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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (520843)	1/7/2004 4:54:45 PM
From: Rick McDougall	Respond to of 769668

This is all I could find PT. 14 March 2003 Defense Department Report, March 14: Depleted Uranium Army says DU has military advantage, but no ill health effects The use of depleted uranium in munitions designed to penetrate a tank's armor and for protective plating on the M-1 Abrams battle tank gave U.S. military forces a clear advantage over their Iraqi counterparts in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict and would do so again if war is waged, U.S. defense officials say. Depleted uranium (DU) is a hard metal, preferred by the military over the softer, lighter tungsten because it holds its shape and becomes sharper as it passes through the shell of its target when used as a munition. Both the Army and the Air Force used it during the Gulf War. The Army used it with the M-1 Abrams main battle tank as a munition round and for armor plating, and the Air Force fired DU munitions from its A-10 attack aircraft. Both the U.S. and the United Kingdom have experience working with DU. The military favors its use because "we can hit [them] and they can't hit us," according to Army Colonel Jim Naughton. "It gave us a huge advantage" in the Gulf conflict, he said during a briefing for reporters at the Pentagon March 14. Depleted uranium also was used during the Balkans conflict in Kosovo. Its use has sparked protests from those who contended that depleted uranium residue, or leftover DU munitions, could cause ill effects in humans or pollute the environment. However, independent studies conducted by the United Nations Environmental Program Office, the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission, the European Parliament and the United Kingdom Royal Society have found no cause and effect between DU use and illnesses. Defense Department studies have reached similar conclusions. This has not prevented Iraqi officials from charging that children in southern Iraq, around Basrah, are now sick because of DU use in 1991. There may be no doubt the children are ill, but no DU was used in the area, according to Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, who works for the Defense Department's Deployment Health Support Directorate. Kilpatrick, who also briefed with Naughton, said there were no tank battles in the vicinity of Basrah so DU could not be factored into the equation. Kilpatrick also noted that WHO officials went to the Basrah area and offered to conduct a careful study to determine the cause of the children's symptoms, but the Iraqi government turned down their proposal. He suggested that the Iraqis have kept the issue of alleged DU contamination alive because they hope DU will never be used in another confrontation with coalition forces. The issue has also been kept in play, Kilpatrick said, by those who want to ban nuclear weapons. "It is not a nuclear weapon," he said. "It is not a hazardous substance." DU actually has many commercial uses and all are innocuous. It is used for diagnostic purposes in hospitals, Kilpatrick said, as well as in the manufacture of ship rudders and in aircraft. There have been no negative effects from it, according to these experts. That has even been true for 90 American Gulf veterans who were struck by DU during "friendly fire" accidents when their fellow soldiers unintentionally attacked them. Some of these veterans still have particles of DU embedded in their bodies. Kilpatrick said none of them -- and they have been extensively studied -- have kidney damage, cancer, leukemia or any medical consequences from exposure. Even in Kuwait, where DU was used against Iraqi tanks, measurements of DU cannot be found above what is normally found in nature, according to Kilpatrick. Naughton said he never met anyone in the U.S. military who was afraid to use DU.