Depleted Uranium

http://www.govcov.com/du.html

Dr. Al-Ali (55), director of the Oncology Center at the largest hospital in Basra, Iraq stated, at a recent (2003) conference in Japan:

“Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 cancers - one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney–he had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer”.

“Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common.”,

Besides the multiple cancer victims, another problem is surfacing as the result of DU. Iraqi physicians call it “the white death”-leukemia. Since 1990, the incident rate of leukemia in Iraq has grown by more than 600 percent.

“We have proof of traces of DU in samples taken for analysis and that is really bad for those who assert that cancer cases have grown for other reasons,”

Scary isn’t it?

UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells
The Sunday Times
February 19, 2006
RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the ?shock and awe? bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Dust Storm in Iraq and Kuwait
On Wednesday morning, March 19, 2003, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image of an immense dust storm blowing over the Middle East.
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=5106

Iraq: the DU dust settles
02 April 2004
The Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) estimates the amount of DU used in the 2003 war at 1,700 tonnes, deployed in fighting vehicles, tanks, and aircraft. According to a UMRC research team, DU rounds used by US and British forces may have subjected parts of the country to high levels of radioactive contamination.

The team’s preliminary tests showed that air, soil and water samples contained ‘hundreds to thousands of times’ the normal levels of radiation.

Tanks used in the battle for Nasiriyah examined by the UMRC team were found to be emitting several hundred times the background level of radiation.
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jid/jid040402_1_n.shtml

Afghans’ uranium levels spark alert
BBC News
May 22, 2003
A small sample of Afghan civilians have shown “astonishing” levels of uranium in their urine, an independent scientist says.

He said they had the same symptoms as some veterans of the 1991 Gulf war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3050317.stm

REMEMBER SADDAM HUSSEIN?S ATROCITIES

J. Grant Swank, Jr., POB 1984, Windham ME 04062

Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME

Lest we grow numb to Saddam Hussein?s atrocities, let us keep in the forefront of our ethics what devilment this ?evil? fiend has been up to. Such is the crucial component regarding what a free, morally sensitive global citizenry must do in response to Hussein?s ongoing dark presence in our world.

He is a hatchet man of the first order:

  • Sheikh Taleb Al Souhail, outstanding Iraqi leader and chief of the Bani Tamim tribe, was murdered by Hussein?s intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.

  • The Faylee Kurds, mainly men ages 16 - 28, were tortured in Hussein?s detention camps while their families were sent away to Iran.

  • Hetau Ibrahim Ahmad, prominent Kurdish spokesperson, tells of her having to flee her entire lifetime, in fact becoming a daily refugee. She sets forth detail of killings, oppression and displacement of Kurds by Hussein terrorists.

  • Dr. Katrine Michael, 1988 victim of chemical weaponry, had to flee to Turkey because of the ongoing chemical bombardment of Kurds by Hussein.

  • Nidhal Mhuk Shalal Aljuburi, Sabria Mahdi Naama and Peyman Halmat relate women?s public beheadings (while family members were forced to watch), women being dragged through village streets, rapes by Hussein?s security forces, kidnapping and mass killings, and displacements.

  • Nidhal Muhi Shalal Aljuburi told of the practical extinction of her Jibour tribe, such including relatives, by Hussein. She related Hussein?s purposeful polluting of southern Iraq marsh areas, such yielding the dying out of animal life. (1)

Further crimes by Hussein include:

  • Draining of the southern part of Iraq during the 1990s, such ?cleansing? thousands of Iraqi Shiites.

  • More ethnic obliteration of the non-Arab population of Kirkuk, blatantly murdering thousands of Hussein?s political opponents.

  • Overseeing the murdering of more than 1000 Kuwaitis after his invasion of Kuwait, as well as holding foreign diplomats as hostages, stealing from Kuwaiti citizenry, raining down missiles upon Israeli civilians and seeing through war crimes against American militia.

  • Amassing weapons of mass destruction and instigating global terrorism.

  • Committing enough crimes so as to fill millions of pages of documentation on the part of the Clinton administration?s investigative teams who culled data for bringing Hussein and his henchmen to international justice.

?Yet no Iraqi official (at least 10 are of extreme interest) has ever been indicted for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. My efforts to obtain UN Security Council approval for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal encountered one obstacle after another in foreign capitals, in New York and even within the Clinton administration. The usual excuse was that a tribunal would jeopardize either the United Nations’ inspections regime or its sanctions regime. We needed Hussein’s cooperation, which a criminal indictment might discourage,? Mr. Sheffer states. (2)

Additional crimes include:

  • Daily executions, secretly carried out, at the whim of Hussein. “In Iraq, not a day passes without us hearing that someone from a family we know has been executed,” one refugee is quoted as saying.

“For example, my neighbor’s son was shot outside her house and no one could save him. When he died, the special security forces came and asked her to pay 50,000 Iraqi dinars per bullet to be able to recover the body. She sold everything she had and paid to be able to bury him, on her own, with two police cars accompanying her, and the police buried him. Three days later they came to demolish her house and she was left on the street with her three daughters. I saw that with my own eyes,” the refugee added.

  • Brainwashing of children, beginning at age five. They are enrolled in ?Ashbal Saddam? (?Saddam?s Cubs?) where they must undergo military training, the latter including cruelty to animals. “From the age of nine, children are put through ?proper? military training. A firearm is a physical part of the child’s body,” a mother was quoted as saying.

  • Children are at times arrested, put in prison because a parent opposes Hussein, or merely because a soldier decides it is necessary. One mother told that her children, ages eleven and thirteen, were put behind bars for six months?all because her husband, prior to his being executed, refused to preach in favor of the Hussein war against Iran. Finally, to see her offspring set free, she had to pay the government.

  • Another witness states: “In 1999, while I was under arrest in Abu Ghreb, I saw a group of women brought into prison with children of between three and five. It became standard practice to arrest women and children to put pressure on husbands, brothers, and father. They were kept from one to three months and released only if they confessed,” the witness said.

“We children were between four and twelve in 1981 when we were taken to prison with my mother and my aunt. I can remember the hunger that I felt. When we ran to embrace my mother, who had instruments on either side of her head and was screaming, we felt pain because she was full of electric current,” another witness quoted in the report said.

  • One million of internally displaced persons in Iraq is due to ?forced population removal, known as Arabization.? Under this program, farmland is confiscated, citizens are harassed, imprisoned, tortured, and not permitted to inherit or purchase business or real estate. “The terror in Iraq is ubiquitous,” the report says. “Every Iraqi, man, woman and child is a potential enemy – of the party, of the regime, of the leader Saddam Hussein – and must be dealt with accordingly.” (3)

(1) These testimonials were forthcoming at the National Press Club to an overflow crowd when distinguished Iraq-Americans spoke concerning their personal experiences of the Hussein regime. Moderator was Safia Taleb Al Souhail, Advocacy Director for Middle East and Islamic World at International Alliance for Justice. Joining her was the Honorable Zakia Ismail Hakki, first female judge in Iran and founding member of the Iraqi-American Council, as well as Hetau Ibrahim Ahmad, noted Kurdish activist, and Dr. Katrine Michael, an Iraqi Chaldean and Christian who became a part of the Kurdish resistance movement.

(2) ?Try Him For His Crimes,? David J. Scheffer, The Washington Post September 12, 2002.

(3) International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and the Coalition for Justice In Iraq / NGO Reports Human Rights Abuses by Saddam Hussein.

[quote]ChuckyT wrote:
REMEMBER SADDAM HUSSEIN?S ATROCITIES

J. Grant Swank, Jr., POB 1984, Windham ME 04062

Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME

Lest we grow numb to Saddam Hussein?s atrocities, let us keep in the forefront of our ethics what devilment this ?evil? fiend has been up to. Such is the crucial component regarding what a free, morally sensitive global citizenry must do in response to Hussein?s ongoing dark presence in our world.

He is a hatchet man of the first order:

  • Sheikh Taleb Al Souhail, outstanding Iraqi leader and chief of the Bani Tamim tribe, was murdered by Hussein?s intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.

  • The Faylee Kurds, mainly men ages 16 - 28, were tortured in Hussein?s detention camps while their families were sent away to Iran.

  • Hetau Ibrahim Ahmad, prominent Kurdish spokesperson, tells of her having to flee her entire lifetime, in fact becoming a daily refugee. She sets forth detail of killings, oppression and displacement of Kurds by Hussein terrorists.

  • Dr. Katrine Michael, 1988 victim of chemical weaponry, had to flee to Turkey because of the ongoing chemical bombardment of Kurds by Hussein.

  • Nidhal Mhuk Shalal Aljuburi, Sabria Mahdi Naama and Peyman Halmat relate women?s public beheadings (while family members were forced to watch), women being dragged through village streets, rapes by Hussein?s security forces, kidnapping and mass killings, and displacements.

  • Nidhal Muhi Shalal Aljuburi told of the practical extinction of her Jibour tribe, such including relatives, by Hussein. She related Hussein?s purposeful polluting of southern Iraq marsh areas, such yielding the dying out of animal life. (1)

Further crimes by Hussein include:

  • Draining of the southern part of Iraq during the 1990s, such ?cleansing? thousands of Iraqi Shiites.

  • More ethnic obliteration of the non-Arab population of Kirkuk, blatantly murdering thousands of Hussein?s political opponents.

  • Overseeing the murdering of more than 1000 Kuwaitis after his invasion of Kuwait, as well as holding foreign diplomats as hostages, stealing from Kuwaiti citizenry, raining down missiles upon Israeli civilians and seeing through war crimes against American militia.

  • Amassing weapons of mass destruction and instigating global terrorism.

  • Committing enough crimes so as to fill millions of pages of documentation on the part of the Clinton administration?s investigative teams who culled data for bringing Hussein and his henchmen to international justice.

?Yet no Iraqi official (at least 10 are of extreme interest) has ever been indicted for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. My efforts to obtain UN Security Council approval for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal encountered one obstacle after another in foreign capitals, in New York and even within the Clinton administration. The usual excuse was that a tribunal would jeopardize either the United Nations’ inspections regime or its sanctions regime. We needed Hussein’s cooperation, which a criminal indictment might discourage,? Mr. Sheffer states. (2)

Additional crimes include:

  • Daily executions, secretly carried out, at the whim of Hussein. “In Iraq, not a day passes without us hearing that someone from a family we know has been executed,” one refugee is quoted as saying.

“For example, my neighbor’s son was shot outside her house and no one could save him. When he died, the special security forces came and asked her to pay 50,000 Iraqi dinars per bullet to be able to recover the body. She sold everything she had and paid to be able to bury him, on her own, with two police cars accompanying her, and the police buried him. Three days later they came to demolish her house and she was left on the street with her three daughters. I saw that with my own eyes,” the refugee added.

  • Brainwashing of children, beginning at age five. They are enrolled in ?Ashbal Saddam? (?Saddam?s Cubs?) where they must undergo military training, the latter including cruelty to animals. “From the age of nine, children are put through ?proper? military training. A firearm is a physical part of the child’s body,” a mother was quoted as saying.

  • Children are at times arrested, put in prison because a parent opposes Hussein, or merely because a soldier decides it is necessary. One mother told that her children, ages eleven and thirteen, were put behind bars for six months?all because her husband, prior to his being executed, refused to preach in favor of the Hussein war against Iran. Finally, to see her offspring set free, she had to pay the government.

  • Another witness states: “In 1999, while I was under arrest in Abu Ghreb, I saw a group of women brought into prison with children of between three and five. It became standard practice to arrest women and children to put pressure on husbands, brothers, and father. They were kept from one to three months and released only if they confessed,” the witness said.

“We children were between four and twelve in 1981 when we were taken to prison with my mother and my aunt. I can remember the hunger that I felt. When we ran to embrace my mother, who had instruments on either side of her head and was screaming, we felt pain because she was full of electric current,” another witness quoted in the report said.

  • One million of internally displaced persons in Iraq is due to ?forced population removal, known as Arabization.? Under this program, farmland is confiscated, citizens are harassed, imprisoned, tortured, and not permitted to inherit or purchase business or real estate. “The terror in Iraq is ubiquitous,” the report says. “Every Iraqi, man, woman and child is a potential enemy – of the party, of the regime, of the leader Saddam Hussein – and must be dealt with accordingly.” (3)

(1) These testimonials were forthcoming at the National Press Club to an overflow crowd when distinguished Iraq-Americans spoke concerning their personal experiences of the Hussein regime. Moderator was Safia Taleb Al Souhail, Advocacy Director for Middle East and Islamic World at International Alliance for Justice. Joining her was the Honorable Zakia Ismail Hakki, first female judge in Iran and founding member of the Iraqi-American Council, as well as Hetau Ibrahim Ahmad, noted Kurdish activist, and Dr. Katrine Michael, an Iraqi Chaldean and Christian who became a part of the Kurdish resistance movement.

(2) ?Try Him For His Crimes,? David J. Scheffer, The Washington Post September 12, 2002.

(3) International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and the Coalition for Justice In Iraq / NGO Reports Human Rights Abuses by Saddam Hussein.

[/quote]

So because Saddam Hussein was bad theres no way that DU causes health problems?

I don’t know enough about the subject to judge if they are a health risk, but just because we deposed Hussein doesn’t mean we can do anything we like as long as were not as evil as he was.

If they are a health risk they also pose a huge problem for our guys who use them everyday.

[quote]ExNole wrote:

So because Saddam Hussein was bad theres no way that DU causes health problems?
[/quote]

There is no doubt it causes health problems. The extent is debatable.

Claiming shells fired in Iraq are drifting to Britian and causing problems is ludicrous. JTF is well known for posting outlandish lies. I expect this is likely just one more.

I don’t think he means we can do anything we want, just that even though we used a dangerous weapon to depose him the actual dangers posed by this weapon pale in comparison to the evil Saddam did.

[quote]

If they are a health risk they also pose a huge problem for our guys who use them everyday.[/quote]

Not really. They are only a problem after they are fired and the particulate gets in the air. Not something you want to breathe.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
ExNole wrote:

So because Saddam Hussein was bad theres no way that DU causes health problems?

There is no doubt it causes health problems. The extent is debatable.

Claiming shells fired in Iraq are drifting to Britian and causing problems is ludicrous. JTF is well known for posting outlandish lies. I expect this is likely just one more.

I don’t know enough about the subject to judge if they are a health risk, but just because we deposed Hussein doesn’t mean we can do anything we like as long as were not as evil as he was.

I don’t think he means we can do anything we want, just that even though we used a dangerous weapon to depose him the actual dangers posed by this weapon pale in comparison to the evil Saddam did.

If they are a health risk they also pose a huge problem for our guys who use them everyday.

Not really. They are only a problem after they are fired and the particulate gets in the air. Not something you want to breathe.[/quote]

Isn’t DU one of the theories about Gulf War Syndrome or has that been debunked? I know a nerve agent that was accidentally bombed has been thrown around too.

JTF’s Britain drift is totally ridiculous, but I don’t usually read his posts and missed that. All I meant to reply to was Marmadogg’s Basra Cancer article.

I certainly wasn’t saying that using depleted uranium was even remotely close to Saddam’s crimes, only that if we have a weapon that causes this sort of collateral damage we still have to take responsibility for it regardless of how bad Saddam was.

[quote]JustTheFacts wrote:
Scary isn’t it?[/quote]

Yes, it’s scary how absolutely fucking retarded this post is.

[quote]UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells
The Sunday Times
February 19, 2006
RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the ?shock and awe? bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

[/quote]

The science from Busby is astonishing;

“These increases were in material from the period from 13th March to the 24th April. This is also roughly the period of Gulf War 2, and since it is now universally conceded that a significant amount of uranium weapons were used in the bombing and anti tank warfare, it seems reasonable to connect the uranium increases in the filters with the production of uranium oxide aerosols in Iraq. The first increase was seen in the filter which was removed and measured on 27th March, 9 days after the initiation of the bombing on 19th March. This would firstly require that there was an airflow from Iraq to England in the period 19th to 27th. In addition to this, we should have to agree that the particles could be carried by this airflow, although in a sense, the evidence from the present analysis is implicit in the results; i.e. the increases found clearly demonstrate that the uranium particles are capable of long distance travel.”

First, “universally” according to whom? Second, nothing beats finding data that “roughly” supports your “reasonable” hypothesis and then using that as proof of all the requisite intermediates your hypothesis requires.

It would almost be funny if he weren’t arguing with the IAEA, UN, WHO, and the UK Royal Society with statements like;

“Thus at minimum, the atmospheric conditions do not oppose the conclusion that the uranium at Aldermaston was from the Iraq bombing.”

[quote]Dust Storm in Iraq and Kuwait
On Wednesday morning, March 19, 2003, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image of an immense dust storm blowing over the Middle East.
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=5106
[/quote]

OMG, a dust storm in the desert! And they took a picture! The day before the bombing started!

[quote]Iraq: the DU dust settles
02 April 2004
The Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) estimates the amount of DU used in the 2003 war at 1,700 tonnes, deployed in fighting vehicles, tanks, and aircraft. According to a UMRC research team, DU rounds used by US and British forces may have subjected parts of the country to high levels of radioactive contamination.

The team’s preliminary tests showed that air, soil and water samples contained ‘hundreds to thousands of times’ the normal levels of radiation.

Tanks used in the battle for Nasiriyah examined by the UMRC team were found to be emitting several hundred times the background level of radiation.
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jid/jid040402_1_n.shtml
[/quote]

So depleted uranium, which is widely regarded as a toxicity hazard rather than a radioactive hazard is leading to higher levels of radioactivity? Huh.

[quote]Afghans’ uranium levels spark alert
BBC News
May 22, 2003
A small sample of Afghan civilians have shown “astonishing” levels of uranium in their urine, an independent scientist says.

He said they had the same symptoms as some veterans of the 1991 Gulf war.

[/quote]

Since the Uranium found isn’t depleted, how is this relevant, other than another scientist spewing bullshit like:

“I’m certainly not saying Afghanistan was a vast experiment with new uranium weapons. But use your common sense.”

Nothing like a little scare/conjecture/imagination to drum up funding for the UMRC. But then, that’s part of their “Vision”;

UMRC’s vision for the world is a full awareness of the risks of using nuclear products and by-products AND to contain the still reversible alterations of the earth’s biosphere since the advent of nuclear events and the resulting contamination.

There needs to be an appreciation of the enormous effects and damage of uranium on the environment and human health. Governments, scientific communities, and the general public need to understand the many forms of contamination and specific effects. Continued abuses of uranium and radioisotopes will only lead to the steady degradation and eventual end of meaningful life on earth.

Nothing like objectivity and independence!

[quote]lucasa wrote:
Yes, it’s scary how absolutely fucking retarded this post is.

UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells
The Sunday Times
February 19, 2006
RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the ?shock and awe? bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

The science from Busby is astonishing;

“These increases were in material from the period from 13th March to the 24th April. This is also roughly the period of Gulf War 2, and since it is now universally conceded that a significant amount of uranium weapons were used in the bombing and anti tank warfare, it seems reasonable to connect the uranium increases in the filters with the production of uranium oxide aerosols in Iraq. The first increase was seen in the filter which was removed and measured on 27th March, 9 days after the initiation of the bombing on 19th March. This would firstly require that there was an airflow from Iraq to England in the period 19th to 27th. In addition to this, we should have to agree that the particles could be carried by this airflow, although in a sense, the evidence from the present analysis is implicit in the results; i.e. the increases found clearly demonstrate that the uranium particles are capable of long distance travel.”

First, “universally” according to whom? Second, nothing beats finding data that “roughly” supports your “reasonable” hypothesis and then using that as proof of all the requisite intermediates your hypothesis requires.

It would almost be funny if he weren’t arguing with the IAEA, UN, WHO, and the UK Royal Society with statements like;

“Thus at minimum, the atmospheric conditions do not oppose the conclusion that the uranium at Aldermaston was from the Iraq bombing.”[/quote]

Look dumbass, why is it when it comes to something like radiation possibly being spread throughout Europe, you would immediately put it in the category of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rather than err on the side of caution? THAT is fucking retarded.

We bombed Iraq and the radiation in Britain jumped fourfold – sometimes things are exactly as they appear.

Lung Cancer Hits Young, Non-Smoking Women
Ill Despite Healthy Lifestyle
While no national studies have yet been done, many lung cancer specialists say they’re seeing a disturbing trend of more and more non-smoking women with the disease.

You have an answer for that too? I don’t. Why ARE more and more healthy, non-smoking women developing lung cancer?

Something in the air maybe?

[quote]
Dust Storm in Iraq and Kuwait
On Wednesday morning, March 19, 2003, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image of an immense dust storm blowing over the Middle East.
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=5106

OMG, a dust storm in the desert! And they took a picture! The day before the bombing started![/quote]

Actually I didn’t even notice the date – I mostly linked to that to show that the dust indeed carries far and wide…

“In the bottom part of the image, the wave of dust appears to crash like surf across the bright orange sands of the deserts of Saudi Arabia. All of Iraq is under the cloud, which reaches over the border into Iran (notice the crisply defined terrain to the east of the line of dust), as is Kuwait. The dust stretches out over the blue-green waters of the Persian Gulf”

[quote]
Iraq: the DU dust settles
02 April 2004
The Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) estimates the amount of DU used in the 2003 war at 1,700 tonnes, deployed in fighting vehicles, tanks, and aircraft. According to a UMRC research team, DU rounds used by US and British forces may have subjected parts of the country to high levels of radioactive contamination.

The team’s preliminary tests showed that air, soil and water samples contained ‘hundreds to thousands of times’ the normal levels of radiation.

Tanks used in the battle for Nasiriyah examined by the UMRC team were found to be emitting several hundred times the background level of radiation.
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jid/jid040402_1_n.shtml

So depleted uranium, which is widely regarded as a toxicity hazard rather than a radioactive hazard is leading to higher levels of radioactivity? Huh.[/quote]

DU is largely considered a heavy metal and not a radioactive hazard. Unfortunately when a DU shell hits something it aerosolizes into fine dust, which happens to also be slightly radioactive.

You wouldn’t want to snort powdered aluminum or lead much less DU.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Claiming shells fired in Iraq are drifting to Britian and causing problems is ludicrous.[/quote]

So you admit DU is very dangerous but the possibility of it getting to Britain is “ludicrous”. Just like terrorism, DU dust is all contained in Iraq…

Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium
Airborne Transport of Uranium Particles
The fallout range of airborne DU aerosol dust is virtually unlimited. These micro-particles can be inhaled and ingested easily and that makes them dangerous to human health…

A 5 micrometer uranium dioxide particle can cause a high, localized yearly radiation dose from energetic alpha particles to lung tissue; it is a radioactive hot spot in the lung
http://www.wise-uranium.org/dgvd.html#AIRTRANS

Lung cancer in non-smokers is suddenly skyrocketing – WHY?

Lung Cancer Hits Young, Non-Smoking Women

HAVE DU WILL TRAVEL
Iconoclast Interview With Leuren Moret

MORET: …three years ago, Halliburton took over that facility. I asked, did Halliburton take over a British government air monitoring facility and he said yes. That’s very interesting and they’re the ones who wouldn’t give you the numbers and he said yes.

Last Jan.1, in 2005, the Freedom of Information Act went into law and was effective on that day and that’s the day he filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the numbers. They still refused to give them to him and so there was a long delay.

Finally, Halliburton gave him the numbers, but they wouldn’t give him any of the 2003 numbers for the Iraq war. When I saw how high that number was, 1,700, I understood exactly why they had taken the facility over three years before. It was too high.

ICONOCLAST: What should the numbers be?

MORET: Less than 30. We should only be measuring natural uranium in the air that is coming out of mineral sources and natural sources…
http://lonestaricon.com/2006/Archives/09/news06.htm

This tells a good deal more about your character than mine.

[quote]ChuckyT wrote:
REMEMBER SADDAM HUSSEIN?S ATROCITIES

J. Grant Swank, Jr., POB 1984, Windham ME 04062

Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME

Lest we grow numb to Saddam Hussein?s atrocities, let us keep in the forefront of our ethics what devilment this ?evil? fiend has been up to. Such is the crucial component regarding what a free, morally sensitive global citizenry must do in response to Hussein?s ongoing dark presence in our world.

He is a hatchet man of the first order:

  • Sheikh Taleb Al Souhail, outstanding Iraqi leader and chief of the Bani Tamim tribe, was murdered by Hussein?s intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.

  • The Faylee Kurds, mainly men ages 16 - 28, were tortured in Hussein?s detention camps while their families were sent away to Iran.

  • Hetau Ibrahim Ahmad, prominent Kurdish spokesperson, tells of her having to flee her entire lifetime, in fact becoming a daily refugee. She sets forth detail of killings, oppression and displacement of Kurds by Hussein terrorists.

  • Dr. Katrine Michael, 1988 victim of chemical weaponry, had to flee to Turkey because of the ongoing chemical bombardment of Kurds by Hussein.

  • Nidhal Mhuk Shalal Aljuburi, Sabria Mahdi Naama and Peyman Halmat relate women?s public beheadings (while family members were forced to watch), women being dragged through village streets, rapes by Hussein?s security forces, kidnapping and mass killings, and displacements.

  • Nidhal Muhi Shalal Aljuburi told of the practical extinction of her Jibour tribe, such including relatives, by Hussein. She related Hussein?s purposeful polluting of southern Iraq marsh areas, such yielding the dying out of animal life. (1)

Further crimes by Hussein include:

  • Draining of the southern part of Iraq during the 1990s, such ?cleansing? thousands of Iraqi Shiites.

  • More ethnic obliteration of the non-Arab population of Kirkuk, blatantly murdering thousands of Hussein?s political opponents.

  • Overseeing the murdering of more than 1000 Kuwaitis after his invasion of Kuwait, as well as holding foreign diplomats as hostages, stealing from Kuwaiti citizenry, raining down missiles upon Israeli civilians and seeing through war crimes against American militia.

  • Amassing weapons of mass destruction and instigating global terrorism.

  • Committing enough crimes so as to fill millions of pages of documentation on the part of the Clinton administration?s investigative teams who culled data for bringing Hussein and his henchmen to international justice.

?Yet no Iraqi official (at least 10 are of extreme interest) has ever been indicted for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. My efforts to obtain UN Security Council approval for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal encountered one obstacle after another in foreign capitals, in New York and even within the Clinton administration. The usual excuse was that a tribunal would jeopardize either the United Nations’ inspections regime or its sanctions regime. We needed Hussein’s cooperation, which a criminal indictment might discourage,? Mr. Sheffer states. (2)

Additional crimes include:

  • Daily executions, secretly carried out, at the whim of Hussein. “In Iraq, not a day passes without us hearing that someone from a family we know has been executed,” one refugee is quoted as saying.

“For example, my neighbor’s son was shot outside her house and no one could save him. When he died, the special security forces came and asked her to pay 50,000 Iraqi dinars per bullet to be able to recover the body. She sold everything she had and paid to be able to bury him, on her own, with two police cars accompanying her, and the police buried him. Three days later they came to demolish her house and she was left on the street with her three daughters. I saw that with my own eyes,” the refugee added.

  • Brainwashing of children, beginning at age five. They are enrolled in ?Ashbal Saddam? (?Saddam?s Cubs?) where they must undergo military training, the latter including cruelty to animals. “From the age of nine, children are put through ?proper? military training. A firearm is a physical part of the child’s body,” a mother was quoted as saying.

  • Children are at times arrested, put in prison because a parent opposes Hussein, or merely because a soldier decides it is necessary. One mother told that her children, ages eleven and thirteen, were put behind bars for six months?all because her husband, prior to his being executed, refused to preach in favor of the Hussein war against Iran. Finally, to see her offspring set free, she had to pay the government.

  • Another witness states: “In 1999, while I was under arrest in Abu Ghreb, I saw a group of women brought into prison with children of between three and five. It became standard practice to arrest women and children to put pressure on husbands, brothers, and father. They were kept from one to three months and released only if they confessed,” the witness said.

“We children were between four and twelve in 1981 when we were taken to prison with my mother and my aunt. I can remember the hunger that I felt. When we ran to embrace my mother, who had instruments on either side of her head and was screaming, we felt pain because she was full of electric current,” another witness quoted in the report said.

  • One million of internally displaced persons in Iraq is due to ?forced population removal, known as Arabization.? Under this program, farmland is confiscated, citizens are harassed, imprisoned, tortured, and not permitted to inherit or purchase business or real estate. “The terror in Iraq is ubiquitous,” the report says. “Every Iraqi, man, woman and child is a potential enemy – of the party, of the regime, of the leader Saddam Hussein – and must be dealt with accordingly.” (3)

(1) These testimonials were forthcoming at the National Press Club to an overflow crowd when distinguished Iraq-Americans spoke concerning their personal experiences of the Hussein regime. Moderator was Safia Taleb Al Souhail, Advocacy Director for Middle East and Islamic World at International Alliance for Justice. Joining her was the Honorable Zakia Ismail Hakki, first female judge in Iran and founding member of the Iraqi-American Council, as well as Hetau Ibrahim Ahmad, noted Kurdish activist, and Dr. Katrine Michael, an Iraqi Chaldean and Christian who became a part of the Kurdish resistance movement.

(2) ?Try Him For His Crimes,? David J. Scheffer, The Washington Post September 12, 2002.

(3) International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and the Coalition for Justice In Iraq / NGO Reports Human Rights Abuses by Saddam Hussein.

[/quote]

LIES! DAMNABLE LIES!

Those women and children wanted to go visit their husbands and fathers.

DU munitions are used mainly against armor. The M-1 main gun can fire a DU munition. It’s an Armor Piercing Round. It would essentially travel thru a building before it exploded. High Explosive would be used in an urban setting. No DU in them.

The A-10 fires a DU round but again it would be used in an anti-armor role. HE in an urban setting.

DU rounds send a penetrator into the target. They don’t explode into a cloud of dust. The media needs to talk to someone better informed. Maybe somebody who is familiar with DU munitions.

Why are we worried about this when there is a much bigger threat?

Granite!!!

That’s right, granite. In fact the Thomas Jefferson building in Washington DC has been found to produce radiation that is about 13,000 times higher the than ongoing worldwide radiation exposures from the Chernobyl accident, according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).

This is one of those bullshit nonissues that people try to blow way out of proportion, and to again place blame on America for every little problem.

Is anyone else getting tired of all the nonscientific crap like this going around?

Hey, my mother used Tylenol, and now has cancer, therefore the Tylenol caused it. Can anyone find the faulty logic in this statement? It is the exact same faulty logic used in the subject of this post.

[quote]ExNole wrote:

Isn’t DU one of the theories about Gulf War Syndrome or has that been debunked? I know a nerve agent that was accidentally bombed has been thrown around too.

…[/quote]

I think both those theories are alive and well as well as biological reasons.

I have no idea what the truth is.

Thought maybe this should be included here:

And since most of you won’t click the link, here is the article.

Danger from radiation is exaggerated, say scientistsb

By Mark Henderson, Science Editor

THE dangers of radiation to human health have been exaggerated significantly, according to scientists who have examined the legacy of the Chernobyl disaster 20 years ago.

Research into the aftermath of the meltdown at the Soviet nuclear reactor has suggested that low levels of radioactivity are not as harmful as believed - and may even be beneficial.

Evidence from people and animals exposed to fallout has convinced experts that the risks of radiation follow a much more complex pattern than predicted.

Generally, the hazards are thought to rise directly with increasing doses of radiation. But the new theory suggests that there is a threshold, below which any amount of exposure is probably safe. The theory will be outlined on Thursday during a BBC Two Horizon documentary. It will intensify controversy over the safety of nuclear power in the week in which the Government’s energy review is expected to back a new generation of atomic plants.

Scientists on the programme said that there was mounting evidence that the dangerous reputation of radiation and nuclear energy was unjustified.

Mike Repacholi, of the World Health Organisation radiation programme, said: “People hear radiation, they think of the atomic bomb and they think of thousands of deaths. They think that the Chernobyl reactor accident was equivalent to the atomic bombing in Japan, which is absolutely untrue.”

The Chernobyl disaster was initially predicted to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. Two decades later the death toll stands at 56. The United Nations Chernobyl Forum estimates that no more than 4,000 people will die as a direct result of fallout, while radiation may be a contributory factor in another 5,000 deaths.

Dr Repacholi said that even these estimates could be too high. While 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been detected in the Chernobyl region, with 15 deaths, many can be attributed to better detection because of the screening conducted after the disaster.

The main negative health impacts of Chernobyl were not caused by the radiation, but a fear of it, he said. “We know that there were low doses of radiation received by a large number of people. We don’t want to minimise the effects but we also know that the fear and anxiety about radiation was a much greater factor and it’s this fear which has caused a huge number of health complaints that have overloaded the healthcare system.”

The low number of deaths and adverse health effects suggests that the low levels of radiation to which people around Chernobyl were exposed were not as dangerous as had been assumed.

Further evidence has been taken from wildlife in the most contaminated area around the reactor. Research by Professor Ron Chesser, of Texas Tech University, found that mammals exposed to 8 to 15 millisieverts of radiation a day - equivalent to 8,000 chest X-rays - showed none of the genetic damage that his team had expected. “The radioactivity, even though it was very high according to all of our measures, was not enough to result in any appreciable measure of DNA damage in animals that lived their entire life in this area,” Professor Chesser said. “This was something that that we really didn’t expect.” Other research into natural background radiation also suggests that low levels of exposure do not cause genetic damage or cancer.

Antoine Brooks, of Washington State University, said: “We have, through our fear of radiation, parlayed it into a major player, which it is not.”

Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares will be broadcast on BBC Two at 9pm on Thursday.

[quote]hedo wrote:

DU rounds send a penetrator into the target. They don’t explode into a cloud of dust. The media needs to talk to someone better informed. Maybe somebody who is familiar with DU munitions.[/quote]

This is true but everything I have read indicates a very small amount of material is lost from the round.

It is usually contained in the target.

You would not want to spend time in a tank that had been hit by one of these rounds but to pretend that the contamination localized in the dead tank is drifting to Britian is worse than retarded.

It is an intentional lie meant to undercut our war effort.

[quote]hedo wrote:
DU rounds send a penetrator into the target. They don’t explode into a cloud of dust.[/quote]

At least, that’s what the Army says to the troops who have to operate around it.

But since the rounds remain in perfect shape after impact, it must be fun to retrieve it from the target, recase it and fire it again and again, right?

Pookie,

I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’ve never actually fired one at another tank…am I right? I have.

The penetrator enters the tank and the resulting spalling from the target sprays the occupants with molten gas and metal fragments shredding the individuals inside and igniting everything that can burn including fuel and munitions stored in the tank.

I don’t think you could reuse a DU projectile due to deformation and the fact that it may shatter into large chunks while it is bouncing around. It doesn’t turn to dust however. If it did, it would not be an effective armor piercing round.

Nobody would fire a DU round at a building unless it was a snap shot. In other words very rare. You save your AP rounds for when you need them.

You seem to be implying that because it doesn’t dissolve into a cloud of dust then no dust is created. So when it shatters or when it impacts no small particles are released? Amazing.

As far as the dust reaching England, I watched a show on (I think) the Weather Channel about a massive breakout of hoof-and-mouth disease in England a few years ago that was traced to a massive dust storm in the southern Sahara.

Billions of dollars worth of livestock had to be destroyed, and they had fairly conclusive proof of the origins of the virus and the timeline relative to the dust storm. Ludicrous?

[quote]hedo wrote:
The penetrator enters the tank and the resulting spalling from the target sprays the occupants with molten gas and metal fragments shredding the individuals inside and igniting everything that can burn including fuel and munition stored in the tank.[/quote]

Zap,

You believe what you read way too much.

The explanation above, combined with the fact that penetrated targets leak, burn or weren’t closed vessels in the first place would point out ample opportunities for particulate matter to leak and be dispersed.

Of course, the proponents of the current munitions systems are very much going to point to the safety and utility of those systems.

All that said, I’m still somewhat of a skeptic, waiting for more analysis to be done, but I’d be hesitant to reject it based on some cheerleader spin which is surely going to be put out there right away.

Your choice, believe what you want to believe whenever you find spin that lets you do so, or consider the matter from first principles each time, allowing the discovery of new facts and conclusions as more is learned.

[quote]tme wrote:

You seem to be implying that because it doesn’t dissolve into a cloud of dust then no dust is created. So when it shatters or when it impacts no small particles are released? Amazing.

As far as the dust reaching England, I watched a show on (I think) the Weather Channel about a massive breakout of hoof-and-mouth disease in England a few years ago that was traced to a massive dust storm in the southern Sahara.

Billions of dollars worth of livestock had to be destroyed, and they had fairly conclusive proof of the origins of the virus and the timeline relative to the dust storm. Ludicrous?
[/quote]

You are comparing extremely tiny amounts of one substance with massive amounts of another.

Yes it is a ludicrous comparison.