History Forum / General / General Topics / September 2004

The destruction that this evil monster and his very mischievous
father brought to the cradle of human civilization and the death
and suffering on the innocent, is not of Jesus, but of Anti-Christ.

The devil saved him, personally. Here are the results of the deeds
of his father and him:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B2E2DF9B-1E0C-43F4-BBF6-074C1367E27C.htm

Washington's secret nuclear war
By Shaheen Chughtai

Tuesday 14 September 2004, 22:17 Makka Time, 19:17 GMT  

The US has dropped tonnes of depleted uranium on Iraq
Related:
    US secretly removed Iraqi uranium
    The ABC of WMD
    Iraq's real WMD crime

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Illegal weapons of mass destruction have not only been found in Iraq
but have been used against Iraqis and have even killed US troops.

But Washington and its allies have tried to cover up this outrage
because the chief culprit is the US itself, argue American and other
experts trying to expose what they say is a war crime.

The WMD in question is depleted uranium (DU). A radioactive by-product
of uranium enrichment, DU is used in ammunition such as tank shells
and "bunker busting" missiles because its density makes it ideal for
piercing armour.

Thousands of DU shells and bombs have been used in Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and - both during the 1990-91 Gulf war and the ongoing
conflict - in Iraq.

"They're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block with DU - it's
all over the place"

Major Doug Rokke,
ex-head of US army DU project
"They're using it now, they're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is
chock-a-block with DU - it's all over the place," says Major Doug
Rokke, director of the US army's DU project in 1994-95.

Scientists say even a tiny particle can have disastrous results once
ingested, including various cancers and degenerative diseases,
paralysis, birth deformities and death.

And as tiny DU particles are blown across the Middle East and beyond
like a radioactive poison gas, the long-term implications for the
world are deeply disturbing.

DU has a "half-life" of 4.5 billion years, meaning it takes that long
for just half of its atoms to decay.

Sick soldiers

Only 467 US soldiers were officially wounded during the 1990-91 Gulf
war.

But according to Terry Jemison at the US Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA), of the more than 592,560 discharged personnel who served
there, at least 179,310 - one third - are receiving disability
compensation and over 24,760 cases were pending by in September 2004.

A sixth of the Iraq war veterans
have already sought treatment
This does not include personnel still active and receiving care from
the military, or those who have died.

And among 168,528 veterans of the current conflict in Iraq who have
left active duty, 16% (27,571) had already sought treatment from the
VA by July 2004.

"That's astronomical," says Rokke, whose team studied how to provide
medical care for victims, how to clean contaminated sites, and how to
train those using DU weapons.

Rokke admits the exact cause for these casualties cannot be confirmed.
But he insists the evidence pointing to DU is compelling.

"There were no chemical or biological weapons there, no big oil well
fires," he says. "So what's left?"

Cradle to grave

Dr Jenan Ali, a senior Iraqi doctor at Basra hospital's College of
Medicine, says her studies show a 100% rise in child leukaemia in the
region in the decade after the first Gulf war, with a 242% increase in
all types of malignancies.

The director of the Afghan DU and Recovery Fund, Dr Daud Miraki, says
his field researchers found evidence of DU's effect on civilians in
eastern and southeastern Afghanistan in 2003 although local conditions
make rigorous statistical analysis difficult.

Iraqi and Afghan doctors have
seen a rise in deformed foetuses
"Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumours protruding
from their mouths and eyes," Miraki told Aljazeera.net. Some newborns
are barely recognisable as human, he says. Many do not survive.

Afghan and Iraqi children continue to play amid radioactive debris.
But the US army will not even label contaminated equipment or sites
because doing so would be an admission that DU is hazardous.

This "deceitful failure", says Rokke, contradicts the US army's own
rules, such as regulation AR 700-48, which stipulates its
responsibilities to isolate, label and decontaminate radioactive
equipment and sites as well as to render prompt and effective medical
care for all exposed individuals.

"This is a war crime," Rokke says. "The president is obliged to ensure
the army complies with these regulations but they're deliberately
violating the law. It's that simple."

No remedy

But these blatant violations are practically irrelevant because
Rokke's Iraq mission found that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is
no known medical remedy.

US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair used Saddam
Hussein's alleged possession of illegal weapons to justify invading
Iraq. But several prominent jurists hold Bush and Blair guilty of war
crimes for waging DU warfare.

The vice-president of the Indian Lawyers Association, Niloufer
Bhagwat, sat on an international panel of judges for the unofficial
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan.

Bhagwat and her fellow judges ruled that the US had used "weapons of
extermination of present and future generations, genocidal in
properties".

Friendly fire

And not just against defenceless Afghan civilians.

Critics say George Bush (R) and
Tony Blair are 'war criminals'

"Bush was guilty of knowingly using DU weaponry against his own
troops," Bhagwat told Aljazeera.net, "because the president knew the
effects of DU could not be controlled".

A prominent US international human-rights lawyer, Karen Parker, says
there are four rules derived from humanitarian laws and conventions
regarding weapons:

   * weapons may only be used against legal enemy military targets
and must not have an adverse effect elsewhere (the territorial rule)
   * weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict
and must not be used or continue to act afterwards (the temporal rule)
   * weapons may not be unduly inhumane (the "humaneness" rule). The
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 speak of "unnecessary suffering"
and "superfluous injury" in this regard
   * weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural
environment (the "environmental" rule).

Illegal weapons

"DU weaponry fails all four tests," Parker told Aljazeera.net. First,
DU cannot be limited to legal military targets. Second, it cannot be
"turned off" when the war is over but keeps killing.

Third, DU can kill through painful conditions such as cancers and
organ damage and can also cause birth defects such as facial
deformities and missing limbs.

"Use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the Geneva
Conventions"

Karen Parker,
human rights lawyer
Lastly, DU cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural
environment.

"In my view, use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions
of the Geneva Conventions," says Parker. "And so its use constitutes a
war crime, or crime against humanity."

Parker and others took the DU issue before the UN in 1995, and in
1996, the UN Human Rights Commission described DU munitions as weapons
of mass destruction that should be banned.

Deceit

Despite the evidence, Rokke says Pentagon and Energy Department
officials have campaigned against him and others trying to expose the
horrors of DU.

That charge is echoed by Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who has worked
at the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons
research laboratories in California.

White House denials are part of a long-standing cover-up policy that
has been exposed before, she says.

President Bush insists warnings
about DU are merely propaganda
"For example, the US denied using DU bombs and missiles against
Yugoslavia in 1999," she told Aljazeera.net. "But scientists in
Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria measured elevated levels of gamma
radiation in the first three days of grid and carpet bombing by the
US."

Moret says: "A missile landed in Bulgaria that didn't explode and
scientists identified a DU warhead. Then, Lord [George] Robertson, the
head of NATO, admitted in public that DU had been used."

Even the US army expressed concern about the use of DU in July 1990,
some six months before the outbreak of the first Gulf war. Those
concerns were later echoed by Iraqi officials.

Denial

But brushing his own army's report aside - now said to be "outdated" -
US President George Bush has dismissed such warnings as "propaganda".

"In recent years, the Iraqi regime made false claim that the depleted
uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and birth
defects in Iraq," says Bush on his White House website.

"But scientists working for the World Health Organisation, the UN
Environmental Programme and the European Union could find no health
effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium," he says.

Bush can point to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2001
that said there was no significant risk of inhaling radioactive
particles where DU weapons had been used.

It said the level of radiation associated with DU debris was not
particularly hazardous, but it accepted that high exposure could pose
a health risk.

Scientific studies

WHO also commissioned a scientific study shortly before the 2003
invasion of Iraq that warned of the dangers of US and British use of
DU - but refused to publish its findings.

The study's main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, told Aljazeera.net that
"the report was deliberately suppressed" because WHO was pressed by a
more powerful, pro-nuclear UN body - the International Atomic Energy
Agency. WHO has rejected his claims as "totally unfounded".

"[WHO's] report was deliberately suppressed"

Dr Keith Baverstock,
co-author of WHO report on DU
The study found DU particles were likely to be blown around and
inhaled by Iraqi civilians for years to come. Once inside a human
body, the radioactive particles can trigger the growth of malignant
tumours.

Bush's claim that the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) gives DU
pollution a clean bill of health is also disingenuous.

UNEP experts have yet to be allowed into Iraq, its spokesman in Geneva
Michael Williams told Aljazeera.net, citing security concerns.

And a scientific body set up in 1997 by Green EU parliamentarians -
the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) - found that DU posed
serious health risks.

An eminent Canadian scientist involved with the ECRR, Dr Rosalie
Bertell, says the deadliness of DU derived not just from its
radioactivity but from the durability of particles formed in the
3000-6000C heat produced when a DU weapon is fired.

"The particles produced are like ceramic: not soluble in body fluid,
non-biodegradable and highly toxic," she told Aljazeera.net. "They
tend to concentrate in the lymph nodes, which is the source of
lymphomas and leukaemia."

Known killer

The US military and political establishment cannot plead ignorance. As
early as October 1943, Manhattan Project scientists Arthur Compton,
James Connant and Harold Urey sent a memo to their director, General
Leslie Groves, saying DU could be used to create a "radioactive gas".

DU targets human DNA and may
thus affect future generations
In 1961, two nuclear experts, Briton HE Huxley and American Geoffrey
Zubay, informed the scientific community that DU targeted human DNA
and "the Master Code, which controls the expression of DNA", Moret
says.

In September 2000, Dr Asaf Durakovic, professor of nuclear medicine at
Washington's Georgetown University, told a Paris conference of
prominent scientists that "tens of thousands" of US and UK troops were
dying of DU.

Death sentence

"There has to be a moratorium on the manufacture, sales, use and
storage of DU," geoscientist Moret says, warning that this will not
happen unless more Americans realise what is happening.

The Middle East has been severely contaminated, warns Moret. "That
region is radioactive forever," she says, but worse is yet to come.

Moret says the air carrying DU particles takes about a year to mix
with the rest of the earth's atmosphere.

Radioactive sites continue to kill
and contaminate Iraqi children

The radiation released by DU nuclear warfare is believed to be more
than 10 times the amount dispersed by atmospheric testing.

As a result, DU particles have engulfed the world in a radioactive
poison gas that promises illness and death for millions.

Rokke went to Iraq a fit and healthy soldier, but the major is now
beset with a variety of illnesses and each day is a struggle.

He suffers from respiratory problems and cataracts while his teeth -
weakened by DU radiation - are crumbling. At least 20 of the 100
primary personnel he worked with on the US army's DU project have
died. Most of the rest are ill.

Meanwhile, WHO says cancer rates worldwide are set to rise by 50% by
2020, although it does not link this publicly to DU.

"They would never say that - they offered various strange
explanations," says Moret. "But DU is the key factor. People will
slowly die."