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By Steve Beckow
OpEdNews
September 3, 2007
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steve_be_070831_why_we_must_not_go_t.htm
Webster Tarpley, Paul Craig Roberts and others have warned that an attack on Iran by the American military is “imminent.” (1) Ray McGovern asks if we have the courage to stop the Bush Administration from making war on Iran. (2)
If we don’t stop the Bush administration from going to war with Iran, we as a planet may very well face what radiation experts are calling “omnicide.” (3)
What does it mean? Consider these facts.
* * * * *
If we are to prevent a global DU catastrophe, which a war with Iran would bring, we need to consider these facts.
Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons are used because uranium is a very dense metal that can penetrate concrete, steel, sandbag bunkers, or virtually anything. (4) The fragments that break off on impact emit Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and X-ray radiation at a rate of 4.15 million electron volts (the voltage in a normal cell is 10 electron volts). Anyone in the immediate area is usually killed outright. (5)
However, worse than the damage it does immediately, DU turns into an infinitesimally fine dust after it explodes. Its deadly radioactive particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria and can be carried as an aerosol in the wind. (6)
Internationally-recognized radiation scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that DU nanoparticles can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick. The radioactive ceramic dust can stay deep in the lungs for years, irradiating the tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a 30-micron sphere, causing emphysema and/or fibrosis. The ceramic can also be swallowed and do damage to the gastro-intestinal tract. In time, it penetrates the lung tissue and enters into the blood stream. (7)
According to former Laurence Livermore geoscientist Dr. Leuren Moret, the invisible particles can reach sensitive targets, including the lymph nodes, spleen, heart, and central nervous system. (8) They can be found in the semen, bone marrow, and lungs. (9) DU can give rise to a range of fatal cancers as well as more than 100 serious illnesses from fibromyalgia to Lou Gehrig’s disease. (10) In other words, in her view, “depleted uranium is a death sentence.” (11)
There are several myths about DU. One is that the protective gear issued to soldiers actually protects them from ingestion and contamination. Dr. Moret advises that DU “will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging." (12)
U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke goes further. Rokke was the man in charge of the “clean-up” after Gulf War 1. He says the protective gear was ineffective in saving soldiers from DU ingestion. “When I talked to senior Manhattan Project scientists that were expert particle physicists, they said – ‘Hey, we knew when uranium breaks up like this, it was going to be down in the .1-.2 micron range.’ “No doubt about it. The gas masks, the respiratory protection issued to the troops – there’s no way it can protect against inhalation." (13)
Another myth is that simple exposure to unfired anti-tank shells and bunker-buster bombs will not result in radioactive contamination.
In the video, Beyond Treason, Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, offers this view: there is “a very minor amount of radioactivity [in an unfired shell], but it’s not anything. … As long as it’s in its bullet form it can be stored and it’s not any type of hazardous material.” (14)
But in fact, according to Dr. Moret, many veterans have been reporting illnesses through proximity to unfired shells and bombs. For instance, gunners in Bradley vehicles who sat on boxes of DU shells are now reporting rectal cancer. (15)
A third myth is that there is a threshold, a safe-exposure limit, below which one can contact DU and not suffer. This too is in fact not true.
According to Dr. Moret, “the amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small.” “It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal.” (16)
Dr. Moret points to National Academy of Sciences studies that indicate there is "no safe level of exposure" for DU. (17)
According to Dr. Moret, because a soldier’s semen is contaminated from DU particles, when he returns home he can contaminate his wife or partner. (18) Whole families can be affected. Staff Sergeant Bob Jones, a former Army Ranger and veteran of Desert Storm, is now retired and disabled due to Gulf War Illness. Not only is he ill, but his entire immediate family all suffer from mycoplasma fermentans incognitos. (19)
The manner in which they were treated by the Veterans Administration should also be noted.
“It wasn’t so much my illness, but my family was also ill and they required medical attention and medical treatment – real medical treatment. I retired in June of last year – June 2003. As soon as I retired my family was completely dropped from the military medical system. … Although I begged and pleaded they would not let my family re-enroll back into the Womack Family Practice.
“So in essence, my wife was completely cut off from all the medications and all the treatment that she had received for the past seven years. … – Cause she was also a victim of these exposures that I brought home from the Gulf War – from my equipment and my personal exposure, as I alluded to earlier – from personal bodily contact… and that to me is the greatest travesty. I just can’t imagine how … you have innocent family members and loved ones that never put their hand up and swore allegiance to fight and defend the constitution of the United States and they get kicked to the curb and nobody cares.” (20)
Even minute trace amounts of DU in semen can bond with DNA, “where they wreak havoc with cells – especially the cells of developing fetuses.” (21) In some cases there are no indications that the baby is not healthy and yet it dies. Said Staff Sergeant Jones: “Some of us that conceived children after the war – and I know of at least two individuals where their children were born perfectly healthy according to the hospital - and within six months after their return [from hospital] their hearts literally exploded in their chests.” (22) Birth defects have skyrocketed in every DU-contaminated region. They are quite elevated in Afghanistan since the invasion: children "born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths ... deformed genitalia." (23)
British researcher Dai Williams states that “women and children … are most vulnerable to internal radiation and chromosome damage owing to higher rates of cell division.” (24)
The first signs of children succumbing to DU poisoning are herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles. These cases develop into childhood cancers, leukemia, Hodkin’s disease, and lymphomas. (25)
Pedriatic examination of Iraqi children confirm that:
“Childhood leukemia has risen 600% in the areas [of Iraq] where DU was used. Stillbirths, births or abortion of fetuses with monstrous abnormalities, and other cancers in children born since [the Gulf War in] 1991 have also been found.” (26)
We must keep in mind that the conditions we are describing will not go away. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years, the same as the age of the Earth itself. (27) It is a problem which, far from lessening over time, will likely increase by orders of magnitude as the DU particles travel around the globe.
DU does not respect sides in a battle. For instance, Israel, a U.S. ally, lies downwind of Iraq and is suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes. (28) Britain, another ally, recorded the highest levels of DU ever measured after the Tora Bora bombings and the “Shock and Awe’ assault of 2003. (29)
Moreover, it does not take long for DU to travel. Within 7-9 days of the “Shock and Awe” campaign, very fine particles of DU were captured by filters 2400 miles away in Britain. (30)
“After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium-oxide nanoparticles on the battlefield, DU remains suspended in air and travels around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow, and moisture remove it from the atmosphere.
“Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The amount of low level radioactive pollution from depleted uranium released since 1991, is many times more (deposited internally in the body), than was released from atmospheric testing fallout.” (31)
According to Dr. Moret, DU is everywhere. She says that researchers have found the "smog of war" from Gulf War I in glaciers and ice sheets globally a year later. (32) Large annual dust storms originating in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia quickly spread the radioactive contamination around the world, and weathering of old depleted uranium munitions on battlefields and other areas will provide new sources of radioactive contamination in future years. (33)
As Dr. Rokke reminds us, DU "cannot be cleaned up." (34) Dr. Moret calls it “the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, … the weapon that keeps killing. … There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up.” (35)
According to Dr. Moret, “there are no known methods of treatment. (36) Dr. Rokke concurs: DU is “going to cause all [kinds of] health problems and there is no medical care and treatment. You can’t reverse radiation exposure damage to the body.” (37) Unlike in the first Gulf War, when 300 tons of DU were fired off in the Kuwaiti and Iraqi desert, in the second Gulf War nearly 10 times as much DU was largely exploded and burned in urban areas, putting the dust right in the path of millions of civilians. (38)
Vignettes of our future?
Near Sarajevo, Michel Chossudovsky found empty villages with full cemeteries. (39)
When a child is born in Iraq, according to Beyond Treason, the parents no longer ask, “Is it a girl or a boy?” They ask, “Is it normal?” (40)
Leuren Moret asserts that the Middle East and Central Asia and Yugoslavia “are contaminated forever.” (41) Dr. Craig Etcheson of the Center for Non-Violent Alternatives, Fort Ashby, W.Va, suggested that “we must … consider the real possibility of Iraq as an uninhabitable wasteland, with the residue of the DU aerosol blowing in the wind and flowing in the waters to adjacent lands, a residue with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Is this outlook too bleak?” (42)
The testimony of Jhooma Khan of Laghman Province in Afghanistan stands as witness to the manner in which America may come to be seen by much of the world:
“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 silent death from which I know we will not escape." (43)
Disposable armies? Who will enlist?
In January of 2006, the Washington Post reported that 518,000 of 580,000 Gulf War veterans were on disability, over half on permanent disability. Over 13,000 Gulf War 1 veterans are deceased. (44) When this information becomes widely known, how will the U.S. or any other armed force recruit soldiers?
Omnicide: The end of life on this planet
Prof. Elias Tuma stated that “to attack Iran's nuclear facilities ... could ... unleash clouds of radiation far beyond the targets and the borders of Iran." (45) He is undoubtedly correct but he does not even mention the radioactivity that will come from thousands of tons of DU released in the first “Shock and Awe” assault. The International Criminal Tribunal on Afghanistan accepted the term “omnicide” to describe the outcome of war prosecuted with DU weapons. Dr. Rosalie Bertell defined the term:
“The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it as omnicide."(46)
Dr. Bertell adds:
“Our collective gene pool of life, evolving for hundreds of millions of years has been seriously damaged in less than the past fifty. The time remaining to reverse this culture of ‘lemming death’ is on the wane. In the future, what will you tell our grandchildren about what you did in the prime of your life to turn around this death process?" (47)
Dr. Moret adds: “There are just a few generations left before the collapse of our environment.” (48) These words were said before a war with Iran seemed imminent. It may be that the extra load of thousands of tons of DU released to “Shock and Awe” the Iranians may have the truly shocking and awful effect of rendering Planet Earth eventually uninhabitable.
Notes
(1) Paul Craig Roberts, “My wake-up call: Watch for Another 9/11 WMD Experience,” Online Journal, 20 July 2007; Paul Craig Roberts, “Impeach Now or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy,” Counterpunch, July 16, 2007; Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney determined to strike in US with WMD this summer; only impeachment and removal, or a general strike, can stop him,” Online Journal, 23 July 2007, downloaded from http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2220.shtml, 6 August 2007; see also, as background, Michel Chossudovsky, “The Pentagon's ‘Second 911.’ ‘Another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets.’" Global Research, 10 Aug. 2006.
(2) Ray McGovern, “Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?”, Opednews.com, downloaded from http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ray_mcgo_070831_do_we_have_the_coura.htm, 31 Aug. 2007.
(3) Internationally-renowned radiation expert Dr. Rosalie Bertell, quoted in judgement of Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J, International Criminal Tribunal For Afghanistan at Tokyo, 13 March 2004, downloaded from http://www.traprockpeace.org/tokyo_trial_13march04.doc, 30 Aug. 2007.
(4) Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, in Beyond Treason, video, produced by the Power Hour, 2005.
(5) U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(6) Dr. Leuren Moret quoted in Robert C. Koehler, “Depleted Uranium (DU): Silent Genocide,” Tribune Media Services, 25 March 2004, downloaded from http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Silent-Genocide25mar04.htm, 29 Aug. 2007; Dr. Rosalie Bertell cited in Michel Chossudovsky, “Low Intensity Nuclear War,” Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, 2001, downloaded from http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/kosovo/chossudovsky_lowintensity.html, 26 Aug. 2007.
(7) Dr. Rosalie Bertell cited in Michel Chossudovsky, ibid.
(8) Dr. Craig Etcheson, Center for Non-Violent Alternatives, Fort Ashby, W.Va., “Depleted Uranium: Pernicious Killer Keeps on Killing,” t r u t h o u t, 19 February 2007, downloaded from http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021907G.shtml, 31 Aug. 2007.
(9) Dr. Moret in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(10) Dr. Leuren Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, 1 July 2004, downloaded from http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm, 26 Aug. 2007.
(11) Dr. Moret in video Beyond Treason, ibid.
(12) Dr. Leuren Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, 1 July 2004, downloaded from http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm, 26 Aug. 2007.)
(13) Dr. Doug Rokke in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(14) Beyond Treason, ibid.
(15) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” ibid.
(16) Ibid.; also Koehler, ibid.
(17) Dr. Leuren Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star: Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East,” Mindfully.org, 26 Feb. 2006, downloaded from http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Moret26feb06.htm, 30 Aug. 2007.
(18) Dr. Moret in Beyond Treason, ibid.; see also Capt. Joyce Riley, USAFR, in same video.
(19) Beyond Treason, ibid.
(20) Staff Sergeant Bob Jones in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(21) Dave Lindorff, “DU, the Ticking Nuke in Bush’s White House War Room,” San Francisco Bay View, 25 Jan. 2006, downloaded from http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Bush-War25jan06.htm, 26 Aug. 2007.
(22) Staff Sergeant Jones in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(23) Koehler, ibid.
(24) Dai Williams, Hazards of Uranium Weapons in the Proposed War on Iraq, 22 Sept. 2002.
(25) Chossudovsky, ibid.
(26) Loc. cit.
(27) Dai Williams, ibid.; Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.; Dr. Etcheson, ibid.
(28) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” ibid.
(29) Loc. cit.
(30) Dr. Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star,” ibid.
(31) The figure of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs is given in Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid. But note as well: “Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, a Japanese physicist at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, has estimated that the atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs has been released into the global atmosphere since 1991, from the use of depleted uranium munitions.” (Dr. Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star,” ibid.)
(32) Dr. Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star,” ibid.
(33) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.
(34) Dr. Doug Rokke in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(35) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.
(36) Dr. Moret cited by Koehler, ibid.and in Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.
(37) Dr. Doug Rokke in Beyond Treason, ibid.
(38) Lindorff, ibid.
(39) Chossudovsky, ibid.
(40) Beyond Treason, ibid.
(41) Dr. Moret in Beyond Treason, ibid. “Several areas of Iraq are now permanently contaminated.” (Dai Williams, ibid.)
(42) Etcheson, ibid.
(43)Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003 in Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.
(44) Dr. Rokke in Beyond Treason, ibid.; Etcheson, ibid.
(45) Statement of Prof Elias Tuma, Arab Internet Network, Federal News Service, 1 March 2005 in Michel Chossudovsky, “Planned US-Israeli Attack on iran,” Globalresearch.ca, a May 2005, downloaded from http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO505A.html, 26 August 2007.
(46) Cited in Judgement of Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J, ibid.
(47) Cited in Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” ibid.
(48) Loc. cit.
Author's Website: http://www.freewebs.com/truthseeker22
Author's Bio: The author is a former Member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and the author of several Internet books on cross-cultural spirituality.
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