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The Disturbing Truths about DU the Pentagon and VA Are Taking Great Pains to ConcealThose truths are emerging slowly and convincingly, but emerging they are. It's quite true we don't have all the answers yet, and there's still much more to be learned before we know for certain just how harmful DU is in all respects and how widespread its contamination has spread. However, all the new evidence coming out points in one direction and leads to an increasingly clear conclusion. It's the same one I first heard told me by an eminent man in a required college natural science course I took in 1953. The man was George Wald, distinguished professor of biology and later a nobel laureate in 1967. Dr. Wald had many admirable qualities I admired greatly, but I still remember verbatim the dramatic statement he made one day in class. He told his young students that "there is no such thing as a safe amount of radiation." He understood what Albert Einstein did even earlier, and both these men spoke out forcefully against the genie out of the bottle that emerged once the atom was first split in 1938 in a Berlin laboratory. From that time to now, it's been known beyond dispute how dangerous and deadly radiation is in all its forms and in any amount to all those coming in contact with it even for short periods of time. However, for those exposed to it daily like our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan where it's contaminated a vast area, it's a possible death sentence or at the least a lifetime of likely misery from the poisoning that increases each day.
Some Documented Facts On the Effects of DU Poisoning
I reported all this in a major, detailed article I wrote on this subject a few months ago and available on my blog site - sjlendman.blogspot.com. In it I went on to explain that all military and civilian personnel at or near target areas were and are most adversely affected by DU contamination, especially if they remained in those areas for an extended time. During the six week Gulf war about 150 of our forces were killed and 467 were reported injured. However, the real effects of that war weren't apparent until years later. We're beginning to get lots of information on it now but not without great difficulty to make it as complete and accurate as possible.
Because of that problem, there's great variance in the numbers I've seen. But somewhere between about 30 - 75% of the 696,841 military personnel who served in the Gulf from August 2, 1990 to end of July, 1991 have filed claims for or have been reported by the Veteran's Administration (VA) to be on some form of disability in 2004. It's likely the true number is closer to the lower percentage, but I've chosen to report the range in case later on we learn things were far worse than we now can imagine. We do know an additional 11,910 vets have died as of early this year. There's a problem compiling accurate data because the VA has been complicit with the Pentagon in the cover-up about DU and has said very little about the true number disabled or how many of the disability total were the result of DU poisoning. They could easily find out by administering blood tests and doing other proper examinations. Instead they've done as little as possible just as for years in the 1990s they denied the existence of "Gulf war" syndrome (most likely from DU poisoning) and told suffering vets it was all in their heads. They certainly were there if any of those heads were afflicted with brain tumors or their early stages.
We can only speculate about how many of our military personnel post 2001 are now the victims of DU poisoning, but it's likely the number is large and growing with more coming down with disturbing symptoms daily. We know many returning vets are already seeking treatment for health problems, and that medical professionals in hospitals and other facilities providing it have been threatened with $10,000 fines and even jail if they speak out about what those problems are. Think how outrageous this is - that a nation that sent hundreds of thousands of its young men and women to fight in two illegal wars of aggression, then turns its back on them when they return home with serious illnesses they may never recover from or that may kill them. And making matters even worse, the Pentagon and VA are complicit in a cover-up and denial a problem even exists. They might as well be saying "let 'em suffer and die." So think of it. This is the "model democracy" we hold up to the world to emulate. In fact, it's a deadly and sinister model all nations should reject and condemn.
Documented Evidence On Recent DU Fallout
In February, 2006, after I wrote my article on DU, Irving Wesley Hall wrote his carefully researched and extremely important series on DU and its harmful effects. His findings were widely posted, and all of it is available on his web site - notinkansas.us. Irving's work is so important, readers should visit his site, review his series carefully and likely learn for the first time how serious and deadly a threat DU contamination is to everyone coming in contact with it.
Here's a sample of the information included in the series which needs as much resonance as possible. I've added some of my own comments to it. Irving has made an important contribution, and I'm proud to be associated with him and his work. He wrote that Dr. Chris Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, reported on official UK radiation levels in the wake of the "shock and awe" assault against Iraq in 2003. Dr. Busby documented that uranium particles traveled 2,400 miles in nine days from Iraq to Aldermaston, England. The invisible cloud quadrupled Europe's atmospheric radiation clearly showing that despite Pentagon denials, DU contamination spreads far beyond the target sites struck. Once again the Pentagon's mendacity and indifference to its forces and the rest of us is revealed in plain sight for all to see if they'll bother to look.
The widespread contamination is even more dangerous and deadly than formerly believed. But apparently one emailer in particular, with little knowledge to support what he wrote, attacked Irving's findings and shamed and embarrassed himself in the process. I read his response and know the facts. They clearly contradict virtually everything he said and his conclusions overwhelmingly. The emailer not only put his ignorance on public display, but he also arrogantly and insolently attacked the honesty, honor and integrity of a man of the highest stature.
His shameless act reminded me of a "show-stopping" moment I saw on US TV in June, 1954. It was during the so-called Army - McCarthy hearings when chief Army counsel Joseph Welch gave his famous retort to the soon to be disgraced US senator, who became infamous from his witch-hunting, self-serving search for communists in government without ever finding any. Welch and his reply are still remembered to this day, and I clearly recall him making it. In defense of his client under McCarthy's malicious attack he asked the senator on national TV: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency." Not long after that memorable moment the McCarthy hearings ended inconclusively, the senator's reputation was shattered, he was censured by the Senate, and he died a disgraced man a few years later. We can only hope for a similar denouement for the band of rogues in charge of US policy today who are making so many people around the world the worst for it.
I won't try to match Joe Welch, but I'll just ask the emailer: aren't you ashamed enough to flaunt your ignorance to a world audience without compounding it by shamelessly attacking a distinguished man of the highest integrity and honor. Like "Tail-Gunner" Joe (a moniker referring to one more dark side of the tainted senator), have you no sense of dignity, or just plain no sense at all?
Additional Expert Scientific Commentary Reported by Irving Wesley Hall
Here's more from Irving's articles on the DU threat. He learned about the work of Leonard Dietz who's a retired physicist from the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York state. Dietz pioneered the technology to measure uranium isotopes, and Irving quoted what he said: "Anyone, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it's not going to decrease very much over time....In the long run....veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem."
Irving reported an even more dire assessment that came from another study of the materials currently in the DU munitions used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found that in addition to U-238, today's DU weapons contain plutonium (the most toxic of all known substances), neptunium, and the highly radioactive uranium isotope U-236. According to a 1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, these elements are 100,000 times more dangerous than the U-238 in DU. It only takes the most minute, nearly unmeasurable amount of this substance in one's body to be fatal.
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