US Considered Radiological Weapon
In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate “important individuals” such as military or civilian leaders, according to newly declassified documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Approved at the highest levels of the Army in 1948, the effort was a well-hidden part of the military’s pursuit of a “new concept of warfare” using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations.
Military historians who have researched the broader radiological warfare program said in interviews that they had never before seen evidence that it included pursuit of an assassination weapon. Targeting public figures in such attacks is not unheard of; just last year an unknown assailant used a tiny amount of radioactive polonium-210 to kill Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.
No targeted individuals are mentioned in references to the assassination weapon in the government documents declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the AP in 1995.
The decades-old records were released recently to the AP, heavily censored by the government to remove specifics about radiological warfare agents and other details. The censorship reflects concern that the potential for using radioactive poisons as a weapon is more than a historic footnote; it is believed to be sought by present-day terrorists bent on attacking U.S. targets.
The documents give no indication whether a radiological weapon for targeting high-ranking individuals was ever used or even developed by the United States. They leave unclear how far the Army project went. One memo from December 1948 outlined the project and another memo that month indicated it was under way. The main sections of several subsequent progress reports in 1949 were removed by censors before release to the AP.
The broader effort on offensive uses of radiological warfare apparently died by about 1954, at least in part because of the Defense Department’s conviction that nuclear weapons were a better bet.
Whether the work migrated to another agency such as the CIA is unclear. The project was given final approval in November 1948 and began the following month, just one year after the CIA’s creation in 1947.
It was a turbulent time on the international scene. In August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, and two months later Mao Zedong’s communists triumphed in China’s civil war.
As U.S. scientists developed the atomic bomb during World War II, it was recognized that radioactive agents used or created in the manufacturing process had lethal potential. The government’s first public report on the bomb project, published in 1945, noted that radioactive fission products from a uranium-fueled reactor could be extracted and used “like a particularly vicious form of poison gas.”
Among the documents released to the AP - an Army memo dated Dec. 16, 1948, and labeled secret - described a crash program to develop a variety of military uses for radioactive materials. Work on a “subversive weapon for attack of individuals or small groups” was listed as a secondary priority, to be confined to feasibility studies and experiments.
The top priorities listed were:
- 1 - Weapons to contaminate “populated or otherwise critical areas for long periods of time.”
- 2 - Munitions combining high explosives with radioactive material “to accomplish physical damage and radioactive contamination simultaneously.”
- 3 - Air and-or surface weapons that would spread contamination across an area to be evacuated, thereby rendering it unusable by enemy forces.
The stated goal was to produce a prototype for the No. 1 and No. 2 priority weapons by Dec. 31, 1950.
The 4th ranked priority was “munitions for attack on individuals” using radioactive agents for which there is “no means of therapy.”
“This class of munitions is proposed for use by secret agents or subversive units for lethal attacks against small groups of important individuals, e.g., during meetings of civilian or military leaders,” it said.
Assassination of foreign figures by agents of the U.S. government was not explicitly outlawed until President Gerald R. Ford signed an executive order in 1976 in response to revelations that the CIA had plotted in the 1960s to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, including by poisoning.
The Dec. 16, 1948, memo said a lethal attack against individuals using radiological material should be done in a way that makes it impossible to trace the U.S. government’s involvement, a concept known as “plausible deniability” that is central to U.S. covert actions.
“The source of the munition, the fact that an attack has been made, and the kind of attack should not be determinable, if possible,” it said. “The munition should be inconspicuous and readily transportable.”
Radioactive agents were thought to be ideal for this use, the document said, because of their high toxicity and the fact that the targeted individuals could not smell, taste or otherwise sense the attack.
“It should be possible, for example, to develop a very small munition which could function unnoticeably and which would set up an invisible, yet highly lethal concentration in a room, with the effects noticeable only well after the time of attack,” it said.
“The time for lethal effects could, it is believed, be controlled within limits by the amount of radioactive agent dispersed. The toxicities are such that should relatively high concentrations be required for early lethal effects, on a weight basis, even such concentrations may be found practicable.”
Tom Bielefeld, a Harvard physicist who has studied radiological weapons issues, said that while he had never heard of this project, its technical aims sounded feasible.
Bielefeld noted that polonium, the radioactive agent used to kill Litvinenko in November 2006, has just the kind of features that would be suitable for the lethal mission described in the Dec. 16 memo.
Barton Bernstein, a Stanford history professor who has done extensive research on the U.S. military’s radiological warfare efforts, said he did not believe this aspect had previously come to light.
“This is one of those items that surprises us but should not shock us, because in the Cold War all kinds of ways of killing people, in all kinds of manners - inhumane, barbaric and even worse - were periodically contemplated at high levels in the American government in what was seen as a just war against a hated and hateful enemy,” Bernstein said.
The project was run by the Army Chemical Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Alden H. Waitt, and supervised by a now-defunct agency called the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. The project’s first chief was Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, the Army’s head of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs. The radiological project was approved by Groves’ successor, Maj. Gen. Kenneth D. Nichols.
The released documents were in files of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project held by the National Archives.
Among the officials copied in on the Dec. 16 memo were Herbert Scoville, Jr., then the technical director of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and later the CIA’s deputy director for research, and Samuel T. Cohen, a physicist with RAND Corp. who had worked on the Manhattan Project.
The initial go-ahead for the Army to pursue its radiological weapons project was given in May 1948, a point in U.S. history, following the successful use of two atomic bombs against Japan to end World War II, when the military was eager to explore the implications of atomic science for the future of warfare.
In a July 1948 memo outlining the program’s intent, before specifics had received final approval, a key focus was on long-lasting contamination of large land areas where residents would be told that unless the areas were abandoned they probably would die from radiation within one to 10 years.
“It is thought that this is a new concept of warfare, with results that cannot be predicted,” it said.
© 2007 Associated Press
The AP writer describes a “new concept of warfare” using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations. ”
Leave it to the complicit Associated Press to continue the corporate military industrial government lies and cover-up of the current use of depleted uranium munitions !
The impression is given here that our military decided to never use “dirty bombs”.
Our honorable military has released thousands of tons of radioactive material in the form of DU weapons in the Balkans, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and the current war crimes in Iraq.
DU weapons are a weapon of mass destruction.
Some estimates state that radiation equivalent of 40,000 Nagasaki nuclear bombs has been released since DU came into conventional use with Gulf War I.
And since other types of penetrators will perform nearly as well, the question remains whether or not the intent is a slow radioactive death or debilitation of the inhabitants of regions that are in the sights of imperial America.
Will post some choice urls later.
What’s the difference between people who would use WMD’s and serial killers?
Yay! We’re Number One! We’re Number One!
You don’t suppose that the murderers in the Whitehouse are seeding the pipeline route they want through Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq with DU? Wouldn’t that turn those places in a no-man’s-land? Maybe it would be a really cheap way to guarantee that no evil persons would break the pipelines. And so what if the oil being pumped through got irradiated — ?
I’m sure that KEM PATRICK or Paul will be here commenting soon on DU. In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, the following video. Warning: Very graphic.
http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html
One of the reasons that the early plans for dirty bomb warfare were rejected is that dispersed radioactive material will affect all combatants as well as civilians. The ceramic nano-particles of DU dust have a half-life of billions of years.
But here is an early military memo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiological_weapon
“ The history of radioactive weaponry may be traced to a 1943 memo to Brigadier General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project. Transmitting a report entitled, “Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon,” the memo states:
October 30, 1943 memo from Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey to Brigadier General L. R. Groves, Manhattan District, Oak Ridge, Tennessee; declassified June 5, 1974As a gas warfare instrument the material would … be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty…. It cannot be detected by the senses; It can be distributed in a dust or smoke form so finely powdered that it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging….
Radioactive warfare can be used … To make evacuated areas uninhabitable; To contaminate small critical areas such as rail-road yards and airports; As a radioactive poison gas to create casualties among troops; Against large cities, to promote panic, and create casualties among civilian populations.
Areas so contaminated by radioactive dusts and smokes, would be dangerous as long as a high enough concentration of material could be maintained…. they can be stirred up as a fine dust from the terrain by winds, movement of vehicles or troops, etc., and would remain a potential hazard for a long time.
These materials may also be so disposed as to be taken into the body by ingestion instead of inhalation. Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke. Four days production could contaminate a million gallons of water to an extent that a quart drunk in one day would probably result in complete incapacitation or death in about a month’s time. “ End.
Much later, as Secretary Of Defense for Gulf War I, Cheney was largely responsible for the extensive use of DU munitions as part of conventional warfare:
http://www.notinkansas.us/du_1.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/hall230306.htm
Historic note: The following letter was submitted to the United States department of Veterans Affairs by former Army doctor Asaf Durakovic:
February 11th, 1997
Dear President Clinton:
I am bringing to your attention the conspiracy against the Veterans of the United States.
In the Persian Gulf War some veterans were exposed to radioactive contamination with Depleted Uranium. I personally served in the Operation Desert Shield as a Unit Commander of 531 Army Medical Detachment. After the war I was in charge of Nuclear Medicine Service at Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Wilmington, Delaware. A group of uranium contaminated US Veterans were referred to my attention as an expert in nuclear contamination. I properly referred them for the diagnostic tests to different Institutions dealing with transuranium elements. All of the records have been lost in this Hospital and in referring Institutions. Only a small part of information was recorded in Presidential Advisory Committee report on Gulf War Illnesses. Recently I received an order by the Chief of Staff of this Institution to start the veterans examinations again since all of the records have been lost.
Today I was informed in writing that my job was terminated as a reduction in force. I have been at this position for over eight years with an outstanding job performance and I am convinced with certainty that my elimination from the job is a direct result of my involvement in the management of Gulf War Veterans and discrimination for raising nuclear safety issues.
The lost records, lost laboratory specimens and retaliations which are well documented point to no less than conspiracy to terminate my efforts of proper management of Gulf War Veterans. I am sure that you will have an interest in this matter for the benefit of the veterans of The United States of America.
Most respectfully
(signed)
Asaf Durakovic, M.D., D.V.M., M.Sc., Ph.D., F.A.C.P
Chief, Nuclear Medicine Service, VAMC Wilmington
Colonel, U.S. Army Medical Corps (R)
Prof. Asaf Durakovic, USA
Partial list of DU links for many hours of reading:
Photo of DU birth defects: http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/depleted_uranium_iraq_afghanistan_balkans.html
DU war crimes: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/pr_uswc.html
DU Archive: http://www.idust.net/
LINKS:
http://www.uwec.edu/grossmzc/anderkel.html
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/vi…5ca152d5ef14d6b
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html
http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm
http://www.cadu.org.uk/
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm
http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html
http://ccnr.org/du_hague.html
http://www.ngwrc.org/
http://www.motherjones.com/commenta…/we_351_01.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2860759.stm
http://www.miltoxproj.org/
Solid names to Google for depleted uranium are Leuran Moret, Doug Rokke, Rosalie Bertell and Dan Fahey among others.
A parting thought from Moret:
” I believe in the end that … you will comprehend that the amount of DU [Depleted Uranium] released into the atmosphere since 1991 is far more than my estimate. Whatever you or I think or differ about, the disaster is worse than we even know … but that tale will be told each year, each decade, each century. Humanity has changed the genome of the entire planet forever. ”
Leuren Moret
http://www.greatdreams.com/death/deathstar2.htm
All nuclear powers considered such weapons. The French actually spent more on them (neutron, cobalt devices) than conventional nukes.
Thankyou JConrad for the info & links, and thanks also Rebel Farmer. You have proven yourself frontline generals in the fight against this inhumane worldwide atrocity. Keep up the good fight and never ever question that you stand on the moral high ground regarding this issue. The evidence is clear & overwhelming humanity (and EVERY other life form on earth) perches perilously on the verge of possible extinction.
Oh yes, the Manhattan Project. Another product coming out of that research & developement was the notorious Agent Orange. How many people, American & otherwise lost their lives (or had their health ruined) before our government finally admitted how nasty the stuff was/is?
To get a better understanding of just how vile DU (depleted uranium) is try a Google search and read some of the 1.5 million articles about it written by some of the world’s most respected authorities on radiation. I have no scientific degree, but have read (and written) studiously about the subject, and have one thing going for me that proponents of radiological weaponry do not…good common sense.
Just one last small comment. For those of you who believe you are safe because most of these DU weapons are being used in foreign lands thousands of miles away DON’T BE DELUSIONAL. Exploded DU vaporized aerosol particles can span the globe through wind currents in just 9 days. From being shot on practice ranges throughout the US, and the conflicts we are embroiled in around the world, minute DU particles are falling on you RIGHT NOW, and the half life is 4.5 billion years, meaning permanently.
REBEL FARMER, Kem is on vacation and said he will not even think about DU for a month. Of ocurse Kem is a closet liar and truthfully is not very bright. At one time he was a registered Republican and it takes a long time to go thru the re-hab from that malady. He asked me to fill in for him but I’m also an ex-repug and am still pretty stupid, therefore I won’t write anything technical.
Kem says “Hi to you all, says he misses you and to have lots of fun reading and writing all of the swell news coming in every day”. He also told me you were a beautiful person Rebel.
Saludos desde Puerto Rico,
Puerto Rican independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos said for many years that the US had used radiation on him during the 1950s while he was in an Atlanta Federal prison. His body was covered with burns. There are pictures of this. His case is well documented.
Could it be that he is a victim of this program? And that like so many other things in the US, the truth is now starting to come out.
Don Pedro Albizu Campos died in April of 1965. His nation is still a colony of the US. The US government has used un democratic programs like the FBI harrassment carried out under the COINTELPRO against pro independence advocates. Now the existence of this program is discovered. I would not be surprised to one day learn that the US government killed Pedro Albizu Campos. It was a slower more painful way to die. If compared to the death of pro indpendence leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios on September 23, 2005 in a 200 to one “shoot out” with the FBI. The FBI left Ojeda Rios to bleed to death. Years compared to a day.
The mushroom cloud over Nagasaki is a reminder of the other reason (perhaps the real reason) that nukes were used during WWII - as a warning to the Soviets.
That we would use radioactives to assassinate folks comes as a surprise? This is like peeling back an onion, one thin layer at a time, and realizing you’ll never get to the heart of the matter - at least, not without shedding a lot of tears.
If the USSR was known as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, what did/does that make us?
I just finished reading a sad and chilling book by a lady name of Carole Gallagher. It is titled American Ground Zero
The Secret Nuclear War
She is a professional photographer who took on a project of doing what one might call an ethnography of the Downwinders in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, mainly. The book mainly consists of a photograph and a short interview with each person.
I had a really hard time getting through it and I intend to send her a letter if I can get an address. We deliberately sacrificed thousands of people to use as radiation guinea pigs. Then, when the Downwinders started to realize what had been done to them and requested information, the government first classified the information, then when the foia insisted, they destroyed it.
Servicemen who had been directly exposed to the tests now have no record, in some cases of having been in the military, but in others no record of being in the test areas at all.
Officials have told of how they gave film badges to the populations of towns, then when they were turned in, some black with exposure, they dumped them into barrels and threw them out. No records were kept. There were too many of them and too much work. There are towns where the people had life spans of 80-100 years, going back generations. Virtually no diseases. Suddenly after the tests, they were dying of cancers in their 30s and 40s. Leukemia had been unknown, suddenly epidemics of dozens of children dying of Leukemia in a single school. It just goes on and on.
One person was reading all the cold war atomic attack information for LA and Vegas, how the populace would have to stay in shelters for months until the radiation level dropped. He asked why, if this was the case, were they encouraged to stand on hillsides and watch the tests, and to eat the food and drink the milk covered by fallout. The answer? Those are Russian bombs. You don’t have to worry about ours, the fallout from ours won’t hurt you.
The flyleaf says it all. “…Carole has penetrated the veil of official secrecy and anonymity to document the incredible untold story of of the Americans whose misfortune was to live downwind of the nuclear detonations — those citizens described in a top-secret Atomic Energy Commission memo as a ‘low-use segment of the population’ — and of civilian workers and military personnel exposed to radiation at the Nevada Test Site.”
This nation has become an evil entity in the world, and it starts way back in the forties.
As to records, if I hadn’t managed to hang on to my DD-214 and Honorable Discharge certificate, there would be no proof I had ever served in the Navy. It is all gone, burned up in a warehouse fire that destroyed about half of the US Military service records. The only proof I have that I was at Bikini is my Operation Redwing Certificate, and some rather vivid memories which, of course, will die with me.
If the book is available in your public library, look at the statement of Dr. John Willard, Sr. Page 287-89. That tells it all. He also quotes Eisenhower who said of those living downwind from the test sites, “We can afford to sacrifice a few thousand people out there in defense of national security.”
That “sacrifice” is extending to generation after generation and on into the future. The thousands of sheep, lambs, and cattle that died of radiation poisoning were bought up and shipped out for pet food and to markets for human consumption. The milk from contaminated cows was distributed like any other milk, but it was full of radioactive strontium, iodine, and other chemicals.
The world wide epidemic of cancers and birth defects can be laid at the door of the military-scientific-industrial complex of a number of nations, but more especially ours as we are supposed to be land of the free and to know better.
The fact that we did know better and went ahead and did it, and now want to shirk responsibility for the results is beyond despicable.
raulmax: These guys are into random killing and genocide. They really don’t care who lives or dies. We are talking here about DU that has a half life of over 4 billion years. Your friends in Puerto Rico very well may have been killed by agents of the U.S., but it doesn’t sound like intentional DU poisoning which takes a bomb to atomize it to become lethal.
How can we check the total veracity of this story?
isn’t this dirty bomb? and it is old news.
The Duperpower strikes again! Duplicity, deceit, obfuscation, misinformation of every type and kind, it’s despicable, loathsome and disgusting.
“The Truth? [Americans] can’t handle the truth!”
What rare prophetic (truthful) lines they are.
America can know the truth, be told the truth, watch the truth, have it put right in front of their own eyes, and it’s apparently just meaningless, mindless “entertainment.” American Mythology has taken over, a nation of violent numb-skulls lead by a numb-skull controlled by an unscrupulous ruthless unsustainable numb-skull profit-machine.
“Veracity check”? Pfft.
Here’s the truth: America never had a democracy. All you’ve had is an illusion, that’s become the myth to govern and enslave you all. The Land of the Fee (sic), what an obscenity. All your pretty words are just empty and devoid of meaning, for they are not backed by meaningful rational sustainable action that gives those words any substance or weight that’s worth a damn to anybody to whom words actually mean something. The only way America can give its words weight, is by painting them on a bomb or putting them in a glass case, where they’re no good to anybody. Put them in your heart and live by them, not beside them.
Look at all the treaties you’ve signed but never ratified. Your women don’t even have a ratified women’s rights act, but they think they do, oh yes they do. Americans: Suckers at the tit of propaganda.
When someone cannot take responsibility for their own acts and is incapable of telling right from wrong, you know one thing: they are insane and irrational.
That’s America. Insane and irrational.
I am sickened to the depths of my being by America’s depraved and arrogant inhumanity, for I want to, and do love the ideals you prate. But when I see how you as Americans betray those same ideals…I just want to vomit my despair and revulsion at your betrayal and lack of character.
New Zealand unleashed the power of the atom, and eschewed it, disparaged it, didn’t want it, abhors it. America, incapable of such invention or distinction (it steals whatever it wants), embraced it, turned it into a disgusting and cowardly weapon, and used it, and you’re still holding on to it after seeing the terrible toll it took on all humanity. The stink of uranium is still on your breath.
America has no love of humanity, for America has, in fact (in deeds), no humanity at all. What nation that worships Mars, the god of war, could have humanity and worship at that alter of blood and destruction?
Make the words mean something.
J Conrad: A million thanks for your effort in posting all that information.
QUOTE:
JConrad October 9th, 2007 12:27 pm
The AP writer describes a “new concept of warfare” using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations. ”
Leave it to the complicit Associated Press to continue the corporate military industrial government lies and cover-up of the current use of depleted uranium munitions !
The impression is given here that our military decided to never use “dirty bombs”.
Our honorable military has released thousands of tons of radioactive material in the form of DU weapons in the Balkans, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and the current war crimes in Iraq.
DU weapons are a weapon of mass destruction.
…
END QUOTE.
I have not read but the opening part of the article, so am only commenting based on this.
What JConrad says seems to be a misreading of what AP is saying. The ‘new concept …’ in terms of it having been that in 1948, the year of the document that AP is referring to, does not seem off-base, …; it’s not the same thing as saying a ‘new concept’ as of today.
DU was not first used until the 1960s, or not first developed and applied in manufacturing of weapons of wars until the 1960s, while not used in war before the 1970s, and by I think Israel, which obtained the DU or DU-treated bombs from the U.S. I read something like this several times, and from definitely reputable, very respected experts on the topic of DU used for weapons of war and esp. when applied in war, the consequences, anyway. Those people cover mostly the consequences, but also provide some information in terms of the 1960s and 1970s historics, while other experts provide en masse on this aspect.
DU is a WMD, but obviously not as fast and expansively acting as nuclear bombs. But very well respected Leuren Moret argues that we can consider that Iraq and perhaps more of the Middle East is now radiologically poisoned from the U.S. wars of aggression on Iraq in 1991, and 2003 and since, with all of the use of DU weapons there; and that this poisoning is like a forever matter, given the half-life of DU is around 4 billion years (or is million, but still no less and therefore treatable as quite forever?).
‘new concept’ in the 1948 timeframe doesn’t sound very exaggerated, if it is at all. The atomic bombs were first used in WWII, so just a few years earlier; and then some time was likely or perhaps needed for the insane scientists developing atomic, nuclear weapons to realise another manner that these could be fatally useful for much longer, by using the radiologically poisoned elements or residue, the remaining waste that could be reemployed and for lethal purposes, or for causing cancers, etc. Maybe anyway.
I’m no expert on this historicity, but ‘new concept’ seems like a credible thing to have been thought back in 1948; and a document of such nature and signed in 1948 was prepared in what year; when did the preparation of it commence; when was the idea of using radiologically poisoned waste from atomic explosions and/or depleted uranium, …, first thought of; did all of this happen in 1948, or did an earlier commencement conclude with this document being signed in that year?
I’ll get around to reading the whole article; only presenting some preliminary thoughts for now.
I still have not read but the opening part of the article, so am only commenting based on this, and this is just a revision that I had hoped to be able to use to replace the original post; but the timer expired.
What JConrad says seems to be a misreading or distortion of what AP is saying. Or maybe it’s only somewhat that, a misreading; perhaps it does apply in respects that I’ll discover when finishing the article.
If the ‘new concept’ is what the thought was in 1948, then this would seem credible enough to me; while if radiological waste from atomic explosions and DU was a new discovery during the Cold War, then this lasted decades, from the 1940s to the 1980s (according to Wikipedia), so which of these many years would the ‘new concept’ have been thought of or in? If in the 1960s, then maybe this’d also be credible enough; and maybe it’d still be credible if it was in the 1970s or 1980s, too.
(I believe to have read that not longer after WWII the U.S. had thought of using large bombers to dispose of radiological wastes over lands of “disliked” peoples or rulers, whatever. But that’d still be during the Cold War years.)
The first Iraqi report on the consequences of DU having been used there, in Iraq, and due to the U.S. warfare, was I believe a report from the early 1990s. That is a report, easily findable on the Internet, and about Iraqi children.
Reports with respect to effects on U.S. troops, I think these came out later; and U.S. troops were first exposed to DU in U.S. warfare with the 1991 war on Iraq, from what I’ve read anyway.
Were there earlier reports of the effects of the radiologically poisoned residues from atomic bombings and/or use of DU for warfare? I’ve read that Israel was the first govt to use DU in actual war and believe to recall that this was in the 1970s; however, I’ve never read of any reports of consequences from the radiological poisoning for the populations that were targeted, and also none with respect to Israeli soldiers.
I know of reports about when the U.S. first began employing DU to harden warfare shells and in the 1960s, and I think having sold to Israel, when Israel became the I believe first country to actually use such DU weapons in a war in the 1970s. But these accounts are not about the radiological consequences of use of DU weapons; only telling of when DU was first used in manufacturing of weapons of war, why it was used, and then the first use in actual war.
What was there for earlier reports and such that U.S. military officials, the Pentagon, would have therefore known that the residues from atomic bombings and/or use of DU for warfare would have long-term harmful consequences for generations of humans in an area struck with such weapons, and for the land in other terms?
I think we can be quite certain that the U.S. govt and ruling power elites know that the radiological poisoning is for real, and we can also give some serious credence to the claim that these powermongers and corrupt govt “leaders” are also aiming for human [DE]population; therefore, we could believe that their use of DU is part of the depopulation strategy. But a lot of people will write this off as nonsense “conspiracy theory”; although that’s rather always without given any serious arguments to try to prove that the depopulation plan is a fantasy matter, not real or true. (There’s evidently more cause to believe that depopulation is planned and not done in nice ways; and the people presenting this claim tend to do it with serious argumentation that’s based on reality, facts, while the “debunkers” don’t back up their words.)
Depopulation planning, if it’s true, which I believe it is, this is a very long theme among the power elite rulers running an ‘invisible govt’ inside our govt, and what was done to the First Nations peoples of the present continental U.S.A. was nothing less than major human depopulation; indeed, definitely! It was genocide, murderous, massacring genocide, [and] human depopulation; “making room” for repopulation with the “newcomer” waves of invaders, the criminal, hegemonic, murdering kind, and then the peaceful newcomers respecting peace and justice, the rights of the indigenous, the First Nations, but still constituting part of the overall repopulation.
As for such planners wanting to use radiological materials like DU in warfare for the purpose of poisoning lands, however, this would be a much newer method; if these planners are really wanting to employ such materials for this purpose, that is. Why they’d want to do that though, now this is quite something to question. After all, the power elites want to take over control of the major energy resources in countries like Iraq, Iran, etc., but these elites will need workers to operate the extraction and shipping, perhaps also refining, in these countries, so …. Maybe these planners would only and unwittingly be working or planning in a manner that is counter-productive with respect to their ultimate goals of seizing the resources of these countries?
As for uses like for assassinations, now this might be ‘new concept’ all the more. How many times have you heard or read of assassinations being committed with the use of radiological poisons? I haven’t heard or read of any before the Alex. Litvinenko case. And that case seems to be one that indicates that radiological poisons might not be a “good” way to assassinate people; unless some kinds are not easily traceable, like the pelonium or polonium used to kill him was, f.e.
It was traced to Russia, but the assaillant remaining ‘unidentified’ seems to be and credibly is true in publicly official terms (only, or mostly ?). A lot of people claimed it was President Putin who ordered the assassination, while some people making this nonsensical and unsupportable claim minimally left it strongly implied that he intended for that specific poison to be used. But it was not him, there’s no way to reasonably argue the contrary, and some people have well enough argued that one or two of the big oil tycoons of Russia and now living in Britain, or at least one is, one Russia wants extradited because of the evidently justified need for the Russian govt to put him on trial, whatever the case is, but while it’s due to his crimes in and against Russia, well, some people say that this man would be responsible for the assassination of Litvinenko. It’s perhaps not proven enough, but it’s a more credible claim; I think.
Of course the U.S. govt would not side with that claim; it is going to definitely protect him. He’s like another pal of the big oil business and power elites world.
Traces of the poison were found in the offices of those two Russians, although I’m not quite sure if the other is really from big oil business in Russia or just associated in other or indirect terms.
But we’ve since received reports that traces of the poison were found on MANY European airplanes, which is a wickedly wild claim; quite unbelievable or surely a lie, I think. This story, and if I’m recalling correctly, came out after the story telling of traces having been found in the offices of the aforementioned men wanted by Russia; unless one of them has also died, leaving only one being still sought by Russia. That one is the former BIG OIL tycoon of Russia; I believe until Vladimir Putin became president, or shortly before it was made official.
I’ve read plenty on all of that, but have not memorized it, and haven’t read more for many months now; except for one short recent piece about the traces found on supposedly many European airplanes, a claim of Western govts, so therefore a suspect or suspicious claim.
Those stories were just some side reading that I did; definitely not a main focus, and I very early-on dismissed the claim against Pres. Putin as bs, nonsense, etc. It did not make sense, and it makes no sense at all when we know what Pres. Putin’s top priority is, to protect Russia from the encroaching U.S. and NATO; a far more important matter than anything Litvinenko might have said or planned to say about Pres. Putin and/or the Russian govt. Litvinenko was really a non-threat, and definitely nowhere significant like the encroachment of the U.S. and NATO is.
Litvinenko also knew some things the U.S. and NATO, the power elites, would not want mentioned much about the international trafficking of heroin from Afghanistan to the West; but possibly knew other things they wouldn’t want him talking publicly about too. Some of what he knew about the heroin and/or opium trade business would also be such that some Russian govt officials at different levels, including local ones, wouldn’t want publicly disclosed. That’s according to a piece by Craig Murray of Britain and from not long ago, anyway; a piece for which there’s a copy at GlobalResearch.ca and easily found via the authors ‘M’ subindex.
Yet I read that there were things Litvinenko knew of and which the power elites ruling the ‘invisible govts’ of the West’s govts surely would not want publicly disclosed.
Anyway, it’s Western govts that have produced the incredible claim that the poison used to assassinate him, that traces were found on MANY European airplanes; and that’s a very incredible, surely bogus story. It sounds a lot more like the Western govts standing behind this claim and the ones coming up with it to begin with instead have something they judge to be much too important and therefore not for public knowledge, ‘top secret’. That’s what the claim really sounds like.
And, as has long been said, ‘truth is the enemy of state(s)’.
But as for the ‘new concept’ use of radioactive wastes from atomic explosions and I suppose development processes, as well as from the use of DU, this being used for radiologically poisoning lands and for committing assassinations, well, it could be ‘new concept’ enough; I believe. The power elites including, in their worldwide strategies, human depopulation is credible enough, but to do this by poisoning entire lands and with substances known to remain poisonous for around 4 billion or million years, this does not make much sense. And use for assassinations, there are many other poisons and methods that can be instead used, and which have been long used and proven to work, already.
AP might have produced a somewhat bogus article, but the ‘new concept’ part seems arguably defendable; I think.
UPDATE:
Now that I’ve read the whole article, I don’t see anything off-base about AP’s reporting in this case.
I don’t interpret the article as an attempt to cover up the U.S. use of DU; instead seeing it as a report specifically, enough, on the 1948 document and the related memos. Both of those long enough predate the U.S. military use of DU for weapons, as I’ve read about the use anyway.
And everyone KNOWS the U.S. employs DU for military weapons; while many who have this knowledge have also read about the U.S. govt’s denials of the radiological-poisoning consequences, as well as the opposite reporting from people like Leuren Moret and Doug Rokke.
From what I recall, those experts and others say that the DU does make the shells sufficiently harder for them to be more certainly penetrating against hard and deep or thick materials. And I believe to recall having read that that is the reason given by the US govt for its use of DU’ing military weapons, tank shells anyway.
If that’s correct for recollection on my part, then the remaining or apparently sole, very important and criminal, but still sole difference is that the govt denies the radiological poisoning. It’s criminal of the govt to do that, and it’s crimianl of it to be committing wars of aggression with or without atomic and DU weapons; but the govt denying the poisoning aspect of DU weapons does not mean that poisoning is the govt’s real purpose of employing the DU.
I don’t live inside the heads, minds or souls of the govt people who decide to employ the DU for military purposes, and none of us know what their fully real intent is; maybe some of them want the poisoning effect, but maybe none of them do. Perhaps their sole purpose is for the hardening and penetration aspect.
It would not be adequately effective poisoning against the enemy fighters, for U.S. soldiers affected by DU poisoning often live for many enough years after being poisoned, and while remaining functionally capable enough to fight, fire a gun, plant a bomb, ….
Iraqi children, who seem to be the victims who are the most extremely affected, certainly aren’t the enemy fighters and would not become any for many years.
The following is one of the copies of the report that I examined and referred to in one of my prior two posts, the report from the early 1990s. It’s a copy of the ‘Extreme Deformities’ report, and the date is May 1992.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html
1992, would those extreme deformities be from the 1991 U.S. war on Iraq, for if yes, then the DU was then extremely fast-acting for these children? But it’s a report about very young Iraqi children; not adult-age Iraqi fighters or military personnel.
Anyway, the reason or one of the reasons why I ask the above question is because of the Israel strike on Iraq’s nuclear power plant or some nuclear facility in the early 1980s. Was there radioactive poisoning of Iraq due to this attack? I wonder. I’ve not read anything in this regard.
That soldiers and officers, American and Iraqi, who’ve been poisoned have long since continued to live and while remaining functional enough, it seems to me that the U.S. govt would not be employing the DU for targeting enemy forces in order to poison them with any quick lethality.
The use of DU weapons therefore should not be used, because of the poisoning effects; but the way they’ve been used in Iraq also seems to remain very pointless, for the hardening, penetrating factor does not seem (to me) to have been any real or significant contribution for the U.S. there. The U.S. is not going after deep bunkers, or firing at objects that conventional weapons would not be able to suffice for; I think anyway.
It’s insane to war to begin with, except when it’s strictly for purpose of defence, which we all know is definitely not what the U.S. position. And it’s insane to use the damn DU, because of the poisoning; but it doesn’t seem to be employed in Iraq for the purpose of poisoning the land and/or enemy fighting forces (who aren’t enemy but defenders of their country).
And that’s what JConrad’s post strikes me as being about, that AP is trying to cover up the radioactive poisoning effects of DU.
Leuren Moret, an evidently very real expert, and possibly others have said that Iraq, rather the whole of it, and likely neighbouring countries of the Middle East are now poisoned with DU; arguing well enough that the fine DU particles get easily carried by the winds, including up into like jet stream high winds that cross continents. I read some reports on sudden increases in radioactivity in the environment in parts of Europe, and shortly enough after the March 2003 launch of the war on Iraq, which cause the the belief that maybe these jumps were due to DU from this war being carried this far by high altitude winds. I read another report about a doctor in India who was supposed to travel to a conference in Italy where Leuren Moret was to speak, as well as himself, but power elites had the Indian govt forbid this doctor from leaving for Italy, so he was not able to attend. What he said was that he’s not precisely sure of the source or origin of the radiological poisoning, that it might possibly be high altitude winds carrying DU particles from Iraq to India, but that the origin might be elsewhere too. Anyway, he was beligerently and unethically prevented from being able to legitimately attend the conference.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s AP’s intent is to at all cover up the DU matter. And none of what I have posted is about the 1948 document and related memos that AP’s article is about, so AP could do a sort of reverse of JConrad and claim that I’m trying to cover up the disclosure of the 1948 report and related memos, which strike me as very good for AP to report on. And I appreciate the details of the AP piece. It was not cheaply done; it’s just that it did not include the 1960s-and-onward history on DU.
Nice thread and thanks to all.
” Servicemen who had been directly exposed to the tests now have no record, in some cases of having been in the military, but in others no record of being in the test areas at all.”
This is an old trick as records of service are required for disability claims or other legal actions. There was a fairly recent case of a women who fought for decades over her husband’s cancer death from early atomic bomb testing. Since the military “lost” the required records, her case was rejected by a federal court. The same happened with records of tens of thousands of Gulf War I vets. Keeping records in chaos is a way of making crimes hard to prove, which is exactly how the Pentagon budget graft is hidden. It is not possible to audit the Pentagon by any normal and effective methods of accounting. They like it that way.
Also, in Puerto Rico, there is a huge problem with a bombing range and DU pollution.
http://www.greens.org/s-r/25/25-09.html
” As if all these environmental woes were not enough, Vieques had also been used as a testing site for munitions made of depleted uranium (DU). The Navy admitted that it had used DU ammunition in Vieques in a May 10 1999 statement in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Military Toxics Project. The use of DU ammunition constitutes “a crime against God and humanity,” declared Doug Rokke, who directed the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project and wrote its Cleanup and Handling Protocol for Depleted Uranium. Rokke visited Vieques on June 2000.
According to a study carried out by the Puerto Rico Health Department, the cancer rate in Vieques is 26.9% above Puerto Rico’s average. Apart from cancer, Vieques epidemiologist Rafael Rivera-Castaño also reports unusually high rates of other diseases, such as scleroderma, lupus, thyroid deficiencies and asthma.”
And Peaceman and others: Glad you enjoyed the links. That is part of files I surfed as a local legislative citizen activist trying to pass a state DU bill that would provided more protection and training for troops and post-deployment testing and to raise general awareness. The bill was blocked by a local National Guard general and the VA. NY state has the best protective DU law in the nation for the Guard, but the real solution is to ban the weapons.
bill: http://www.idust.net/States/NY-Initiative.htm#FinalBill
DU exposed NY vets have a suit in the courts:
http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/236_depleted_uranium.html
If these vets prevail it will change everything but more than likely it will drag out in the courts for decades like Agent Orange and by than many of those affected will be dead.
A vet in the UK effectively proved his case with very precise damaged chromosome testing. I have heard the Brits are now taking DU rounds out of their tanks. The Navy removed DU from their Phalanx weapons system, perhaps not wanting to have radioactive material stored on the ships.
UK: http://vitw.org/archives/405
Navy: http://www.navybuddies.com/weapons/phalanx.htm
And others: I am not misreading the article but giving my opinion on the reporter’s errors of omission. You can read for literal content and you can also read for implied meanings and content that has been neglected. I would expect that if he were to try to include the DU issue that his article would have been edited or censored. It is not a coincidence that all the serious DU writing/research is being done by independents. My local corporate chain paper has neglected the DU issue for decades.
And it can be productive to stir the pot every now and then by thinking outside the box.
Any competent journalist writing today about low-yield radioactive weapons should be mentioning DU. Someone not familiar with DU would read this AP story and think that we have never used dispersed radioactive warfare. The corporate spin masters can be very clever. On the other hand this might be a young and ignorant journalist working in the dark. The profession is arugably at it lowest levels in decades and I have been reading newspapers for about 50 years. Did we not get HUNDREDS of WMD articles run by the major papers without anyone checking the story ?
It is my opinion that most American corporate media is complicit in the current war crimes and no different than Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels propaganda machine.
They have spun the Iraq war crimes as a legitimate “war” for democracy, God, America and the infinite “war on terror”.
What a shocker. What evil men will do. In the name of killing the enemy.
What if we discover the enemy, and he is us?
I feel we should all use dissometer wipes (sp) to determine if we are all ready contaminated from unknown sources of DU dust. But mopping down your residence doesn’t get rid of it. Nanoparticles melt into drinking water, food and soil.
I used to wonder why Timothy McVay, a Desert Storm explosives expert, decided his real enemy was the U.S. government, and why he attacked the Oklaholma City Federal complex. What information caused him to do this? At his execution, the MSM claimed he had nothing to say; so no statement was made.
I doubt that very very much.
Before that, you had the Unibomber Ted sysinski or something, well educated, who had reached simular conclutions.
I had a college Logic instructor, who despised technology, esp nuke power, hated Reagan, and thought along these same lines. Mindless Philosiphers, I thought to myself. I loved Reagan, and I thought that this instructor and all these vilolent vigilantes were crackpots, grown men afraid of high technology.
Now in light of this terrible poliferation of radioactive poison, which will bedevil us for all time, it seems I was the crackpot to put my faith in CEO’s and Politicians to do what is best for all of us.
Talk about coming full circle and staring in the mirror.
The reflection is not flattering at all.
I leave you to your own contemplation,
pac
Isn’t it remarkable the way psychology works? At just the moment we are beginning to use these radiological weapons, we start to become collectively terrified that some “terrorist” is going to use a “dirty bomb” against us!
The vicissitudes of a guilty conscience are truly a thing to behold.