| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb | |
| 2006-10-28 | |
| My favorite part is about arab babies in the morgue spontaneously bursting into flames. Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians? We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed. But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste productof the enrichment process is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium. | |
| Posted by:elbud |
| #17 What horseshit. If Israel was going to use any sort of radioactive weapon, their enemies would never know it because they'd all be dead. This sort of terrorist enabling garbage is worse than shameful, it's sleeping with the enemy. Why doesn't this asshole just fellate all the Arabs he can find. It's the only thing he could do that would improve their morale even more than him writing this shit. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-10-28 23:48 |
| #16 Oh, to be a verb. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-10-28 14:58 |
| #15 Fisk is basically an Arab condom - trying to protect them from the consequences of their urges |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-10-28 13:55 |
| #14 And they sure did! Smoke can give you lung cancer! Fiends! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-10-28 13:34 |
| #13 This is also part of the grand tranzi project to cripple the militaries of free peoples; use smoke grenades that contain phosphorus? You just committed a war crime! |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2006-10-28 13:28 |
| #12 Long-winded bastard, isn't he. But not as long-winded as this article. It's printed twice here. It begins again just before the The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium. Because, heaven knows, enriched uranium grows on trees and is cheaper than dirt, so why not use it everywhere? A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium. (Or tires.) It's true! Clouds of thick black smoke! I saw it on Reuters! |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2006-10-28 13:07 |
| #11 American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry - and five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq. Seriously, how many hundreds of times has this canard been shot down? What a self-righteous, lying prick this guy is. |
| Posted by: Raj 2006-10-28 13:02 |
| #10 Just so we are clear, it is not as if the Iranian establishment believes it needs an excuse to develop and deploy nuclear weapons against Israel. But this new lie is exactly the sort of pretext Iran may find useful to further rally support among the idiots. Fisk is doing the mullahs work for them again. |
| Posted by: Flea 2006-10-28 12:59 |
| #9 The moral is to the physical as three is to one. |
| Posted by: Napoleon Buonaparte 2006-10-28 12:53 |
| #8 Wars are ruthless. If you've been through it, it is without saying. The only question is who inflicts the damage. If you sit on your PC ass, the Muzzies will have no hesitation in destroying you and yours. Mindset is the largest obstacle in waging war, always. |
| Posted by: SpecOp35 2006-10-28 12:30 |
| #7 And having reached the point of ruthlessness. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-10-28 12:12 |
| #6 Useless moron. If Israel wanted to be serious, they would quit using laser guided bombs. Instead, they should take out entire neighborhoods with old style dumb bombs, followed by the very low tech, but very effective, dispersal of napalm to completely burn out the area. Anyone in bunkers would likely either be immediately torched or suffocated. No high tech nonsense needed, just common sense. |
| Posted by: SpecOp35 2006-10-28 11:15 |
| #5 Robert Fisk. Just the name makes me smile. A man whose name will go down in history as one who wrote such pieces of senseless garbage that it was necessary to deconstruct them line by line. |
| Posted by: anon 2006-10-28 10:45 |
| #4 If 'elevated radiation levels' are found at the crater of an Israeli bomb (this war), I would expect it indicates the Israelis blew up a 'dirty bomb' factory. |
| Posted by: Angort Slons8752 2006-10-28 09:33 |
| #3 If only the Israelis would beat him to a bloody pulp like the Afghanis did, then he'd adore them. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-10-28 09:32 |
| #2 *I* especially like the part about taking naturally-radioactive uranium, taking almost all the radioactive stuff out, and what remains is "waste products of the nuclear industry". |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-10-28 08:29 |
| #1 Long-winded bastard, isn't he. So what he is saying is that Israel should fight strictly by the rules, but Hizbollah, well , there isn't much critique of Hizbollah here. So Hizbollah can fight out of uniform, use civilians as cover, use mosques and civilian homes as firing positions, and Israel must play it by the book. Sure. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-10-28 08:24 |