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Slow burn
* "Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops", by Amy Worthington The Idaho Observer, 4-16-3.Ok, this article may be a war apologists' rant, but if there's a hint of truth it's sensationally concerning. "America's mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR. Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a 'liberation' gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear. Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute. Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped. The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU. These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them. The A-10 'tank buster' aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield. "DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering ... When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill ... battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can suffer kidney failure within days. Any soldier now in Iraq who has not inhaled potentially lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds. Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated debris. "Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert ... He found that 62 percent of sick vets (from Gulf War I) tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine. Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings ... Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth defects suffered by the Iraqi people ... As an Army health physicist, Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away." Posted by: glen 2003-04-22 |
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