RADIOACTIVE AMMUNITION FIRED IN THE MIDDLE EAST MAY CLAIM MORE LIVES THAN HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

[babylonsister]

RADIOACTIVE AMMUNITION FIRED IN THE MIDDLE EAST MAY CLAIM MORE LIVES THAN HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2007-11-19 21:52. Media

By Sherwood Ross

By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.

So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, “The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed.”

“More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991,” Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine.

Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California.

Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, “The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control.”

Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, “For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed.” She adds, “the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive.”

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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/28830

[cally]

1. I have no words to express my horror

I knew DU was terrible but I had no idea at the magnitude of the devastation.

[MrCoffee]

3. bwah!

most unintentionally hilarious post ever! :rofl:


if you meant it, that's a triple word score

[quip]

14. The threat is minimal unless it goes underground.

:rofl:

[BornagainDUer]

2. Horrifying. IMO I think this is what Bush

had in mind for Iraq. That way the oil can be gotten out without human intervention.

[Donnachaidh]

27. it's been used before -- Bush I used it, and Clinton used it in Bosnia

Iraq has been doubly dosed with DU. And I'm sure the Bosnians have no love for us, either.

[bdamomma]

28. welcome to DU!!

ethic cleansing has been rampant also.

[PDJane]

4. I will hope that

the rest of the world finally tackles the United States and ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity as a humanitarian service.

[MonkeyFunk]

5. the problem with depleted uranium

is not radiation - it's heavy-metal toxicity after it's been broken up.

A block of DU wouldn't do you any harm.

[Richard Steele]

13. A lot of people confuse those issues.

It's not very radioactive, it's just one of the most toxic
substances known to science. And much of it vaporizes into
microscopic dust when it hits a target.

It's like coating the entire Iraqi countryside with a slow-acting poison.
The skyrocketing birth-defect rate is just the beginning.

[FogerRox]

20. Thanks for the rational thinking, depleted uranium is a heavy metal as is cadmium

cadmium IIRC is found in DU rounds too.

What tripped me was these ailments dont really match up with radiological event/s.

[lovuian]

23. its toxic and kills and causes birth defects

right very poisonous and killing our soldiers and making children sick

and some are saying its not radioactive but heavy metal posioning

but the results are the same DU is deadly

[bdamomma]

29. yes, what is depleted uranium doing to our soldiers also.

[truedelphi]

34. Exactly. But of course, in combat situations, the DU often is broken up

Once a DU strengthened vehicle is hit by an IED or other explosive charge, there is a huge chance that the DU contained therein is freed to float about.

Attached to heavier debris items, it will land on the ground. If attached to lighter dust molecules it will go upwards, perhaps even into the stratosphere, where is can come down in the form of rain.

Moret has been known to say that any substance moving upwards that finally reaches the jet stream will (within a mere five days), be evenly distributed across the globe.

So the rain droplet on your toddler's rain coat could have DU on it. It is just as likely that a penguin in the Antartic or a caribou in the Artic hinterlands has DU on their torsos.

DU used in our battle zones is a death sentence for all of us on Planet Earth.

[MadHound]

37. Actually it is both

DU is still a weak alpha a beta emitter, no threat when it is outside your body, your skin and clothes block the radioactive effects.

However when it is blasted into a dust form, and either inhaled or ingested, it gets inside your body where there is no protection against those emissions, thus we see the weak alpha and beta waves wreak havoc inside the body.

Both the radiation and heavy metal toxicity are a problem.

[Gregorian]

6. This hints of genocide. I know we don't use that word lightly.

This period of American history is no better than that which killed the Native Americans. Being someone who has been affected by genocide, I do not use the term lightly. There is a facet of this that may very well fall under that definition. It is a war crime none the less.

And when this invasion is over, it won't be over. This is more than a war crime. This is a crime against humanity.

[Ezlivin]

7. Don't worry - Jesus will be back soon to clean it all up

Unfortunately that is what the End-Timers in our military believe.

[mzmolly]

17. That pic says it all.

Doesn't it? Ann Coulters idea of "The Prince of Peace" summed up very nicely.

[robinlynne]

8. Why did they do this? What is the point at all of using these weapons?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

15. penatration...

makes the bombs/bullets/rockets more 'effective'. :(

[TomInTib]

9. And our people are exposed to the same sh*t.

Just look at how at the effects of DU in Poppy's little dust-up.

It is widely believed that DU was a major factor in all of that (unrecognized by the DoD, of course) Gulf War Syndrome business.

And the exposure was minimal and short-term.

KnR from someone who slept on ground soaked with Agent Orange.

[babylonsister]

11. Yes, and there are already documented cases of US soldiers with it,

who have had deformed children born, etc. But the US so far isn't claiming any responsibility and refuse to consider DU as the cause. If I can find an article, I'll post it here. I know I read one recently.

[devilgrrl]

10. Yeah but think of the lives saved as a result!

:sarcasm:

[JerseygirlCT]

30. And all that FREEDOM! nt

[nealmhughes]

12. The half-life of U-238 is over 4 billion years. It decays by alpha decay, then B- until

it reaches lead. The skin will stop an alpha, and a B- does not exist for very long, as there are plenty of positive charges to "neutralize" them.

DU is most dangerous as a heavy metal than as a radiation danger, per se, like lead.

Although in theory, one could ingest the powered DU from a projectile splintering and then becoming pulverized, then eat or breathe it into the body, but with a half-life of over 4 billion years, I don't think most have to worry about the radiation if ingested, rather the heavy metal aspect of the metal.

U-238 is not the same as U-235 or Plutonium! It isn't good for you, but I think that the DU scary tactics are overblown as a radioactive contaminant rather than as a heavy metal poison.

[lonestarnot]

18. And by DU you mean depleted uranium and not democratic underground.com.

[MiniMe]

16. "The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence"

First off, lets not abbreviate Depleted Uranium as DU on DU. Makes it sound like being on this message board is a virtual death sentence.

[blues90]

19. This is one of the issues that always crop up in my mind

When people talk about hope when there is not just the global warming and a slow motion move to find alternative fuels as we are at peak oil but we have no poisoned to globe with so many of mans grand formulations that cannot ever be cleaned up and will be the death of thousands each year .

What really astounds me is each of these manmade abominations were made from the natural resources pulled from this earth so in a very real sense they are all from nature but it took man and his madness to find and mix all the wrong elements to promote death and disease rather than to promote life .

We use radiation to detect cancers and to attempt to cure cancers when they in fact cause cancers . And now since we have nuclear weapons to keep us safe they are the reason we are not safe .

The natural items that help man are illegal and banned from use , makes perfect sense to me .

Most of the medicine I have read come from plants that are only found in rain forests yet we destroy the very environment they grow in .

We seem to have a choice , go quick or go slowly and let those who suffer be ignored .

[FogerRox]

21. Worry about heavy metal toxicity not radioactivity

these ailments dont really match up with radiological event/s.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

22. Time to impeach yet?

This is so depressing. My god I feel ill.

[bdamomma]

31. exactly why are they still in power???

george is playing and making fools of all of us.

[mvccd1000]

24. Is anyone monitoring how frequently DU ammo is used?

It's not used in the M16, M4, or any of the rifles or handguns carried by troops. It's not used in the .50 caliber that's mounted on the gun trucks in the convoys. As far as I know, it's only used in the 20mm vulcan cannon, or perhaps larger tank or artillery rounds. Since those have very little application over here, I'm curious as to how we're "blanketing the country" with these rounds?

I understand that those guns have been used, and that the expended ammo is out there, but it's just not the kind of thing that's used on a daily basis in the kind of activity we see over here now.

[windoe]

25. Toxic uninhabitable lands

will stand for ages, unless there is some kind of robot/drone to clean that up. These are definite crimes against humanity, our descendants and the Earth, and we wonder why we are hated.

[truedelphi]

35. DU is used to harden the missiles that we use.

And to enharden the armor on our vehicles.

So often when one of our vehicles is hit, DU is vaporized.

This is why so many of our service people have been impacted by it. They might survuve the initial attack on the vehicle they were in, but as they are breathing in the DU dust for some seconds or minutes after the initial explosion, they have it in their bodies.

Then it is like any radioactive time bomb.

[mvccd1000]

36. That's kind of my point...

... DU is used mostly in weapons that are used in heavy combat. Since the period of heavy combat was of relatively short duration here, the amount of DU potentially released may not be all that great.

Our company installs armor on vehicles over here. While I won't provide any in-depth information about that armor, I will say that there are very few vehicles on the road here that contain any DU. There are also very few weapons being used these days that use DU ammunition.

Those systems WERE in use when there was heavy fighting, but they have seen very little use in the patrol-type action that has been ongoing for the last 3 years or so.

On a side note, when I was in the Navy, I used to enjoy watching the 20mm CIWS system being fired on the ship. Those rounds were DU, and I even have a string of expended shell casings linked together on my desk. That's been almost 20 years, and I haven't seen any ill effects yet. (Not denying those effects exist, just saying that - at least in my case - they don't seem to result from casual contact.)

Bottom line: while I agree that DU is an environmental mess, I don't agree that it is either genocide, or that it can, or has, rendered an entire land uninhabitable.

[truedelphi]

38. Didn't mean to imply we aren't on the same page.

BTW, activists are commonly shown a Sixty Minutes or Dateline report from the early nineties - it suggests that almost all the missiles used in the Iraqi theatre of war were DU hardened.

Have no idea if that was the case for 'Iraq I' or not.

But I know that mainstream media clip scared me enough to think there is a problem.

[The Stranger]

26. What a clever genocide they have committed.

[BadgerLaw2010]

32. More moronic "uranium is radioative hazard" BS, I see. Look up what a half-life is.

[Pawel K]

33. Too bad every study ever conducted on this topic directly contradicts what she is saying.

But I guess if it advances your political agenda then you might as well keep posting this bullshit, right?