• PUBLIC RECORD
    • About Public Record
    • Older Headlines We've Featured
  • ARCHIVES
      • NATION
      • FULL NATION ARCHIVES HERE
      • Investigative Reporter Jason Leopold Discusses FOIA And Uncovering Government Secrets
      • Busy VA Clinic Just Discovered It’s Automated Phone System Hasn’t Been Working For Weeks
      • The Murky Legality of Philadelphia Police Department’s License Plate Reader Program
      • NSA Refuses to Confirm Or Deny Whether It Has Documents On Spy Program It Already Talked About
      • NSA Sees “Grave Damage” To National Security If Draft Talking Points On Surveillance Released
      • POLITICS
      • FULL POLITICS ARCHIVES HERE
      • Here’s What The White House’s “Secret” Plan To Close Guantanamo Looks Like
      • Revealed: The 95 Media Worthy FOIA Requests Flagged For Pentagon Approval
      • Former EPA Officials: Why Hasn’t The Justice Department Indicted BP’s Top Executives?
      • COMMENTARY
      • FULL COMMENTARY ARCHIVES HERE
      • Environmental Justice: One Illegal Bid At A Time
      • Republicans Lie About ‘Support Our Troops’
      • Romney Tax Return Provides a Window to His Soul
      • LAW
      • FULL LAW ARCHIVES HERE
      • How The Senate’s CIA Torture Report Could Derail Guantanamo’s Military Commissions
      • California to Review Government Access to Consumer Data
      • I’m Suing DOJ For Copy of Senate Committee’s CIA Torture Report
      • TORTURE
      • FULL TORTURE ARCHIVES HERE
      • Gitmo “Team Leader” In Slahi Torture Sued For Framing Innocent Chicago Man For Murder
      • APA “Independent” Torture Review Led by Attorney Who Worked With CIA’s Tenet
      • New Questions About Conflict-of-Interest Throw Doubt on APA’s “Independent Review” of CIA Links
  • POLITICAL RACES
      • KEY RACES
      • ARIZONA
      • Arizona — Open; GOP Sen. Jeff Flake retiring
      • CALIFORNIA
      • Arizona — Open; GOP Sen. Jeff Flake retiring
      • INCUMBENTS TRYING TO HOLD ON
      • Nevada: GOP Sen. Dean Heller running for reelection
      • Indiana: DEM Sen. Joe Donnelly running for reelection
      • Missouri: DEM Sen. Claire McCaskill running for reelection
      • North Dakota: DEM? Heitkamp running for reelection
      • Florida: DEM Nelson running for reelection
      • Wisconsin: DEM Sen. Tammy Baldwin running for reelection
      • Montana: DEM Sen. Jon Tester running for reelection
      • Ohio: DEM Sen. Sherrod Brown running for reelection
      • 5 COLUMNS
      • 6 COLUMNS
      • CHALLENGERS IN PRIMARIES
      • KEY RACE NY GOV: Cuomo v. Nixon
      • Jaffe vs. Pelosi
      • IND Tim Canova Challenging DEM Debra Wasserman Shultz
  • DOCUMENTS
      • COURT FILINGS
      • newSpecial Counsel Mueller
      • 5 COLUMNS
      • 6 COLUMNS
      • FEC FILINGS
      • newTo Replace Speaker Ryan
      • Jaffe vs. Pelosi
      • Tim Canova Challenging Debra Wasserman Shultz
      • FOIA DOCUMENTS
      • NY GOV: Cuomo v. Nixon
      • newNevada — GOP Sen. Dean Heller running for reelection
      • Indiana — DEM Sen. Joe Donnelly running for reelection
      • Missouri — DEM Sen. Claire McCaskill running for reelection

Depleted Uranium: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke

  • Oct 19th, 2009
  • World
  • By Dave Lindorff

DUbaby
The horrors of the US Agent Orange defoliation campaign in Vietnam, about which I wrote on Oct. 15, could ultimately be dwarfed by the horrors caused by the depleted uranium weapons which the US began using in the 1991 Gulf War (300 tons), and which it has used much more extensively–and in more urban, populated areas–in the Iraq War and the now intensifying Afghanistan War.

Depleted uranium, despite its rather benign-sounding name, is not depleted of radioactivity or toxicity. The term “depleted” refers only to its being depleted of the U-235 isotope needed for fission reactions in nuclear reactors. The nuclear waste material from nuclear power plants, DU as it is known, is what is removed from the power plants’ spent fuel rods and is essentially composed of the uranium isotope U-238 as well as U-236 (a product of nuclear reactor fission, not found in nature), as well as other trace radioactive elements.

Once simply a nuisance for the industry, that still has no permanent way to dispose of the dangerous stuff, it turns out to be an ideal metal for a number of weapons uses, and has been capitalized on by the Pentagon. 1.7 times heavier than lead, and much harder than steel, and with the added property of burning at a super-hot temperature, DU has proven to be an ideal penetrator for warheads that need to pierce thick armor or dense concrete bunkers made of reinforced concrete and steel. Once through the defenses, it burns at a temperature that incinerates anyone inside (which is why we see the carbonized bodies of bodies in the wreckage of Iraqi tanks hit by US fire).

Accordingly it has found its way into 30 mm machine gun ammunition, especially that used by the A-10 Warthog ground-attack fighter planes used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as Kosovo). It is also the warhead of choice for Abrams tanks and is also reportedly used in GBU-28 and the later GBU-37 bunker buster bombs, each of which can have 1-2 tons of the stuff in its warhead.

DU is also used as ballast in cruise missiles, and this burns up when a missile detonates its conventional explosive. Some cruise missiles are also designed to hit hardened targets and reportedly feature DU warheads, as does the AGM-130 air-to-ground missile, which carries a one-ton penetrating warhead. In addition, depleted uranium is used in large quantities in the armor of tanks and other equipment. This material becomes a toxic source of CU pollution when these vehicles are attacked and burned.

While the Pentagon has continued to claim, against all scientific evidence, that there is no hazard posed by depleted uranium, US troops in Iraq have reportedly been instructed to avoid any sites where these weapons have been used—destroyed Iraqi tanks, exploded bunkers, etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. Many torched vehicles have been brought back to the US, where they have been buried in special sites reserved for dangerously contaminated nuclear materials. (Thousands of tons of DU-contaminated sand from Kuwait, polluted with DU during the US destruction of Iraq’s tank forces in the 1991 war, were removed and shipped to a waste site in Idaho last year with little fanfare.)

Suspiciously, international health officials have been prevented or obstructed from doing medical studies of DU sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. But an excellent series of articles several years ago by the Christian Science Monitor described how reporters from that newspaper had visited such sites in Iraq with Geiger-counters and had found them to be extremely “hot” with radioactivity.

The big danger with DU is not as a pure metal, but after it has exploded and burned, when the particles of uranium oxide, which are just as radioactive as the pure isotopes, can be inhaled or ingested. Even the smallest particle of uranium in the body is both deadly poisonous as a chemical, and over time can cause cancer—particularly in the lungs, but also the kidneys, testes and ovaries.

There are reports of a dramatic increase in the incidence of deformed babies being born in the city of Fallujah, where DU weapons were in wide use during the November 2004 assault on that city by US Marines. The British TV station SKY UK, in a report last month that has received no mention in any mainstream American news organization, found a marked increase in birth defects at local hospitals. Birth defects have also been high for years in the Basra area in the south of Iraq, where DU was used not just during America’s 2003 “shock and awe” attack on Iraq, but also in the 1991 Gulf War.

Further, a report sent to the UN General Assembly by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq’s Minister of Women’s Affairs since 2006, stated that in September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 babies born, 24 percent of which died within their first week of life. Worse yet, fully 75 percent of the babies born that month were deformed. This compares to August 2002, six months before the US invasion, when 530 live births were reported with only six dying in the first week, and only one deformity. Clearly something terrible is happening in Fallujah, and many doctors suspect it’s the depleted uranium dust that is permeating the city.

But the real impact of the first heavy use of depleted uranium weaponry in populous urban environments (DU was used widely especially in 2003 in Baghdad, Samara, Mosul and other big Iraqi cities), will come over the years, as the toxic legacy of this latest American war crime begins to show up in rising numbers of cancers, birth defects and other genetic disorders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, as in the case of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the toxic effects of this latest battlefield use of toxic materials by the US military will also be felt for years to come by the men and women who were sent over to fight America’s latest wars. As with Agent Orange, the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department have been assiduously denying the problem, and have been just as assiduously denying claims by veterans of the Gulf War and the two current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who claim their cancers and other diseases have anything to do with their exposure to DU.

The record on Agent Orange should lead us to be suspicious of the government’s claims.

The deformed and dead babies in Iraq should make us demand a cleanup of Iraq and Afghanistan, medical aid for the victims, and a ban on all depleted uranium weapons.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

Share The Public Record

VIDEOS

BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

"[DNC Chair Tom Perez] has gotten instructions from Bill Clinton not to let the party go to the Bernie Sanders folks." - Jonathan Allen, co-author of Shattered, revealing new material in the upcoming paperback release pic.twitter.com/dLEnwl7kIc

— HootHootBerns 🌹🐦 (@HootHootBerns) May 3, 2018




Michelle Wolf: "I wouldn't change a single word that I said"



FOUNDER'S BOX:
JASON LEOPOLD

LEE CAMP
JIMMY DORE
MIKE ALLEN
TIM BLACK
MAX BLUMENTHAL
DAVE BARRY
WALKER BRAGMAN
MICHAEL SAINATO
ANOA CHANGA
JORDAN CHARITON
DAVID CORN
MAUREEN DOWD
RONAN FARROW
BRIAN KAREM
JUDD LEGUM
LAWRENCE LESSIG
MAGGIE HABERMAN
BRIAHNA JOY GRAY
SHAUN KING
JOSH GERSTEIN
GLENN GREENWALD
LLOYD GROVE
NOMIKI KONST
DAVID IGNATIUS
INSIDE BELTWAY
JASON LEOPOLD
HOWIE KURTZ
RICH LOWRY
AARON MATÉ
DANA MILBANK
PEGGY NOONAN
EVE PEYSER
POLITICO MORNING MEDIA
POLITICO PLAYBOOK
BILL PRESS
WES PRUDEN
REX REED
RICHARD ROEPER
BETSY ROTHSTEIN
JENNIFER RUBIN
JIM RUTENBERG
LUKE SAVAGE
DAVID SIROTA
BRIAN STELTER
MATT TAIBBI
ZOE TILLMAN
GEORGE WILL
WALTER WILLIAMS
BYRON YORK
BILL ZWECKER


ABCNEWS
ATLANTIC
AXIOS
BBC
BILD
BILLBOARD
BLAZE
BOSTON GLOBE
BOSTON HERALD
BUZZFEED
CBS NEWS
C-SPAN
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
CHICAGO TRIB
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
CNBC
CNN
DAILY BEAST
DAILY CALLER
EMPTY WHEEL
FOXNEWS
FREE BEACON
HILL
HILL: JUST IN
HUFFINGTON POST
INTERCEPT
LA DAILY NEWS
LA TIMES
MAP LIGHT
MEDIAITE
MOTHER JONES
NATION
NATIONAL REVIEW
NBC NEWS
NEW REPUBLIC
NEW YORK
NY DAILY NEWS
NY OBSERVER
NY POST
NY TIMES
NY TIMES WIRE
NEW YORKER
PROGRESSIVE ARMY
PROPUBLICA
POLITICO
REAL CLEAR POLITICS
ROLL CALL
ROLLING STONE
SALON
SAN FRAN CHRON
SECULAR TALK
SKY NEWS
SLATE
TALKING POINTS MEMO
THE YOUNG TURKS
TIME MAG
US NEWS
USA TODAY
VANITY FAIR
VARIETY
WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASH EXAMINER
WASH POST
WASH TIMES
WEEKLY STANDARD
ZERO HEDGE
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
AP TOP
AP RADIO
BLOOMBERG
INDO-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE
INTERFAX
ITAR-TASS
MCCLATCHY [DC]
PRESS TRUST INDIA
REUTERS
REUTERS POLITICS
REUTERS WORLD
XINHUA
UPI
YONHAP
  • Terms & Conditions
  • •
  • Privacy
© All Rights Reserved, Public Record 2018