American and British troops entering Iraq
should bandage all cuts, keep their overheated rubber suits zipped tight, and
stop breathing. It is dust, not bullets, that will likely pose the most lethal
consequences to their invasion of Iraq.
American military strategist Harlan Ullman
will not be accompanying them. But Ullman is excited about seeing his plan for
mass murder enacted. Only weeks away from a "live-fire"
demonstration over the streets of Iraq's biggest cities. Ullman compares
hundreds of cruise missiles hitting Baghdad to moments of total devastation
directed at another war-ravaged population half a century before.
"You have this simultaneous effect,
rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but
minutes," Ullman boasts. [The Sun-Herald Jan. 26 2003]
Intended as a lesson for a worldwide
audience, the Pentagon says its plan is intended to shatter Iraq
"physically, emotionally and psychologically" by raining down on its
people in two days more than twice the number of missiles launched during the
entire 40 days of Desert Storm. The World Health Organization estimates that
"as many as 500,000 people could require treatment as a result of direct
and indirect injuries" from this unprecedented onslaught or radioactive
high-explosives. [The Mirror Jan 29, 2003]
Extensive experimentation against urban
centers in Bosnia, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq have shown cruise missiles to
be wildly inaccurate. Military insider Al Martin recalls a U.S. general
laughing during Desert Storm at the inaccuracy of American cruise missiles.
"The defense contractors will get paid as long as the things go off and
hit the right country," the general said. [All Fall Down: The Politics
of Terror and Mass Persuasion]
It will take up to 800 missiles to ensure
complete demolition of Iraq's remaining defenses and infrastructure, including
sporadically-functioning power stations, sewage and water purification plants.
Repeatedly blasted in 1991 Ð then denied spare parts under U.S. and British
embargoes Ð these key city facilities are located in crowded neighborhoods.
"The sheer size of this has never been
seen before, never been contemplated before," a Pentagon official boasted
to CBS News. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad."
It's not safe now! Much of Iraq remains radiologically
"hot" following undeclared nuclear attacks that have randomly
distributed lethal air and food-borne radiation from Depleted Uranium (DU)
munitions Ð without any mushroom clouds.
With a postwar toll of perhaps 650,000 deaths
from lingering wounds, illness and DU exposure, Iraq has already suffered more
radiation deaths than the 130,000 corpses produced at Hiroshima through
American know-how and acute radiation exposure. [UN and Japanese figures]
The same type of uranium-tipped cruise
missiles that carried cancer into Bosnia and Afghanistan will only add fresh
"rems" to the radioactive dust of this distant desert land.
Even if resistance collapses following an
urban bombardment unprecedented in scale, timing and ferocity, allied forces
face the specter of severe casualties from the lethal legacy of their last
munitions testing on the people of Iraq.
"If your son or daughter is in the
military today, opposition from the hapless Iraqi army is not the greatest
threat," warns Depleted Uranium (DU) investigator John Kaminski. "In
southern Iraq, American soldiers will be sent into battle with inadequate
protections against a proven health hazard that will almost certainly doom
them to lives diminished by a variety of cancers caused by uranium 238, which
means they may transmit these illnesses to their family and friends - and
birth defects to their children Ñ when and if they return home."
JUST A DAB WILL DU YOU
DU shells retain 60% of the radioactivity of
unspent "hot" uranium. Radiobiologist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that
"it can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly,
the sick."
A speck of Uranium-238 can cause cancer. The
Pentagon admits to firing 320 tons of DU into Iraq's farms and neighborhoods
during Desert Storm. Greenpeace puts the figure at more than 800 tons.
Foremost expert on radiation sickness, Dr.
Helen Caldicott explains that DU dust is a potent radioactive carcinogen,
emitting a heavy alpha particle that can lodge in open wounds, the lungs or
the stomach depending on its pathways of ingestion. The result: cancers in the
lungs, bones, blood or kidneys.
These devastating diseases are already
surfacing in Afghanistan and Bosnia, while continuing to decimate the
survivors of what the City Council of Detroit condemns as "genocide"
in Iraq. With a half-life of 4.5 million years, Caldicott says that
contaminated areas "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of
time." [San Francisco Chronicle Oct. 10, 2002]
Former Basra Dean of Medicine Dr. Alim Abdul-Hamid
says he has "plenty of first-hand experience with Iraq's unprecedented
plague of cancers and birth defects." The Iraqi physician is seeing
breast cancer among women in their 20s. "In their 20s!" he repeats.
"There are increased incidences of colon cancer, thyroid cancer Ð in
addition to, of course, leukemia and lymphomas." [Counterpunch Dec.
28, 2001]
TARGETING CHILDREN
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to
the effects of radiation than adults. Today more than half of all cancers in
Iraq are occurring among children under the age of five.
Helpless pediatricians in Basra have watched
childhood leukemia and cancer increase up to 12-times peacetime rates.
Hospitals throughout Iraq have reported as much as a 10-fold increase in birth
defects since cities and countryside were strafed with radioactive munitions.
[Counterpunch Dec. 28, 2001]
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Pointing to a map of Basra, Dr. Abdul-Hamid
demonstrated the dose-response relationship between DU and cancers, saying,
"Areas which have got the higher level of background radiation have
higher levels of cancers."
American and British military doctors insist
that eating and breathing radioactive uranium is perfectly safe. So, they say,
is being injected with mycoplasma-spiked anthrax vaccine. Believing these
assurances, an estimated 250,000 disposable Desert Storm veterans in Canada,
the United States and Great Britain currently suffer from debilitating
"Gulf War Illness". [Bringing The War Home]
But because Depleted Uranium is unmatched as
a shield and a weapon, international efforts to ban DU continue to be ignored
by the U.S., Canada and Britain. Radioactive warfare is also a convenient way
to redistribute mountains of mutagenic debris from atomic warfare factories to
distant "colored" neighborhoods.
ROKKE'S RADIATION
Dr. Doug Rokke knows these dangers
internally. The American physician in charge of dealing with post-war
contamination in Iraqi communities saw his medical records confiscated by the
U.S. Army after long-delayed examination results showed radiation in his body
at 5,000 times maximum "safe" levels.
Rokke, who headed the army's Depleted Uranium
program after the Gulf Massacre, told reporters after returning from Iraq,
"'Oh my God' is the only way to describe it. Contamination was all
over."
Rokke's recruits measured dangerous levels of
radiation up to 150 feet away from DU-fried tanks Ð including up to 300
millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation. Alpha radiation registered in
the thousands to the millions counts-per-minute on their Geiger counters.
"That whole area is still trashed,"
Rokke remarked. "It's hotter than heck over there still. This stuff
doesn't go away."
NO TANKS
Rokke's team spent three months cleaning up
24 tanks for return as outdoor exhibits to the United States. The army took
another three years to clean up the tanks. But just three days after
commencing their inspections, Rokke and his crew started getting sick."
Over the past decade, 30 men out of 100 servicemen dealing with DU,
"dropped dead."
Rokke says the biggest danger is the dust
given off when a Depleted Uranium shell detonates. In heat fierce enough to
melt armor plating, up to 70% of a DU round oxidizes. "This aerosolized
power Ð uranium oxide Ð is the really dangerous stuff," Rokke says.
"Particularly when it is inhaled."
Rokke suspects that, like many Iraqi adults
and children, radioactive uranium oxide dust is permanently trapped in his
lungs. Rokke also has lesions on his brain. Pustules protrude from his skin.
He suffers from chronic fatigue, and cannot stop wheezing for breath and
coughing. His fibromyalgia inflicts chronic pain in his muscles, ligaments and
tendons.
Rokke's radioactive regrets reveal the
hazards facing unprotected U.S. and British soldiers, as well as peacekeepers
brought in from other countries Ð including Canada Ð to secure the second
biggest oil fields on Earth.
Caldicott warns, "these tiny particles
travel long distances when airborne." In Yugoslavia, Depleted Uranium
fired into agricultural areas has irradiated food. Scottish scientists
recently verified that residents of the Balkans exposed to fallout from DU-tipped
cruise missiles are excreting uranium in their urine.
GULF WAR ILLNESS Ð THE SEQUEL?
Even before American and British troops enter
Baghdad's radioactive environs to "liberate" families suffering the
sickening strangulation of their sanctions Ð allied casualties continue to
mount.
In preliminary announcements of what may
later be called "Gulf War Illness II", Reuters reports that
"Veterans groups on both sides of the Atlantic say up to one in three
soldiers has fallen ill after taking the vaccine, and six of them died in the
United States."
"We have hard facts," says
British-based National Gulf Veterans and Families Association coordinator
James Moore.
"Two and Three Parachute Regiments have
had anthrax injections. At least a third come down with flu-like symptoms and
have been very poorly. In the United States, over 30 percent have come down
with symptoms and six have died after taking the vaccine." [Reuters Jan.
8, 2003]
