heart… breaking
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Wm. Terry Leichner, RN:
Stan,
Sadly, there were many of us…including you…who warned the mainstream press and anybody who would listen something like this would happen. Depleted uranium has left a marker everywhere we’ve used it and the military and all the alleged “experts” continue to deny, deny, deny.
We had studies done to determine if DU would cause such symptoms but the results didn’t suit the masters of war so they discredited the researchers. Anectdotal reports from Serbia and the other Balkans states have shown similar symptoms wherever US troops used DU enhanced weapons. Gulf War I resulted in the same leukemias and birth defects among Iraqis exposed. Gulf War syndrome was initially said to have DU as a caustive factor only later to have that report retracted.
So. this report only confirms what many of us dumbass “peaceniks” already knew and warned about. Many of us peaceniks being ex-grunts like myself exposed to another generation’s toxic weapon of Agent Orange.
27 July 2010, 5:24 pmBeing a skeptic, I don’t see much will on the part of “progressives” “liberals” or the malaise called the peace movement to effect any change, however. Wish I did.
Peace be with you, Stan. Walking with you and the other brothers and sisters in the Gulf remains one of my favorite memories.
W.Terry Leichner, RN
USMC grunt in Vietnam ’67-’68
cabdriver:
I’m currently a supporter of nuclear power. I think that the radiation from reactors is containable and controllable, as a health risk.
But DU is something else. I can’t imagine a more effective way to mobilize a beta radiation emittor as a biotoxin/mutagen/carcinogen than in the form of pyrophoric ash. And pyrophoric ash is, by design, an inevitable consequence of using DU as a munition.
That fine ash that one encounters in the aftermath of fireworks displays? That’s pyrophoric ash. It’s usually magnesium, in that example. The toxicity is negligible compared to uranium, because it isn’t radioactive. But perhaps the most effective way to ingest toxic radioactivity is to breathe it. It seems undeniable to me that turning DU into pyrophoric ash amounts to weaponizing it.
A cast piece of depleted uranium has negligible toxicity, especially if it’s coated with another metal, like cadmium. But when it incinerates from the friction of hitting a target, it produces huge quantities of this pyrophoric ash.
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=depleted+uranium+pyrophoric+ash&btnG=Google+Search
28 July 2010, 1:43 amPeter Dolan:
You failed to note the myriad of potential flaws in this “new study”.
28 July 2010, 1:24 pmElizabeth:
I can certainly relate to your disgust over the malaise of the peace movement, but it’s hard to make progress when the mainstream media blacks out information that might get things moving, and most of the nation is in ignorance. Unfortunately, for many it’s willful ignorance. All I know to do is get some information out to my students without getting fired. You can be sure they will be reading this article come fall. I know it’s a feeble effort, but that’s all I’ve got to work with at the moment.
By the way, many thanks to Stan for helping to educate me. Your books and blog are terrific, and I thank God for the veterans who are active in getting the word out. I pass your stuff along too.
28 July 2010, 2:31 pmxenia:
It takes great courage to address the subject publicly, no doubt. I know that from my own work as an educator.
But I do not accept people who claim that the information is inaccessible. I first learned of DU during the first Gulf war, as a teenager. It marked me forever, especially once I read about the deformities and the unimaginably long-lasting radiation.
In the late 1990s, I saw a picture of an Iraqi baby born without the upper half of its head. DU was clearly stated as a cause. This was actually a mainstream daily newspaper from a mid-sized city in the US (the South, no less!)
Also, it is vital to acknowledge that not only the Bushes bombed Iraqi civilians. Clinton and his people did it as well, later abundantly and consciously adding DU in their campaign on parts of Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia…
Those adults who can read, who do read, and who have access to the internet, and who yet say that they did not know about these horrors **decided** at some point not to know. Perhaps it was even easy, as those civilians against whom the weapons are deployed are defined as Untermenschen from the start.
Yet, why is there zero movement against this?
And why do we have masculinist, “neutral” nonsense above, with cabdriver and Peter Dolan not addressing the issue at hand, the one giving us some physics trivia (aka minimizing), and the other denying reality, without a single argument of his own?
30 July 2010, 3:34 pmMichael Anderson:
This was documented, in Iraq at least, back in ’03—the pics are all over the net. The use of this weapon is, to me, the ultimate filthy act of arrogance and malignant intent towards innocent humans by people (CREATURES) who DO NOT CARE about their fellow humans in any way, other than as expendable units of work. This includes soldiers, of course…Col. Doug Rokke being the most obvious example, the investigator who got sick from this crap and was promptly ignored by the Army.
31 July 2010, 3:38 amcabdriver:
Peter Dolan:
“You failed to note the myriad of potential flaws in this “new study”.”
Well…so have you. If you’re going to offer up that criticism, how about edifying your audience as to what those “potential flaws” might be?
31 July 2010, 8:07 amJack Thompson:
Quick look weapons platforms that are capable of firing DU ammunition: LAV 25, AV-8B, AH-1, M1A1–all used by the Marines.
STAN: And the A-10, CAS for all.
31 July 2010, 4:10 pmPeter Dolan:
I do not possess the technical expertise to opine one way or the other. I posted the comment ecause neither does the blogger that linked it here, and both he and Patrick Cockburn failed to acknowledge that the “new study” conclusion has been challenged by those who apparently do. Here is a link to one of several on-line debates that I refer to.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=6188790
3 August 2010, 6:01 pm