[Peace-discuss] Kucinich on DU

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

New issues page from the Kucinich Campaign website:
 
http://www.kucinich.us/issues/depleted_uranium.php
 
Depleted Uranium
 
As President, I will order an end to the United States' illegal use
of depleted uranium munitions and will lead an international effort
to recover depleted uranium. I will promote environmental
remediation. Also, I will develop a program to provide care and
restitution for people suffering as a result of the United States'
use of depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons
production, nuclear testing, and uranium mining.
 
Through four wars (Gulf War I, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, and Gulf War
II), the U.S. military has deployed tons of nuclear tank missiles of
depleted uranium (DU), which are solid 10-pound uranium bullets made
from radioactive waste from the U.S. Department of Energy's uranium
enrichment process. At least 350 tons of solid radioactive uranium
remains in Iraq after Gulf War I, and 2,000 more tons of radioactive
rubble has been added from our present Gulf War II. Depleted uranium
has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
 
According to Pentagon experts, approximately 13,000 Gulf War I
veterans are now dead as result of injuries and illnesses incurred
while participating in military operations between August 1990 and
October 1991. As of May 2002, at least 221,000 veterans were on
disability as result of injuries and illnesses incurred during
military operations in the Persian Gulf combat theater of operations.
All of our troops presently in Iraq are continually being exposed to
this radioactive depleted uranium contamination, other war related
contaminants, water- and food-borne illnesses, and endemic diseases
every second they remain there.
 
A recent study shows that U.S. Gulf War veterans' children have a
much higher likelihood of having three specific types of birth
defects: two types of heart valve abnormality occurring to children
of male veterans, and genital-urinary defects to children born of
female veterans. A study of British veterans of the Gulf War, Bosnia,
and Kosovo reveals that they have 10 to 14 times the usual level of
chromosomal abnormalities.
 
A Canadian medical research facility recently found that the urine of
Afghani people living near the area where the United States carried
out military operations contained radioactive isotopes 100 to 400
times as high as Gulf War veterans from the United Kingdom who were
tested in 1999. The Canadian team recorded an average of 315.5
nanograms of these isotopes in people in Jalalabad, Tora Bora, and
Mazar-e-Sharif. A 12-year-old boy near Kabul tested at 2,031
nanograms. The maximum exposure considered safe by the United States
is 9 nanograms/year. With growing evidence of an increase in birth
defects and stillborns, the situation should be addressed as an issue
of the highest priority.
 
According to humanitarian law specialist, Karen Parker J.D., a weapon
is made illegal in two ways: (1) by adoption of a specific treaty
banning it; and (2) because it may not be used without violating the
existing law and customs of war. A weapon made illegal only because
there is a specific treaty banning it is only illegal for countries
that ratify such a treaty. A weapon that is illegal by operation of
existing law is illegal for all countries. This is true even if there
is also a treaty on this weapon and a country has not ratified that
treaty. As there is no specific treaty banning depleted uranium
weapons, its illegality must be established in the second fashion.
 
The laws and customs of war (humanitarian law) include all treaties
governing military operations, weapons, and protection of victims of
war, as well as all customary international law on these subjects. In
other words, in evaluating whether a particular weapon is legal or
illegal when there is not a specific treaty, the whole of
humanitarian law must be consulted.
 
There are four rules derived from the whole of humanitarian law
regarding weapons:
 
1. Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as
legal military targets of the enemy in the war. Weapons may not have
an adverse effect off of the legal field of battle.
(The "territorial" test).
 
2. Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A
weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over
violates this criterion. (The "temporal" test).
 
3. Weapons may not be unduly inhumane. (The "humaneness" test). The
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 use the terms "unnecessary
suffering" and "superfluous injury" for this concept.
 
4. Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural
environment. (The "environmental" test).
 
DU weaponry fails all four tests:
 
1. It cannot be "contained" to legal fields of battle and thus fails
the territorial test. Instead, the DU is air-borne far afield of
legal targets to illegal (civilian) targets: hospitals, schools,
civilian dwellings, and even neighboring countries with which the
user is not at war.
 
2. It cannot be "turned off" when the war is over. Instead, DU
weaponry continues to act after hostilities are over and thus fails
the temporal test. Even with rigorous cleanup of war zones, the air-
borne particles have a half-life of billions of years and have
potential to keep killing and injuring former combatants and non-
combatants long after the war is over. The toxicity is confirmed by
U.S. Army documents. The Director of the U.S. Army Environmental
Policy Institute stated in a congressionally mandated report that "No
available technology can significantly change the inherent chemical
and radiological toxicity of DU. These are intrinsic properties of
uranium." (Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium
Use in the U.S. Army: Technical Report, AEPI, June 1995)
 
3. It is inhumane and thus fails the humaneness test. DU weaponry is
inhumane because of how it can kill -- by cancer, kidney disease,
etc. -- and long after the hostilities are over when the killing must
stop. DU is inhumane because it can cause birth (genetic) defects
such as cranial facial anomalies, missing limbs, grossly deformed and
non-viable infants and the like, thus affecting children who may
never be a military target and who are born after the war is over.
The teratogenic nature of DU weapons and the possible burdening of
the gene pool of future generations raise the possibility that the
use of DU weaponry amounts to genocide.
 
4. It cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment
and thus fails the environment test. Damage to the natural
environment includes contamination of water and agricultural land
necessary for the subsistence of the civilian population far beyond
the lifetime of that population. The U.S. Army also confirms that
depleted uranium contamination will affect food and water. The
primary U.S. Army training manual: Soldier's Manual of Common Tasks
states "NOTE: (Depleted uranium) Contamination will make food and
water unsafe for consumption." Cleanup is an inexact science and, in
any case, extremely expensive -- far beyond the ability of a poor
country to pay for.
 
 
In the course of armed conflicts (wars), weapons may only be used
against legal military targets and for the duration of the war.
Weapons may not cause undue suffering or superfluous injury. Weapons
may not use or employ "poison." Weapons may not severely damage the
environment. DU weaponry cannot be used in military operations
without violating these rules, and therefore must be considered
illegal. Use of illegal weapons constitutes a violation of
humanitarian law and subjects the violators to legal liability for
their effects on victims and the environment, as well as criminal
liability. In my view, use of DU weaponry necessarily violates the
grave breach provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and hence its use
constitutes a war crime or crime against humanity.
 
Under a Kucinich Administration, all illegal use of depleted uranium
munitions will be halted, as the U.S. becomes a leader in the
international movement to recover depleted uranium.
 
---
 
Rita A. Weinstein
Media Team
Kucinich for President
(206) 782-1088
www.kucinich.us