AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME IS RADIOACTIVE GENOCIDE

Iraqi and visiting doctors, and a number of news reports, have reported that birth defects and cancers in Iraqi children have increased five- to 10-fold since the 1991 Gulf War and continue to increase sharply, to over 30-fold in some areas in southern Iraq. Currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent. Children are especially vulnerable because they tend to play in areas that are heavily polluted by depleted uranium.

The Pentagon has been using radiooactive weapons for at least a decade and a half with full complicity of at least three White House administrations and Republican and Democratic congressional legislators. Conservatively, at least 300 tons and 1,700 tons of depleted uranium were used in the Gulf War and the current Iraq War, resectively. This is about 70 grams of depleted uranium per Iraqi citizen, and if inhaled or ingested, it is enough to kill them all.

Is this not radioactive genocide, especially when our troops used and continue to use most of the depleted uranium munitions in densely populated areas such as Baghdad and Fallujah? Depleted uranium has a half-life of billions of years. Consequently, Iraq will be a wasteland forever and essentially uninhabitable for anyone.

After the 1991 Gulf War, about 1 in 4, or 150,000, U.S. veterans came down with what is referred to as "Gulf War Syndrome." Most of the ailments characteristic of Gulf War Syndrome are consistent with radiation or heavy-metal poisoning. Veterans' children are now also born with higher proportions of birth defects and other genetic disorders, according to sporadic accuonts. The Pentagon continues to deny the harmful effects of depleted uranium or its role in Gulf War Syndrome.

As described by a report of the World Health Organization Depleted Uranium Mission to Kosovo, uranium can be found in rocks and soil and contributes to natural background levels of radioactivity. Depleted uranium is a waste product of uranium enrichment for nuclear reactors and is about 60 percent as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium. Depleted uranium is considered weakly radioactive.

Nevertheless, depleted uranium is considered nuclear waste and has to be disposed of accordingly, which is expensive and a potential environmental hazard. The nuclear industry must be very pleased the U.S. military has found a way to get this stuff off their hands cheaply.

Depleted uranium is really a misnomer, because the potentially harmful effects are by no means depleted. Research reports have found that when depleted uranium is ingested or inhaled, it can cause cancers and birth defects. It has considerable heavy-metal toxicity.