War on Iraq is a Nuclear War
And the fallout is coming this way, says independent
scientist Leuren Moret
by Stephanie Hiller
In May, 2003, the United States dumped 2,200 tons of
depleted uranium on Iraq, according to reliable sources, and it's logical to
assume that more depleted uranium is being employed in the current attacks on
Faluja that began April 8 to put down Iraqi resistance to the American presence
there.
 According
to independent geoscientist Leuren Moret, the war on Iraq - like the war on
Afghanistan - is a nuclear war. "Depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon and
it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U. S. government's definition of
weapons of mass destruction," Moret says.
The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that DU is harmful,
despite the symptoms of half the returning veterans from the first Persian Gulf
Wars who are now disabled. But researchers have shown that the Pentagon has been
fully aware of the consequences of what is called "low level
radiation" since 1942, when depleted uranium was first suggested for
development as a military weapon under the Manhattan Project.
On Sunday, April 6, the New York Daily News reported
that nine soldiers who returned from Iraq last summer had symptoms typical of DU
poisoning. The News arranged for them to be tested by Asaf Duracovic, a former
colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and one of
the world's foremost experts on the medical effects of radioactive weaponry.
Depleted uranium was found in the urine of four of the men - Sgt. Hector Vega,
Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - the first
confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq
conflict
Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members
of Uranium Medical Research Centre's (UMRC) field investigation team are
contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one from Canada
and the other, Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in October 2003; five
months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's aerial bombing and
ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC's partner laboratory in
Germany measured DU in both team members' urine samples. (Please see http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp)
If short-term visitors and soldiers have been so
affected, what of the people, living near bomb sites, breathing the air every
day, drinking the water? What of the children who play in these sites and
collect pieces of exploded materiel to sell so their families can eat?
Using figures developed by Japanese physicist, Professor
Yagasaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, and explained in his
presentation at the World Conference on Depleted Uranium Weapons held in Hamburg
last October, the radioactivity of 2,200 tons (or 440,000 pounds) of depleted
uranium together with some 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan, is the atomicity
equivalent to 400,00 Nagasaki bombs.
Depleted uranium is cheap and plentiful. When uranium is
processed for fission bombs or fuel rods for use in power plants, only U-235,
about half a percent of the total, is used. Most of what's left over is U-238,
so-called "depleted" uranium. The US has over a million tons of the
stuff, and storage is becoming a serious problem.
Though less radioactive than U-235, DU is still highly
radioactive &endash; and chemically toxic as well. "There is no
allowable level of risk," says Moret. Nearly twice as dense as lead, DU is
used in tanks and airplanes, as well as bullets, handguns, cannons, all the way
up to large bombs weighing more than 5,000 pounds.
It's not dangerous until it blows up.
Depleted uranium is pyrophoric. Relatively innocuous as
a metal alloy used in planes, tanks, missiles, bullets and rounds, when depleted
uranium burns, it releases a radioactive gas. Larger particles may settle to the
ground, but winds blowing across the desert may carry the fine particles to
locations in a 1000-mile radius from the explosion. As a result, areas as far
west as Egypt and as far east as India are likely to be contaminated. "The
U.S. has staged a nuclear war in the Middle East, from Iraq and Central Asia, to
the northern half of India. Half of Egypt, Israel, the Saudi Arabian peninsula,
Turkey, Iran, the Russian oil-rich states, the Caspian oil region, and northern
are now, or will be, all contaminated."
Depleted uranium - U-238 - has a half-life of 4.5
billion years. It's effects will be with us forever. It is in the soil, in the
groundwater, in food, but the worst of all &endash; it is in the air. When
inhaled, it enters directly into the bloodstream. One uranium particle behaves
in the body like a tiny nuclear bomb, sending out alpha and beta particles and
gamma rays to adjacent cells. These are permanently damaging to the cells and
chromosomes and lead to a host of deadly diseases, including cancer and
leukemia. They also cause mutations of the genetic material that will show up in
subsequent generations as terrible birth deformities, weakened health, and
infertility.
Moret says the fallout from these foreign wars is headed
our way. Spread by powerful desert winds, the fallout will be carried certainly
as far as Britain (where dust storms from the Middle East commonly leave
residual dust) and then across the Atlantic Ocean. It will also travel across
Asia and the Pacific Ocean and be slowly and silently deposited across the North
American continent.
American citizens have already been exposed to radiation
from a variety of sources including malfunctioning nuclear power plants, the
disasters at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, aboveground bomb tests conducted
from 1957 to 1963, and the enormous existing pile of depleted uranium, about 1
million tons, poorly stored in the United States. Radiation has caused the
geometric rise of cancers in the US - 1 in 3 Americans compared to 1 in 20
before the second World War. It is also responsible for the rise in autism,
learning disabilities, chronic immune deficiency disorders (chronic fatigue
syndrome, Epstein-Barr and so forth), higher rates of infant mortality and the
general weakening of the public's health.
Leuren Moret was formerly employed at the
Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, and the Lawrence Livermore
nuclear weapons lab. Since walking out on her job to become a whistleblower at
Livermore, she has devoted her time to the study of the effects of nuclear
radiation. She has worked with scientists like Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Marian
Fulk, Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Uranium Medical Research Center, Dr. Doug Rokke
of Traprock Peace Center and many others. Her testimony at the International
Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held December 13-14, 2003, in Tokyo was
largely responsible for the unanimous verdict on depleted uranium, and that the
President Bush and the United States is guilty of war crimes against that
country.
*****
Stephanie Hiller's article above is from her website awakenedwoman.com
Leuren Moret was also interviewed by Janie Rezner on her
show, Women's Voices, April 12, 2004. on www.kzyx.org
in Mendocino County, California
MORE INFORMATION
http://www.mindfully.org
http://www.traprockpeace.org
http://www.umrc.net
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers.htm
The European Committee on Radiation Risk, within
the European Parliament, has just published an excellent report on low-level
radiation at <http://www.euradcom.org>
| 
