Delete If You Want, But Protect Your Health With This Knowlege
"American Soldiers Are Ill and Dying. Is It Depleted Uranium?" -- we encourage you to stop right now to read it.
The news the past two weeks have greatly strengthened the reporting of this terribly sad story. Listen:
* "American Casualties", Radio Liberty, interviewed by Dr. Stan Monteith. On 11/25/03, Dr. Stan Monteith interviewed Captain Joyce Riley, who is now working with the Gulf War Veterans Association. She verified that the "Gulf War Syndrome" of Gulf War I was a combination of Depleted Uranium poisoning and toxic vaccinations.
Then, she stated that veterans of this war are already suffering
and dying from exactly the same symptoms! Riley said that over 9,000 "non-military casualties" have occurred already. She also said that the Pentagon is attempting to hide the truth by either threatening soldiers to not talk, or they will lose medical benefits and by calling the sicknesses by various names.
Dr. Riley basically verified the key points of our original article, above. One additional bit of information we had not heard before came from Dr. Monteith during this interview; he stated that depleted uranium still contains 20% of its original radioactivity! As we are currently proving on the ground in Iraq, this amount of radioactivity is deadly!
* NEWS BRIEF: "The perfect weapon: Our love affair with depleted uranium masks a war crime in progress", By ROBERT C. KOEHLER, Tribune Media Services, November 17,2003. Daily News Updates, 11/16 and 11/26.
"... depleted uranium — the perfect weapon. At 1.6 times the density of lead, DU shells are the last word in penetration power: locomotives compressed to the size of bullets. The shells ignite the instant they're fired and explode on impact. I mean it's absolute kill ... Inside the vehicle is a giant firestorm'."
There can be no doubt but that Depleted Uranium munitions offer the Pentagon superior firepower against an enemy. When generals are given the assignment to gain a victory over an opponent, they will absolutely love Depleted Uranium munitions for it truly annihilates the enemy. However, such munitions also kill the friendly soldiers wielding it! This is the disaster the Pentagon is striving so hard to hide from everyone. Let us now go back to this Tribune article
to see why D.U. kills all who come into contact with it, whether the victim is an enemy soldier, an Iraqi civilian, or the soldier wielding the weapon.
"...'depleted uranium' isn't really depleted of anything. It's dirty: U-238, the low-level radioactive byproduct of the uranium enrichment process. And when the ammo explodes, poof, it vaporizes into particles so fine — a single micron in diameter, small enough to fit inside red blood cells... "
Obviously, such fine polluted powder will pass through any mask any soldier is wearing. As we stated in our original article, American and British soldiers are "the walking dead".
What kind of a problem are we facing because of Depleted Uranium munitions? Let us go back to this Tribune article.
"... we've sewn pulverized DU across Kosovo and Afghanistan, and now, once again, Iraq. This time, 2,000 tons of it. 'That's the solid estimate'. Two thousand tons. And you can't clean it up. This is a long-term public health disaster of fearful proportions for Iraqis. But even those of you who have a hard time caring about their fate surely see that it is also an imminent disaster for
our own men and women in uniform. They are utterly unprotected from DU contamination."
Captain Riley also reported that many of our soldiers are returning with rectal cancer because they were tank men sitting above the D.U. weapons stored underneath the seats in the Abrams Tanks. She also reported that a growing number of soldiers are coming down with brain cancer. But, most surprisingly, she reported that as many as 40% of the wives of D.U. poisoned soldiers are also become poisoned, a parallel development to the experience of Gulf War I.
* NEWS BRIEF: "IRAQ: Worse Could Follow, Says New Study", Inter Press Service News Agency, 11/11/03. Daily News Updates 11/17.
"LONDON, Nov 11 (IPS) - The consequences of the war in Iraq on people's health may be felt for generations, says a report by the medical charity Medact ...
'The full impact of the war on health will not be known for years', the report adds ... The legacy of the war continues to kill, injure and damage people in all sorts of ways, the report points out. One direct consequence of the war is the masses of unexploded ordnance lying around. Cluster weapons, landmines and depleted uranium weapons 'remain a potential health hazard for local populations years after the conflict', the report says. 'Deaths and injuries from unexploded ordnance are likely to be under-reported'."
* NEWS BRIEF: "'Health will suffer for generations' ",James Meikle, health correspondent, The Guardian, London, Wednesday November 12, 2003
"Iraqis will suffer the health consequences of the second Gulf war 'for years, maybe generations', says a report warning of an 'information black hole' on what is truly happening in the country ... disruption to the country's health was still considerable, says the report's author ... pointing to dangers suchas leftover explosives and ammunition - Unicef has said this has hurt more than 1,000 children - landmines, and risks of cancers from toxic dust from weapons with depleted uranium. 'The mental and physical health of already weakened and unhealthy people is being damaged further'."
In early May, I asked our medical source, a doctor serving in a foreign army, if our Depleted Uranium poisoning of Iraq was so serious that, over the course of a generation, the entire land may be rendered unlivable for civilians. This doctor replied that, yes, this scenario was not only possible, but probable.
Now the British are getting in on the act of Depleted Uranium poisoning. Listen:
NEWS BRIEF: "Soldiers to sue over new Gulf War syndrome", Mark Townsend, Guardian Unlimited, November 23, 2003
"Dozens of soldiers who served in Iraq are to sue the Government, claiming they are suffering from a new form of Gulf War syndrome. Multiple vaccinations given in the run-up to the conflict are being blamed for chronic pains, stomach problems, rashes, swelling, fever, depression and anxiety. Lawyers and medical experts say the symptoms are identical to those which affected thousands of veterans after the 1991 Gulf conflict."
Did you catch that critical understanding?
"... the symptoms are identical to those which affected thousands of veterans after the 1991 Gulf conflict."
Since we know that the Gulf War I Syndrome was caused by a combination of Depleted Uranium poisoning and toxic vaccinations, we can rest assured this is the reason these soldiers are now dying.
As one author whom we quote in our original article stated, "American and British soldiers now in Iraq are the walking dead"!..............................................................................
Subject: DU: Devastation Home and Abroad
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR201A.html
Depleted uranium: Devastation at Home and Abroad
by Leuren Moret San Francisco Bay View, 7 November 2001
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 23 January 2002
"The little fox is still. The dogs of war have made their kill." These are the words of famous Black poet and writer Langston Hughes, commenting on war. He couldn't have said it better.
Few communities have felt the impact of war more than Hunters Point. Theimpact of war is not felt just overseas, in a distant country. It is right here in our own backyards: death and illness from radiation exposure,chemical exposure, and the economic devastation that ensues when the military moves on and leaves the mess behind.
The bombing of Afghanistan by U.S. government forces has direct ties to Hunters Point. It was at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard that a radioactive material called depleted uranium (DU), currently being used in the bombing of Afghanistan, was first tested by the Navy.
The United States now has hundreds of thousands of tons of depleted uranium piled in heaps outdoors at DOE facilities. It is 99.5 percent of what is left when the most fissionable isotope (one of three) is extracted from naturally occurring uranium. The extracted uranium is used in nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors. The 99.5 percent that is discarded cannot be put back into the mines it came out of because, after crushing and processing, the volume is greater than before it was removed
from the mines. "Depleted uranium" does not mean it is not radioactive - it is very radioactive and very dangerous to all living things.
The Department of Defense got the bright idea of using depleted uranium in weapons because: it is very dense, which gives it greater penetrating power to destroy tanks, etc.; it is "pyrophoric," which means that upon impact, it explodes into fire and smoke, creating submicroscopic radioactive particles which travel great distances and can remain suspended until it is "rained out" of the atmosphere; it is cheap, and passes the responsibility for disposal from DOE on to civilians (that means us) and the environment.
Since depleted uranium is so radioactive, it will continue acting
internally on living things long after the battlefield has been cleared - with delayed effects, which impact soldiers and civilians for the rest of their lives. The half life of uranium is 4.5 billion years - in ten half-lives radioactivity becomes an insignificant amount. In 45 billion years it will no longer be a danger. In other words, it's "fun" for the DOD, it's "cheap" for the arms manufacturers (who reap good profits by making it), and "good riddance" says DOE (with 480,000 tons on hand).
The Navy first tested depleted uranium munitions in 1977 at Hunters Point. From the USS Bigelow, the Phalanx Weapons System fired 3,000 rounds of depleted uranium penetrators per minute. The tests exceeded expectations and production started in 1978 to fill orders for 23 U.S. Navy and 14 foreign military systems.
The Army A-10 Thunderbolt II, nicknamed "the Warthog," fired most of the depleted uranium munitions in the Gulf War, between 300 to 800 tons. The Abrams Tank, the Marines M-60, the U.S. F-16 and U.S. Apache helicopters have been fitted to fire DU munitions. Many cruise missiles contain DU balance weights.
The use of DU is not being covered up, but the health hazards have been. Gulf War Syndrome not only killed, maimed, and made soldiers sick, they brought it home. In a study of 251 Gulf War veterans' families in Mississippi, 67 percent of their children were born without eyes, ears or a brain, had fused fingers, blood infections, respiratory problems or thyroid and other organ malformations.
The U.S. has manufactured and tested depleted uranium in 39 states. The cleanup bill - just for the depleted uranium - at the Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana would be $7.8 billion. The DU has not been cleaned up, but DOD has closed the area. Communities living near these test ranges will continue to be exposed and suffer health problems.
For 40 years, the Sierra Army Depot in Northern California has burned millions of tons of old munitions - including 20 times more DU than was used in the entire Gulf War. The radioactive smoke and ash, full of heavy metals, phosgene gas and dioxins, contaminated local communities as well as that of many Native Americans living downwind - especially the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation.
The health problems in those communities have been horrendous. The Sierra Army depot burned old munitions in open pits - and was the single largest contributor to air pollution in California - 17-23 percent. Norman Harry, former Pyramid Lake Tribal Chairman, and Nevada Senator Harry Reid, worked with others to shut it down. A month ago, Lassen County refused to renew theburn permit for the Sierra Army Depot - finally.
The United States has used DU weaponry in the Gulf War, Kosovo, Serbia, Vieques Island, and Torishima Island near Okinawa, Japan; and sold DU to at least 23 countries at great profits. As mentioned earlier, DU is part of the arsenal the U.S. and British military forces are using against Afghanistan.
The depleted uranium that has contaminated the Gulf States since the Gulf War can be detected on gamma meters in Greece and Bulgaria on windy days. It's the weapon that "keeps giving"... and keeps killing.
DU is also used as ballast in commercial and military planes. On Sept. 11, a hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon. Dr. Janette Sherman, research associate with the Radiation and Public Health Project, had spoken a few days earlier at a Sept. 6 press conference in Hunters Point. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Dr. Sherman notified the Nuclear Information and Resource Service that she detected elevated levels of radiation in her home, located seven miles from the Pentagon. Dr. Sherman still had a gamma meter she had borrowed for her visit to Hunter's Point. The EPA, the FBI, and other
federal agencies, including HMRU (Hazardous Materials Response Units), USAR teams, the local fire department and the Virginia HAZMAT were notified, and an investigation began at the Pentagon.
A pile of rubble from the crash was found to be radioactive, but EPA official Bill Bellinger of the agency's Region III Environmental Radiation Monitoring Office was unconcerned when contacted by Diane D'Arrigo from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Bellinger indicated that it was probably depleted uranium and mentioned that americium 241could also be scattered around the crash site. He was convinced that depleted uranium is not radiologically toxic, but commented that it is more of a hazard when aerosolized.
Firefighters, Pentagon personnel, and communities nearby did breathe the smoke and ash from the fire. The agencies that are supposed to be protecting us are not. There was no follow-up investigation.
And what about the World Trade Center in New York? Radiation issues almost never get coverage from mainstream media. It is a taboo subject, a silent killer, as Hunter's Point residents know too well.
The true patriots in this country are two women: Barbara Lee for saying "no" to needless further devastation of an already war-torn country, and Dona Spring, who brought the issue to the table in the Berkeley City Council. Berkeley is the only city in the United States to pass a resolution calling for an end to the bombing of Afghanistan.
Whether or not we agree with the military action in Afghanistan, our soldiers have fought for hundreds of years to give us the right to say yes or no. War is how our "leaders" bleed us, too. It is economically, radiologically and chemically devastating at home as well as abroad.
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Useful links: For an article about how DU is currently being used to bomb Afghanistan, visit www.zolatimes.com/V5.44/afghan_uranium.html .
For information about the testing of DU in Hunters Point Shipyard via the USS Bigelow and the Phalanx Weapons System, visit www.spar.navy.mil/ships/ddg995/wep-phal.html .
To read an article about the use of DU as ballast in commercial as well as military planes, www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dhap997.html .
The Radiation and Public Health Project website is located at www.radiation.org .
Visit the Nuclear Information and Resource Service at www.nirs.org .
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Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 23:21:11 -0500
Subject: Fw: Afghanistan "Uninhabitable" Forever (Uranium) Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE): Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards Democracy. NOTE: Many thanks to Soula Culver for this. -- kl, pp
Uranium and mis-named "depleted" uranium are being used in U.S. weapons. The contamination lasts more than 4.5 billion years. The quotes below are from papers by Afghan Dr. Daud Miraki, who sent survey teams out to collect information from people in areas of Afghanistan that had been bombarded with U.S. weapons.
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"After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced
us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good, different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silence death from which I know we will not escape." (Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003)
These words were uttered by a grieving Afghan grandfather, who saw his own and others' families' extinction at the hands of the United States of America and her allies.
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"If they had killed us once, it would not be so bad. But what the
Americans have brought upon us is not only depriving us but our future generations of our basic God-given human right, the right to live. They will be killing us for generations to come." (An Afghan Victim of US-UK bombing)
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My team also reported that many children are born with no limbs, no eyes, or tumors protruding out from their mouths and their eyes. The father of one of the children in Paktia said this about his child:
"When I saw my little boy with those monstrous red tumors, I thought to myself, why is it difficult for Americans to understand that they are hated in our country. If I do this to the child of an American family, that family has the right to pull my eyes out of my eye sockets. I would like to tell the Americans that they love to live their lives of luxury at the expense of our extermination." (Assadullah, February 2003)
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The father of one of the victims from Kundoz, whose wife had given birth to a deformed child that hardly resembled an infant, said this to our survey team in Kabul:
"My wife was pregnant and we were happily waiting for the moment to see our second child. On the day of the delivery, my wife felt weird, saying that she did not feel good and had pain in her abdomen. When the baby was born, it was hardly a human. It looked as if some one had beaten a baby and then covered its body with flour. My poor child looked like someone had rolled it in a basket of flour. When my wife saw the baby, she went into shock and died after 5 hours." (Zar Ghoon, December, 2002)
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A man from ToraBora lost control of his emotions. While chatting with one of the field volunteers, he screamed and continued with a question:
"What else do the Americans want? They killed us, they turned our newborns into horrific deformations, and they turned our farmlands into graveyards and destroyed our homes. On top of all that their planes fly over and spray us with bullets. We have nothing to lose; we will fight against them the same way we fought the previous monster [the former Soviet Union]."
Sa'yed Gharib, April 2003)
Most of the people that developed various health problems have died; others suffer from conditions such as kidney disease/failure, confusion, and loss of immunity and painful joints.
I wish to conclude this paper with the following quote from one of the victims of the US bombing:
"Tell America, we are not fools. Your words and actions are those of evil. We do not have airplanes like you do; however, we have one thing that you do not have, principles and morals. We will never do anything remotely similar to American children what Americans have done to our children and families. They might win some fights, but we have already won the big fight, the moral ground." (Nurullah Omar-Khail, March, 2003)
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This is some of the source material within which I researched. The above quotes are from numbers 3 and 4:
1) "Afghans' uranium levels spark alert" By Alex Kirby, BBC News, 22 May
2003:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm
2) Uranium Medical Research Centre (see "Project Afghanistan"):
http://www.umrc.net
3) "The Silent Genocide from America" by Mohammed Daud Miraki, 5 May,
2003:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MIR306A.html
4) "The Perpetual Death from America" by Mohammed Daud Miraki,
http://www.uranwaffenkonferenz.de/speakers/miraki_perpetual_death.pdf
5) World Uranium Conference, Oct. 2003
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/World_uranium_conf_2003.htm
6) "Depleted uranium may stop kidneys 'in days'" By Rob Edwards, 12 March,
2002
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/du/article.jsp?id=99992024&sub=News%20
update
=========================
Maybe this is related to (6):
"US Casualties from Iraq War Top 9,000" by Mark Benjamin
Published on Friday, November 14, 2003 by the UPI
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- The number of U.S. casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom -- troops killed, wounded or evacuated due to injury or illness -- has passed 9,000, according to new Pentagon data."
...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1114-12.htm
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Finally, on Thursday Dec. 4 in Berkeley, California, USA at 7 pm, there will be a panel discussion and forum: "Silent Genocide: America's Use of Radioactive Weaponry in the Age of Terror - A Crime Against the Planet -"
http://sf.indymedia.org/calendar/event_display_detail.php?event_id=2768&day=
4&month=12&year=2003
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