[Peace-discuss] DU

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1220/p01s04-wome.html   
   
Christian Science Monitor
December 20, 2002
 
A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy
If US fights Iraq, it would use a weapon that left a
radioactive trail in Gulf War.
By Scott Peterson 

-[T]he invisible particles created when those bullets
struck and burned are still "hot." They make Geiger
counters sing, and they stick to the tanks,
contaminating the soil and blowing in the desert wind,
as they will for the 4.5 billion years it will take
the DU to lose just half its radioactivity.
-Pentagon spokesmen said yesterday that US troops are
being given no new DU protection training for any Iraq
campaign. 
-Critics charge that the official downplaying of DU's
dangers keeps the magic bullet in the arsenal, while
thwarting DU-specific compensation claims by Gulf War
vets.
The Iraqi battlefield will be "very dangerous" in the
aftermath of a new war, says Asaf Durakovic, a former
chief of nuclear medicine at a veteran's hospital and
head of the private Uranium Medical Research Center.
In the peer-reviewed journal "Military Medicine" last
August, he published results that 14 of 27 ill Gulf
War vets had DU in their urine nine years after the
war.
Testifying before Congress in 1997, Dr. Durakovic
predicted DU will ensure that "battlefields of the
future will be unlike any...in history," and "injury
and death will remain lingering threats to 'survivors'
of the battle for ... decades into the future."
-[A] report by the British Atomic Energy Agency used
an estimate of 40 tons of DU to create a hypothetical
danger level, and predicted that that amount of DU -
one-eighth of what actually was fired - could cause
"500,000 potential deaths."
-"If [fallout on civilians] was a serious
consideration," concurs Hewson, of Jane's, "we would
not be contemplating a major land battle in Iraq. At
the levels where this stuff is being planned, no tears
are being shed for those people."

KHARANJ, IRAQ - The rusting tanks are gathered in
Iraq's southern desert like an open-air exhibit of the
1991 Gulf War.

But these are not just museum pieces. This still
radioactive battlefield - and the severe health
problems many Iraqis and some US Gulf War veterans
ascribe to it - may also be an omen of an unsettled
future.

As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a
possible Gulf War II, analysts agree that the bad
publicity and popular fears about depleted uranium
(DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later in Kosovo
and Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm
for its "silver bullet." US forces in Iraq will again
deploy DU as their most effective - and most
controversial - tank-busting bullet.

War seems more imminent as the White House indicated
late this week that the decision for war could come by
late January.

But this bleak desert just north of Iraq's border with
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offers a window on the human
impact nearly 12 years after a toxic stew of DU,
chemical agents, pesticides, and smoke from burning
oil wells poisoned this war zone. Few suggest that a
new war, if it involves Iraqi armored resistance, will
have any less of an effect. "Nobody thinks about what
is going to happen when the shooting stops," says
Robert Hewson, editor of the London-based Jane's
Air-Launched Weapons. "The people who are firing [DU]
will demand that they have it...they will not want to
go to war without it. The primary driver will always
be the mission and getting the job done."

DU is made from nuclear-waste material left over from
making nuclear weapons and fuel. American gunners used
320 tons of it in 1991 to destroy 4,000 Iraqi armored
vehicles and swiftly conclude victory.

But the invisible particles created when those bullets
struck and burned are still "hot." They make Geiger
counters sing, and they stick to the tanks,
contaminating the soil and blowing in the desert wind,
as they will for the 4.5 billion years it will take
the DU to lose just half its radioactivity.

Unaware of the risks, two shepherds earlier this week
relaxed on the ground as their sheep picked at scrub
grass near one tank. Similar tanks struck by DU during
the Gulf War were deemed a "substantial risk" and
buried by US forces in Saudi Arabia or a low-level
radioactive waste dump in the US.

Pentagon spokesmen said yesterday that US troops are
being given no new DU protection training for any Iraq
campaign. In the mid-1990s, US troops were required to
wear full protective suits and masks within 50 yards
of a tank struck with DU bullets. Those rules, based
on Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety guidelines,
were dramatically revised in the late 1990s.

In most cases, the rules now say, any face mask is
sufficient. Pentagon officials note their policy has
been "inconsistent," but admitted in 1998 that their
"failure" to alert soldiers to the risks before the
Gulf War resulted in "thousands of unnecessary
exposures." The latest rules, a US Army spokesman said
yesterday, "reflect the most current ... data
regarding DU."

Critics charge that the official downplaying of DU's
dangers keeps the magic bullet in the arsenal, while
thwarting DU-specific compensation claims by Gulf War
vets.

The Iraqi battlefield will be "very dangerous" in the
aftermath of a new war, says Asaf Durakovic, a former
chief of nuclear medicine at a veteran's hospital and
head of the private Uranium Medical Research Center.
In the peer-reviewed journal "Military Medicine" last
August, he published results that 14 of 27 ill Gulf
War vets had DU in their urine nine years after the
war.

Testifying before Congress in 1997, Dr. Durakovic
predicted DU will ensure that "battlefields of the
future will be unlike any...in history," and "injury
and death will remain lingering threats to 'survivors'
of the battle for ... decades into the future."

Though DU clearly enhances the chances of victory,
some say the price is too high. Risks are difficult to
quantify, but US military and expert reports indicate
DU can be a hazard that may cause cancer, and that
total soil decontamination is impossible.

British troops deploying to Kosovo in 1999 were sent
out with full suits and masks, and told to use them
"if contact with targets damaged by DU ammunition is
unavoidable." A report commissioned by the US Army on
the eve of the Gulf War found that "no dose [of DU
particles] is so low that the probability of effect is
zero." Another report by the British Atomic Energy
Agency used an estimate of 40 tons of DU to create a
hypothetical danger level, and predicted that that
amount of DU - one-eighth of what actually was fired -
could cause "500,000 potential deaths."

"I don't think we know if DU can be used safely, and
until we know that, we shouldn't use it," says Chris
Hellman, a senior analyst with Washington's Center for
Defense Information. "The military's mindset is clear:
'This is war, war is hell...the guy who shoots first
wins, and he hits them with everything he has.'"

In the US, every aspect of DU creation, use, and
disposal is strictly controlled. The US Army alone has
14 licenses to handle the substance. Disposal requires
burial in low-level radioactive waste dumps; particles
must be mixed with concrete and encased in two
barrels.

But when it comes to fighting armor, no substance can
match DU bullets, denser than lead and
self-sharpening. They burn through armor on impact and
are cheap. US gunners love them and say DU saves lives
on the front line.

This graveyard of tanks shows why. DU burns so hotly
into its target that a targeted tank's own ammunition
ignites, causing a blast that often rips the turret
right off the top of a tank. In the process, however,
the DU round aerosolizes into a lethal dust that emits
alpha particles.

Though alpha particles have a limited range of a
quarter-inch or so, they pack a punch 20 times more
powerful than beta or gamma radiation, and can lodge
easily in the body if inhaled or ingested. Many US
vets believe DU may also be a key factor in Gulf War
syndrome, the set of symptoms for which the Veteran's
Administration has already provided compensation for
nearly 1 in 4 vets.

Iraqis say DU is a major cause of the severe health
problems such as cancer and birth defects that they
graphically show are surging in southern Iraq, though
they do not have the clinical capability to link DU to
health problems.

"No one wins in war, everyone loses, and Basra will
again be a great battlefield," says Thamer Ahmad
Hamdan, an orthopedic surgeon in Basra. In 1998, when
visited by the Monitor, he had one box of x-rays
depicting grotesque abnormalities. "Now it is boxes,"
he says. "We will remember the Americans used this
again, that it was killing miserable people.
Hopefully, they are not going to do it."

Iraqi doctors say poverty, malnutrition, and poor
water and sanitation are key to current health
problems, along with DU and chemical exposures, and
trauma from the last war. Jawad Khudim al-Ali,
director of the cancer ward at Basra's Saddam Teaching
Hospital, says pre-war cancer rates have increased
11-fold; the mortality rate 19-fold.

While US war planners in the Gulf War and in campaigns
since have taken great care to minimize civilian
casualties, the longterm impact of DU is tough to
define. And the reviled Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein
may limit concerns of civilian suffering, analysts
say. "I don't think there is a consensus in this
country about whether war is the right thing to do,"
says CDI's Hellman. "But there is a consensus that
Saddam is right up there with Satan on the
evil-people-in-the-world list. And therefore, whatever
methods of warfare are going to bring him down, and
safeguard American troops in the process, is going to
be acceptable [to Americans]."

"If [fallout on civilians] was a serious
consideration," concurs Hewson, of Jane's, "we would
not be contemplating a major land battle in Iraq. At
the levels where this stuff is being planned, no tears
are being shed for those people."

Abdulkarim Hussein Subber, a gynecologist at the Basra
Maternity and Children's Hospital, has three photo
albums full of images of unimaginable birth defects
that he claims are six times more prevalent today than
before the Gulf War.

"We have become very familiar with these cases," Dr.
Subber says, adding that numbers have leveled off
since expectant mothers began using ultrasound to
detect - and terminate - severe cases. "The problem is
[our patients] are afraid of being pregnant again,
because of the fear of malformations," Subber says.
"The problem is the pollution from the war."