The 'Groves Memorandum' and the Continued Deployment of Depleted Uranium Weapons of Mass Destruction---Demonstrating the Heretofore Universality of United States Government Terrorism and Examining What a Transformation Toward Humanity Will Require in Regard to a Particular Instance of Such Depredation

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PART ONE - A PROLOGUE


Opinion-Editorial News is no stranger to the Depleted Uranium(DU) quandary--a tawdry tale of 'discarded' soldiers decimated by their own commanders in the view of this writer, a 'tempest-in-a-teapot' according to the policy wonks, technical experts, and martial ministers who populate Departments of Defense and Veteran Affairs in the halls of power. A few, relatively recent, OEN titles include the following materials.

• "Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse Than Hiroshima," by Tom Eley, reported soon after publication on the study, led by English epidemiologist and radiation expert Chris Busby, "Cancer, Infant Mortality, and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq," which suggested that Depleted Uranium quite likely had had toxic effects long after its use.
• "One of History's Greatest Crimes," by Stephen Lendman, issued in late September, a couple of months following Eley's report; Lendman provided an overview of the plausible impacts and criminality of DU usage.
• Just last week, Chris Floyd's "Mondo Inferno: the Endless Echoes of America's WMD Atrocity" appeared, speaking cogently about the moral and sociopolitical consequences of a U.S. predilection for mass murder.

Floyd writes insistently to his fellow Americans, most of whom remain woefully ignorant, no small swath of them willfully so. This long-standing journalist has refused to be a willing accessory to murder.

"I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the 'continuity' of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by God I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth."

One of thousands of powerful video expressions of the dire DU straits of these times might also be helpful to begin. That some of these materials come from France, which is supposedly a nuclear mecca, is especially noteworthy. Resistance Films offers viewers this introduction [Ed. note - link does not work].

This humble correspondent has also written about DU before. A complex and rambling historical and conceptual overview shows up here. An extensive review of a pair of documentary films is available here. And a detailed recounting of the Chris-Busby-led Fallujah study, examining the science and analysis that the investigation utilized, is accessible here.

Moreover, I have begun the process of organizing and contextualizing and scripting a series of volumes that illuminate the DU story from the point-of-view of a trio of soldiers who are still experiencing Uranium's impacts directly, joined by a bold scientist willing to stand against a gale of criticism for her unstinting critique of DU. All of this monumental effort to reveal and explicate a still-little-known phenomenon intersects with the task here at hand.

The point of the present essay is less prosaic, definitely less analytical and investigatory, than it is narrative. Hence, it should be more digestible than a group of monographs dense with the history and the political economy of the Nuclear Fool Cycle, from 1939 to today's 'Renaissance.'

Today's purpose is to serve a popular democracy and undermine a present tendency to dictatorial sway by calling a Soldier's and People's Congress to consider the state of knowledge, analysis, and honesty in regard to the initiation of the atomic age. Such a Citizens' Congress on Uranium and the Nuclear Fool Cycle should occur regularly, quarterly if possible, annually at the least, until practically speaking 100% of folks could intelligently consider questions of 'Nuclear Renaissance' and radioactive weaponry.

If readers will bear with this humble correspondent, they shall arrive at a juncture that expresses this general idea with tangible particularity. This essay, in other words, will promote a first step in building toward a People's Congress, such a Citizens Congress, such an empowering moment of democratic empowerment.

Before sauntering to such an intersection, however, anyone who seeks to grapple with such a deep and dreadful tale as nuclear weapons and waste and all that accompanies them--from Tehran to Los Alamos; from Niger's mines to those in Australia; from America's Appalachian H-bomb breadbasket to China's bristling arsenal of death, from dying atomic veterans and 'energy employees' to soldiers maimed from inhaled Uranium particulates--might profitably ponder an overview of the American prospect generally. As the song from the sixties stated the case, "There's something happening here; what it is ain't exactly clear."

A FEW FURTHER PREFATORY REMARKS

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright has understood the interplay of oppression and freedom in America with righteous rectitude. Not only his career as a preacher, but also his avocation as a scholar, attests to this.

"'(L)iberation theology' ... . was not from the top down or from a set of teachings which undergirded imperialism. Their viewpoints, rather, were from the bottom up, the thoughts and understandings of God, the faith, religion and the Bible from those whose lives were ground under, mangled and destroyed by the ruling classes or the oppressors. ... It started from the vantage point of the oppressed."

The evidence of the American experience, the 'people's history of the United States' as Howard Zinn has so lyrically chronicled it (click here), fits such perspectives. In such views, the United States Government (USG) is much closer to the devil than to any deity worthy of humanistic or compassionate obeisance.

In fact, one can trace the path of USG executive authority from its inception two and a quarter centuries ago and discover that literally every second over those unfolding decades, including the present pass, has contained predominant aspects of U.S. administrative imprimatur in favor of terrorist thuggery against innocents and neutrals and bystanders and opponents alike. Specifying the litany of such depredation makes so-called patriots fume.

A SOCIAL-HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION OF DU

They sputter, often in a murderous tone, "You must really hate America." This of course precedes the threatening, "Why don't you go somewhere else, if you think it's so bad here?"

Man! Talk about missing the point: part of that oblivion about a key, incisive lesson concerns individual responsibility, something that all manner of chest-thumpers--from 'W' to Barack-the-Magnificent--intone as a sacred litmus test of human worthiness.

The problem is that individual responsibility means nothing unless it accompanies, as a sine qua non, a fierce insistence on collective responsibility. That's why democracy can rock the world, if it ever comes to pass. Only individual choice can conjoin to yield collective strength. Otherwise, no authority is possible without responsibility: no responsibility signifies anything real without the authority to bring it to pass.

And authority starts with, or at the very least includes as an irreplaceable attribute, a high degree of historical consciousness. The present springs from the past. Ignore this core notion and vicious idiocy as the policy-flavor of the day becomes unavoidable. This concept is the basic undergirding of the work of Reverend Wright and many others, this humble correspondent included.

That's why this essay starts by listing cases of USG terror that have occurred as self-serving expressions of ruling-class interests:

• Ten million plus Africans fed into the maw of slavery, and then treated as sub-human servants of a superior 'race' when an opportunistic end to the 'peculiar institution' transpired;
• Ten million plus native-Americans butchered, cheated, and battered, the survivors shunted off to concentration camps, until the resources there beckon ruling interests to further broken promises;
• Tens of millions of children counted as chattel for capital's greedy accumulation of profit, any pretense of human-rights be damned, by the Supreme Court and the Chamber of Commerce, until my mother and father were kids;
• Tens of millions of Mexicans, Central Americans, Cubans, Filipinos, South Americans, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, and more, and more, and more, cut to pieces, starved, immolated, and otherwise decimated in the service of the empire that denies its existence.

Documenting and developing these facts reveals a complexity and multi-sidedness, however, that allow both a few rude reactionaries and many slippery liberals to slither away from owning-up to the inescapable conclusion: as the Reverend Dr. Wright exclaimed, 'God might very well damn America.'

In fact, not only do backers of business-as-usual slink away from criticisms, but they also spit in the face of the critics. The SOP reply to any such an idea of deconstruction of American pretense is loud and angry. The response is also uniform: 'Such anti-American views ought to be exterminated.' Any inclination to espouse a dialog is out of the question among such boosters, who so passionately decry the naysayers.

In response, Anderson Cooper has quoted, contextually (click here), from Wright's Spring, 2008, sermon, "Confusing God and Government," in which the President's one-time pastor uttered the fiery line, "God Damn America!" Wright's imprecation is not without foundation, Cooper finds.

The CNN correspondent quoted the pugnacious pastor. "'We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.'"

But restating these historical truisms, while such elocution is important, is not the primary purpose of this little narration. After all, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Chief Red Cloud, Geronimo, Eugene Debs, Mary Harris ('Mother') Jones, Joe Hill, Malcolm Little, and tens of millions of others fought for human rights and social justice for salt-of-the-earth working folks.

These little-heralded toilers (such as Reverend Wright's family, for instance) built this country, brick by brick, rail-tie by rail-tie, spot-weld by spot-weld. Even if such of their social struggles for equality as union and civil rights campaigns barely counterbalanced the routine extraction of lucre from the backs and bellies of slaves and from the looting of Native peoples and so on and so forth, these battles for social justice have provided a powerful counterpoint to capital's ruling ruthless brutality.

Instead of repeating either a general litany of complaint or an overall paean to triumphant resistance, however, this essay attempts to establish a stage on which to observe America, or to put in place a lens with which to examine the gringo conscience and consciousness. The rationale for this is that such an effort allows an observer to consider specific cases of past ignominy more intelligibly and intelligently.

Such re-visioning of the 'mainstream' annals of America has led, inevitably, to the already-mentioned labels of revisionism or worse. Such monikers are tantamount to insult among the denizens of establishment points of view. Thus, even having the temerity to advance such contentions has elicited regular condemnation of anyone who would reveal the sorts of relationships and missteps that Jeremiah Wright has depicted.

A LITTLE-KNOWN MEMO THAT OUGHT TO BE REQUIRED READING FOR CITIZEN-DISCUSSION


Overview

Michael Cort, for example, has been prominent in 'damning' revisionists and other finger-pointers (click here) in relation to the nuclear matters that have so fascinated the author of the essay now in front of readers. Cort propounds an overturning of those interpretations, like the good Reverend Wright's, which, so to say, hold America's feet to the fire about the history and development of the Nuclear Fool Cycle, precisely the area of concern that this humble correspondent intends to explore at this time.

The general context of this microscopic slice is the nuclear dawn that arguably began with Leo Szilard's 1934-patenting of processes for sustaining Uranium chain reactions, or with the 1939 FDR letter (click here) that he drafted for Albert Einstein's signature.

This brief communiqu???? served to inaugurate first the Uranium Committee and eventually the Manhattan Project. From those eventualities onward, in revisionist thinking, a particularly egregious and ugly version of American administrative viciousness has unfolded.

Biographical, Conceptual Background to the S-1 Uranium Subcommittee

For instance, one can ponder a memorandum that issued, on October 30, 1943, from Dr. James Conant (click here) --Harvard's President before he joined the Manhattan Project--and a few equally estimable colleagues. This four-page notice summarized and mirrored a lengthier report, which in turn pondered the potential that enemies might use radiation against allied forces and laid out contingency plans for preemptive U.S. deployment of Manhattan-Project products and byproducts as weapons.

In making this case, Conant's, Urey's, and Compton's audience was their boss, the 'hero' who organized atomic slaughter along scientific industrial lines, General--then a mere Brigadier, Leslie Groves (click here). The memo's most pointed purpose, about which a bit more detail follows below, was a discussion of how the U.S. might operationalize, as a poison gas, new forms of carnage and mayhem on the basis of discoveries and offshoots of what was taking place in California, Tennessee, New Mexico, Washington, and elsewhere that the new Uranium-Plutonium-Industrial-Complex was springing up.

Perhaps by happenstance, or plausibly not at all a matter of chance, the lead voice in this troika--Conant's--was already deeply steeped in both the governmental agency and technical arcana of poison-gas weaponry (click here). "World War I would be remembered as the 'chemist's war,' primarily due to the use of poison gas warfare initiated by the German army against the French in 1915. Conant worked on gas warfare projects in laboratories at American University in Washington, D.C., the largest federally funded scientific research project to that date. (Immediately upon taking leave from Harvard), (n)ewly commissioned Lieutenant Conant immediately went to work on mustard gas and then on a more toxic and easily deliverable gas, lewisite."

In 1918, Conant's promotion to Captain corresponded with taking on the task of organizing the mass manufacture of adequate supplies of poisons, should that become necessary. Twenty-five years later, a new thanatopic technology under consideration, Conant--again on leave from the Crimson--once more confronted the issue of how to garner adequate supplies of lethal elements, raising that as one of many problematic matters in the S-1 Uranium Committee threesome's report.

The three cohorts disagreed markedly in their conclusions though. Chairman Conant found the likelihood of German utilization of radioactive gases against America "extremely unlikely" and hence dismissed the necessity of prioritizing research and development in this area. Both Compton and Urey strongly disagreed, feeling that the potential for an attack had a level of "immediacy" that required a definite response (click here).

"Two of the signers of this report (believe that) an attack within the next few months may be expected if it is to be made at all. Immediate preparations for reply accordingly become important unless there are reasons, unknown to us, for discounting the probability of use of radioactive warfare by the enemy. 'Perhaps the most effective reply would be to answer immediately in kind.'"

According to the distribution protocol attached to the report, its makers created only three copies of the complete document. Vannevar Bush and a Colonel O'Connor received the only two duplicates clearly slated for dissemination. The Manhattan Project's leader, and perhaps a very few of Groves' superiors, obtained the summary memorandum that is now fairly widely visible online.

This memorandum itself adopted mostly Compton's and Urey's perspectives; they constituted the majority of the three-man-body, in any case. Neither the summary nor the report text guaranteed that the U.S. would use 'dirty bombs,' but, with absolute clarity, they insisted that the U.S. be prepared for such a contingency (click here).

A Conant, Compton, & Urey Prayer for Radioactive Poison Gas Weapons

Thus, without equivocation, this missive completely abrogated the 1929 Convention barring use of any form of poison gas or similar noxious weaponry, a Geneva Accord that many U.S. strategists summarily rejected as applicable to American forces (click here). Nevertheless, roughly half a century following 'civilized humanity's' decision to proscribe this sort of weapon of mass destruction, the United States became a treaty signatory to the "Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases," an agreement that the language of the Manhattan Project documents definitely, and the practical placement of DU weaponry arguably, would violate. For instance, one could hold up the following snippet as counter to the spirit and letter of this international statute.

"An effective reply which could be ready by December, 1943 would be several bombs of 10,000 curies each prepared at the Clinton (Oak Ridge) plant. The preparation of such bombs would retard perhaps by a few days the development program for (atomic bomb per se) production. This procedure would require consultation with an expert on aerial bombs, and preparation to extract and deliver the radioactive material in the needed form. Immediate action is necessary if such devices are to be available before the end of 1943."

In typically elliptical bureaucratic language, Groves' 'executive summary' notice introduced an overall organizational scheme. Under it, the suggested options that the majority of the S-1 Uranium Committee subcommittee promoted became doable. Though stodgy and vague, the meaning seems nevertheless fairly obvious (click here).

"a. Immediate formation of a research and study group at the University of Chicago under supervision of the present Area Engineer. Assignment to this group of competent individuals now working on dust and liquid disseminating munitions and field testing of chemical warfare agents from the National Defense Research Council.
c. The responsibility of the above organization would be:
(1) Develop radiation indicating instruments, expand present facilities of the Victoreen Company, and prepare a trial order for instruments with this company.
(2) Make theoretical studies pertaining to the methods, means and equipment for disseminating radioactive material as a weapon of warfare.
(3) Conduct field tests in isolated locations, such as Clinton Engineer Works or Sanford Engineer Works, using a non-radioactive tracer material.
(4) Prepare an instruction manual for the use of, or the defense against, radioactive weapons. This manual would be similar to that now used by the Chemical Warfare Service for gas warfare."

In the heart of the memo, a much starker and more sinister expression predominates. 'Dirty bombs,' weapons of indiscriminate impact, and prohibited ordnance are all part of the order of battle (click here).

"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth at a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty."

An Interpretive DU-Nexus for the Memo and the Report Behind It

A couple of points require mention here. The first is that both the memo and the portion of the full report that is open to examination mention "fission products" specifically as likely components of such weapons. The second is that the repeated mention of the potential for machining or grinding particles into gas or smoke certainly could easily include Uranium, the diversion of which would also explain the explicit recognition of possibly delaying by a short time the acquisition of fissionable materials from Oak Ridge's enrichment program for bombs.

The fuller report that stood behind the easily acquired synopsis is not obviously available in anything like its entirety. The euphemistically-named National Security Archives at George Washington University (GWU), among the many fascinating details of doomsday housed therein, includes a substantial amount of material about radiation, including two sections of the full narrative of the S-1 subcommittee.

A large body of materials concerning the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) also awaits the intrepid detective there, for example. The execrable records revealed therein underlie, in some part, a vast financial liability that the United States has accepted in regard to soldiers, workers, and civilians--at least occasionally prisoners, who suffered cancers and other sicknesses, often fatal, likely because of exposure to radiation or toxicity related either to the production of Uranium, or to the inescapable creation of transuranic elements or fission offspring that were radioactive.

Several Congressional bills, now part of the United States Code, permit onlookers to view how regularly and consciously agents of the USG knowingly both plied unwitting 'guinea pigs' with different doses, and dispatched these uninformed 'research subjects' down pathways of uptake, of radiation. These have included the Veterans Dioxin and Radiation Compensation Standards Act of 1984), the Radiation-Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000, among several others. Such troves of insight as these could easily form a foundation for widespread, open, and community-led dialog about the origins and impacts of the Nuclear Fool Cycle.

At the very least, evidence discernible through legislative histories, in archives such as that at GWU, in the hundreds of thousands of pages that ACHRE data caches contain, and in multiple other locations proves beyond dispute that, in addition to annihilating civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both before and after these grotesque, clear-cut experiments in extermination, USG plans incorporated production and use of hideous engines of destruction employing radioactive materials. To argue any other point of view violates the basic rule of argumentation: one is entitled to opinions, but one does not have liberty to deny obvious facts, nor to fabricate data.

Relying in part on the Groves document, champions of eliminating DU weapons, like Leuren Moret and Doug Rokke, have asserted that U.S. military and industrial and scientific leaders have long recognized DU as deadly. Their argument continues that, with a more or less complete consciousness of the likely consequences, for almost seventy years, military-industrialists have hatched schemes that made DU ordnance inevitable, and its arguably attendant morbidity and mortality equally impossible to avoid.

This humble correspondent agrees that a vast array of dispositive data supports such a conclusion. In any event, that soldiers, citizens, and technical experts, in direct contravention of established government policy and opinion, offer such contentions speaks to the absolute necessity for a broad and thoroughgoing debate on these topics.

A SNARLING, SNARKY SPITTING CONTEST

General Background

In fact, the Groves memo, declassified in 1974 just as extensive field-testing of DU weapons was about to begin in Puerto Rico (click here) and elsewhere, has, as a result of 1990's ACHRE publicity, induced, instead of any sort of honest intellectual engagement, a fractious round of accusations against those who have cited these materials in relation to Depleted Uranium toxicity. This noisome ad-hominem brouhaha began because Leuren Moret, after her whistle-blowing revelations at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (click here), turned her attention to DU.

For many decades, the Conant/Groves document (click here) that is probably critical to any accurate general understanding of the contemporary atomic pass remained 'under seal,' part of a vast secret archive that, even today, contains thousands, tens of thousands, or even more hidden informational tidbits about the workings of the world (click here), not to mention of the ruling elite's methods for arraying knowledge of this reality to the advantage of the plutocrats. Similarly as in the case of investigators plumbing the depths of Wikileaks, to the estimable service of Ms. Leuren Moret, all humanity owes a debt of gratitude for insisting that this ACHRE-dispensed 'missive of doom' contained critical items to contemplate.

On the basis of the powerful articulation therein--leaving aside altogether the choice to unleash megatons of explosive fission conflagrations--to support weapons that utilize radiation, Moret and others, when they uncovered the choppy, rambling document sent to Groves, deduced that here lay the roots of DU ordnance. Moret has repeatedly stated this hypothesis, both in her own writing and speaking (click here) and in multiple international appearances that have indicted U.S. policy in this regard (click here).

Moreover, multiple veteran advocates also called out, such as Dr. Doug Rokke, who for a time helped to lead the Army's clean-up (click here) of DU after Gulf War-I--until his insistence on publicity and integrity about DU's menace resulted in his discharge (click here). Journalists like Bob Nichols have joined the chorus (click here) too, reiterating this contention about the Conant-led S1 subcommittee report, and stating with fiery directness that U.S. use of DU is a criminal matter dating from the 1940's.

"This did not happen by mistake and it is not an accident. American political leaders are doing this on purpose, and it is premeditated. The US government has known all this, and more, since 1943. That's when it was first documented that uranium oxide gas did all these thing as it destroys the bodies of gullible young American men and women; not to mention the helpless, innocent civilians in Iraq."

All of this type of reasoning has caused an apparent firestorm of controversy, however. This humble correspondent uses the adjective, 'apparent,' advisedly here. While database delving churns up close to the top of most citations-lists seemingly crushing critiques of Moret, et al--"Leuren Moret (and so on) Mislead the Public on 1943 Memo"--a bit of reflection, and a bit more digging, suggests that these self-righteous aspersions represent, as Lincoln warned us to avoid, 'much more good-sounding sense than good, sound sense.'

Institutionalized Derision: A Modus-Operandi for De-rigeur Debunking

Three names show up repeatedly in leveling such accusations, which especially condemn Moret and Rokke as intellectually dishonest (click here), and all who would listen to them as unwary, or worse, as morons. As so often in life, though, projection may be the most primitive coping strategy. These fiery accusers almost all, upon close examination, are at best gold-ribbon hair-splitters and at worst disingenuous dissimulators.

Dr. Robert Holloway is one of the chief proponents of DU's inherent mildness for any killing purposes other than blowing up tanks. His primary methodology is twofold. He first rebuts whole arguments based on a rejection of some part of the deduction that he knows is technically wrong, suggesting thereby a wholesale dismissal of the positions that he dislikes.

He then appeals to the weight of established authority. "The vast majority of experts on the subject of depleted uranium believe that the alarmists on this subject are mistaken." He uses 'mistakes' to bully and demean; he employs sources that agree to suggest ineptitude on the part of other viewpoints.

Dr. Bob Cherry is a second attack-dog against Rokke and Moret and others. Like Holloway a Health Physics Ph.d., and like Helbig, below, a retired Army Colonel, he has routinely pursued and sought to discredit Doug Rokke (click here).

He often develops his attacks on the basis of rejection-by-resume, pointing out supposedly false or overstated qualifications that Rokke or others have suggested that they have. 'If Rokke wasn't really the project leader,' or 'if his Ph.d. is actually in another field,' he asks observers to believe, then all the rest is bunk.

And Colonel Roger Helbig, a third denier of DU's decriers, resides in a class of his own as a pit-bull police canine that snarls at anyone who disparages the DOD's DU SOP (click here). To obtain a sense of the inimitable earnestness, abusiveness, and slickness that Helbig combines in his pugilistic schtick, one might examine a Canadian blogger who effectively dispatched the good Colonel after a period of hounding.

Helbig attacks by a combination of grabbing small errors by the throat and advancing huge assertions that are difficult to challenge without significant research, sometimes providing Army-vetted or similar 'health-physics' citations to buttress his position. David Rothscum, in "Conversations with a Denialist," demonstrates excellent good humor and potent intellectual legerdemain in repeatedly deconstructing and refuting (click here) the former Colonel with a pro-DU bent.

Debunking the Debunkers

Technically, these guardians of Depleted Uranium demonstrate two inarguable ideas about their opponents' utilization of the Conant/Groves texts. First, as noted above, none of the 1940's documents make mention of 'Depleted Uranium,' itself allegedly a Public-Relations term meant to pacify in advance possible critics of DULLRAM(Depleted Uranium Low Level Radioactive Material) firepower.

Second, most opponents of DU-weapons who have utilized the (memos) have suggested more than they could clearly prove about the purposes of Urey's and Compton's and Conants work (click here). This assertion of matters not in evidence, as it were, does not invalidate their reasoning; it does not dismantle their arguments; it does not diminish their overall rectitude. But like second-rate sophomore debaters who believe harping on non-sequiturs might deflect attention from substance and thereby rescue a losing cause, Holloway and company are relentless in hammering home that the memos don't prove that the S-1 subcommittee had DU munitions in mind.

However, looked at in the very best light possible for Messieurs Holloway, Cherry, and Helbig, this all basically adds up to a situation like the following criminal law hypothetical. A defense lawyer in a murder trial says that, 'first, my client didn't think about committing this crime five years ago; in fact, he didn't think about killing anybody until five months ago. Second, the prosecution made a mistake; my client used the substance in question not because it was poisonous, but because it was extremely useful. He could care less that it was poisonous. So therefore he's innocent of all the deaths of which he's accused.'

Quite likely, both of these contentions are distortions, or even outright lies, anyway. But even were they completely accurate, the fact of conscious carnage, with malice aforethought or reckless disregard for others, remains almost inevitably probable.

Uranium Toxicity--An Initial Substantive Defense of DU-Critiques

At least a dozen substantive rebuttals, all probative of this notion, are possible to the likes of Holloway and his companions. A couple should suffice at this juncture.

First, one confronts the overwhelming general evidence of Uranium toxicity, in terms of both radiation and chemistry, the denial of which is a reflection on the scientific fraudulence of the one who refuses to acknowledge the danger. Holloway's "vast majority" is at best tenuous, in this context: perhaps the field of health physics has a predilection toward accepting the Nuclear Fool Cycle that other 'experts'--in public health, medicine, epidemiology, history, and citizenship, to name a few--have not followed with the same slavish sense of self-serving self-interest.

Massive, and both long-accessible and recently developed, evidence demonstrates the noxiousness of Uranium. The National Library of Medicine, noting an anomalous lack of clinical surety, estimates the inhaled LD/50 intake as a gram or so and the ingested deadly dose as a few grams or so (click here). The toxicology textbook, Clinical Environmental Health and Toxic Exposures also agrees that, despite the demonstrable need, little is certain about the damage of different doses. It provides multiple historical vantage points for considering the issue and leaves no doubt about the general potential lethality of Uranium.

The deleterious impacts of Uranium on miners (click here) were common knowledge from the inception of the Atomic age; U.S. scientists and administrators adopted an 'experimental' attitude toward confirming what Central European laborers had long proven. Just as DU is the tail-end of the Nuclear Fool Cycle, with a litany of lethal effects, so too the first step along the Uranium avenue is beset with mortality and morbidity.

The Google search, <"Uranium mining" OR "Uranium mines" + health> garners 279,000 hits--on the first two pages, 15 of 23 items unequivocally warn of Uranium's poisonous legacy. A couple of the remainder were neutral, like the Wikipedia entry. The balance consisted of nuclear industry groups or Health Physics departments or representatives.

This predominance of caution in regard to the first step along Uranium's hellish highway ought to make anyone stop to think before reflexively extolling DU as innocuous. Rationale aplenty, of course, as readers shall soon see, might direct those with a stake in Uranium to overlook evidence of its risk. Such cavalier disregard could consider the input of a pair of Canadian physicians who have produced a brief monograph, "Human Health Implications of Uranium Mining and Nuclear Power Generation." Every step toward a radioactive 'renaissance' is replete with filth and death, including DU's martial uses.

"Canada does not reclaim the leftover depleted uranium after the enrichment process. The American military now uses some of it in the production of armour for tanks and for armour-piercing bullets. Bullets made from this material combust on impact, producing a fine radioactive smoke which, when inhaled, damages lung tissue. This aerosolized uranium, and the contaminated spent shells remaining on the ground, expose the local population, as well as soldiers, to this radioactive waste for many years (the half life of U 238 is 4.46 billion years). These weapons have been used in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other theatres of war. This material, and its radioactive daughter products, will remain mobile in the environment for a very long time. Canada is implicated indirectly in this situation, as it supplies the U.S. with uranium. "

A 1981 DOD compilation reveals the clarity with which Army health physicists saw DU dangers then (click here). It makes the point that fully combusted DU munitions are inherently likely to cause excessive inhalation, for example. "The Uranium concentration in the area surrounding the fire will exceed the concentration limit calculated for an acute exposure."

A moderate and information-packed briefing from Serbia (click here), the product of Dragana Popovic and two female particle-physics colleagues, shows the vast increases in Uranium's biotic uptake that have accompanied the Fool Cycle. It states, plainly and without artifice, some of the inevitable sorts of health consequences of this increase, which DU soldiers are permitting those not too blinded-by-bias to witness.

"Besides from natural sources, uranium and its daughters are found in the environment due to (agro)technological procedures. The most important sources of the technologically enhanced natural radioactivity are uranium mines, lead and coal mines, steam power plants and their by-products; particularly important sources are mineral fertilizers' production plants. Therefore, mostly due to the technological increase in natural radioactivity, the level of natural radiation has increased about 30 to 40 times in the last thirty years. ...Uranium('s)... group of toxic elements... is highly reactive and easily forms oxide compounds. It reaches humans and animals through skin (by directly deposited dust containing uranium), through air (by inhaling dust containing particles with uranium) and through food and water (by deposition of dust on the ground and due to uranium presence in groundwaters and underground waters, vegetation, etc.). The critical organ for uranium in humans is kidney and the 'biological' half-time (period of elimination) for kidneys is 15 days, i.e. 100 days for the whole body."

The EPA's two volume Uranium-dangers series (Volume 1 and Volume 2), part of its TENORM materials that deal with Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials, explicitly list Uranium's deadly potential. Very aware of the intricacies of Uranium chemistry and possible pathways of dispersion, the Environmental Protection Agency clearly articulates from the early 1980's onward that Uranium and its 'daughters' in the decay process can cause well-known harms such as cancer to citizens who imbibe them.

California's careful and comprehensive examination of its hydrological infrastructure, to determine Uranium's plausible impact on drinking water standards, repeatedly announces the sinister risks that inhere in imbibing Uranium-'enriched' liquids. As well, multiple journalistic and summary sources exist, both contemporary (click here) and historical (click here), that drive home the comprehension that--whatever the form--Uranium is among the deadliest substances to unleash in the biosphere. To deny this contention is criminal folly at best.

This checklist does not even scratch the surface of the voluminous, one might easily assert conclusive, documentation of Uranium's generally poisonous presence in the biosphere. Furthermore, as additional tomes of data, and increasing troves of new science, make clear, the specific attributes of DU ordnance in action make its hazards especially dire (click here).

Moreover, this humble correspondent has ready for publication a substantial literature review to expand on this contention that interconnects so centrally with Uranium's generally horrific cultural role. Because of its incisive reasoning and down-to-earth presentation, and her long-standing, unprejudiced scientific acumen, I would recommend a piece by Rosalie Bertell as an introduction to this corollary notion (click here). No matter what, though, whether the Manhattan Engineering District scientists intended to use Uranium, its hideous properties fitted it for the sorts of tactical utility that they perceived as possible from radioactive weaponry.

Intentional Harm--Another Substantive Defense of DU-Critiques

A second trope that upsets the Holloway-and-company apple cart is that the USG, at the highest levels, repeatedly and knowingly did in fact decide to research the deployment of radioactive toxins. An almost grotesque eagerness to discern what would transpire in the context of military and industrial dispersion of radioactive elements played a significant tactical role in the choice of targets (click here) for conducting the planet's only out-and-out nuclear war.

Of course, the culmination of this inclination to experiment with decimation was the decision to use the atomic bomb unconditionally, against the overwhelming majority of scientific advice. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argues in Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, documentary, testimonial, and circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly indicated the choice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in part 'clinical' decisions.

The inaugural mention, above, of the array of legislation meant to ameliorate Uranium's biological bane proves America's cupidity and venality in regard to Uranium and its byproducts--'more bang for the buck,' 'too cheap to meter,' and conscious, self-serving and double-dealing duplicity were omnipresent all through the Fool Cycle, leading in turn to the purportedly restorative statues. As well, many other sources amplify the argument that vicious negligence, shot through with homicide and horrid injury, were par for the Uranium/Plutonium fairway.

The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, for example, although on the one hand it represents something akin to an attempt to rescue honor, also stands as a complete admission of guilt in regard to citizens, wage-earners, prisoners, and--in a chilling depiction of lessons unlearned--soldiers (click here), all of whom suffered and perished as a result of a perverse combination of scientific arrogance, curiosity, greed, and dishonesty. Try as it might to 'spin' this matter without ever appearing downright demonic, the committee had to admit dark transgressions.

More important, it could not finesse the continuing potential for a repetition of the same noisome and willful negligence. "Insofar as wrongdoing may have occurred in the past, we needed to examine the likelihood that such things could happen today. (And in fact)...(h)uman research can still be conducted in secret today, and under some conditions informed consent in secret research can be waived. Events that raise the same concerns as the intentional releases in the Committee's charter could take place in secret today under current environmental laws."

Truly voluminous, almost limitless, documentation of this notion of rotten perfidy at the center of the system would also be possible to continue. Among the hundreds of archival records--only one relatively small category of evidence--demonstrative of this point, a student might look at the voluminous skein of documents that connect Harvard's, and the Manhattan Project's, Dr. Conant and the famed Vannevar Bush, who promised an "endless frontier of science and peace and prosperity stemming from the nascent military-industrial-Uranium complex at the very center of American capitalism (click here).

Records here include correspondence and other transcripts, for instance, concerning the Groves memo and the S-1 subcommittee report. The possibility for a "super," or hydrogen bomb is also present. Among dozens of other matters that concern the ethics and infrastructure of the merchandising of megadeath are materials about both the nature of what is so far the world's only atomic war, and the nuclear testing and build-up that followed in the aftermath of that heinous liquidation of some quarter million people.

Once more, then, nitpicking about whether these forefathers of nuclear holocaust specifically anticipated DU ordnance, or whether they thought precisely of the 'delicious' toxicity of Uranium when they contemplated weaponizing radioactive byproducts, seems utterly beside the point. They acted consciously to bring about ends that had to include the potential for something completely congruent with DU-penetrators and the widespread morbidity and mortality attendant on their development.

The Tactics of Democratic Dialog Versus Reactionary Derision

Whether the clear-eyed consciousness of these erstwhile heroes, whom Holloway and his ilk would defend uncritically, was primarily unconscionable or' for the greater good' is also of small import. Much more centrally, whatever 'greater good' has transpired has in fact revolved around a consolidated empire, an agglomeration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer plutocrats, and the simultaneous potential for mass collective suicide while democracy appears an ever-diminishing fantasy.

And in the view of such soldiers whose urine and semen and blood and bones still glimmer and ache with the spikes of Uranium's alpha bombardment, this 'greater good' has also included a 'disposable army' now caught in the throes of sickness and decline. To cavil about small overstatements regarding a memo that, in spirit and intent, clearly underlies this abattoir seems at best petty and misleading.

In the normal course of doing intellectual business, though, this tendency on the part of those attacking DU critics, to grab hold of minor flaws or harmless errors and cry fraud or forgery or duplicity of some sort, is both prototypical of, and execrable on the part of, those who guard the Nuclear Fool Cycle and its plutocrats. As one possible approach to responding to such oppression, the work of Australian physicist and social scientist Brian Martin puts into an explanatory form this common tactical approach to any threat of democratic input into sacrosanct technical arenas.

This "backfire model" not only analyzes the political economy and methodological machinations of the denizens of business as usual, but it also proffers a citizens' defense course that explicates how to take apart, overturn, and reject the automatic hegemony that the promulgators of empire have come to expect. Some of this 'model's' pieces appear, plausibly, quite useful.

Like any social-anarchist worth the name, Martin is 'theoretical' only insofar as such an orientation emphasizes practical outcomes. He focuses on the necessity of seizing agency as a grassroots matter, rather than merely acceding, as usual, to the study of the nefarious plans of the plutocrats.

In seeking to accomplish this 'agency-shift,' from the powers-that-be to a nascent grassroots upsurge, he extols the metaphorical thinking and conceptual modeling propounded by Berkeley's George Lakoff. "The idea of framing is of more immediate use. Framing refers to sets of ideas. ... The ideas that people use to think about an issue often influence their attitudes towards it. ... Frame analysis offers a powerful tool for activists to think through the way they construct an issue." In relation to DU and a popular-education and action plan, then, this essay contributes to framing the nuclear debate by suggesting that this 'highway of doom,' this 'Fool Cycle,' this 'Death Dance,' serves only the masters.

Of course, this is just what the DU-denizens do, albeit in such a way as to shame themselves in relation to the light of reason. As if the paltry putridity of Holloway's style of argumentation did not stink enough already, more pertinent still to cutting such libel and calumny to pieces is Leuren Moret's own defense of her position, left to deliver the coup de grace to 'denialist' cretins. She presents both data and assessment that eviscerates her opponents' pitiful paltriness (here).

"I have confirmed with three Manhattan Project scientists that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo recommending developing radioactive materials as POISON GAS MILITARY WEAPONS in 1943.
Dr. James Conant, was President of Harvard when John Kerry's father (a high level CIA agent) brought him into the Manhattan Project to develop poison gas warfare weapons. Conant had developed poison gas warfare weapons in WW I so he was already an expert on them.
The three Manhattan Project scientists who confirmed to me that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo are:
Marion Fulk, a retired nuclear physical chemist who worked on the research of rainout of nuclear materials for the nuclear weapons program at Livermore (where I also formerly worked), Dr. Fred Wood, and a third one I met in Willits, Calif. while giving a talk a few months ago with Dennis Kyne on DU.
In addition to those three, Dr. Ernest Sternglass--who is a world expert on ionizing radiation and convinced the Senate to sign the partial test ban treaty in 1963 at the request of Pres. Kennedy--also confirmed that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo."

She continues, more majestically. "This terrible truth(of DU's demonstrable, undeniable, and deadly toxicity) and global tragedy is what Holloway and the other prostitutes for the nuclear establishment are hiding by lying about the intended purpose of the Groves memo." While this humble correspondent does not know for a fact that Wood, Fulk, and so on will sign sworn affidavits to the effect that Ms. Moret's contentions are true, to an extent, such incapacity is 'machts nichts.'

Moret's response, until disproven, dispositively makes the case that she originally advanced in regard to this very-interesting document. If mistaken, then the facts and data in this section defenestrate the 'denialists.' In sum, DU's intentional devilish employment in defense of empire, its mortifying tendency to cause pain and death, and the disregard of any human consideration over and against these brutal, 'strategic' considerations and tactical niceties appear to be, to say the least, persuasively established.

In any event, as a method for examining and learning about the present, through investigating and debating the past, few policy brawls show superior potential to this one. Thus, returning to the ultimate rationale for this essay, let us begin to be serious about a democratic dialog about these matters.

BY WAY OF CONCLUSION

At some juncture, a Peoples Congress might come together to ponder organizing documents for the citizen-empowered, community-friendly future. Until that time, this humble correspondent implores that a crystalline comprehension of the aspects of the collective past are critical when those long-gone eventualities so obviously glowed with the same patina of radioactive threat and predominance that governs the road forward from here, so far as the powers-that-be define the case.

Put most simply, no people's plan for a different travel itinerary will stand a chance against even so flimsy an opponent as a Robert Holloway or a Roger Helbig unless the planning process manifests an accurate consciousness of how things like the Nuclear Highway began. In such a situation, a Citizens Congress to Consider Depleted Uranium's Role in the Nuclear Fool Cycle Dance of Death could be just the ticket.

The Traprock Peace Center and Grassroots Peace activism that has sheltered and given a vector to the voices of Doug Rokke and others has withstood many insults and threats from Holloway and his ilk. To wrap up this session, and to emphasize the material interests that establish the basis for the next unit of this little narrative, readers may turn to a nice piece of deconstruction in regard to dear Dr. Holloway from The Deprogrammer. This investigator first makes clear that Nevada Technical Associates, a company in which Holloway has played a leading role, has assisted Dr. Bob in becoming a millionaire many times over.

In response to negative DU publicity, these 'scientists'-of-government-contract-administration set up a virtual defense portal. They acknowledged both their bias and their presumption in the following fashion (click here).

"'Many of us who work in the nuclear industry and the profession of radiation safety believe that the public is needlessly fearful of nuclear power and radioactive materials.... This web page was begun as site to allow several experts to respond.'"

The response to this of an 'Executive-of-Peace' from Traprock is instructive. "I'm convinced that Holloway is part of a DoD smear campaign against Doug. ...They focus on an interpretation of the famous Groves memo. Doug says they were talking about uranium as it could be weaponized. It's not a 'mistake' - it's a difference in interpretation. He has focused on this - let's face it, a fine point of argument over the meaning of a 1943 memo - to divert attention from the dangers of DU. Throwing dirt on Doug and Helen Caldicott reflects a classic technique of US administrations... .I've avoided continuing dialogues with Holloway as he has made it is career it seems to divert us from the real work."

He then recommended that Dr. Bob check out the film version of "Metal of Dishonor." Holloway claims the imprimatur of overarching expertise in response. "I don't have to see a movie, I am an expert in this subject, having worked with environmental radioactivity for 30 years. I know more about it than any of the activists."

Right there is the rub, as it were. Without an open and thorough study of this specific past, the likes of Holloway will always be able to attempt this trumping of any critique. Well might we ask, 'What are we waiting for?' Or, 'Why have we waited so long?' Let the Peoples Congress begin.

This humble correspondent encourages readers to stay tuned. PART TWO of this particular incarnation of the DU-dialog, which is an ongoing construction-project in the textual efforts of Jim Hickey, will soon follow. The ETA for the coming installment is Tuesday, January 18.

There, rather than asking that "God Damn America' for copious sins that in so many ways deserve condemnation, this continuing argument will pray that God empower America to conduct a deep-seated democratic discourse on Depleted Uranium that begins at the beginning of that phenomenon's presence. Calling for conversation, the lifeblood of democracy, may be the only salve capable of countermanding the bloody murder which otherwise seems America's eternal fate.

Authors Bio:
The original 'odd bird,' my stint as head of High School ROTC included my wearing MFS's black armband just before I turned down an appointment to West Point to go to Harvard. There, majoring in bridge, backgammon, and poker for my middle years as an undergrad, I managed to get a degree in History-and-Philosophy that led me to believe that writing was my calling.

Years and years in the South since then have sent me down all sorts of strange byways of political, environmental, and civil rights activism, during all three decades of which I've squeaked by fiscally doing all sorts of odd jobs, including slinging texts at all sorts of buyers when the market permitted.

Today, I teach--primarily Koreans--about the intricacies of reading and writing English, often as a second language, and imagine a future in which my fiction, commentary, journalism, and criticism finds an audience. Graduate school may beckon in my sixth decade above ground, who knows?

I'm game for collaboration, correspondence, and constructive feedback. "I'm drawn to those who seek the truth, and I flee from those who have found it." Or, as Octavio Paz noted, "He sang, singing not to remember his true life of lies, but to recall his lying life of truth."