Veteran's Atomic Accusations Confirmed By Seismic Data
Twice against the deep cave complexes in Tora Bora. And once in the desert outside Basra — another deep burrowing bunker buster whose only lingering giveaway was radiation, as a demo for Saddam if he used the chemical weapons Washington had provided him.Did you get that? A German television channel sent an investigative team to document my report of increased radiation levels in urine samples taken by a European medical team. They were monitoring DU contamination. But these new levels were much higher than those for the aerosolized depleted uranium that was so many poisoning wombs. And they contained isotopes only released by a nuclear detonation...
willthomasonline.net exclusive
VETERAN’S ATOMIC ACCUSATIONS CONFIRMED BY SEISMIC DATA
By William Thomas
Pentagon officials were in disarray following an Italian national television report corroborating a US Gulf War veteran’s claims that the United States dropped a tactical nuclear bomb in the southern Iraq desert near Basra during Desert Storm.
“THE THIRD NUCLEAR BOMB: THE VETERAN'S ACCUSATION”
During this special program aired October 7, 2008 , Italian Channel 24 TV interviewed Gulf Watch founder Jim Brown, after he agreed to appear on television for the first time in connection with a story he’d broken under the pseudonym “Hank” on my Convergence website.
Brown’s assertions that a 5-kiloton nuclear Earth Penetrator was detonated by U.S. forces approximately 11 miles east of the former Iraqi capitol in February 1991 was corroborated by online data published by the Seismological International Center showing just one seismic event recorded in the region during the first Gulf War.
Despite a deluge of cruise missiles, fuel-air explosives and gigantic (conventional) “bunker busters”, a unique seismic event was registered by nine seismic stations in Iran, Nepal, Sweden, Canada and Norway. The Feb. 7, 1991 magnitude 4.2 Richter temblor was centered in the region between Basra and the Iran border at 1:39 PM local time.
A 4.2 “is dead bang on a 5 kiloton nuke,” Brown correctly declared. As the Italian producers noted, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were of 16 and 22 kiloton yields. (“Las bombas atómicas lanzadas sobre Hiroshima y Nagasaki tenían una potencia de 16 y 22 kilotones, respectivamente.”) [elpais.com]
The classified nuclear detonation came just two days after I heard a SCUD missile strike a US Army chow hall in Dhahran, killing 22 and injuring 99 American soldiers — and one day after that army massacred of an Iraqi tank column retreating with its turrets reversed.
During his on-air interview with Italian Television 24, Jim Brown stated that he had spoken with American military eye-witnesses who were in the area when the bomb was dropped.
VISITATION
Within hours of this overseas broadcast, the two uniformed intelligence officers who invariably appear on Brown’s doorstep following his published revelations once again showed up at his home.
“I was informed that there were several inquiries that went thundering through the five-sided nuthouse,” Brown later told me, referring to the Pentagon. “Because this happened on Schwartzy’s watch. And he was not in the loop!”
A letter to producer Maurizio Torrealta from Lieutenant Commander Daniel J. W. King, head of Central Command’s Public Affairs division, was displayed during the broadcast. In it King insisted, “Only conventional munitions were used during the Gulf War in 1991.”
But Cmdr. King was unable to verify any bombs 5,000 pounds or larger dropped on Iraq. “It is not possible for us to confirm the exact incident that you are referring to,” he wrote to the Italian TV producer. Which seemed odd, since each American bombing mission was meticulously logged and followed up with a BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment).
Another anomaly resulted from Brown’s information that a burrowing “mini-nuke” had detonated beneath the desert outside Basra on or around February 7, 1991. A single seismic event was recorded on February 27 of that year.
“We know there were multiple detonations in Afghanistan, so why not Iraq?” Brown surmised. “Whether there was a single event and the date was incorrect, or there were two events and both dates are correct, the DOD does not categorically deny” — that a massive detonation took place.
The US Air Force asserts that at least one “small” 15,000 pound fuel-air bomb was dropped in the Basra district on February 7, 1991. The resulting fireball covered two square miles. Beyond the immediate blast radius, the vacuum created by that massive gas explosion would have collapsed the lungs of all living creatures.
But even a 21,600 pound fuel-air bomb detonated in mid-air would not have registered on distant seismic instruments. Channel 24 learned that a BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter” produces a magnitude 3 on the Richter scale. Not the exponentially more powerful 4.2 actually recorded near Basra.
Was the detonation of that uranium-tipped Mother of All Bombs intended to mask a subsequent nuclear event? “Usage of the BLU-82 is the precursor to the next weapon that may be used,” noted a British website: “the bunker-busting nuclear weapons.” [casi.org.uk]
What is definitely known is that a British Special Air Service (SAS) team on a secret reconnaissance mission sighted a signature mushroom cloud from 110 miles away. The commandos radioed back to headquarters, “Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait.” [indymedia.nl; psywarrior.com]
GOING NUCLEAR
In fact, the blokes had just nuked Iraq. By then, Iraq’s former capitol had been declared a "free fire zone". In direct violation of Article 51 of the Geneva Protocols signed by the United States, this city of 800,000 trapped and terrified souls was opened to carpet-bombing by high-flying formations of eight-engine B-52s.
Mixing fuel-air bombs with many thousands of grenade-size cluster bombs, the bombers — affectionally dubbed “Big Ugly Fat Fuckers” by their crews — leveled entire city blocks. The Los Angeles Times reported “bomb craters the size of football fields, and an untold number of casualties.”[Washington Post Feb 2/91; Los Angeles Times Feb 5/91]
According to Brown’s GI informants, the “demonstration” GB-400 nuclear bomb burrowed shallowly into the desert sand outside that city — before erupting like a brief miniature subterranean sun. About “400 to 500 meters” of terrain were “cleaned out” of any bystanders and vehicles, Brown told me.
The seismic shock radiating up to a mile from ground zero was also “pretty devastating.” And strong enough to be picked up by seismic stations in Europe and Canada. Besides flipping vehicles over, triggering alarms, and knocking people off their feet, the earth-shaking blast detonated every mine in the area.
“We had FOX [Nuclear Biological Chemical ‘sniffer’] vehicles sitting on the Kuwaiti side of the border to make sure the thing went the way it was supposed to,” Brown told me. At the time of detonation, Iraq’s sharkay daytime wind was blowing from northwest to southeast — away from Basra, toward Iran. But the shamal shifts 180-degrees during the night, “so everybody gets a taste.”
Brown pointed to patient photos and medical data provided by Dr. Jawad al Ali, Director of the Talimi Oncology Center at Basra’s biggest hospital, regarding his research into the effects of radiation and cancer cases “in Iraq's radioactive governate of Basra.”
Dr. Jawad was treating an unending stream of patients injured by what most doctors initially presumed to be Depleted Uranium poisoning. [“Israeli Nuclear Strike On Iran Turned Back By USAF by William Thomas, willthomas.net, Jan 22/07]
But the estimated 300-800 tons of nuclear DU waste dumped on the people and ecologies of Iraq during Desert Storm were concentrated in the Baghdad region. Far to the south, Iraq’s former capitol “is some 200 kilometres away from sites where large numbers of DU shells were fired,” reported David Rose. Yet, nearly every family tested in Basra experienced extreme symptoms from low level radiation exposure (my emphasis). [Tribune Media Services June 29/06; byronchild.com; Vanity Fair Nov/04]
THE BIG “C”
Six years after the 1991 Gulf War, a cancer study found Iraqi soldiers who fought in the Basra area to be stricken with “a statistically significant increase in the rate at which they were stricken with lymphomas, leukaemia, and lung, brain, gastrointestinal, bone and liver cancers, as compared to personnel who had not fought in the south.” [WSWS May 10/05]
“Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before,” Dr. Jawad testified before the 2003-2004 Citizen’s Tribunal in Japan. “The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with two cancers — one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney; he had three different cancer types.
“The second is the clustering of cancer in families,” the British-educated MD continued. “We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr. Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr. Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer." [Tribune Media Services June 29/06; WSWS May 10/05]
These are not typical DU injuries. At the time of Dr. Jawad’s interview with journalist Ewa Jasiewicz, the the Talimi Oncology Center staff were dying from radiation poisoning at rates rivaling emergency responders at Chernobyl. “Thirteen doctors and nurses at Talimi have contracted cancer since 1990 – breast, testicular and lymphoma,” Ewa Jasiewicz reported. “The rate of cancer here has multiplied 15-times since the last Gulf war,” Dr. Jawad further stated, warning that children are especially susceptible to radioactive fallout.. [“Uranium in Your Koolaid” Occupation Watch Jan 26/04]
WOUNDED WOMBS
“After the Gulf War, they had maybe one baby a week born with birth defects in the hospitals in Basra. Now they are having 10-12 a day,” lamented science reporter Leuren Moret.
In March 2004, the Tokyo Citizen’s Tribunal found George Bush and his administration “guilty of war crimes” for using illegal weapons against the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview by Dr. Souad al-Azzawi Aug/06 Hiroshima]
Before her death from sudden-onset cancer, beloved Iraqi artist and Baghdad Diaries author, Nuha al-Radi “believed her leukemia could have been caused by DU,” wrote Dr. Souad al-Azzawi. “And if not DU, then something else to which Iraqis were knowingly exposed.” [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview Aug/06 Hiroshima]
Was that “something else” an undisclosed atomic warning?
BRIEFINGS
In my May ’91 environmental summary to returning cabinet members of the Kuwait Royal Family in Kuwait City, I did not include Depleted Uranium in my impact assessment. The reason was simple: I had never heard of DU. Neither had any of the Kuwait officials and scientists present at my briefing.
Jim Brown subsequently informed me that in March 1995, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Nuclear, Chemical and Nuclear Affairs sent HASMAT teams to wave Geiger counters over chunks of what looked like rebar, following “some kind of radiological event” requiring a response.
What would have caused them to go poking around the desert with Geiger counters?
“Measuring radioactive pollutants in the atmosphere,” answered the Director of Radioactive Protection Department, before emphasizing, “Kuwait is free of any radioactive pollutants.” “If there is nothing going on, there is no need to say there is nothing going on. Why did you feel the need to put this into writing in a public brochure and send it to people who call up and want some information on your country?” Brown wanted to know — referencing, Kuwait In Brief, a monthly newsletter from the Kuwait Information Office. “Radioactivity must be on a lot of minds in Kuwait. Call up the emir,” Jim Brown urged. “Tell him, don’t eat the dates.”
COVER-UP
Then there was the issue of the deleted NBC logs. During the Congressional furor over missing Nuclear Chemical Biological logbook pages showing sensor-detected chemical attacks on US and allied forces during Desert Storm.
“General Schwarzkopf acted surprised that the pages were missing.” According to Brown’s sources, Schwarzkopf came down with hypothyroidism. “Shades of Chernobyl,” this veteran of the elite 10th Mountain Division observed. “Graves Disease.”
“The halls of the E-Ring right about now are really, really not a fun place to be,” my confident had reiterated before the Italian program aired. “The folks in the five-sided nuthouse are not happy about that.”
And before RT asked him for a follow-up interview.
“If we popped off even one, and our inventory did not alter to accept the reduction by one, that means we lied,” Jim Brown later observed. “Verification does not work at that point. That to me is the key question of this entire thing. Just imagine what Vlad would be saying at this point.”
“But you can’t confirm it?” I pressed.
“At 4.2 there’s no possibility of confusion here,” my longtime collaborator came right back. “Not just a 4.2. The duration of the event, all the characteristics that were not an earthquake signature — zero possibility [of a natural seismic event in an area not prone to earthquakes]. This was a tent stake through the head. No ducking. No dodging. These are guys standing with their fingers in their ears saying we can’t hear you say ‘nuke’.”
Moreover, those two letters from CENTCOM Public Affairs had come from “the guys down in Florida, Schwarzkopf’s old command,” he reminded me. “When they’re in react mode, it’s meltdown city. And you’re lookin’ at two letters that prove exactly that.”
Because a BLU-82 explosion will only produce a Richter 3, LCDR Bill Speaks had “helped rule it out,” Brown believed. “And the fact that they can’t come out and flatly deny” the incident was equally telling, he felt.
NUKING AFGHANISTAN
Once again, the Desert Storm veteran pointed to seismic data traced by a NORSAR seismic monitoring network during March 1, 2 and 3 in Afghanistan in 2002.
And there were more “glaring, in your face things: We started retrograding troops out of Afghan into that other “Big I” [country] to the left. [DoD] did not want them exposed.” Significantly, this was not a planned troop movement. Brown’s buddies on the ground spoke of a “3 am wakeup: ‘Get on the plane, shut up and get your stuff and go.’ There was no plan.”
The fallout cloud “lingered. It stayed in the valley and did not go north. A low depression stayed on top of it, and it pounded the local population — which is why we’re seeing clusters” [of radiation illness].
GI observers also told Brown, “A lot of equipment was doing low-fly through said cloud.” And… “a lot of people on the tarmac were wiping down planes and canopies.”
“If it turns out that these guys and gals were exposed to something and being retrograded, wouldn’t they be given something in the short term? And it turns out they were,” he answered his own question.
IODINE
Through his dusty boots buddies, Jim Brown learned that shortly after those unspecified detonations in the nearby mountains, “a huge influx” of iodine showed up in drinking water on the air base. Usually, if required, one dose of iodine is added to each 400 gallon water truck — referred to by GIs as a “buffalo” (as in water buffalo). But at this base, it was one dose of iodine per canteen.
Once passed through an airbase filtration system, locally obtain water is generally assumed to be safe. So why was so much iodine added at a secure base, Brown wanted to know. “We have a pretty decent water supply. They actually have stuff coming to them in pipes. So why would they be issuing handfuls of iodine pills to individuals who happen to be in that area and told to use at dosages until your teeth start aching?”
Such high dosages would have led to a lot of illness among the troops, I suggested.
“Basically it’s the same kind of symptomology as if you’d taken the PB tablet,” Jim Brown agreed, referring to the notorious anti-nerve agent tablets issued daily to all in–theater personnel during a sarin-laced desert deployment. “If it doesn’t have something to do, your thyroid — your parathyroid — your thalamus gland will be jinked around with.” [for more on sarin exposures during Desert Shield, see Bringing The War Home by William Thomas]
Unless all that excess iodine is intended to absorb nuclear radiation.
“We’re talking a panic reaction by the brass,” Brown agreed. “These were the same kind of pills and the same kind of dosage regime given to UN inspectors” on the trail of radioactive Depleted and Non-Depleted Uranium.
As for “the six missing boom booms” (tactical nuclear weapons), there were some events that occurred prior to that from what I’m hearing,” Brown stated, referring to confirmation by two of his sources. “In order to make sure our inventory stayed where it was supposed to stay at, there was a shell game going on. Some material was stuffed into a box and made to look as if…” no boom booms had been removed.
Otherwise, “if used in ‘91 and again in ’92, (that) inventory is going to have to be shuffled.”
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW
If not exactly “routine”, Brown says, the undisclosed use of five nuclear weapons against Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in a dangerous shift in U.S. war fighting. As he put it, "Using tactical nukes is now an acceptable doctrine until otherwise notified.”
In calling America a “Nuclear Rogue” in 2002, a very different New York Times had warned, “Nuclear weapons are not just another part of the military arsenal. They are different, and lowering the threshold for their use is reckless folly.” [NYT Mar 11/02]
Asked on-air by his Italian TV host why he had decided to withdraw his anonymity and appear on European television, Brown said that since founding the Gulf Watch organization in 1991, “We have been trying for a long time to get this information together and put it out to the public and prevent it from happening again. Because I guarantee you, if they got away with it in 1991 and 2002, they will continue getting away with it.”
Unless a public outcry and thorough legislative investigations halt further “preemptive” use of nuclear weapons.
Just ask the only country to use nuclear weapons against other nations. And the recklessly rogue Government of Israel.
William Thomas
Aug. 12, 2024
Photo Captions
US bombs Basra -al-monitor.com
US military drops 'mother of all bombs on Afghanistan -bbc.com
New Study Documents Depleted Uranium Impacts on Children in Iraq -julietbonnay.com
Iraq links cancers to uranium weapons -SFGate sfgate.com
Using depleted uranium weapons will bring heavy karma to perpetrators -scoop.co.nz
US Army serves up depleted uranium munitions for NATO's war in Ukraine en.defence -ua.com