DU does not respect sides in a battle. For instance, Israel, a U.S. ally, lies downwind of Iraq and is suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes. (28) Britain, another ally, recorded the highest levels of DU ever measured after the Tora Bora bombings and the “Shock and Awe’ assault of 2003. (29)
Moreover, it does not take long for DU to travel. Within 7-9 days of the “Shock and Awe” campaign, very fine particles of DU were captured by filters 2400 miles away in Britain. (30)
“After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium-oxide nanoparticles on the battlefield, DU remains suspended in air and travels around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow, and moisture remove it from the atmosphere.
“Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The amount of low level radioactive pollution from depleted uranium released since 1991, is many times more (deposited internally in the body), than was released from atmospheric testing fallout.” (31)
According to Dr. Moret, DU is everywhere. She says that researchers have found the "smog of war" from Gulf War I in glaciers and ice sheets globally a year later. (32) Large annual dust storms originating in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia quickly spread the radioactive contamination around the world, and weathering of old depleted uranium munitions on battlefields and other areas will provide new sources of radioactive contamination in future years. (33)
- DU cannot be cleaned up.
As Dr. Rokke reminds us, DU "cannot be cleaned up." (34) Dr. Moret calls it “the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, … the weapon that keeps killing. … There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up.” (35)
- There is no known treatment for DU contamination.
According to Dr. Moret, “there are no known methods of treatment. (36) Dr. Rokke concurs: DU is “going to cause all [kinds of] health problems and there is no medical care and treatment. You can’t reverse radiation exposure damage to the body.” (37) Unlike in the first Gulf War, when 300 tons of DU were fired off in the Kuwaiti and Iraqi desert, in the second Gulf War nearly 10 times as much DU was largely exploded and burned in urban areas, putting the dust right in the path of millions of civilians. (38)
Vignettes of our future?
Near Sarajevo, Michel Chossudovsky found empty villages with full cemeteries. (39)
When a child is born in Iraq, according to Beyond Treason, the parents no longer ask, “Is it a girl or a boy?” They ask, “Is it normal?” (40)
Leuren Moret asserts that the Middle East and Central Asia and Yugoslavia “are contaminated forever.” (41) Dr. Craig Etcheson of the Center for Non-Violent Alternatives, Fort Ashby, W.Va, suggested that “we must … consider the real possibility of Iraq as an uninhabitable wasteland, with the residue of the DU aerosol blowing in the wind and flowing in the waters to adjacent lands, a residue with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Is this outlook too bleak?” (42)
The testimony of Jhooma Khan of Laghman Province in Afghanistan stands as witness to the manner in which America may come to be seen by much of the world:
“After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good, different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not escape." (43)
Disposable armies? Who will enlist?
In January of 2006, the Washington Post reported that 518,000 of 580,000 Gulf War veterans were on disability, over half on permanent disability. Over 13,000 Gulf War 1 veterans are deceased. (44) When this information becomes widely known, how will the U.S. or any other armed force recruit soldiers?
