INVADING HIROSHIMA
by William Thomas
Feb. 4, 2003
American and British troops entering Iraq are advised to bandage all cuts,
keep their overheated rubber suits zipped tight, and stop breathing. It is
dust, not bullets, that will likely pose the most lethal consequences to
their invasion of Iraq.
American military strategist Harlan Ullman will not be accompanying them.
But Ullman is excited about seeing his plan for mass murder enacted. Only
weeks away from a "live-fire"demonstration over the streets of Iraq¹s
biggest cities. Ullman compares hundreds of cruise missiles hitting Baghdad
to moments of total devastation directed at another war-ravaged population
half a century before.
"You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at
Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes,"Ullman boasts. [The
Sun-Herald Jan. 26 2003]
Intended as a lesson for a worldwide audience, the Pentagon says its plan is
intended to shatter Iraq "physically, emotionally and psychologically"by
raining down on its people in two days more than twice the number of
missiles launched during the entire 40 days of Desert Storm. The World
Health Organisation estimates that "as many as 500,000 people could require
treatment as a result of direct and indirect injuries" from this
unprecedented onslaught or radioactive high-explosives. [The Mirror Jan 29,
2003]
In the annals of CNN, Time and similar mass media war pornography, the
neighborhood-busting cruise missile is touted as a "smart"munition, able to
strike infant formula factories with robotic pinpoint accuracy. But as all
home computer users know, computers malfunction constantly, while carrying
out the simplest tasks.
In fact, Washington warmongers with oil and empire in their eyes must fire
massive waves of missiles at Iraq¹s teeming cities in order to "take out²
sporadically-functioning power stations, sewage and water purification
plants, and bring hundreds of thousands of already suffering families to
their knees.
Repeatedly blasted in 1991, and then denied spare parts under U.S. and
British-imposed sanctions in order to deliberately cause water-borne
epidemics, these key city facilities are located in crowded neighborhoods.
Extensive experimentation against urban centers in Bosnia, Libya,
Afghanistan and Iraq have shown cruise missiles to be wildly inaccurate.
Military insider Al Martin recalls a U.S. general laughing during Desert
Storm at the inaccuracy of American cruise missiles. "The defense
contractors will get paid as long as the things go off and hit the right
country,"the general said.
The solution to inaccuracy is to fire 800 missiles at a few hard-to-miss
cities in Iraq. As a Pentagon official boasted to CBS News, "The sheer size
of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before. There
will not be a safe place in Baghdad."
"The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated
before,"a Pentagon official told CBS News. "There will not be a safe place
in Baghdad."
It¹s not safe now! With a postwar count of perhaps 650,000 corpses from
lingering wounds, illness and DU exposure, Iraq has already suffered more
radiation deaths than the 130,000 corpses produced at Hiroshima through
American know-how and acute radiation exposure. [UN and Japanese figures]
Much of Iraq remains radiologically "hot"following undeclared nuclear
attacks that have randomly distributed lethal air and food-borne radiation,
without any mushroom clouds. The same type of Depleted Uranium-tipped cruise
missiles that have carried cancer into Bosnia and Afghanistan will only add
fresh "rems"to the radioactive dust of this distant desert land.
uic.com.au
Even if resistance collapses along with already tortured and teetering
cities, allied forces face the specter of severe casualties from the lethal
legacy of their last munitions testing on Iraq.
"If your son or daughter is in the military today, opposition from the
hapless Iraqi army is not the greatest threat,"warns Depleted Uranium (DU)
investigator John Kaminski. "In southern Iraq, American soldiers will be
sent into battle with inadequate protections against a proven health hazard
that will almost certainly doom them to lives diminished by a variety of
cancers caused by uranium 238, which means they may transmit these illnesses
to their family and friends - and birth defects to their children - when and
if they return home."
JUST A DAB WILL DU YOU
DU shells retain 60% of the radioactivity of unspent "hot"uranium.
Radiobiologist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that "it can be breathed in by
anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick."
A speck of Uranium-238 can cause cancer. The Pentagon admits to firing 320
tons of DU into Iraq¹s farms and neighborhoods during Desert Storm.
Greenpeace puts the figure at more than 800 tons.
Foremost expert on radiation sickness, Dr. Helen Caldicott explains that DU
dust is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a heavy alpha particle
that can lodge in open wounds, the lungs or the stomach depending on its
pathways of ingestion.
The results are cancers in the lungs, bones, blood or kidneys. These
devastating diseases are already surfacing in Afghanistan and Bosnia, while
continuing to decimate the survivors of genocide in Iraq. With a half-life
of 4.5 million years, if not buried by custom-equipped decontamination
teams, Caldicott says that dust-laden winds in Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and
Afghanistan "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time."[San
Francisco Chronicle Oct. 10, 2002]
In his story on "Going Nuclear in Iraq², Ramzi Kysia interviewed Dr. Alim
Abdul-Hamid at a major medical college in Baghdad. The dean of medicine says
he has "plenty of first-hand experience with Iraq¹s unprecedented plague of
cancers and birth defects.²
Dr. Abdul-Hamid is seeing breast cancer among women in their 20s. "In their
20s!² he repeats. "There are increased incidences of colon cancer, thyroid
cancer, in addition to, of course, leukemias and lymphomas." [Counterpunch
Dec. 28, 2001]
TARGETING CHILDREN
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than
adults. Today more than half of all cancers in Iraq are occurring among
children under the age of five.
Since the misnamed "end"of an ongoing Gulf War, helpless pediatricians in
Basra have watched childhood leukemia and cancer increase up to 12-times
peacetime rates. Hospitals throughout Iraq have reported as much as a
10-fold increase in birth defects since cities and countryside were strafed
with radioactive munitions.
Pointing to a map of Basra, Dr. Abdul-Hamid demonstrated the dose-response
relationship between DU and cancers, saying, "Areas which have got the
higher level of background radiation have higher levels of cancers.²
"GRUNTS EAT URANIUM!²
Boot camp grads preparing to occupy Iraq could chant cadence with this
catchy ditty. American and British military "doctors" insist that eating and
breathing radioactive uranium is perfectly safe.
So, they say, is being injected with mycoplasma-spiked anthrax vaccine.
Believing these lies, an estimated 250,000 disposable Desert Storm troopers
currently suffer from debilitating "Gulf War Illness². [Bringing The War
Home]
Because Depleted Uranium is unmatched as a shield and a weapon,
international efforts to ban DU continue to be ignored by the U.S., Canada
and Britain. Radioactive warfare is also a convenient way to explosively
redistribute mountains of mutagenic debris from America¹s atomic
annihilation factories to distant "colored" neighborhoods. As former South
African President Nelson Mandela remarked two days ago, Bush¹s policy of
"carnage" is fundamentally racist. [Independent Jan. 30, 2003]
The good news for black and Hispanic tank crews wheeling into attack
formations on Iraq¹s borders is that Iraqi Army tank shells cannot penetrate
their dense DU armor. The bummer is that expendable "tankers" are exposed to
whole-body gamma radiation emitted by the uranium-tipped shells racked
tightly around them. "It¹s like receiving a tiny X-ray every second," one DU
expert explains. [Bringing The War Home]
DU shells retain 60% of the radioactivity of unspent "hot"uranium. As
Caldicott comments, "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, 2002]
NO TANKS
Dr. Doug Rokke knows these dangers internally. The American physician in
charge of dealing with post-war contamination in Iraqi communities saw his
medical records confiscated by the U.S. Army after long-delayed examination
results showed radiation in his body at 5,000 times maximum "safe" levels.
Rokke, who headed the army¹s Depleted Uranium program after the Gulf
Massacre, told reporters after returning from Iraq, "Oh my God' is the only
way to describe it. Contamination was all over."
Rokke¹s recruits measured dangerous levels of radiation up to 150 feet away
from DU-fried tanks, including up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma
radiation. Alpha radiation registered in the thousands to the millions
counts-per-minute on their Geiger counters.
"That whole area is still trashed," Rokke remarked. "It¹s hotter than heck
over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."
Rokke¹s team spent three months cleaning up 24 tanks for return as outdoor
exhibits to the United States. According to the dying DU expert, the army
took another three years to clean up the tanks. Some could not be
decontaminated and had to be buried. [Bringing The War Home]
But human tissue cannot be decontaminated. Just three days after commencing
their work, Rokke and his crew started getting sick."Over the past decade,
30 men out of 100 servicemen dealing with DU, "dropped dead."
ROKKE¹S RADIATION
Rokke says the biggest danger is the dust given off when a Depleted Uranium
shell detonates. In heat fierce enough to melt armor plating, up to 70% of a
DU round oxidizes. "This aerosolized power, uranium oxide, is the really
dangerous stuff," Rokke says. "Particularly when it is inhaled.²
Rokke suspects that, like many Iraqi adults and children, radioactive
uranium oxide dust is permanently trapped in his lungs. Rokke also has
lesions on his brain. Pustules protrude from his skin. He suffers from
chronic fatigue, and cannot stop wheezing for breath and coughing. His
fibromyalgia inflicts chronic pain in his muscles, ligaments and tendons.
Rokke¹s radioactive regrets reveal the hazards facing unprotected U.S. and
British soldiers, as well as peacekeepers brought in from other countries to
secure the second biggest oil fields on Earth. Caldicott warns that "these
tiny particles travel long distances when airborne", infecting distant
populations, peacekeepers, and the entire food chain.
The misery of radioactive warfare extends to those who produce it. Serious
health effects have been documented among DU processing workers and their
families in Kentucky, Ohio, New Mexico, Tennessee, Washington state, New
York, Tennessee, Iowa, Massachusetts, and the Four Corners area of southwest
Colorado. In Yugoslavia, Depleted Uranium fired into agricultural areas has
irradiated food. Scottish scientists recently verified that residents of the
Balkans exposed to fallout from DU-tipped cruise missiles are excreting
uranium in their urine. [Counterpunch Dec. 28, 2001]
GULF WAR ILLNESS,THE SEQUEL?
Even before American and British troops enter Baghdad¹s radioactive environs
to "liberate" families suffering the sickening strangulation of their
sanctions, allied casualties continue to mount.
In preliminary announcements of what may later be called "Gulf War Illness
II², Reuters reports that "Veterans groups on both sides of the Atlantic say
up to one in three soldiers has fallen ill after taking the vaccine, and six
of them died in the United States."
"We have hard facts," says British-based National Gulf Veterans and Families
Association coordinator James Moore. "Two and Three Parachute Regiments have
had anthrax injections. At least a third come down with flu-like symptoms
and have been very poorly. In the United States, over 30 percent have come
down with symptoms and six have died after taking the vaccine."[Reuters
Jan. 8, 2003]
As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems
reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense
against further exposures to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress,
caffeine, insect repellent and radiation leftover from the last war.
This is a war even the victors will lose.
# # #
William Thomas served as a member of a three-man Gulf Environmental
Emergency Response Team in Kuwait during and immediately after Desert Storm.
Producer of the award-winning documentary, "Eco War², he is the author of
"Bringing The War Home" and "All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass
Persuasion".
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