arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

As I read this Jan. 26, 2004 investigation from Bagdad on depleted uranium (by peace group "voice in the wilderness") and interview with Basra's Talimi Teaching Hospital Dr Jawad Al Ali, I felt like this is something very important to know about and unreported/underreported in mainstream media (at least in the last months), although it is nothing really new and we sporadically hear about it. I forward it to you although it is not my own personal experience. Besides, Belgium was at the end of the countries in the list of countries using DU or contaminated by DU - does anyone have further knowledge about this?
fanny

http://vitw.us/weblog/archives/000499.html#more

Voices in Iraq

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January 26, 2004
Uranium in Your Koolaid: an interview with Cancer Specialist Dr Jawad Al Ali

Ewa Jasiewicz
Occupation Watch
Occupied Basra

DU - What is it?

Depleted Uranium is a highly toxic heavy metal derived from nuclear bomb and fuel waste. It's heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities cause it to burn-melt like a blowtorch through steel when a DU coated/loaded penetrator, self-sharpening by nature, strikes a hard target. It's mainly used to incinerate battle tanks, and on contact pulverizes into breathable aerosol-like dust that can travel 26 miles and remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years.

Despite the name "Depleted" Uranium, DU has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium, which is pure uranium, and all uranium whether "natural", "depleted" or "enriched" is a chemical and radiological toxic substance emitting alpha, beta and gamma particles, all of which have a destructive effect on the cellular make-up of the human body, ie they attack the human body at the most essential, primary and vital levels.


Imagine the effect of DU weapons on tanks and compare it to that of the after-drift and settlement into water systems, soil, vegetation, and the animal/human body. The energy of a single alpha particle, never mind the gamma, the heaviest penetrating rays known to science - is more than the amount required to damage important macromolecules (the glue that holds us together) such as DNA, RNA, enzymes and proteins. It does this by breaking molecular bonds and chemical reactions, which alter or destroy the shape, organization and function of these essential life sustaining molecules. DU particles have the capacity to penetrate, corrode, crack and break down the building bricks of human life within the body, through generating cancer. It can kill, slowly and undetectably at first, with the effects of DU invisible for the first 4 years of exposure.

According to Dr Durakovic, a former US army colonel and current professor of medicine, in the course of one year, 1 milligram of uranium emits 390 million alpha particles, 780 million beta particles and associated gamma rays. This is over one billion high-energy, ionizing, radioactive particles and rays which can produce extensive biological damage--biological warfare fought out across the inner terrains of the human body: attacking the ovaries, lungs, lymph nodes, kidneys, breast, blood, bones, brain, stomach and fetuses. There are over 1000 different cancer types known to medical science. Cancer means mutated cells. The body's immune system kicks in to combat the cancerous cells and in doing so begins to attack the whole body. White blood cells do the fighting. They're designed to attack any foreign cells, or any foreign object entering the body, be it viruses, mutated cells or even organs such as mismatched transplanted kidneys. As cancer spreads through the body, the immune system strategy is to try to defeat it. Cancer cells divide rapidly, overtake other cells and can spread faster than the immune system can react. Death envelops when cancerous cells reach a critical mass in the body, attacking and multiplying through mutating every cell around them.

An estimated 300-800 TONS of DU were pounded into Iraq during the 1990 Gulf war.

Lab Rat Nation

DU emerged in the 70s as the US's Cold War weapon of choice: cheap, abundant and devastatingly effective in busting new top-line Soviet tanks - US manufacturers had found a captive market and a sustainable enemy.

DU is the modern tyrant's multipurpose must, indispensable for armor-piercing bullets, casing for bombs, shielding on tanks, counter weights and ground penetrators on missiles, Cluster Bomb fragments that penetrate armor and anti-personnel mines.

The destructive effects of DU have been known to scientists, military strategists and politicians for over 60 years.

A 1943 U.S. War Department proposed the 'Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon', defining it as:

1) a terrain contaminating material, the radioactive product of which would be spread on the ground and would affect personnel.
2) 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 vehicle, or aerial bombs

The US government began experimenting on and poisoning its own subjects long before its military and economic warfare experiments ignited Iraq's already internal and external war savaged environment. Research by Damacio Lopez, Executive Director, International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST) features a 1994 Interim Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments which described intentional releases of radioactive materials into populated areas prior to 1963 as "Experiments involving intentional environmental releases of radiation that

(A) were designed to test human health effects of ionizing radiation; or
(B) were designed to test the extent of human exposure to ionizing radiation.

These releases were generally related to radiation warfare tests, the gathering of intelligence, and the development of instruments. Four such tests were conducted at Los Alamos, New Mexico, however the Department Of Energy reports that the number of such tests approximates 250.

The majority of DU shot in the 1990 Kuwait/US war and in this US/UK war was concentrated on Basra and Baghdad respectively. 1000 to 2000 metric tons are estimated to have been used by US and to a lesser extent British forces, in the 2003 Gulf War. (Figure from Dr Jawad Al Ali)

Sitting in Basra's Talimi Teaching Hospital Dr Jawad Al Ali, a renowned cancer specialist, talks measuredly about his research into the affects of DU and cancer cases in Iraq's radioactive governorate of Basra.

'The rate of cancer here has multiplied 15 times since the last Gulf war. In 2002 we had 644 deaths from cancer in Basra. We have approximately 123 patients per 100,000 of the population. (Basra's is Iraq's second largest city with an estimated population of 2-3 million). People living near the nuclear reactors are affected the worst, but overall, its estimated that 1000-2000 tons of Depleted Uranium were inside Iraqi cities and in west Basra and between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A10 planes were dropping it, and Apaches. Abu Khaseeb, North Rumeilla, and the airport were particularly hard hit. The results of the DU used in this war will not be seen for another 4-5 years - the incubation period for cancer'.

The staff of Talimi hospital theselves have not escaped the DU seep. 13 doctors and nurses at Talimi have contracted cancer since 1990 - Breast, testicular and lymphoma. And in terms of US aggression, 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.

'Workers smelting old tanks and vehicles in Khor Zubier are known to have contracted leukemia' Tells me Dr Jawad. Hardly suprising, keening over a hot radioactivity accelerating poisonous metal slop, breathing in re-energized particles of depleted uranium all day. But, it's scrap metal, it sells on the market and it brings in the cash to feed families in a country staggering under 70% unemployment. Pity those particular workers are unlikely to ever see their children grow up.

'DU is the cause of these cancers but its difficult to prove', explains Dr Jawad. 'Our patients attest to the fact that cancer rates are skyrocketing. There is three times more DU in the air than is present naturally. Water and food are the key contaminated sources, and also the 're-suspension of particles' - i.e the re-release of DU into the air through strong winds or the digging up of DU.'

'In Gurna we have found cancer clusters, a director of a school plus two teachers are suffering from Luekemia there. We know of one person, Doug Rokke, an American, who was decontaminating tanks. He received 5000 times the proper dose of DU. He now has slurred speech and dizziness, no cancer as yet, but, he has been affected'.

Indeed, Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project, former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel, was recruited by the US department of defense to handle the post-first- Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up. He told Sunday Herald reporters last March, 'A nation's military personnel cannot willfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions. To do so is a crime against humanity. We must do what is right for the citizens of the world: ban DU.'

Dr Jawad goes on to describe the threat of DU to the most vulnerable sector of society. 'Children in particular are susceptible to 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 lymphoma, which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common.'

'Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 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. 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'.

Dr Jawad looks exhausted. He slowly toys with his pen. 'The occupation forces should have protected the stores near the nuclear reactor in Baghdad, in Twaitha.' The case was well documented by Greenpeace in May. Post regime fall, impoverished, mostly squatter families were using barrels meant for toxic nuclear waste to store water for washing, cooking and drinking. 'They should have known to protect the place but they can now say, 'people stole the barrels, its their fault and they spread the radioactive materials'. They will be held responsible for DU contamination, not the forces. And I think they did this on purpose, this is my opinion, just my opinion'. It makes sense. In April last year, the Pentagon announced that the US government had no intention of conducting a post war clean up of DU, believing that that there was no evidence for long-term affects of DU. The 200,000 US soldiers suffering from mystery fatigue, memory loss, and chronic muscle and joint pain aka Gulf War Syndrome, not being evidence enough on their own soil, and the eyeless children, multiple cancer bearing and leukemia fighting victims filling hospital wards in Basra and Baghdad and other war-scarred Iraqi cities, are too not evidence enough to seriously confront the effects of the radioactive killer.

For Dr Jawad, the constant cancer cases (many of which go unreported he stresses) are a spiraling emergency which needs to be investigated promptly, efficiently and accurately soon. '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. And it's not just lack of equipment, we need physicists and specialist doctors, people who can help conduct tests and do analysis. A woman from Britain came to visit me and said that doctors from The Royal College of Physicians would be coming to conduct studies. But noone has come. We were accused of spreading propaganda for Saddam before the war. When I have gone to do talks I have had people accuse me of being pro-Saddam. Sometimes I feel afraid to even talk. Regime people have been stealing my data and calling it their own, and using it for their own agendas. The Kuwaitis banned me from entering Kuwait - we were accused of being Saddam supporters.'

Dr Jawad and his patients have suffered acutely from the kill of the ecocidal tons of nuclear weapons deployed in the last two gulf wars. The killing continues. War casualties continue to be hospitalized, expire, and pile up in the graveyards of Basra. Some of the alive are slowly dying already, from the first breath of heavily radiated air breathed after The Fall. Others are set to bring deformed babies into the world, with crownless skulls or fused fingers, while whole families watch listlessly as taut bed-bound members reel from the violence of the poison in their veins, in their flesh.

There are weapons of mass destruction everywhere in Iraq. They were made in America, bombed over here, and lie left vitiating in the dessert, beside highways, in demolished homes, rubble buildings; a fine murder dust on the breeze, upon the water, inside the roasting tissues of a chicken on a spit in the street, inside the bodies of bone-eating cancer bearing children, or inside the wombs of women sick with dizziness--just pregnancy or poisoning? Their birth-days can only tell. But one thing is certain in occupied Iraq circa 2004, the UK and US governments are guilty of deploying in effect, biological warfare against the Iraqi civilian population. And the killing continues. The killing continues.

Resources

Countries using DU or contaminated by DU according to Damacio Lopez, Executive Director, International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST): Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Iraq, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, Panama, Pakistan, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Yugoslavia.


The Use of the Radioactive Material Depleted Uranium U-238 (DU) as a Military Weapon - By Damacio Lopez, Executive Director, International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST)

Basics about Uranium and Depleted Uranium (DU) and Its Impact on Human Health - by Dr. Durakovic

Middle East Report: Depleted Uranium Haunts Kosovo and Iraq - Scott Peterson

The Environmental and Health Effects of Deployment of Depleted Uranium During 1991 by US and UK Armies in Iraq - DR B.A Marouf

US Forces' Use of Depleted Uranium is Illegal - by Neil Mackay

Current Issues - Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Gulf Wars (1991, 2003)

Posted January 26, 2004 11:37 AM