Under what circumstances is it justifiable to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population?

[truedelphi]

10. Our government and military's use of depleted uranium is a

Travesty. Although I mourn the loss of life in Japan, we were in a total war scenario, and we had been attacked first.

There was no excuse for Nagasaki, but until we bombed the Japanese at Hiroshima, most of our military analysts believed we were in serious trouble. We would be sending a half million of our service people into battle, going up against people of Japan and that there might be casualties as high as 100,000 killed, and another 100,000 seriously wounded.

But in Spring of 2003, we had no real reason to attack the people of Iraq. They now have sky high rates of birth defects and cancer, because of the depleted uranium that has been used there. Babies are born that look more like hamburger meat than infants. Some are born without eyes; some are born already suffering from blastomas and other deadly cancers.

Although depleted uranium is a rather benign material, if it is hardened and put to use in shielding tanks or jeeps, or being part of the shells for missiles, once the material experiences combustion, as it does upon explosion, it becomes vaporized and highly risky. Entire neighborhoods have been drenched with the stuff. And I and others believe this was done as part of a deliberate genocidal effort.

It was also allowed by "Western Civilization" against the people of Serbia, in our NATO war against them. And also against the people of Afghanistan.

There are two major repercussions for the USA itself - the male servicemen who have experienced a release of radiation from pulverized DU material release it through exchange of bodily fluid into their spouses, and there is the possibility of berth defects from that. The female service people have it directly inside them - so they are more likely to have infants with serious birth defects. There is also a much higher risk of cancer for service people who have absorbed the DU. And these women are of course also at a much higher risk of cancer.

Secondly, the fact of the matter is, as geo-physicist Leuren Moret has explained - any radiation release to any neighborhood on earth ends up fairly evenly distributed into the atmosphere, except for the small portion that is directly absorbed. So when a shell shielded with DU exploded in Bagdad, the radiation material that went int the soil is in the soil, there in Iraq. But the parts of the DU material that ended up, like much of the shell casing, exploding and being pulverized - much of that went into the atmosphere. There is debate about whether it is evenly distributed - some scientists now believe that more poisons end up over the poles that the other parts of the globe.

But in any event, we now have an atmosphere above us that contains five times the amount of radiation that was above human kind on Dec 31st, 1945. And that radiation does fall back to earth. very rare cancers are being experienced by infants and youngsters in the USA. As to be expected, more of these cancers are found among new immigrants from the Serbia and Croatian areas, and from the Middle East. And among our service people. But some of these cancers exist in children whose parents had nothing to do with the war, other than perhaps pay their taxes. The earth's atmosphere, and what we allow our corporations and governments to put up into it, is a great equalizer!