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Depleted Morality

The first signs of uranium sickness surface in troops returning from Iraq

By Frida Berrigan

It’s a year into the occupation and U.S. troops are being killed at a rate of more than four a day. These deaths from roadside bombs, suicide attackers, anti-U.S. militia and mobs of angry civilians make headlines. More quietly, American soldiers also are beginning to suffer injuries from a silent and pernicious weapon material of U.S. origin—depleted uranium (DU). DU… return to article

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    “But the men of the 442 and the 131,000 U.S. and 24,000 Coalition soldiers serving in Iraq deserve more. They deserve a ban on Depleted Uranium.”

    It’s always fascinating anew, in sort of a sickening way, how aggressors have a knack to cast themselves as victims of their own aggression. The US-forces, the US-media and John & Jane Public do not form an exception.
    Back in the 1960s & 1970s, they all bitterly lamented the US-victims of the Vietnam war, hardly anybody mentioned the manifold worse suffering of the victimised Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians - both directly through US-bombs and chemical warfare, and indirectly in the wake of said warfare. Had the US not bombed Cambodia, it is highly doubtful that the murderous regime of Pol Pot ever would have had a shot at power.
    It followed logically from this skewed view of who had been victimized by whom, that the “richest nation in the world” never did make the slightest official effort to acknowledge its wrongdoing, let alone to redress with generous material support and help the injury it had caused in this “righteous war against communist aggression”. Rather to the contrary.

    And now in Iraq?
    Once again, the focus is on the victimised US-forces, even in the anti-war “In These Times”.
    Sure, the US- and coalition soldiers deserve a ban on Depleted Uranium. But what about the Iraqui people? Would they not have deserved such a ban already long ago, with much greater right and with far more urgency?
    After all, the US-forces affected by DU are only reaping a tiny fraction of the pernicious seeds they so genereously did sow, both in this “Gulf War” and in the previous one.
    Reports of the disastrous effects of DU on the Iraqui people have been published - and, naturally, denied by the US-military and political leadership - already shortly after the first “Gulf War”. And the media did not raise much of a stink about it.
    Presumably, those in the say then years ago must have thought “it was worth the price”.
    Today, there is reason to fear, that as long as there are only a few “confirmed” US-victims of DU, “it” still will be “worth the price”. As long as the price is paid in Iraqui lives.

    Sweden Posted by epix2 on May 28, 2004 at 6:24 AM

    Yes, the Iraqi people deserve to have this abomination banned.
    The U.S. has dispersed 405 tons of DU in the past 14 years: 320 tons in the 1st Gulf War, 10 tons in Yugoslavia and 75 tons in the latest conflict.
    Safe? With a half-life of 4.5 billion years, it’s hardly safe. In fact, it’s one of the worst chemical weapons ever used. Cancer rates in Kosovo are up 166% and rising. In Iraq, 700-1000%. Deformities are up 400-600%. Gulf war veterans cancer rates are up 67%.
    --Source: Campaign Against Depleted Uranium.

    This is an abomination the world will never be rid of. Our sun will super-nova before the half-life of DU is over.

    epix is right--the U.S., the dispersers of this horror, has little room to complain. But the innocent soldier is falling victim just like the Iraqi citizen. Only the soldier is beign betrayed by his/her own government by being told it’s safe.

    I have to give In These Times the benefit of the doubt on this one. I don’t believe they’re making light of the Iraqi people’s plight. I would hope most readers of ITT would understand the Iraqi people are still, still, fucking still getting the shaft.

    It doesn’t matter, though. The horror continues, babies are being born without eyes, enlarged heads, horrible deformities. It’s an outrage.
    This is the democracy we bring them?

    United States Posted by Ammonia D on May 31, 2004 at 10:39 PM

    There is much controversy on the use of Depleted Uranium. However a look through Google using maternity hospitals possibly with Croatia will turn up many reports. Kaiser has a report that can be lost except on my web site searching for DU.

    The use of DU must stop both militarily and commercially.

    United States Posted by Mark Schindler on Sep 23, 2004 at 5:59 PM

    we have depleted uranium on our doorstep, should we all be worried!one local doctor has dissmised claims of any leukemnia in dumfries and galloway as a whole,there is a live firing range down the road in dundrenan,is it safe to swim in the sea,and play in the sand,one local counciller thinks it is,he swims there all the time,they will not release any medical information on child or adult leukeamna,yours in disgust
    derek

    United Kingdom Posted by derek. on Oct 4, 2004 at 1:53 PM

    If they use DU on the range they could be contaminated. My WEB site has further information:
    http://inferno.slug.org/~mark/Issue_D.html
    The Kaiser Report has extensive information.

    United States Posted by Mark Schindler on Nov 3, 2004 at 5:34 AM

    It is my opinion that Depleted Uranium (DU) is very dangerous, and I fear for our soldiers that are being exposed to it over in Iraq.  I also found a website (a few months back) which showed Iraqi babies born with birth defects due to being contaminated with DU.  There were huge black areas all over their little bodies that looked translucent, and my thoughts were, “Surely they can’t live with these defects and will soon die.  My heart went out to them and to their mothers who must have suffered miserably while they were pregnant.  May God have mercy on us for doing this to them.  It makes me sick!

    Now, since May 12, 2008, we have DU now being stored stateside according to Cheney’s Halliburton having a no-bid contract on this contaminated Kuwaiti sand via the Army and American Ecology Corp. 

    Apparently, they have shipped approximately 6,700 tons of contaminated Kuwaiti sand halfway around the world from the Persian Gulf to the Grand View, Idaho hazardous waste landfill (near Boise, Idaho).  This sand is left over from Gulf War I in the winter of 1992-1993, which caught fire and became a real “toxic mess” and has been causing health problems to the Kuwaitis; so they told the DOD that they wanted it moved out of there.

    According to the retired major that originally stored the contaminants in preparation for gulf war II, which included DU, chemicals and chemical weapons, biological weapons, conventional munitions, tanks, artillery and fuel radiation, etc., this sand may be contaminated with toxic levels of highly dangerous substances that we’re not being told about.

    Idaho governor, Butch Otter, claims “(radiation levels) dose rate measurements were taken on the surface of the container.  These measurements were between 12 and 14 microem per hour (uRem/hr)”.  (See article at http://proliberty.com/observer/20080507.htm).

    If what the Idaho governor said is true, it would hardly be worth the shipping costs to ship 6,700 tons of low-grade radiated sand to Idaho from the other side of the world/Kuwait.  Apparently, storing contaminants is big business in America, today (if you can find a place where they’ll take it.)

    Without consent of the people, Governor Otter also stated that he is going ahead with plans to expand uranium mining operations in Idaho and is courting a French company that wants to process raw uranium into plutonium at plants to be built in Idaho. 

    Has this man lost his mind?  Where is his concern about people and the environment? 

    I live in fairly close proximity to the Grand View landfill/dump (about 140 miles downwind), and I have noticed a very obnoxious element in the air that has made me sick and caused me to have a bloody noses with a lot of irritation in my sinuses, and huge scabs which have formed above and below my nose.  Since I have lived here, I have never experienced anything like this (or at any other time). 

    With my experiences in Salt Lake with the nerve gas incinerator and chemicals being sprayed on us from the sky, I have found that I am very allergic to anything that is chemical.

    In one of the websites (http://www.2news.tv/news/18476139.html), it shows a dump truck carrying the Kuwaiti contaminated sand.  It shows (DU?) dust coming out of the back of the truck and flying around, and the back of the dump truck is covered with a flimsy canvass-type material.  Very hap-hazardous if you ask me.  Then, when the dump truck arrives at the dump site, they probably take off the canvass and then just dump the contaminants into the silo or landfill.  What ever happened to the “carefully loaded rail car” that they state so emphatically talk about and say they are being so careful not to let any of the contaminants escape.  So much baloney!

    United States Posted by Marjorie Kidman on Jun 18, 2008 at 6:37 PM
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