Webster Tarpley, Paul Craig Roberts and others have warned that an attack on Iran by the American military is “imminent.” (1) Ray McGovern asks if we have the courage to stop the Bush Administration from making war on Iran. (2)
If we don’t stop the Bush administration from going to war with Iran, we as a planet may very well face what radiation experts are calling “omnicide.” (3)
What does it mean? Consider these facts.
- Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons, when fired, create a DU aerosol of ceramic nanoparticles.
- Ingestion of DU or contact with it delibilitates or kills.
- Simple exposure to unfired DU weapons can contaminate.
- There is no safe exposure limit to DU.
- Protective gear does not protect.
- DU infects spouses/mothers through semen transfer and family members through contact with contaminated objects.
- DU leads to horrible birth defects in babies.
- Women and children are the most susceptible
- DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.
- DU travels globally on the winds.
- DU cannot be cleaned up.
- There is no known treatment for DU contamination.
* * * * *
If we are to prevent a global DU catastrophe, which a war with Iran would bring, we need to consider these facts.
- Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons, when fired, create a DU aerosol of ceramic nanoparticles.
Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons are used because uranium is a very dense metal that can penetrate concrete, steel, sandbag bunkers, or virtually anything. (4) The fragments that break off on impact emit Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and X-ray radiation at a rate of 4.15 million electron volts (the voltage in a normal cell is 10 electron volts). Anyone in the immediate area is usually killed outright. (5)
However, worse than the damage it does immediately, DU turns into an infinitesimally fine dust after it explodes. Its deadly radioactive particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria and can be carried as an aerosol in the wind. (6)
- Ingestion of DU or contact with it debilitates or kills.
Internationally-recognized radiation scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that DU nanoparticles can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick. The radioactive ceramic dust can stay deep in the lungs for years, irradiating the tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a 30-micron sphere, causing emphysema and/or fibrosis. The ceramic can also be swallowed and do damage to the gastro-intestinal tract. In time, it penetrates the lung tissue and enters into the blood stream. (7)
According to former Laurence Livermore geoscientist Dr. Leuren Moret, the invisible particles can reach sensitive targets, including the lymph nodes, spleen, heart, and central nervous system. (8) They can be found in the semen, bone marrow, and lungs. (9) DU can give rise to a range of fatal cancers as well as more than 100 serious illnesses from fibromyalgia to Lou Gehrig’s disease. (10) In other words, in her view, “depleted uranium is a death sentence.” (11)
- Protective gear does not protect.
There are several myths about DU. One is that the protective gear issued to soldiers actually protects them from ingestion and contamination. Dr. Moret advises that DU “will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging." (12)
U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke goes further. Rokke was the man in charge of the “clean-up” after Gulf War 1. He says the protective gear was ineffective in saving soldiers from DU ingestion. “When I talked to senior Manhattan Project scientists that were expert particle physicists, they said – ‘Hey, we knew when uranium breaks up like this, it was going to be down in the .1-.2 micron range.’ “No doubt about it. The gas masks, the respiratory protection issued to the troops – there’s no way it can protect against inhalation." (13)
- Simple exposure to unfired DU weapons can contaminate.
Another myth is that simple exposure to unfired anti-tank shells and bunker-buster bombs will not result in radioactive contamination.
In the video, Beyond Treason, Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, offers this view: there is “a very minor amount of radioactivity [in an unfired shell], but it’s not anything. … As long as it’s in its bullet form it can be stored and it’s not any type of hazardous material.” (14)
But in fact, according to Dr. Moret, many veterans have been reporting illnesses through proximity to unfired shells and bombs. For instance, gunners in Bradley vehicles who sat on boxes of DU shells are now reporting rectal cancer. (15)
- 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.
