Why We Must Not Go to War with Iran

• There is no safe-exposure limit to DU.

A third myth is that there is a threshold, a safe-exposure limit, below which one can contact DU and not suffer. This too is in fact not true.

According to Dr. Moret, “the amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small.” “It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal.” (16)   

Dr. Moret points to National Academy of Sciences studies that indicate there is "no safe level of exposure" for DU. (17)

• DU infects spouses/mothers through semen transfer and family members through contact with contaminated objects.

 According to Dr. Moret, because a soldier’s semen is contaminated from DU particles, when he returns home he can contaminate his wife or partner.  (18)  Whole families can be affected.  Staff Sergeant Bob Jones, a former Army Ranger and veteran of Desert Storm, is now retired and disabled due to Gulf War Illness.  Not only is he ill, but his entire immediate family all suffer from mycoplasma fermentans incognitos. (19) 

The manner in which they were treated by the Veterans Administration should also be noted.  “It wasn’t so much my illness, but my family was also ill and they required medical attention and medical treatment – real medical treatment.  I retired in June of last year – June 2003.  As soon as I retired my family was completely dropped from the military medical system.  …  Although I begged and pleaded  they would not let my family re-enroll back into the Womack Family Practice.   

“So in essence, my wife was completely cut off from all the medications and all the treatment that she had received for the past seven years. … – Cause she was also a victim of these exposures that I brought home from the Gulf War – from my equipment and my personal exposure, as I alluded to earlier – from personal bodily contact… and that to me is the greatest travesty.  I just can’t imagine how … you have innocent family members and loved ones that never put their hand up and swore allegiance to fight and defend the constitution of the United States and they get kicked to the curb and nobody cares.” (20) 

• DU leads to horrible birth defects in babies.

 Even minute trace amounts of DU in semen can bond with DNA, “where they wreak havoc with cells – especially the cells of developing fetuses.” (21) In some cases there are no indications that the baby is not healthy and yet it dies. Said Staff Sergeant Jones: “Some of us that conceived children after the war – and I know of at least two individuals where their children were born perfectly healthy according to the hospital - and within six months after their return [from hospital] their hearts literally exploded in their chests.”  (22) Birth defects have skyrocketed in every DU-contaminated region.  They are quite elevated in Afghanistan since the invasion:  children "born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths ... deformed genitalia." (23) 

• Women and children are the most susceptible

British researcher Dai Williams states that “women and children … are most vulnerable to internal radiation and chromosome damage owing to higher rates of cell division.” (24)  

The first signs of children succumbing to DU poisoning are herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles.  These cases develop into childhood cancers, leukemia, Hodkin’s disease, and lymphomas.  (25)

Pedriatic examination of Iraqi children confirm  that:

“Childhood leukemia has risen 600% in the areas [of Iraq] where DU was used. Stillbirths, births or abortion of fetuses with monstrous abnormalities, and other cancers in children born since [the Gulf War in] 1991 have also been found.” (26)

• DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.

We must keep in mind that the conditions we are describing will not go away. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years, the same as the age of the Earth itself. (27)  It is a problem which, far from lessening over time, will likely increase by orders of magnitude as the DU particles travel around the globe.  

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