SLEIGHT OF NUKE
SLEIGHT OF NUKE
by William Thomas
willthomasonline.net exclusive
In late February 1991, the fabled city of Sinbad the Sailor was receiving a great deal of American attention. Founded by order of Caliph Omar in 636 AD, and about to be carpet bombed with cluster bombs dropped by American B-52s with appalling civilian casualties, Iraq's 3rd largest city and main seaport stands astride the main highway to nearby Iran. [Bringing The War Home by William Thomas] American commanders were keen to stop a stream of WMD being trucked over that border into Iran at night. Armed with newly delivered chemical agents, as well as the software and “yellow cake” needed to enhance its nuclear weapons program, Iran could ruin their plans for an mechanized blitzkrieg into Kuwait if the mullahs in Teheran decided to intervene.
The American generals knew that late in 1990, as war clouds massed on Iraq’s western border, a dissident Shiite commander named Hussein Kemal Hassan formed a mutinous cell within Saddam’s Sunni-led army and began clandestinely transporting hijacked WMD to Shia Iran.
The son-in-law and second cousin of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Hussein Kamel rose through the ranks to supervise Iraq's WMD development programs from 1987 to August 1995, when he defected to Jordan and assisted United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams in locating and destroying Iraq’s remaining weapons of mass destruction. [www.answers.com]
In 1990, Saddam Hussein still trusted his military industrial head. With the knowledge and clearances to arrange shipments of WMD within Iraq, Hussein Kamal had no trouble getting a convoy of six transport trucks loaded at the heavily guarded al-Jesira factory near Mosul.
Already targeted by allied war planners, al-Jesira produced the uranium hexaflouride used in the difficult technical task of turning low grade uranium “yellow cake” into highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium. Ripped from the ground in the Akashat mine, Iraq’s yellow cake” had been manufactured at the remote and heavily guarded al-Qaim facility since 1984. Located near the Syrian border some 380 kilometers west-northwest of Baghdad, the Swiss-built al-Qaim plant had by 1990 produced at least 170 tons of yellow cake for Saddam’s nuclear weapons program.
Camouflaged with mud and traveling blacked out, the convoy made its way south to a second loading stop in Baghdad. But instead of heading for an in-country destination, the trucks turned east through the night toward the Iranian border. According to US intelligence assets who learned of their movements, the drivers did not know the contents of their cargos.
DRIVE TIME
Included in the first convoy heading south to beat a Desert Storm were a 1983 red and white Scania transport van, a 1985 Scania with white cab and red box; an orange 1975 MAC truck, an orange 1986 Scania, a brown and white Volvo truck of unknown year, and another Scania truck of unknown vintage sporting an orange cab and red box.
Still traveling only at night, the convoy was waved through the border of Saddam’s sworn enemy — and their Islamic kin — Iran. Civilian Iranian drivers and trucks were waiting for them. After exchanging passwords and manifests, the heavy cargo boxes were quickly transferred into waiting Iranian transport trucks. The crates were clearly labeled in Arabic: “Tularemia,” “Anthrax,” “Botulinum” and “Plague”. Also included in this first of two clandestine WMD convoys to Iran also included an advanced Hewlett Packard computer and a Linatron X-ray machine marked “pbg”. Both had been shipped from Iraq’s nuclear weapons facility at Mosul, along with sealed containers of uranium hexafluoride.
The Iranians drove their cargo to the town of Hamadan, where Revolutionary Guards assumed control of the convoy. Following the road between the towns of Shariyar and Robate Karim, the Guards delivered their special freight to the Shahid Mostafa Khomeini Revolutionary Corps Barracks at Pasdaran, about 30 kilometers southwest of Teheran. Used by the Guards as a military training facility, the barracks included storage rooms and warehouses.
The yellow cake was sent to the Fasa/Rudan Research Center for conversion into uranium hexafluoride. There, the Mo’allem Kalayeh facility could use the Iraqi raw material from the Akashat mine to manufacture enriched uranium fuel rods for civilian reactors.
The resulting uranium-hexaflouride could also be used to make bombs.
Sometime after the commencement of hostilities between the UN coalition forces and Iraq, a second blacked out convoy consisting of 1987 Volvo with red cab, a 1988 Volvo with black cab; a 1987 Scania with white cab, a 1985 MAC truck with brown cab, and a 1987 Scania with a red cabin transferred similar chemical-bioweapons materials. [“Shell Game: How Saddam’s Dissident Shiite Commanders Sent WMD To Iran by William Thomas willthomas.net; US Defense Department Report: IIR 2 201 0744 91/Filename:22010744.91r. Message SERIAL: (U) IIR 2 201 0744 91 “TRANSFER OF NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL, AND CHEMICAL (NBC) MATERIEL DURING DESERT STORM” May 4/95]
Alarmed by these intelligence reports, U.S. military commanders placed high priority on interdicting this clandestine WMD supply route into Shiite Iran in an operation that would also deter Teheran from intervening against the coming U.S. attack on largely Shiite Iraq.
Would fuel-air bombs achieve both mission objectives? As a bonus, giant fuel-air BLU-82 bombs could be used to clear Iraqi minefields and intimidate terrified barefoot conscripts into surrendering. When General Schwarzkopf suggested using these smaller versions of the MOAB, Colonel George Gray, Commander of the 1st Special Operations Wing exclaimed, “Everybody within three miles of the drop will be bleeding from every orifice of his body.”
General Calvin Waller is said to have ad-libbed with a big grin, “Oh God, how many do we have?”
At least 11 BLU-82s would eventually be dropped on Iraqi positions. [www.psywarrior.com]
KLICK 5
“Hank” was part of the American invasion force heading into Kuwait. “Our guys got told left and right that if things got a little cranky and stupid, we could end up in a short shooting war — but we had a bigger bullet. We had stuff that could come off the navy ships or could be dropped.” That “stuff” he later learned, included a “Klick 5”—a 5 kiloton nuclear bomb. It seemed like a good idea at the time. “WMDs were running back and forth — those guys were doing this from October, November 1990 to about the time we went to the H airfield [and engaged in] a little smash and grab,” Hank recalls. “Those guys” were Karmel’s dissidents driving WMD past Basra into Iran. As he explained, “You have to do it where you can get away with it. It has to be something out in the hinterlands and still be worth being discovered. Baghdad, nooo. Salman Pak producing and storing biological stuff, nooo. Basra, which was the direct [WMD] pipeline between Iran and Iraq—yeah!”
It was risky. If Saddam Hussein could confirm that even a low level nuclear attack had taken place, he might choose to respond by blowing up the key Darbandikhan dam. Located near the ill-fated town of Halabja, it had been seized by Iranian forces during the recently concluded eight-year war with Iraq — and regained through a massacre employing chemical weapons supplied through the White House by a smiling Donald Rumsfeld after publicly shaking hands with Saddam.
As Stephen Pelletiere wrote in the New York Times, Iraq’s “impressive system of dams and river control projects” had already caused downstream countries to covet “the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change… Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades — not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water.” [New York Times Jan 31/03]
But if Saddam took exception to a nuclear strike on his country and blew the Darbandikhan dam, not only would Israel go thirsty after siphoning the water from its parched occupied territories — U.S. troops would need rubber rafts to occupy Baghdad. “The thing they held over us was a reality based threat,” Hank told me in a series of interviews. “Light off a nuke and we’re going to pop that dam, and in three days you’re going to be under three feet of water.”
On the other hand, a bonus on this nuclear gamble, the invisible Electromagnetic Pulse escaping from the underground nuclear blast would fry the local electrical grid, creating a “blind zone” in Iraq’s key southern defenses — “while serving notice on the Iranians not to intervene. We needed to make a clear sign: If we see a human body wave, or even a Ryder truck coming our way, this is what you’re going to get.
“This was a really good spot to make a point to everybody — far enough from Saddam that he would not respond with NBC,” Hank continued, referring to known stocks of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons or materials the dictator was known to have amassed with the help of the West. The message to Teheran would be equally clear: “Carry on cranky, and we’re going to give you a really bad day.”
Dick Cheney and other war planners, Hank added, “were taking a heckuva chance.” Because if truckloads of yellow cake were “excited” by a nearby nuclear detonation—or if a rumored laboratory “way station” was hit in the Basra area—the resulting blast could be amplified beyond “low yield”. “Can you say cook-off?” Hank asked.
At least one 15,000 pound conventional BLU-82 was dropped on February 7, 1991, creating a fireball with a diameter of two square miles. Outside the blast zone, oxygen consumed by the aerosolized fuel-air explosion from this “smaller cousin” to the MOAB created a vacuum, causing the lungs of any creature to implode. As one website accurately warned: Usage of the BLU-82 is the precursor to the next weapon that may be used... the bunker-busting nuclear weapons.” [www.casi.org.uk]
A British Special Air Service (SAS) Commando team on a secret reconnaissance mission around this time, saw a signature mushroom cloud from 110 miles away and radioed back to headquarters, “Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait.” [www.indymedia.nl; www.psywarrior.com]
GOING NUCLEAR
In fact, the blokes had just nuked Iraq. The first detonation of a nuclear weapon against another country since Nagasaki took place approximately 11 miles east of Basra sometime between February 2 and February 5, 1991. By then, Basra had been declared a "free fire zone” — a term used during the Vietnam slaughter to designate areas entirely military in nature and thus open to carpet-bombing by invulnerable formations of eight-engine B-52s. As military spokesman General Richard Neal told the press, "Basra is a military town in the true sense.... The infrastructure, military infrastructure, is closely interwoven within the city of Basra itself."
General Neal claimed there were no civilians left in Basra, only military targets. In fact, Basra was home to 800,000 terrified residents. In direct violation of Article 51 of the Geneva Protocols, which prohibits area bombing, saturation grid-bombing by B-52s mixing high-explosives with cluster bomblets spraying shrapnel through city streets… leveled entire city blocks, the LA Times reported, along with “bomb craters the size of football fields and an untold number of casualties." [Washington Post Feb 2/91; Los Angeles Times Feb 5/91]
During the first week of February 1991, an underground “low-yield” nuclear explosion 11 miles away in the desert would not have attracted much notice in a city reported by the Los Angeles Times to be engulfed from American bombing in "a hellish nighttime of fires and smoke so dense that witnesses say the sun hasn't been clearly visible for several days at a time.” [www.deoxy.org] Who gave the order to go nuclear?
Under the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1995 during the Clinton administration, using nuclear weapons preemptively against weapons of mass destruction or “to demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD” must first be authorized by the National Command Authority — Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney or the President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush.
At the time of the subsurface detonation of the 5-kiloton GB-400 bunker buster in hard-packed sand, Iraq’s sharkay daytime wind was blowing from NW to SE, away from Basra toward Iran. But the wind shifted 180-degrees during the nighttime shamal, “so everybody gets a taste,” as Hank put it. “We had FOX [NBC ‘sniffer’] vehicles sitting on the Kuwaiti side of the border to make sure the thing went the way it was supposed to.” [“Israeli Nuclear Strike On Iran Turned Back By USAF by William Thomas www.willthomas.net Jan 22/07]
According to Hank, about “400 to 500 meters” of terrain were “cleaned out” of any bystanders and their vehicles.
Was the bomb’s message received? After all, Hank related, “You use a tactical nuke of one to 5 kilotons to stop somebody from doing something, or to contaminate an area—area denial. But you’ve got to notify folks you’ve done it with an overt [booom!] or covert [phone call] warning: ‘Look what we just made disappear. Are you sure you want to keep doing what you’re doing? Because I know where you’re at.’”
The seismic disturbance from ground zero radiating out from a half mile to a mile was “pretty devastating,” he affirmed. Besides flipping vehicles over, causing alarms to go off, and knocking people off their feet at that distance, the earth-shaking blast detonated every mine in the area.
Regarding Washington’s intent to halt the WMD transfers and deter Iran, “It made their point,” he says. The immediate “spike” in airborne radiation would drop quickly in immediate lethality, Hank insisted. Two weeks later, U.S. or British Special Forces teams transiting the area, would not “start glowing immediately when we drive through it.”
A Desert Storm scheduled to assault on Kuwait on February 25, “should” have left coalition forces on the other side of the border in the clear, as well. But the Union of Concerned Scientists is less certain of radioactive containment from subsurface low-yield detonations. These nuclear scientists points out that atomic detonations at the Nevada Test Site showed that “the minimum burial depth to ensure containment… is roughly 100 meters for a one-kiloton explosion.”
According to Hank and his informants, the bomb detonated near Basra was five-times more powerful. But as Phelan discovered for Harper’s, “Even a 1-kiloton bunker buster—a relative firecracker detonated at fifty feet underground—could eject about 1,000,000 cubic meters of radioactive soil. [Harper's Dec 1/04]
“Since an EPW (‘Earth Penetrating’ a.k.a ‘Earth Rape’ Weapon) will not penetrate enough to be fully contained,” the concerned scientists chimed in, “it will produce a surface crater when it explodes, and large amounts of radioactive dust and debris from the crater will be ejected into the air and surrounding region. The size of the crater — and the amount of material ejected — will depend on the local ground properties, the depth of the explosion, and the yield of the weapon. The level of fallout will also depend on the local weather conditions, such as wind and rain.” [www.ucsusa.org May/05]
In this case, no rain, and light steady winds blowing into Iran and the countries beyond. At least until nightfall, when the day breeze reversed towards Basra and Kuwait.
Hank continued, “As far as the army is concerned, the solution to pollution is dilution. Give it enough a time, it will spread out [on the wind] and cover everybody with a low dose—instead of a few somebodies with a high dose.”
In other words…
“Any of that dirt that got churned up again would distribute that stuff for a long time. You’re okay to drive through. The people living there, you would start to see the residual effects — short- term; long-term — depending on your level and type of exposure.”
GETTING DEAD
“Basically, it’s like smoking crack,” says former Lawrence Livermore nuclear lab scientist, Leuren Moret. “Only you’re inhaling radioactive crack — and it won’t get you high. It will get you dead. It goes right in your nose. It crosses the olfactory bulb into your brain. It’s a systemic poison. It goes everywhere.” Borne everywhere on the gentlest breezes, radioactive nanoparticles 100-times smaller than a white blood cell, go “straight into the blood stream,” Moret continues. “It’s carried all throughout the body into the bones, the bone marrow, the brain. It goes into the fetus. [It] gets picked up in the lipids and probably the cholesterol and go right through the cell membranes of the cell. They screw up the cell processes. They screw up the signaling between the cells because the cells all talk to each other and coordinate what they’re doing. It messes up brain function.” [Project Censored Feb 21/05; www.iconoclast-texas.com May 9/05]
There is nothing “depleted” about a speck of anything that can kill any organism that ingests or inhales it over the next 4.468 billion years. [Daily Star (Beirut) Sept 14/04; Tribune Media Services June 29/06]
As writer and publisher Alok O'Brien accurately explains, “The nanoparticles of DU enter the body, from the air, from landing on clothing or skin and from food or water. These nanoparticles penetrate all protective clothing and masks, and once it comes in contact with the body it immediately disperses and begins to alter DNA. As it is not soluble it cannot be excreted from the body. Uranium is a toxic chemical element, just like lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium.” Whether inhaled or ingested in sandy food, alpha particles tend to bind with phosphate in human bones and DNA. Just one gram of U-238 from Depleted Uranium dust or a nuclear detonation lodged anywhere in the body emits 12,000 alpha particles per second. [American Free Press Aug 27/04]
NO BIG DEAL
According to Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Hematology at Dundee University, even a cell that seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later that underlie cancer and birth defects.
Pentagon studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects. [San Francisco Chronicle Oct 10/02]
Another Pentagon-funded study concluded: "Fetal exposure to uranium during critical prenatal development may adversely impact the future behavioral and neurological development of offspring." [Vanity Fair Nov/04]
As Hank went on, a bunker buster that explodes anywhere from 20 feet to 160 feet underground “is more than enough to contaminate every water source in the region. The aquifer would be contaminated. And that wouldn’t go away in a week.”
The people who gave the order to drop a nuclear bomb on Iraq “know that “ground contamination on the surface will make it to the water supply and make it undrinkable,” he insisted. “But they considered it ‘low level’ radiation — no big deal.”
Except, of course, for everyone using that water for the rest of their abbreviated pregnancies and lives.
“Everything you do from washing dishes to taking a shower — everything you do…” Hank’s voice trailed off as we both considered how much water was use every day of our lives. “You can’t filter this out if you don’t know it’s there. And you don’t see a lot of people running around over there with a Brita.”
RADIOACTIVE IRAQ
Or Geiger counters. In the heart of Baghdad, Christian Science Monitor reporter Scott Peterson would wave a radiation-detecting wand over one small pile of jet-black DU dirt near a group of playing children — only to step back in alarm when the instrument registered 1,900 times the normal background radiation. [Christian Science Monitor May 15/03; The Daily Star (Beirut) Sept 14/04; WSWS May 10/05]
More than 200 uranium-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from ships and submarines during the first bombardment on Iraq. Hundreds more would follow. In addition, more than 3,000 bombs (including sea-launched cruise missiles) were dropped on metropolitan Baghdad—home to six million people.
The total number of bombs dropped by allied forces in the initial air war came to about 250,000. With DU dust blowing everywhere, and sanitation knocked out by U.S.-led airstrike and epidemics rife, things would get bad in Baghdad by ‘93. With urban air strikes by American warplanes surging in 2007, Hank’s “catastrophic” would not begin to describe the legacy of permanent low-level radioactivity throughout Iraq. [www.deoxy.org]
Dr. Durakovic now says soil samples from Iraq show radiation levels 17-times higher than any readings that might be remotely acceptable — threatening, in his words, environmental "catastrophe." Durakovic also believes that DU contamination from the 1991 war may have exposed the entire Gulf population. [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq Aug/06]
NUKING BASRA
The estimated 300-800 tons of nuclear waste that would be dumped on the people and ecology of Iraq during Desert Storm would be more than enough to mask the radiation effects from the nuclear bomb exploded east of Basra. [Tribune Media Services June 29/06; www.byronchild.com]
Far to the south of Baghdad, Iraq’s formed capitol “is some 200 kilometres away from sites where large numbers of DU shells were fired,” reports David Rose. Yet, nearly every family tested in Basra experienced extreme symptoms from so-called “low level” radiation exposure. [Vanity Fair Nov/04]
Six years later, a study into the cancer rate among Iraqi soldiers who fought in the Basra area during the 1991 Gulf War also found, “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,” testified Dr. Jawad Al-Ali 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 multiple unrelated cancers in the same individual have been reported in Yugoslavia and Iraq in families that had no history of any cancer. This is unknown in the previous studies of cancer, a new phenomenon," comments Leuren Moret. [American Free Press Aug 27/04]
While interviewing Dr. Jawad al Ali at Basra's Talimi Teaching Hospital about his research into the effects of radiation and cancer cases “in Iraq's radioactive governorate of Basra,” reporter Ewa Jasiewicz learned that the hospital staff were also 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 writes. “In 1990 the hospital itself was the target of a US missile strike which saw its intensive care unit crushed by shells and rockets, killing four patients and burying a specialist doctor alive under a collapsed ceiling.”
“DU is the cause of these cancers but its difficult to prove', Dr. Jawad told her. “Our patients attest to the fact that cancer rates are skyrocketing.”
With three-times more radiation detected in the air than is naturally present, this medical doctor added that water and food are the primary contaminated sources — and also the “re-suspension” of radioactive particles through strong winds, or the digging up or vehicular disturbance of radioactive sands.
'The rate of cancer here has multiplied 15 times since the last Gulf war,” Dr. Jawad stated. According to various accounts, Iraq's former capitol and second largest city has a population of two to three million people.
“For Dr. Jawad, the constant cancer cases (many of which go unreported he stresses) are a spiraling emergency,” Ewa continued. As the Iraqi doctor explained, “For the past 13 years we were unable to test people properly, we didn't have sufficient or appropriate equipment. WHO teams were banned from visiting us and the US took away parts for our MRE machines and our computer systems, saying that they could be used for making weapons of mass destruction. We really need special sensitive tissue testing equipment, but under the sanctions, this was unavailable.” [“Uranium in Your Koolaid” Occupation Watch Jan 26/04]
Based on their experience in southern Iraq hospitals, MDs Ahmad; Abdul-Hafidh and al-Khazraji found that anyone exposed to Iraq’s nuclear environment can also anticipate being host to: “A considerable increase in infectious diseases caused by most severe immunodeficiencies in a great part of the population; frequent occurrence of massive herpes and zoster afflictions in adults and children; AIDS-like syndrome; a hitherto unknown syndrome caused by renal and hepatic dysfunctions; leukemia, elaptic anemia and malignant neoplasms; congenital deformities caused by genetic defects (also to be found in animals)…”
… as well as “Down’s syndrome, skeletal and chromosomal abnormalities, hair loss, rare skin diseases, severe vertigo accompanied by nausea and loss of balance, distorted vision and loss of sight, severe migraine, sterility among both sexes, and an increase in the incidence of miscarriages and of still, premature and difficult births.” [Further Evidence on Relation between Depleted Uranium, Incidence of Malignancies among Children in Basra, Southern Iraq Dr. Alim Yacoup; Dr. Imad al-Sa’ doun; Dr. Genan G. Hassan College of Medicine, Basra University]
With more than half of all cancers in Iraq occurring among children under the age of five, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, Director of Oncology Center at Basra’s biggest hospital warned that children throughout the country are especially susceptible to DU poisoning. [Lifeboatnews.com May 27/03]
"Children in particular are susceptible to depleted uranium( DU) poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system, which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common," he said. [Tribune Media Services June 29/06; www.americanchronicle.com]
Doctors Ahmad Hardan, Abdul-Hafidh and al-Khazraji were also seeing “escalating numbers” of children wasting away from leukemia, lymphomas and Hodgkin’s disease. Child leukemia in southern Iraq is up 400% since 1990. Breast cancer in young women age 30 and under is also “many times higher”, and ovarian cancer in women has increased by 1,600%. [Junge Welt Oct 24/00; Further Evidence on Relation between Depleted Uranium, Incidence of Malignancies among Children in Basra, Southern Iraq - College of Medicine, Basra University]
When the Japanese began studying radiation effects in the southern Iraq during the summer of 2003, their Geiger counter went “off the scale on many occasions. During their vista local hospital was treating upwards of 600 children per day.”
Six-hundred children every day?[www.envirosagainstwar.org; www.americanchronicle.com Apr 17/06; WSWS May 10/05]
In March 2004 the Tokyo Citizen’s Tribunal would find the junior Bush and his administration, guilty of war crimes in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq over the use of illegal weapons. [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview by Dr. Souad al-Azzawi Aug/06 Hiroshima]BAGHDAD DIARIESBasra’s beleaguered doctors knew they were facing something extreme. And they were not alone. Before her death from sudden-onset cancer, the much-loved Iraqi artist and Baghdad Diaries author, Nuha al-Radi wrote, “The carnage takes place in apocalyptic proportions… Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia... [www.envirosagainstwar.org]
Nuha was convinced that DU was entering the water table and flowing into every corner of the country, poisoning everything.
“Before her death in Beirut, Nuha “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… since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.” [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview Aug/06 Hiroshima]
Meanwhile, horrific birth defects in the Basra region would soon eclipse medical literature worldwide.
“IS IT NORMAL, DOCTOR?”
The Pentagon’s continued denial of “no known health problems” associated with DU would be news to hospital staff in Basra — especially since the US Army’s own training manuals require anyone coming within 25 yards of DU-contaminated homes, equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection. Otherwise, the manuals warn, "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption."
Pentagon studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects. [San Francisco Chronicle Oct 10/02]
Another Pentagon-funded study concluded: "Fetal exposure to uranium during critical prenatal development may adversely impact the future behavioral and neurological development of offspring." [Vanity Fair Nov/04]
Add a low-level nuclear detonation to DU exposure and the result over successive generations can only be described as genocidal. After all, the only way to defeat an ”insurgency” defending families, culture and homes is to turn most of the population into corpses, medical casualties or refugees.
“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,” laments Leuren Moret. “The levels of uranium are increasing in the population every year. Every day, people are eating and drinking while the whole environment is contaminated. There are more babies born with birth defects, and the birth defects are getting more and more severe.”
In Afghanistan and Iraq, women who should be overjoyed by their pregnancies call their condition “jelly belly”. So many babies are being born with stubby limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be - or with a single Cyclopean eye, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads - new mothers no longer ask, “Is it a girl or a boy?”
Instead, they anxiously inquire, “Is it normal, doctor?”
"Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning," testified Dr. Jawad Al-Ali at the Tokyo War Crimes hearings in 2003. "They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most. However, cancer of the lymph system, which can develop anywhere on the body and has rarely been seen before the age of 12, is now also common."
According to Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, even a cell that seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later that underlie cancer and birth defects. Then there is “the bystander effect” whereby cells divide in unison with others damaged by DU radiation—amplifying the damage done. [American Free Press Aug 27/04] “It’s just a slow death sentence,” says Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than two decades at the Lawrence Livermore National nuclear bomb-making Laboratory. “DNA does not repair itself… Once mutation is caused in DNA, that damage is passed on to future generations of that affected person or animal or plant.” [www.iconoclast-texas.com May 9/05; Journal of International Issues July 1/04]
The result is a “Silent Genocide” that permanently contaminates the regions its dust storms reach, slowly destroying the genetic future of those populations, as Moret reminds us. [Journal of International Issues July 1/04]
This is no exaggeration. A decade before another 3,000 tons of DU was to contaminate the densely populated centers of a dying nation, UK Atomic Energy Authority came up with estimates for the potential effects of the DU contamination left by the conflict. It calculated that "this could cause "500,000 potential deaths."
Photo Captions
Scania S520 transport van -tractorfan.nl
Uranium "Yellow Cake" -ibankcoin.com
Sub-surface 4 kiloton detonation (US Operation teapot 1955) -youtube.com
Carpet bombing by a B-52 is fun when the other side can't shoot back -pinterest.com.mx
B-61 guided nuclear bomb -watch-unto-prayer.org
Radiation sickness pre-death symptom -cbsnews.com
American bombing of Iraq left legacy of deformed babies, infant mortality, distrsught mothers -pinterest.com