Depleted Uranium and the Medical Mismanagement of Gulf War Veterans

Friday 20 November 2009

by: Paul Zimmerman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Photo: US Marines)

The United States insists that weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) pose no health hazards to exposed populations. This charade persists because an artful propaganda matrix has infiltrated and corrupted certain aspects of the radiation and biological sciences. The facts which follow will introduce how our debilitated veterans are being misinformed of the possible role played by uranium in their illnesses.

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Depleted Uranium: Poisoning Our Planet

Soldier Health Scare Back in News

. . . . Lori Brim has joined other parents, hundreds of other sick soldiers, legislators, research scientists and environmental activists who say the cause of their problems results from exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal used in the manufacture of U.S. tank armor and weapon casings . . . . continue

There are WMD in Iraq - ours

Depleted uranium (DU) is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore for use in nuclear weapons and reactors. It is a very heavy substance, 1.7 times denser than lead, it is highly valued by armies for its ability to punch through armored vehicles. When a weapon made with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it and then erupts in a burning cloud of vapor. The vapor settles as dust, which is both chemically poisonous and also radioactive. (BBC News, 4 January 2001)

As an alpha particle emitter, DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years. DU materials are in the warheads of 23 weapon systems, including cruise missiles, bunker busting bombs and cluster bombs. DU munitions were central to the "shock and awe‚" attack on Iraq in 2003 and the continued military conflict since.

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Critical Analysis ... Depleted Uranium

Dissident Voice, DU issues

There Are No Words . . Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs
by Bob Nichols, March 27, 2004, revised July 12, 2004

. . . This story is about American weapons built with Uranium components for the business end of things. Just about all American bullets, tank shells, missiles, dumb bombs, smart bombs, 500 and 2,000 pound bombs, cruise missiles, and anything else engineered to help our side in the war of us against them has Uranium in it. Lots of Uranium.

In the case of a cruise missile, as much as 800 pounds of the stuff. This article is about how much radioactive uranium our guys, representing us, the citizens of the United States, let fly in Iraq. Turns out they used about 4,000,000 pounds of the stuff, give or take, according to the Pentagon and the United Nations. That is a bunch.

Now, most people have no idea how much Four Million Pounds of anything is, much less of Uranium Oxide Dust (UOD), which this stuff turns into when it is shot or exploded. Suffice it to say it is about equal to 1,333 cars that weigh three thousand pounds apiece. That is a lot of cars; but, we can imagine what a parking lot with one thousand three hundred and thirty three cars is like. The point is: this was and is an industrial strength operation. It is still going on, too. . .read more on Radioactive Uranium Dust