Weapons of Mass Destruction: US Military or Al Qaeda?

[Ini sudah lama di desktop, tapi belum sempat membuat terjemahannya. Bisa dipahami dalam bahasa Inggris? Wassalam, Gene.]

There are now many websites that are discussing the use of weapons by the US military in Iraq that contain Depleted Uranium (DU). It should be a serious concern for anyone who is interested in the global dominance of the US military that they can use such weapons freely and at the same time, justify their invasion of Iraq in order to protect Americans from the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. There is some (disputed) evidence that DU causes birth defects and cancer. In the case of the Iraq War, there is also a possibility of poisons in the environment like Mustard Gas that may have been dumped by Saddam Hussein. That does not explain the same health problems being experienced by veterans of the Bosnian War. DU weapons were also used by NATO in Bosnia.

DU is used in bombs, tank shells and bullets because it heavier than lead and stronger then tungsten. That means it can penetrate a target easily (e.g. a tank) and after impact creates an intense fireball. The result after the fire is a fine radioactive dust. Those radioactive particles will stay in the environment for 4.5 billion years!

DEPLETED URANIUM - WHAT IT IS:

Depleted uranium is a highly dense, toxic and radioactive metal. It is collected when highly radioactive uranium is separated from natural uranium that comes out of the ground. The U.S. uses DU for bullets and shells.

WHAT IT DOES:

Depleted uranium contains the highly toxic U-238 isotope, which has a radioactive half-life of about 4.5 billion years. As U-238 breaks down, an ongoing process, it creates protactinium-234, which radiates particles that may cause cancer as well as mutations in body cells. That could lead to birth defects.

HOW IT SPREADS:

When a depleted uranium shell hits a hard target, as much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn on impact, creating a firestorm of depleted uranium particles. The toxic residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine insoluble uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain. Once in the soil, it can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/133581_du04.html

The Pentagon and United Nations estimate that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium during attacks in Iraq in March and April -- far more than the estimated 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War.

The U.S. and British use of DU during the latest conflict, also alarms doctors in Iraq. Cancer had already increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people died of cancer; in 1998, 450 died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths. The rate of birth defects also had risen sharply, according to doctors in Iraq.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/133581_du04.html

US FORCES' USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS IS 'ILLEGAL'

BRITISH and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately ignoring a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.

Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a 'war crime'.

Rokke said: 'There is a moral point to be made here. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction -- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves.' He added: 'Such double-standards are repellent.' [repellent = disgusting]

According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include:

• the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• the Charter of the United Nations;
• the Genocide Convention;
• the Convention Against Torture;
• the four Geneva Conventions of 1949;
• the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980;
• and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'.

All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.

DU has been blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome -- typified by chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue and memory loss -- among 200,000 US soldiers after the 1991 conflict.

It is also cited as the most likely cause of the 'increased number of birth deformities and cancer in Iraq' following the first Gulf war.

'Cancer appears to have increased between seven and 10 times and deformities between four and six times,' according to the UN subcommission.

The Pentagon has admitted that 320 metric tons of DU were left on the battlefield after the first Gulf war, although Russian military experts say 1000 metric tons is a more accurate figure.

In 1991, the Allies fired 944,000 DU rounds or some 2700 tons of DU tipped bombs. A UK Atomic Energy Authority report said that some 500,000 people would die before the end of this century, due to radioactive debris left in the desert.

The use of DU has also led to birth defects in the children of Allied veterans and is believed to be the cause of the 'worrying number of anophthalmos cases -- babies born without eyes' in Iraq. Only one in 50 million births should be anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years. Seven of the fathers had been exposed to American DU anti-tank rounds in 1991. There have also been cases of Iraqi babies born without the crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked to DU shelling.

A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.

Rokke told the Sunday Herald: 'A nation's military personnel cannot wilfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions.

'To do so is a crime against humanity.

He added: 'We can't just use munitions which leave a toxic wasteland behind them and kill indiscriminately.

'It is equivalent to a war crime.'

Rokke said that coalition troops were currently fighting in the Gulf without adequate respiratory protection against DU contamination.

The Sunday Herald has previously revealed how the Ministry of Defence had test-fired some 6350 DU rounds into the Solway Firth [in England] over more than a decade, from 1989 to 1999.

30 March 2003

http://www.sundayherald.com/32522

“Sixty-seven percent of babies born to the 400,000 vets who suffer from Gulf War Syndrome have birth defects,” said Joyce Riley, a former nurse who flew in Iraq and the founder and spokesperson of the American Gulf War Veterans Association. “But the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs do not want America to know the number of sick, dead and deformed kids that vets are having. It’s another cover-up.”

http://www.americanfreepress.net/06_29_03/Birth_Defects_Tied/birth_defects_tied.html

DU shells were also used in the Bosnia War by NATO.

“Between 30,000 and 50,000 DU shells were fired”

“In Kosovo some 2 million civilian men, women and children have been exposed to the radioactive fallout since the beginning of the bombing in March 1999. In the Balkans, more than 20 million people are potentially at risk”

“A British expert predicted that thousands of people in the Balkans will get sick of DU. The radioactive and toxic DU-oxides don't disintegrate. They are practically permanent.”

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/low_war.html

Both the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence officially deny that there is any significant danger from exposure to DU ammunition.

"Soldiers may be incidentally exposed to DU from dust and smoke on the battlefield. The Army Surgeon General has determined that it is unlikely that these soldiers will receive a significant internal DU exposure. Medical follow-up is not warranted for soldiers who experience incidental exposure from dust or smoke. [...] Since DU weapons are openly available on the world arms market, DU weapons will be used in future conflicts. […] No international law, treaty, regulation, or custom requires the United States to remediate [=clean up] the Persian Gulf war battlefields."

- Report by the US Army Environmental Policy Institute: 'Health and Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the US army', June 1995

http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html

The United States Department of Energy currently has an inventory of 704,000 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride (stored in 58,000 metal cylinders), corresponding to 476,000 tonnes of uranium [1]. It encourages the use of DU as a means of disposing of the stock, and plans to eventually convert the remaining inventory to a less toxic form, probably either uranium metal or oxide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

WARNING: SCARY PHOTOS. Photos of the deformed babies are available at the following website:

http://www.uksociety.org/us_crimes_against-humanity_1.htm

LINKS

Children of US Soldiers with Birth Defects

http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf02.html

Cost of War to US Taxpayers

http://costofwar.com/

Research paper with photos and graphs:

http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/StudentWebPages/IPesic/ResearchPaper.htm

News Articles:

US forces' use of depleted uranium weapons is 'illegal'

http://www.sundayherald.com/32522

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml

Website: Information from Occupied Iraq:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m13123&l=i&size=1&hd=0

Campaign Against Depleted Uranium

http://www.cadu.org.uk/intro.htm

http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/

http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=173

Against the War in Iraq:

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/8.html

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/4.html

http://www.doinggovernment.com/war/depleated%20uranium/Destroy%20people.htm

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Ex_Pentagon_doctor_112203.htm

June 10, 2000 International Tribunal for U.S./NATO war crimes in Yugoslavia

http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/cpona.htm

Online Articles:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/low_war.html

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm

http://www.downwinders.org/rokke.htm

http://www.wise-uranium.org/dhap992.html

http://schema-root.org/military/weapons/depleted_uranium/

Other Links:

Sub-Commission resolution 1996/16
(resolves and states DU to be "incompatible" with human rights and international law; lists DU as "particularly" one "weapon of mass destruction or indiscriminate effect")

UN High Commission for Human Rights, 1998
(statement that DU is prohibited and contravenes prior UN resolutions)

"Human rights and weapons of mass destruction, or with indiscriminate effect, or of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering"
(The UN 2002 report)

Post Conflict Assessment Iraq by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Scientific bodies

Depleted Uranium article from the Royal Society.

Depleted Uranium Human Health Fact Sheet from Summary Fact Sheets for Selected Environmental Contaminants to Support Health Risk Analyses by Argonne National Laboratory Environmental Assessment Division.

Uranium Human Health Fact Sheet, also from Argonne.

Other

Better World Links on Depleted Uranium Weapons 500+ links

U.S. Soldiers Contaminated With Depleted Uranium Speak Out - Democracy Now!, April 5, 2004

Depleted UF6 Management Information Network, Online repository of information about the U.S. Department of Energy's inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride.

"After the Dust Settles" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists report from 1999)

Proposal for Research on Depleted Uranium ( U.K. Ministry of Defence )

World Uranium Weapons Conference 2003

Guardian Unlimited's Special report on Depleted Uranium

Campaign Against Depleted Uranium

International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons

Truthout.org