Arbuthnot wrote in 2001, “Since I discovered that depleted uranium weapons had been used, every attempt to find out the truth has been met with a wall of lies. Many of those who have investigated this - and this includes the top experts in the world - have been threatened, shot at and fired from their jobs. I have been receiving death threats for five years now, some of them imaginative, some boring.”
Referring to her visit to Iraq and Kuwait in 1991, Arbuthnot reminisced, “When I arrived in Iraq, doctors were already reporting a rise in congenital abnormalities in the newborn and a threefold rise in cancers and leukemias, especially in children. Birth defects and illness were also affecting Gulf veterans. Their search for answers and treatment has been met with bureaucratic stonewalling and lies. As they have attempted to find answers for themselves and for the sick and dying, their homes have been raided by the Ministry of Defense Police. Computers, disks and documents have been removed.”
Just a few months prior to the shipping of 6700 tons of contaminated sand from Kuwait in April, a contact of mine here in Kuwait (i.e. someone who has researched this issue of DU weapons for years) had met with a Harvard researcher who has claimed that Kuwait was suffering no damage from after-affects of depleted uranium.
The contradiction between this so-called expert’s statement and two governments’ willingness to ship 6700 tons of sand to Idaho screams for more research and public accountability in the USA and Kuwait
Is the U.S. doing enough research on this matter?
Is the USA publicizing the research or scrawling it away in the Bush Presidential Archives in College station, Texas—which will not be open to the public or researchers for another quarter of a century?
In the meantime, here is one website, which follows the DU issue. You can get recent reports of DU base and DU testing site closures, etc. at DU CURRENT ISSUES:
http://www.wise-uranium.org/dissti.html
NOTES
Arbuthnot, Cynthia, “Depleted Uranium: My Battle for the Truth”, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0114-02.htm
“Contaminated Sand from Kuwait Heads to U.S.”, http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MzgwNTU1MTUz
Kuraitis, Jill, “LaRocco to Otter, Risch: No Contaminated Sand to Idaho”, http://www.newwest.net/city/article/larocco_to_otter_risch_no_contaminated_sand_to_idaho/C108/L108/
Olsen, Erik, “Crews Moving Contaminated Sand from Ship to Rail”, http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/29/area_news/doc4816651072f72767559743.txt
“Snake River Alliance”, http://www.snakeriveralliance.org/News/Articles/tabid/122/ctl/ArticleView/mid/471/articleId/2826/Tons-of-Waste-Shipped-to-Idaho-from-Kuwait.aspx
