Radioactive Waste From Iraq Wars Dumped in U.S. Doug Rokke, Ph.D. American Free Press July 21, 2008
During the summer of 1991, the United States military had collected artillery, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, conventional and unconventional munitions, trucks, etc at Camp Doha in Kuwait.
As result of carelessness, this weapons depot caught fire with consequent catastrophic explosions resulting in death, injury, illness and extensive environmental contamination from depleted uranium and conventional explosives.
Recently the emirate of Kuwait required the U.S. Department of Defense to remove the contamination. Consequently, over 6,700 tons of contaminated soil, sand and other residue was collected and shipped back to the United States for burial by American Ecology at Boise, Idaho.
When Bob Nichols, an investigative journalist, and I contacted American Ecology we found out that they had absolutely no knowledge of U.S. Army regulations and all of the medical orders dealing with depleted uranium contamination, environmental remediation procedures, safety and medical care.
They had never heard of Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for dealing with hazardous waste such as radioactive materials and conventional explosives byproducts.
The trans-shipment across the ocean, unloading at Longview, Washington State port, transport by rail, and burial in Idaho not only endanger the residents of these areas, but pose a significant agricultural threat through introduction of pests, microbes etc. foreign to our nation.
Sadly, the known adverse health and environmental hazards from uranium weapons contamination are in our own backyard. The EPA has listed the former Nuclear Metals-Starmet uranium weapons manufacturing site in Concord, Mass. on the EPA’s Superfund National Priority List because it poses a significant risk to public health and the environment.
Consequently, the community in which our nation was born on April 18, 1775, is now the location of America’s own closed dirty bomb factory that will endanger the health and safety of the descendants of the Minutemen.
The previous delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker buster bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States and their use by Israel against Lebanese targets has resulted in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the Middle East. Israeli tank gunners are also using depleted uranium tank rounds, as photographs verify.
Today, U.S., British, and now Israeli military personnel are using illegal uranium munitions—America’s and England’s own “dirty bombs.” The U.S. Army, Department of Energy, Department of Defense and British Ministry of Defense officials deny that there are any adverse health and environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture, testing and/or use of uranium munitions. They do so to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material— depleted uranium.
The use of uranium weapons is a crime against humanity. All governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use. Israel should provide medical care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU contamination.
U.S. and British officials have arrogantly refused to comply with their own regulations, orders and directives that require U.S. Department of Defense officials to provide prompt and effective medical care to all exposed individuals. They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive contamination as required by Army regulations.
Dr. Doug Rokke is the former director of the Army’s Depleted Uranium Project. It was his task to clean up the radioactive battlefields of the Gulf War.
It began as a perfectly legal protest about the visit of the most hated president in American history.
But within hours – as George Bush dined with Prime Minister Gordon Brown several hundred yards away in Downing Street – the demonstration degenerated into a vicious melee in which numerous officers and protesters were injured, and 25 were arrested.
In the aftermath of yesterday’s shameful scenes it was claimed that ’blood hungry’ Metropolitan Police massively over-reacted to the protests to save face for Mr Brown, with a huge presence of officers all too ready to use their batons.
The costs on American taxpayers may reach $2.7 trillion by the time the Iraq war ends, according to a Congressional testimony.
In a hearing held by the Joint Economic Committee Thursday, members of the Congress heard testimony about the current costs of the war and the future economic fallout from returning soldiers.
At the beginning of the conflict in 2003, the Bush administration gave Congress a cost estimate of $60 billion to $100 billion for the entirety of the war. However, the battle has been dragging on much longer than most in the government expected.
William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, told the Congress that the Iraq war has already cost taxpayers $646 billion.
That’s only accounting for five years, and with the conflict expected to drag on for another five years, the figure is expected to more than quadruple, Beach added.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the war costs taxpayers about $430 million per day.
“It is long past time for the administration to come clean and account for the real costs of the war in Iraq,” said Schumer. “If they want to disagree with our estimates or with other experts … fine – they should come and explain why.”
The Bush administration, which was invited to give testimony, declined to participate.
The Pentagon has previously said that the war costs approximately $9.5 billion a month, but some economists say the figure is closer to $25 billion a month when long-term health care for veterans and interest are factored in.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki suggested that US forces might be asked to leave if the two countries cannot agree on the new status of forces agreement, McClatchy reported Friday.
Maliki, seen above, made the comment after pressure from Shiite lawmakers who feel that Iraq’s sovereignty is threatened by US forces and after talks over the status of forces agreement “reached an impasse,” according to McClatchy.
“Iraq has another option that it may use,” Maliki said during a visit to Amman, Jordan. “The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the U.N. terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said that although talks over the security pact are struggling, Baghdad and Maliki are committed to concluding the agreement, Reuters reported Friday.
“I think it’s too early really to judge this agreement that it is dead or there is no way out,” he said after attending a U.N. Security Council meeting on Iraq.
The U.N. mandate for a US presence in Iraq expires at the end of the year, McClatchy reported.
An excerpt from the McClatchy story details the nations’ conflict over the status of forces agreement:
“Maliki acknowledged that talks with the U.S. on a status of forces agreement “reached an impasse” after the American negotiators presented a draft that would have given the U.S. access to 58 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity from prosecution for both U.S. soldiers and private contractors.
The Iraqis rejected those demands, and U.S. diplomats have submitted a second draft, which Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told McClatchy included several major concessions. Among those would be allowing Iraq to prosecute private contractors for violations of Iraqi law and requiring U.S. forces to turn over to Iraqi authorities Iraqis that the Americans detain.”
According to Gideon Polya, based on UNESCO data, the US invasion of Afghanistan has led to as many as 6.6 million unnecessary deaths. According to Washburn University law professor Liaquat Ali Khan, the “crime of genocide applies to the intentional killings that NATO troops commit on a weekly basis in the poor villages and mute mountains of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban.” The occupation forces, which ironically include former Axis powers Germany and Japan, have created the New Auschwitz.
Power failures and maintenance have disrupted running water supplies to almost half of the capital, Baghdad, home to nearly 6 million people.
A Baghdad Municipality source said the project supplying drinking water to Rasafa, the eastern half of Baghdad, was temporarily idle.
The source, refusing to be named, said running water supplies may not resume for a few days.
He attributed the stoppage, which has caused large-scale popular resentment, to blackouts which have recently even affected essential utilities like water.
The stoppage has led to the closure of bakeries and restaurants in Rasafa, aggravating the suffering of Baghdad residents.
Water resumed intermittently and in inadequate quantities through household taps for half a day after a three-stoppage on Thursday. Then the taps dried once again.
US forces boasted of successfully completing the aerial bombing “blitz” which flattened the Baghdad suburb of Arab Jabour, as Iraqis mourned the more than 500 civilians killed when 114,500 pounds of bombs rained down for ten days on the residential area home to more than 120,000 people.
While Iraqi politicians, both Sunni and Shiite, condemned the air raids which also forced thousands of other civilians to flee their homes, the US commanders justified the aerial bombardment on the grounds that “drop was designed to eliminate al Qaeda’s tactical advantage,” ahead of a ground assault to flush out militants from the area.
“The strikes that we concluded (Jan. 20) were focused on IEDs and caches that we have targeted, that will allow us to get our ground troops further into the zone,” Army Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, with responsibility for the Arab Jabour portion of Multinational Division Center, said.
But Iraqi authorities in the area said described the bombing was “random and indiscriminate”, and claimed that at least 500 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed by the air raids in the Sunni majority town.
Ferrell rejected the claim, saying that great care was taken in selecting targets, as the Army worked side by side with the Air Force to prevent collateral damage to civilians and property.
“The process that we go through to orchestrate an event of this magnitude, or any targeting cycle that we work together with the Air Force, is a very detailed, deliberate process,” Ferrell said. “We identify the targets, and they sit beside us, and through detailed and thorough analysis, we target it, they help analyze it, describe what effects we want to achieve, and then they work back through the Air Force system to get the desired effects.”
“This heinous crime show to the whole world the extent of the viciousness of the perpetrators who are targeting lives of the people, and not to respect the rights and honor of the human being having a place in all heavenly religions,” Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI), the highest Sunni authority in Iraq, stated last week.
The scholars called upon the international community, Arab League and all human right organizations in the world, requesting them to “get out of the circle of silent killers, and to have a role even if at minimal degree to stand against the perpetrators of these crimes.”
US forces carried out a similar massacre in Fallujah in November 2004, which killed more around 3,000 civilians, in one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq war.
80 Killed in Clashes in Iraq
Followers of a Shiite messianic cult clash with police in Basra and Nasiriya as thousands of pilgrims mark Ashura, the most important holiday for the sect.
Members of an obscure messianic cult fought Iraqi security forces Friday in two southern cities, leaving at least 80 people dead and scores injured, while spreading panic among worshipers marking Shiite Islam’s most important holiday.
The clashes, which erupted as Shiites marched, chanted and beat their chests in Basra and Nasiriya, represented the first major test for Iraqi security forces since Britain completed a transfer of responsibility for security in the region last month. They also pointed to dangerous divisions within Iraq’s majority Shiite population at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are claiming progress in curbing attacks by Sunni militants.
Members of the cult, which calls itself the Supporters of the Mahdi, mingled with the crowds in at least three sections of Basra and in Nasiriya, then fired shots at worshipers and the security forces, police and witnesses said.
Police said the cult’s leader, Ahmed Hassan, who called himself “the Yemeni,” was killed along with nearly 50 of his followers in the fighting in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. About 60 gunmen were arrested and large quantities of weapons were seized from a mosque linked to the group, said the Basra police chief, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Kareem Khalaf.
Appearing on BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur this weekend, Iraq war architect Richard Perle attempted, on the one hand, to distance himself from the failures of the Iraq war, and on the other hand, to claim it was a fantastic success.
“I’m not happy about the way events have unfolded in Iraq,” Perle began. But when asked whether he felt a “sense of personal responsibility” for what has happened in the aftermath of the invasion, Perle said “I certainly don’t consider myself responsible” for the disastrous post-war occupation of Iraq.
Asked whether he was wrong on Iraq, Perle gave this response:
Well, I don’t believe I was wrong. Let me be very clear about that. What I think happened is that a successful invasion was turned into an unsuccessful occupation. I didn’t favor the occupation strategy. I think the occupation was a mistake.
Perle also defended his pre-war claim that regime change in Iraq would bring about “dancing in the streets.” “Essentially,” there was, said Perle. “The Iraqis actually tend to shoot weapons in the air rather than dance in the streets,” he observed. “But we were regarded as liberators at the beginning.” Watch it:
Before the war, Perle advocated simply bombing and leaving Iraq. “We do not have to go into Baghdad,” he said in Oct. 2002 on NBC. “We do not have to engage in door-to-door, street-to-street fighting.”
But once the war began, Perle specifically endorsed the Paul Bremer-led occupation of Iraq. And repeatedly claimed it was producing good results. Appearing on Fox News on April 7, 2004, Perle said, “We’re making so much progress with most Iraqis that those who feel threatened by the progress are more devoted and more energetic than ever to try to destroy the progress we’re making.”
It might take as long as half a century before US troops can leave the volatile Middle East, according to retired Army Gen. John Abizaid.
“Over time, we will have to shift the burden of the military fight from our forces directly to regional forces, and we will have to play an indirect role, but we shouldn’t assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home, relax and take it easy, because the strategic situation in the region doesn’t seem to show that as being possible,” Abizaid said Wednesday at Carnegie Mellon University.
The rise of Sunni extremism, burgeoning Shi’ite extremism, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the world economy’s dependency on Mideast oil will keep Americans in the Middle East for a long time, he said.
“I’m not saying this is a war for oil, but I am saying that oil fuels an awful lot of geopolitical moves that political powers may have there,” Abizaid said. “And it is absolutely essential that we in the United States of America figure out how, in the long run, to lessen our dependency on foreign energy.”
He reiterated comments made in September that the US needs to do a better job of coordinating economic, political and diplomatic means so the conflict can move from a military to a political issue.
“I would characterize what we’re doing now as 80 percent military, 20% diplomatic, economic, political, educational, informational, intelligence, etc.,” Abizaid said. “You’ve got to take that equation and change it. Make it 80% those other things.”
Abizaid, who has dubbed the current conflict “The Long War,” told The Associated Press in September it will take three to five years before Iraq’s government is stable enough to operate on its own.
Despite the strain on the armed forces, Abizaid said Wednesday it is important to maintain a professional military without re-establishing a draft.
Saddam Offered Exile, But Neo-Cons Unleashed Carnage Anyway
What could have been saved? A trillion dollars, a million lives, the global reputation of the U.S. – but that wasn’t the plan
Neo-Cons could have saved a trillion dollars, spared over a million lives and prevented tens of thousands of dead and injured U.S. soldiers but decided to unleash carnage anyway, after it was revealed last night that Saddam Hussein offered to step down and go into exile one month before the invasion of Iraq.
“Fearing defeat, Saddam was prepared to go peacefully in return for £500million ($1billion),” reports the Daily Mail.
“The extraordinary offer was revealed yesterday in a transcript of talks in February 2003 between George Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the President’s Texas ranch.”
“The White House refused to comment on the report last night. But, if verified, it is certain to raise questions in Washington and London over whether the costly four-year war could have been averted.”
According to the tapes, Bush told Aznar that whether Saddam was still in Iraq or not, “We’ll be in Baghdad by the end of March.”
Why didn’t the Neo-Cons take Saddam’s offer? After all, the invasion was about “weapons of mass destruction” and “spreading freedom”, we were told. With the dictator gone, the U.N. and American forces were free to roam the country in search of the non-existent weapons while setting up the “utopian democracy” that Iraqis now live under.
The Neo-Cons didn’t take the offer because the invasion of Iraq was not about Saddam Hussein, it was about making fat profits for the military-industrial complex by bombing the country back into the stone age, slaughtering countless innocents in the process, seizing control of oil factories, and setting up military bases as a means of launching the Empire’s next jaunt into Iran.
The invasion of Iraq was about having a justification to stay there indefinitely and break the country up into different pieces as was the plan all along.
Here’s what $1 billion could have saved us.
– At least $200 million every single day that could have been spent on fighting poverty, building schools, taking men to Mars, ad infinitum.
– At least $1 trillion that the Iraq war will eventually cost if we ever leave. A trillion is a million millions.
– At least 1 million dead Iraqis according to the latest numbers, along with millions more that will die in the years to come as a result of depleted uranium poisoning, malnutrition, cholera and all manner of other horrors brought about by the invasion.
– Over 1.1 million displaced Iraqis who have been forced to leave their new “utopian democracy” and another million who have been forced to leave their homes due to sectarian violence and persecution.
– Over 3800 dead U.S. soldiers since the invasion began.
– 300 dead coalition soldiers since the invasion began.
– Anything from 23,000 to 100,000 injured U.S. soldiers since the invasion began.
– The reputation of the U.S. around the world as the most hated nation on earth.
– The ballooning deficit and the probable eventual collapse of the U.S. dollar and the economy.
With evidence having emerged that marines were ordered by superiors to massacre women and children in Haditha in Iraq two years ago, combined with scores of other testimonies and reports of such barbaric demands being forced upon American troops daily, it is clear that organised execution and ritual slaughter is the set policy of the architects of aggression in the middle east.
A military court heard Thursday that a US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during the massacre in Haditha which left 24 people dead.
Following a response to roadside bomb attack in November, 2005 Marines stormed houses in the village. At the first of the houses, Marine Lance Corporal, Humberto Mendoza, has given evidence that he was ordered to execute some of the occupants under the command of Sergeant Frank Wuterich. Mendoza stated he refused to do so, when confronted with a room full of women and children. Later he found the women and children dead. Mendoza had previously admitted shooting one male occupant of the house dead, under orders.
At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.
“He said ‘Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,'” Mendoza said.
Mendoza then said he shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.
During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.
“When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed … two more were behind the bed,” Mendoza said.
“I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat … they looked scared. I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,'” Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.
“And what did you say to him?” Sullivan asked.
“I said ‘But they’re just women and children.’ He didn’t say nothing.”
Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to conduct body retrieval, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.
In previous testimony it has also been suggested that the troops stopped random passing cars, ordered passengers out and lined them up and shot them one by one at near-point blank range with M16 machine guns.
Wuterich’s defense is expected to argue that he followed established combat zone rules of engagement. Given that Haditha is not an isolated incident this seems an accurate description.
A 2006 article adapted from the book “Ten Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military,” edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, documents many other testimonies of troops on the ground who have confirmed that they are routinely ordered to kill innocent civilians.
There is constant pressure to kill Iraqi civilians, 22-year-old GI Darrell Anderson said. “At traffic stops we kill innocent people all the time. If you are fired on from the street, you are supposed to fire on everybody that is there. If I am in a market, I shoot people who are buying groceries.”
War crimes in Iraq are not mere aberrations. They emanate from official policies regarding the aims and conduct of the occupation, the article concludes:
It is official policy, for example, to use cluster bombs in populated areas. Soldiers and Marines merely carry out the policy. It was official policy, under Operation Iron Hammer, to put barbed wire around villages, to bulldoze crops, to bomb homes, and to hold families in jail until they released insurgent information. It was official policy to level Fallujah, a city of 300,000 people, as an act of collective punishment.
The list goes on. It was official policy to torture detainees at Abu Ghraib, it was official policy to “kill all military age males” in Iraq, it is official policy to use radioactive Depleted Uranium weapons and deadly white phosphorus in civilian areas in Iraq. The wanton destruction from the air of cities, towns, and villages witnessed on the first night of the war and almost everyday since is official policy in Iraq.
When will the official policies be recognized for what they are, official war crimes?
The systematic killing of civilians in Iraq and throughout the middle east by aggressive forces under the control of the elite usurpers of our governments is clear. Our controlled media is also complicit in its ignorance, its pandering spin and the outright lies we continue to have to endure and break down with every passing day.
Prominent critics and commentators have blasted the mainstream media for failing to portray the brutal reality of the systematic policy of slaughter.
Acclaimed director Brian De Palma, whose new film “Redacted” has stunned audiences with its graphic telling of the horrific true story of another Iraq war crime, has stated:
“In Vietnam, when we saw the images and the sorrow of the people we were traumatizing and killing, we saw the soldiers wounded and brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war. It’s all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it’s not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment.”
De Palma has asserted that it is only the brutal reality seen in the pictures and videos that are routinely ignored by the establishment media that will incense the public enough to force the conflict to be stopped.
Paul Craig Roberts, former Secretary to the Treasury under Reagan, has also blasted the mainstream media in a powerful piece today stating:
“The US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying being one of them. The run-up for the public’s attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find the United States on a map.”
Roberts describes Bush as “high on the list of mass murderers of all time”. With conservatively over one million Iraqis having lost their lives in this war “The vast majority of “kills” by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians, the war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact” he writes.
He warns that the same will happen in Iran very soon if this administration and the power brokers behind it are not halted right away:
“Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. Last summer the Bush administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for Muslim life when Bush supported Israel’s month-long air attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure and civilian residences. President Bush blocked the attempt by the rest of the world to halt the gratuitous murder of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure destruction. Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy. For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles.”
Every instance described here provides evidence of direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which state (Part IV, Article 48):combatants “shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants, between civilian objects and military objectives and, accordingly, shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”
The conventions were established in the aftermath of the Nazi’s indiscriminate slaughter of millions of civilians throughout Europe. It is clear that our own modern day aggressors do not believe they are bound by the conventions, nor any international laws of war that have come before, and will do whatever it takes to ensure their empire building proceeds unimpeded.
Unless we address the reality of the war crimes we have seen unfold in the last 6 years alone, and continue in our attempts to do the job that the corporate media whores are paid not to, we betray our ethical and moral principles, we betray our countries, and we betray the freedom that has been protected for so long by those before us.
Basra, Aug 27, (VOI) – Radiation levels in selected regions of Iraq’s southern province of Basra warn of imminent danger to thousands of local residents who might be more prone to cancer and birth deformities, according to Khajak Vartanian, an environmental radiation measurement specialist from the province.
“Basra has experienced an unprecedented rise in solid cancer cases during the past four years: 62 cases per 100,000 persons compared to 35 in 1997,” Vartanian explained.
Exposure to military depleted uranium (DU) pollution has not only increased solid cancer cases in the province, but caused severe birth deformities in newborn babies, he added. “Other cases of renal failure, skin disease, allergy, infertility and recurrent miscarriages were also attributed to DU pollution,” he indicated, adding that most of the reported cases were close to the contaminated sites.
According to Vartanian, the problem began during the second Gulf War in 1991 when the U.S.-led coalition forces used depleted uranium weapons to bomb Iraqi military sites and economic infrastructure. During the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, depleted uranium shells and ammunition were also used against Iraqi military targets in Basra, which were close to residential areas.
Totaling the number of radiation sites in Basra by 2004 as 100, the environment researcher accused local and central governments of negligence in dealing with the problem. In 2004 the Iraqi government allowed residents and traders to sell iron waste from the battlefield, which added to the increasing incidences of cancer in the province.
When asked about the highly contaminated sites in Basra, Vartanian said that most reported cases were from neighborhoods close to radiation sites, particularly from the neighborhoods of al-Zubair, Abu Khaseeb, al-Qarna and other overcrowded districts.
Commenting on the proper measures for alleviating a potential disaster, Vartanian said that all contaminated materials must be removed from Basra and buried in uninhabited areas. “A proposal was submitted to the Iraqi government to temporarily designate Maqbarat al-Dabbabat (Tanks Cemetery), 200 km west of Basra, for this purpose… but it went unheard,” he added.
Recent statistics show that 1,400 armored vehicles belonging to the Iraqi army were destroyed by DU shells in 1991 and were reused by the Iraqi forces during the U.S.-led war in 2003.
Basra is a Shiite province with a 20% Sunni population. It is located 590 km south of Baghdad.
HONOLULU — A military contractor on Monday confirmed the presence of depleted uranium at the U.S. Army’s Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island, the Army said.
The Army has said it didn’t use depleted uranium at the training range. Earlier state tests found radiation levels in the air near the Pohakuloa training range to be “normal.”
The Army last year said it also found depleted uranium at an Oahu post, Schofield Barracks, in remnants of training rounds used in the 1960s. That announcement came after years of Army denials it used depleted uranium in the islands.
The Army said in a news release Monday it currently doesn’t use depleted uranium in training munitions.
Cabrera Services, the contractor, conducted an aerial survey for depleted uranium Thursday through Saturday.
The contractor’s study sought to determine if a 1960s-era weapon which was capable of firing depleted uranium rounds, the Davy Crockett gun, had ever been fired at Pohakuloa.
The contractor also took soil samples from Pohakuloa, which have been sent to a lab for analysis.
The Army said it will coordinate with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state to determine what steps will be taken.
Big Island peace activist Jim Albertini said the news confirmed his suspicions.
“I’m not surprised at all,” said Albertini, who heads the Malu Aina Center for Nonviolent Education and Action in Kurtistown.
Albertini said his group detected heightened radiation levels at the edge of Pohakuloa as wind was coming off the firing range May 29.
He called on the Army to suspend all live-fire training in Hawaii because of the risk exercises could disturb any depleted uranium in the soil and release contaminated particles into the air.
Albertini added a community representative should be included in the group testing for depleted uranium at Hawaii ranges.
“The military needs to ensure transparency and we need access to all data to have information confirmed through independent sources,” Albertini said.
U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii officials did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of radioactive enriched uranium and has been used by the U.S. military in bullets and other weapons designed to pierce armor. Some researchers suspect exposure to depleted uranium may have caused chronic fatigue and other symptoms in veterans of the first Gulf War, but there is no conclusive evidence it has.
An aerial survey of the Army’s Makua Military Reservation on Oahu was conducted earlier last week, but it was inconclusive because heavy vegetation covered the ground, the Army said. Soil samples from Makua are also being studied.
Iraq’s environment minister blamed Monday the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country.
As a result of “at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing” with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year.
Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, she also complained that many chemical plants and oil facilities had been destroyed during the two military campaigns since the 1990s, but the ecological consequences remain unclear.
“Our ministry is fledgling, and we need international support; notably, we need laboratories to better monitor air and water contamination,” she said.
The first major UN research on the consequences of the use of DU on the battlefield was conducted in 2003 in the wake of NATO operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report after the research that DU poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground.
“Health risks primarily depend on the awareness of people coming into contact with DU,” UNEP writes in its 2004 brochure “Depleted Uranium Awareness.”
No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq.
COLONIE — Ph.D. student Nicholas Lloyd traveled from England to a dusty patch off Central Avenue last summer hunting for terribly small pieces of New York’s polluted military-industrial past.
He found them — microscopic specs containing depleted uranium that he believes may provide clues to how this heavy metal component of modern weaponry behaves on battlefields a world away.
Used for the first time on a large scale in the 1991 Gulf War, depleted uranium weapons have been blamed for sickening soldiers exposed to them — even though the military says the danger is limited.
Research by Lloyd and others shows that Albany-area residents may have been exposed for decades before the first shot was ever fired.
While substantial questions remain about depleted uranium’s effect on humans, Lloyd and others suspect Colonie, home to a long-demolished munitions plant, may be a good place to look.
“This is a natural laboratory here to understand that problem,” said John G. Arnason, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University at Albany.
“There are very few places in the world where you can do this other than here,” said Arnason, who also has studied contamination from the factory operated by Houston-based NL Industries, formerly the National Lead Co. “Not only did you have the plant here that was doing the polluting, but you had a population, unfortunately, that was exposed to it.”
Lloyd’s research, in cooperation with the British Geological Survey, is not a health study. But his preliminary results show that nearly a quarter-century after NL’s Central Avenue plant closed, some of the uranium oxide particles it spewed over surrounding neighborhoods remains — in the soil and in homes. Some linger, he said, in a form that could be inhaled — a state quite different from uranium that exists naturally in the air, soil and water.
“It spread further and it stayed around decades longer than anyone thought,” said Anne Rabe, co-chairwoman of Community Concerned About NL Industries.
Lloyd discovered that depleted uranium contamination was detected as far as 3.5 miles from the plant and that uranium oxide particles found closer to it are comparable to those emitted by depleted uranium weapons.
The primary concern is not direct radiation. Instead, the risk stems from inhaling the particles, formed when the depleted uranium is burned and combines with oxygen. From the lungs, they can be absorbed into the blood and travel to the kidneys.
In the 1960s and ’70s, the factory just west of city limits, which made armor-piercing bullets and counterweights, is believed to have emitted as much as five tons of uranium into the environment.
A byproduct of the manufacture of nuclear fuel, depleted uranium in weapons burns extremely hot and sprays dust. The weapons have been blamed for a range of ailments, including maladies known collectively as Gulf War syndrome.
But research on the dust’s health effects on humans has been limited. The federal government has studied 80 military personnel exposed to depleted uranium through friendly fire during the Gulf War and detected elevated levels of uranium in their urine but found no kidney damage or other uranium-related health problems, according to the Pentagon. The federal Centers for Disease Control has said exposure to high levels of depleted uranium is “not known to cause cancer.”
But neighbors and workers at the plant who were potentially exposed to the dust have, for years, blamed the smoke belched from its stacks for sickness and death among them. They have sought a block-by-block health study, and Lloyd believes his research could provide a baseline for that.
The state Health Department has conducted several studies of NL pollution, including comparing lead levels in the blood of children who live near the plant to those who don’t. None of the studies conclusively linked the pollution to illness, said department spokesman Jeffrey Hammond.
Lloyd, 28, a student at the University of Leicester, set out to study how the molecules known as uranium oxide — some small enough to travel to the deepest parts of human lungs — behave in the environment.
Working with Arnason and local volunteers, Lloyd took more than 200 samples of soil that had been exposed to the elements — some of it on land adjacent to the Thruway and Northway — as well as dust from sheltered areas in homes and commercial buildings.
Of those samples taken from soil already decontaminated by the Army Corps of Engineers, none of the concentrations he detected exceed safety standards. The Army Corps is the federal agency charged with cleaning up the 12-acre site where all the company’s buildings were demolished. The two-decade federal project is expected to conclude this summer with a price tag in excess of $175 million.
Rabe and others are eager for information on the concentrations of uranium detected inside homes — data Lloyd has yet to tabulate.
Using mass spectrometry, Lloyd was able to prove the presence of depleted uranium. Finding traces of depleted uranium up to 3.5 miles away was not surprising, said Arnason, after it was revealed in the 1990s that air filters at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna and the Kesselring Site nuclear facility in Milton detected contamination from NL Industries some 25 miles away.
Arnason, who has studied uranium contamination around the nearby Patroon Creek, said he has tried for years to get funding for the kind of research Lloyd and his colleagues are doing.
“I find it ironic that the Brits came over here to study it,” Arnason said of the Colonie site. “There are no agencies here that are specifically funding nondefense-related research on depleted uranium.”
Lloyd plans to submit his work for peer review next year and hopes it will help move understanding of depleted uranium past speculation.
“I think that probably too much has been said in the media that isn’t based on hard evidence,” he said. “I don’t want to add to that.”
The costs on American taxpayers may reach $2.7 trillion by the time the Iraq war ends, according to a Congressional testimony.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki suggested that US forces might be asked to leave if the two countries cannot agree on the new status of forces agreement, McClatchy 
US forces boasted of successfully completing the aerial bombing “blitz” which flattened the Baghdad suburb of Arab Jabour, as Iraqis mourned the more than 500 civilians killed when 114,500 pounds of bombs rained down for ten days on the residential area home to more than 120,000 people.
noworldsystem.com 