This issue is too important to sort of mention in passing so I did a quick google search on “veterans depleted uranium,” and I was overwhelmed with data from a host of reliable sources on the horrors of using shells laced with this stuff — FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED (US AND THEM).
This is similar to the recent discussions surrounding the use of nuclear weapons, as if using them was some kind of option — without any harm to the rest of the planet — something we figured out thirty years ago!
Well, here’s a useful report prepared for the 1999 Hague Peace Conference that will provide an overview of the depleted uranium situation. (I hate to just bring something up without providing some kind of background on it.)
Gulf War Veterans and Depleted Uranium
Prepared for the Hague Peace Conference, May 1999
By Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., G.N.S.H.

The US has not yet conformed to the 1990 international recommendations which were used for this calculation, and it is still permitting the general public to receive five times the above general public amount, and the worker to receive 2.5 times the above occupational amount. The US may have used its domestic “nuclear worker” limits during the Gulf War, if it used any protective regulations at all. The military manual discusses the hazards of depleted uranium as less than other hazardous conditions on an active battle field!
…Uranium metal is autopyrophoric and can burn spontaneously at room temperature in the presence of air, oxygen and water. At temperatures of 200-400 degrees Centigrade, uranium powder may self-ignite in atmospheres of carbon dioxide and nitrogen… Depleted uranium was used extensively in place of tungsten for ordnance by the US and UK in the Gulf War.
There is no dispute of the fact that at least 320 tons of depleted uranium (DU) was “lost” in the Gulf war, and that much of that was converted at high temperature into an aerosol, that is, minute insoluble particles of uranium oxide, UO2 or UO3 , in a mist or fog. It would have been impossible for ground troops to identify this exposure if or when it occurred in war, as this would require specialized detection equipment. However, veterans can identify situations in which they were likely to have been exposed to DU. Civilians working at military bases where live ammunition exercises are conducted may also have been exposed…

Continue reading →

I can’t believe the U.S. is doing this again. We know now that are undisputed connections between some of the ‘Gulf War Syndromes’ of our own veterans and the United States’ use of depleted uranium during the first Gulf War.
This puts our troops that are over there in danger too!
USWAR/US-led troops used depleted uranium in Basra: report

US and American troops on Sunday used
depleted uranium during their shelling of Basra in southern Iraq,
news resources inside Iraq told IRNA.
They used the weapons to destroy Russian-made T-72 tanks, they
said, adding heavy clashes were going on among ground forces of the
warring sides at 14:00 Tehran time (9:30 GMT).
The Qatari TV broadcaster Al-Jazeera has said that at least 50
civilians had been killed in the bombardment of suburbs of Basra.

Continue reading →