http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/2005/11-20/19news03.htmA Scientific Perspective
An Interview With
LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist
Interview Conducted
By W. Leon Smith
and Nathan Diebenow
Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who works almost around the clock educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials on radiation issues. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after witnessing fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. She is currently working as an independent citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the world, and contributed to the U.N. subcommission investigating depleted uranium. According to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Moret testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Japan in 2003, presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and spoke at the World Court of Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India, in January 2004.
THE INTERVIEW
ICONOCLAST: What are the latest developments with reducing depleted uranium exposures on U.S. troops?
MORET: A young veteran named Melissa Sterry of Connecticut has introduced a bill into the Connecticut Legislature requiring independent testing of returning Afghan and Gulf War veterans going back to 2001. She said that she did it because she’s sick, and her friends are dead, and that’s from serving in the 2003 conflict. I have been following the bill and talking to her. Yesterday, she testified twice at the United Nations. I said, “Why don’t we get this bill all over the U.S. in state legislatures because it informs the public and get the local media to cover it.”
The U.S. has blocked any accountability at international and national levels. There’s a total cover-up just like with Agent Orange, the atomic veterans, MKULTRA, the mind control experiments the CIA did. This is more of the same, but the issue is much, much worse because the genetic future of all those contaminated is effected. Now vast regions around our world, as well as our atmosphere, are contaminated with the depleted uranium. They’ve used so much. It’s the equivalent number of atoms, as the Japanese professor calculated it, to over 400,000 Nagasaki bombs that has been released into the atmosphere. That’s really an underestimate.
I went to Louisiana in April. I was invited to speak at the University of New Orleans for three days. One of the veterans asked me to be in their April 19 protest and rally through the City of New Orleans. He took the Connecticut bill straight to the Legislature, and he got two legislators to sponsor it, and he said, “Just whiteout the name ‘Connecticut’ and write in ‘Louisiana’ on the bill.” You’re not going to believe it. It passed 101 to 0 yesterday in the Louisiana House.
I want you to write about it because we want it (the DU testing bill) in Texas. Nevada is going to introduce it. Congressman Jim McDermott is going to put it into the Washington legislature. We want to get the governor of Montana to do it because he’s the first governor to demand his National Guard be returned. I think half of them are back. He said, “I need them in the state.”
The DU issue is just really, really, really, really so awful. I don’t think there’s any greater tragedy in the history of the world in what they’ve done.
ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in weaponry over there, spreading by air over here?
http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/2005/11-20/19news05.htmA Survivor’s Perspective
An Interview With
MELISSA STERRY
Gulf War Veteran who served in Kuwait
Interview
By W. Leon Smith
Melissa Sterry is a 42-year-old Gulf War veteran who served for six months at a supply base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92. Her job with the National Guard’s Combat Equipment Company A was to clean out and prepare tanks and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war for storage. She was also ordered to help bury contaminated parts.
Sterry recently testified before state lawmakers in Connecticut on the effects of depleted uranium in support of a bill, introduced by State Rep. Patricia Dillon, that requires that Connecticut National Guard troops now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be properly screened and treated for depleted uranium contamination.
Sterry lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
THE INTERVIEW
ICONOCLAST: Tell me about what is going on in the Connecticut Legislature regarding testing soldiers for depleted uranium.
STERRY: We have two different bills here in Connecticut were working on. We have HB6008 that says soldiers returning have a right for an independent test for depleted uranium. There is a federal law that requires soldiers be tested for exposures to depleted uranium. There are Army regulations requiring it. There are Army publications and technical bulletins explaining how the physicals need to be performed. It is not happening.
The state law is saying soldiers have the right to this test, and that the federal government is not living up to its own laws, so the state is going to take care of it.
ICONOCLAST: The state would conduct the tests?
STERRY: We would ensure that independent testing be done. At this point, we’re not quite sure how the financing of that is going to occur, whether or not the state would pay for it. Whether or not the National Guard will pay for it. Whether or not we would turn around and bill the federal government. The financing of it is up in the air right now, but people are pushing really hard to say it’s federal law. The feds are not doing what they are supposed to be doing; therefore, we’re going to bill them for doing their job.
and then there is the best! A Warrior!
A Military Perspective
An Interview With
MAJOR DOUG ROKKE, Ph.D
Former Director of the
U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project
Interview
By W. Leon Smith
Major Doug Rokke, PhD, is a retired Army combat officer who served as the director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project at the start of Gulf War I. His job was to prepare soldiers for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. He was in charge of cleaning up American tanks hit by friendly-fired depleted uranium (DU) munitions as well as helping casualties contaminated with DU.
His own health has suffered from the effects of uranium poisoning. Reports indicate that he has 5,000 times the acceptable level of radiation in his body and that he suffers from reactive airway disease from DU.
Prior to deployment to the Perisan Gulf, Dr. Rokke worked with the University of Illinois Physics Department and served in Vietnam. His PhD is in health physics. His original training was in forensic science. Today, he travels the global informing people and governments of the dangers of DU exposure.
THE INTERVIEW
ICONOCLAST: How do you view depleted uranium?
ROKKE: DU…interesting nightmare.
ICONOCLAST: Actually, it’s a lot more widespread and damaging worldwide than I had realized before talking to Leuren Moret.
ROKKE: Absolutely. The United States gave it to Isreael. The first time it was used that I can document, for which I have the reports that I base my work on — it was 1973, during the Arab-Israeli conflict, and U.S. Army guys actually went on-site. We’ve got all the photographs, measurements. We’ve got trash medically, and equipment was trashed, so we know that for a fact.
And then we used it extensively, probably close to 375 tons — now this is solid uranium, not uranium plus explosives or casings, but solid uranium, the amount of munitions in Gulf War I. In ’94 and ’95 we used three tons in the Balkans, and I was specifically asked to write the clean-up procedures and emergency management procedures for that for the Army. I’ve still got them. In December of ’95 and January of ’96, the U.S. Marines shot the hell out of Okinawa, Torishima Island. We didn’t tell the Japanese for a year.
And then we used it getting ready for the Balkans in ’99 down in Puerto Rico. When I found out about that, I tried to activate our Army emergency response team called Army Contaminated Equipment Recovery team. That’s by the Army regulation 700-48 that I wrote that was adopted, accepted, and implemented.
The Army refused to do that. Then I tried to get medical care for them down there, and they refused to do that.
Then, on April 16 of ’99, we got called up to the White House to meet with what’s called Bill Clinton’s Presidential Oversight Board and that was under Senator Warren Rudman and Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Our team met with them and told them we’re going to see all these health effects in the Balkans. We were still trying to deal with health effects from Gulf War I. At that time, I still got all the emails, copies of all the letters sent.
They said we won’t use it (DU) in the Balkans, and lo and behold, they were already using it. They used 30-40 tons in the Balkans in ’99.
Since then, we’ve been shooting it up, as U.S Congressman James McDermott from Seattle, Washington, has confirmed. The Coast Guard’s been shooting it up in the Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, off the coast of Texas, every place.
ICONOCLAST: Why have they been doing that?
ROKKE: They’re just crazy. They want to make sure their
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