICAL. Pandora’s Box has indeed been opened, and we must cling to HOPE. It stuns the imagination to wonder what will save mankind from itself? Can perfect love wipe out what fear/hate/aggression have not built into the human equation. “Let no man tear asunder what God hath joined together.” Do you think this adage might apply metaphysically to fission? I look for metaphor where others do not seek it, but as far as I see things, since the split of the atom, human relationships (many) have suffered immeasurably. There is a chasm that only the most gifted or fortunate are able to span… and for a lot of those, prosac or alcohol or other chemical and related diversions merely allot them the illusion that they have successfully done so.
(should read have now built into…) sorry!
HOPE just got a reflex. My best friend is raising her grandson and he is a most bright, wonderful child. He loves my company and last time I visited he had me watch a show on ANIMAL PLANET that showed scientific developments taken directly from biologically ingenious mechanisms deploayed by specific species. I mean wouldn’t you LOVE to have the shark’s capacity to just rotate a new tooth? Don’t you wonder why and how it is that the chameleon can lose his tail and immediately generate another one? What the ancients may have taken for magic, science can sometimes… but not always!!! explain. With that being said, and appropos to this discussion, how come scorpions can survive nuclear tests? What is in their make-up that allows this? I don’t know if the mechanisms are compatible with human flesh and genetics, but it’s plausible that some element conducive to THEIR adaptation could help us with ours IF this lovely DU stuff is going to be our fairy dust for the next several billion years. LIFE has an interest in its own continuity, and what human beings and nature are capable of often defies the imagination. Although this toxification (poetic license!) of our planet is evidently underway, let us not limit possibilities for what flesh might be heir to! “We are stardust, we are golden and we’re caught in the devil’s bargain… but we’ve got to get ourselves, back to the stars…”
A commitee for “identifying misinformation?” Where was such a committee anytime a vet was accused, or during alleged tortures?
Our officals should be ashamed. Uranium is a radioactive substance.
Even people who work with radiation in dentists offices are dropping dead at 50.
There were alternatives, they did not have to use this. What about the innocent people?
I bet that is why so many people get sick when the humidity is thick or it rains. All of the particles floating.
Oh yeah, we are safer alright.
Hi there Siouxrose, one of my “hopes” is, we stop using DU for anything. BTW, my first love’s name was Hope. the problem was I was five years old and she was twenty two. I was old enough to appreciate a 36-24-34, with beautiful eyes and a great sense of humor. A blond though.
Another hope is, the head shed gang at Common Dreams, don’t bury this article in the Archives today.
Neocomnned, thank you kindly for the unnecessary reminder. However, let me remind you of something pal, if there was no controversy about the use of DU, we wouldn’t be using it and this article could be put in the archives forever.
Chchicano, great post, thank you for that. One thing, many doctors who are much more qualified than I state, a SINGLE speck of DU in the lung, WILL insure cancer.__ I’m holdin my breath.
HI Coco, howzit goin over there? ___ Never mind, you likely have it worse than we do, keep spreadig the word pal, maybe it will stop being used. (We’d better stop it!)
The wonderful nurse from Hawaii showed up and she really knows the subject. In additon, she’s like Cindy Sheehan, she is actually doing something about a problem. Aloha Linda, hope we here can all meet someday,__ I like you as much as Siouxose.
I hate you Billy. Pffftttt.
Yeah Coco, I replaced Evelyn Smith. She lived up in the attic with her computer and a black, spayed, Persian cat.
Evelyn became so horribly frustrated, because few were taking the DU issue seriously, that one evenig she opened the window and tossed her computer out. Sadly, her nitie got hooked on the cables and she went went with it.__ We’re gonna miss her.
I held her in my arms as she whispered her goodbys and final words. She made me promise to carry on with her writings about the dangers of DU. Finally she told me, I could have her false teeth. Those were her last words. She’d been eating one of her home made chocolate chip cookies too.___Yum yum__ good.
The cat? ____ Ohhh, well, she was good too.
RE: coco August 7th, 2007 6:00 am
“… but i want to know WHY? why are they doing this? what is their plan? don’t they realise they will kill themselves too?”
Good question, coco. There are only two explainations I can surmise.
1) Just like the soldier on the battlefield who believes the bullet will ‘get’ the other guy they just don’t think it can happen to themselves. This aura of invincibility is common among teenagers, but in time most people grow out of it and come to realize we are all born terminal.
2) “We have met the enemy and it is us”. In this country there are Christian fundamentalists. According to a poll I saw somewhere about 20-30 % of Christians hold firmly to the belief in the RAPTURE and that we are in the END TIMES. These ‘end timers’ believe after Jesus comes back they will be taken up to heaven, and the rest of those on Earth will be destroyed. This fatalism leads them not to care what happens to the Earth or their fellow human beings. It’s a warped dogmatic belief based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, and every bit as sick as the Islamic fundamentalist’s belief that someone dieing while fighting for the cause of Islam will be rewarded in heaven with 72 virgins.
So members of either perverted philosophy don’t care, since no matter how dastardly an act they commit against their fellow humans they will be rewarded because they think (without proof except what someone else told them) they are doing the work of their god. In actuality they are doing the work of men who contrived the whole system in ignorance thousands of years ago, and then propagandized the populace thoroughly so they could control them. All of them are deviants from the norm of rational logical thinking.
Unfortunately, BushCo & his crew are subscribers to this belief system, so they don’t care about climate change killing several hundred million people, or the potential of DU killing everyone. Because ’someone’ told them they have a seat on the bus to heaven they blindly believe it. A bunch of foolish hard-headed idiots if you ask me, but they don’t ask anyone really because they think they know.
Google ‘the rapture’ or ‘end times’ to get the whole lowdown on this perversion of faith.
Some seem to believe that the chemicals we dump over Colombia to eradicate the coca plant don’t cause cancer, even when presented with case evidence.
Some seem to believe that cluster munitions can be safely used near population centers with acceptable levels of harm to civilians.
Some seem to believe that you can use a nuclear weapon on an “enemy” and that you won’t be using it on yourself as well.
Some seem to believe that the United States is the white-hat wearing “good guy” and that it wouldn’t subject civilians to white phospherous rounds or Mark 77 fire bombs as they did in Falluja, Iraq in 2004.
Those that believe these things are WRONG.
The question is:
We know that the United States military has broken international law in the past and that they continue to do so today. What are we going to do when the Military experts, the World Health Organization, the Rand Corp (CIA), and NATO all determine that DU ammo is “safe?” (Said conclusion they ABSOLUTELY must come to in order to protect the United States from billions of dollars in liability payments.)
The bottomline is the bottomline. The buck stops a beating heart.
Peace to you and yours.
KEM PATRICK
thank you for your comments. I am certainly not advocating ingesting or inhaling even one particle of DU. What is so nightmarish is that an exploded DU shell releases countless tiny particles and those within a large radius inhale millions of particles. Not to mention the people who have to live where thousands of shells have been expended. Attempts have been made at both the International Court of Justice and the War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia to have these weapons banned and their users declared war criminals. At the War Crimes tribunal, the Judges basically admitted that technically these weapons are chemical weapons, but because NATO’s intent in using them was as explosive weapons and not poisoning weapons, they were not legally chemical weapons. How’s that for the logic of doomsday!
chchicano -
The courts HAD to come to those conclusions because the United States is a rogue nation with no peer. They would simply ignore the ruling if it were made against their interest, thus invalidating the court itself.
If you don’t rule in Caesar’s interests, he has you disbanded.
Secondly, any ruling that would find a weapon illegal opens the users of said weapon to civil liabilities that several other nations may have to pay as well, namely the UK and Israel. Those countries, being the biggest bullies on the block, will be darned hard to hold accountable.
May the revolution be as swift as it is peaceful.
Peace to you and yours.
We need a King.
Robin Williams for King
Why not? He’d be a lot better than Bush
Aloha from Hilo,
Kem Patrick, sorry to hear about Evelyn Smith’s untimely demise. I feel bad that your comments made me LOL.
Mahalo for the kind words about me but truely I’m am just scratching the surface of this issue and research. It was the birth defects coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Gulf War Vets children that sickenen my heart into action.(No proof, as Billy would like to see, only high suspicions these birth defects are caused by DU munitions and the radioactive DUst fallout) When I got a peak of global problem I was overwhelmed and depressed for weeks.
But when we caught the Military in an out and out LIE about using DU here in Hawai’i, I got really pissed off and had to do something. When I give talks on this subject I always include a disclaimer I am not an expert; I just want to encourage people to do their own research. That’s why these blogs are so important; this issue must not be swept under the carpet. Our survival on this planet depends on it.
We have caused an great deal of problems for our Hawai’i State Public Health Department. I believe this is good (It’s their job to protect public health) Private citizens in Kona are buying radiation monitors [orders for them are back logged]. One individual recently got a high reading on hers and called 911 and Civil Defense this weekend, which prompted a local news paper to write another Radiation Story in Hawaii. Eventhough they down played the high reading as taken by untrained, unskilled person (which is true) we wouldn’t have to do it if the Health Dept. did their job. Mainstream media here and most politicans are Pro-military and it is hard to get them to print or do anything on the issue. I’m one of many residents in Hawai’i very concerned about the biggest unregulated polluter of Hawai’i, the U.S. Military.
Aloha from Linda
www.protecthawaii.ws
PAULMAGILLSMITH: Thank you for an important analysis of the false sense of impunity held by those that trespass so willingly against their peers from other lands/nations. I hope SIGMA reads this as she seems intent on defending Christianity as if a high portion of its deluded followers are not the very ones rendering this beloved Eden into a veritable Armageddon.
KEM: You are such a flirt! But you warm my heart and I always like hearing from you! By the way, your depiction of putting “Evelyn” to rest is adorable, and would make for a funny short story. When you’re not elaborating here in the forum, consider that your (Sioux Rose mandated!) assignment! LOL.
Linda, Green Peace will probably be delighted to assist you with radiation readings. They have the latest hi-tech monitors which give a digital readout of every type of radiation and what is causing it, uranium 238, plutonium, etc. I doubt the press would ignore them and say it was unskiilled personnel. Has anyone contacted them? Green Peace was there in japan after that earthquake in a flash.
Flirt Siouxrose? Everyone here knows__ how could you tell. Ahhh of course, ESP. You know that was the first time Evelyn had been out in over five years. She was afraid of flying too.__ A damn shame. Oh well, at least her teeth fit.
We gotta laugh sometimes, this DU subject is not funny at all though, it should be the most serious subject on the planet and I am amazed that so few are aware of it and also amazed at the denials from so many in our world’s governments.
The comments posted above about the liability are right on target though. If it was admitted, it would be an admission of guilt of the worst war crimes ever committed by man. It’s gotta stop!
I still hate you Billy,__ you sneak.
Linda, your press is likely afraid of what would occur if it was big news. Sort of like the fictional story Jaws. Not good for business to advertize the Islands are polluted with atomic waste. The thing there is, it matters not, every place is polluted now. Some plces are worse, none are good.
Again, MONEY TALKS. So damn true. Good luck and please stay in touch.
About the “Rapture” thing: only the decent, lawabiding, caring, kind, and non murderers are going to be hoisted up to heaven. None of the lice in Washington will make the cut. So take heart; after Rapture day the lice will be without Divine Protection, and those of us still here will get a chance to even the score.
Linda,
Technical question for you as an RN: If the uranium is not soluble, how is it excreted in the urine?
Kem, Paul et al,
Actually got a chance to read a little on DU munitions today. Thought I would share a little of my findings-Kem this will not improve your feelings of affection for me.
Found a paper from Sandia Laboratory. “An Analysis of the Uranium Dispersal and Health Effects Using a Gulf War Case Study SAND2005-4331″. There findings included a 1% increase in fatal lung cancer for Category 1 veterans (victims of friendly fire and their rescuers). Category 1 veterans also had an increased risk of kidney problem. Categories 2 and 3, with lesser exposure had no detectable uranium related health problems. They concluded, other than the category 1 veterans, children who play in and around disabled vehicles to have the highest health risk from uranium but they did not have quantitative data on the risk (at least not in the part that I read-this thing is over 200 pages long). The major focus of the report is on veterans rather than the Iraqi population. If you want to read the report for yourself, google the report number and it will come right up.
Found a report “Modeling Exposure to Depleted Uranium in Support of Decommissioning at Jefferson Proving Ground, Indiana LA-UR-96-3907″ This is a study of DU risks at an ammunition test site which has been closed. The recommendation is that unexploded ordinance on the site is a greater risk and the general public should not be permitted on the impact range because of it. Deer which graze the impact range are safe to harvest and consume. Portions of the site should be opened during the hunting season. If the unexploded ordinance is removed, the site can be opened to the general public but farming should not be permitted because of the disturbing of the underground uranium fragments and dust. Linda-this study should be directly related to your interests in Hawaii.
Book on the net by Vladimir S Zajic. I think this might be the source of many of the numbers cited by Kem et al:
“…Because military commanders failed to inform their troops about depleted uranium, thousands of soldiers carelessly climbed on or entered DU-impacted vehicles without any knowledge of the presence or danger of DU contamination and without any protective gear, often just because of curiosity. Veteran groups claim that out of 698,000 Gulf War veterans (552,000 deployed during the hostilities), 400,000 may have inhaled, ingested, or incurred wound contamination by depleted uranium dust during combat operations, equipment recovery, and post-war battlefield tours….” Note this quote says 400,000 possibly contaminated out of 552,000-not 400,00 disabled.
“…A mortality study of all 695,500 Gulf War veterans who served in the Persian Gulf between August 1990 - April 1991 and died between May 1991 - September 1993 was conducted by the Veterans Administration (VA). A group of 746,300 undeployed military personnel was randomly selected for comparison. The death rates show a small, but statistically significant, increase of 9% in the risk of death from all causes in Persian Gulf veterans (about 200 excess deaths). However, the increase has been attributed to external causes such as accidents. There was no increased risk of death from medical diseases, including mortality for cancers. The same conclusions have been reached in a similar Department of Defense (DoD) study…”
This quote is a lulu: “…About 500,000 troops were required to take anti-nerve gas pills of pyridostigmine bromide (PB), an experimental drug to counter the effects of potential exposure to chemical warfare agents. PB is more toxic than sub-lethal doses of chemical warfare agents such as nerve gas. It can have serious side effects and interactions when taken in combination with other drugs, vaccines, chemical exposures, heat, or physical exercise. 50 - 60% of soldiers taking PB experienced acute side effects, similar to those of cholinergic syndrome, which results from inhibition of the life-critical enzyme acetylcholinesterase. Pyridostigmine bromide, nerve gas, and organophosphate pesticides are examples of the inhibitors, which cause stunning nerve and muscle degeneration moments after a single dose. Delayed effects can occur 5 or 10 years after exposure to nerve agents….”
Sorry, but I am still skeptical about widespread DU health effects.
Billy_y4
Uranium is excreted in the urine in a colloidal form–that is, as particles suspended in liquid.
kaila wrote: “It is not contagious, so there is nothing to worry about.” Actually DU is contagious. When a person with DU in his or her body dies and is cremated or buried, the DU returns to the environment. It can then be inhaled by another person or ingested by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water. This cycle can go on for billions of years. For more on the contamination of the environment by human-introduced radioactive isotopes see Dr. Helen Caldicott’s NUCLEAR MADNESS, or Linus Pauling’s harrowing Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, SCIENCE AND PEACE. You can find a more technical disussion in most college-level Particle (Atomic) Physics textbooks (you’ll need to know a little calculus).
I don’t hate you anymore Billy, I felt bad about writing it. I plead temporary insanity, thank goodness, we were not in the same room. We should never hate another human, especially one who is sick and needs help.
Thank you for sharng the info you read about DU, I read those myself. It is hard to believe, but there are one million, three hundred thousand articles about DU, available on the web. Some are written by denyers and although they sound good, it is similar to the economic figures spouted by the Bush administration. They are not totally true and for reason. Keep reading Billy and consider the sources on both sides of the issue.
I’ll let Linda or one who is more informed on pissers to answer the medical question. I will state however, that if a person has used drugs, it shows up in a pee test, the drugs are still frying the pee-ers brains.
Therefore, if a person has inhaled DU and it is attacking his internal body parts and slowly killing, why would the evidence of radiation poisoning, not show up in a pee test? they aren’t gettng rid of all the the DU in their urine, it just shows up with a test, same as lead, and any other heavy metal contamination would.
Bill, have you ever sought teatment in a mental health facility? Just wondered. Actually, I love you Bill, if you weren’t here we could not bring out so many good arguments, that the use of DU for anything, is the most serious issue facing mankind. Read some more and hurry back. Nite,___ You poor baby, what happened to you?
chchi:
I believe uranium is soluble in oxygenated, mildly acidic water. That is how in situ uranium mining is done. I’ll take your word for it being a colloid in urine. The fact remains that it is excreted and no longer part of the body burden.
Kem,
I have been contaminated with uranium several times and it has not caused illness (although you may differ in opinion.)
I was once contaminated with mercury, it showed up in a urine sample. After a cat-scan it was found to be in my prostrate gland. I guess it could be said, I was shooting bullets. Anyway, several small balls of mercury were srugically removed and after, my urine samples were normal.
Now, if I have DU in my lungs and it then travels via my blood stream to say my liver, it coud go anyplace in the body. It shows in a urine sample that I have DU somewhere in my body. It is in my liver, not my bladder and peeing will not remove it. I eventually die from liver cancer.
Aloha from Hilo
Billy,
Have you or do you know any man who has passed a kidney stone? (They say it is the only pain man will exprience that compares and is similar to a woman giving birth.) It doesn’t come out all at once it flakes off in even smaller particles which are strained in every voiding. Stone is still in there causing swelling, pain and blood in the urine.
Now multiply this by millions of tiny particles that are radioact