Washington's
Secret Nuclear War
By Shaheen Chughtai
16 September 2004
Aljazeera
Illegal weapons of mass destruction have
not only been found in Iraq but have been used against Iraqis and have
even killed US troops.
But Washington and
its allies have tried to cover up this outrage because the chief culprit
is the US itself, argue American and other experts trying to expose
what they say is a war crime.
The WMD in question
is depleted uranium (DU). A radioactive by-product of uranium enrichment,
DU is used to coat ammunition such as tank shells and "bunker busting"
missiles because its density makes it ideal for piercing armour.
Thousands of DU
shells and bombs have been used in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and - both
during the 1990-91 Gulf war and the ongoing conflict - in Iraq.
"They're using
it now, they're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block with DU
- it's all over the place," says Major Doug Rokke, director of
the US army's DU project in 1994-95.
Scientists say even
a tiny particle can have disastrous results once ingested, including
various cancers and degenerative diseases, paralysis, birth deformities
and death.
And as tiny DU particles
are blown across the Middle East and beyond like a radioactive poison
gas, the long-term implications for the world are deeply disturbing.
DU has a "half-life"
of 4.5 billion years, meaning it takes that long for just half of its
atoms to decay.
Only 467 US soldiers
were officially wounded during the 1990-91 Gulf war.
But according to
Terry Jemison at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), of the
more than 592,560 discharged personnel who served there, at least 179,310
- one third - are receiving disability compensation and over 24,760
cases were pending by in September 2004.
This does not include
personnel still active and receiving care from the military, or those
who have died.
And among 168,528
veterans of the current conflict in Iraq who have left active duty,
16% (27,571) had already sought treatment from the VA by July 2004.
"That's astronomical,"
says Rokke, whose team studied how to provide medical care for victims,
how to clean contaminated sites, and how to train those using DU weapons.
Rokke admits the
exact cause for these casualties cannot be confirmed. But he insists
the evidence pointing to DU is compelling.
"There were
no chemical or biological weapons there, no big oil well fires,"
he says. "So what's left?"
Dr Jenan Ali, a
senior Iraqi doctor at Basra hospital's College of Medicine, says her
studies show a 100% rise in child leukaemia in the region in the decade
after the first Gulf war, with a 242% increase in all types of malignancies.
The director of
the Afghan DU and Recovery Fund, Dr Daud Miraki, says his field researchers
found evidence of DU's effect on civilians in eastern and southeastern
Afghanistan in 2003 although local conditions make rigorous statistical
analysis difficult.
"Many children
are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumours protruding from their mouths
and eyes," Miraki told Aljazeera.net. Some newborns are barely
recognisable as human, he says. Many do not survive.
Afghan and Iraqi
children continue to play amid radioactive debris. But the US army will
not even label contaminated equipment or sites because doing so would
be an admission that DU is hazardous.
This "deceitful
failure", says Rokke, contradicts the US army's own rules, such
as regulation AR 700-48, which stipulates its responsibilities to isolate,
label and decontaminate radioactive equipment and sites as well as to
render prompt and effective medical care for all exposed individuals.
"This is a
war crime," Rokke says. "The president is obliged to ensure
the army complies with these regulations but they're deliberately violating
the law. It's that simple."
But these blatant
violations are practically irrelevant because Rokke's Iraq mission found
that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no known medical remedy.
US President George
Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair used Saddam Hussein's alleged
possession of illegal weapons to justify invading Iraq. But several
prominent jurists hold Bush and Blair guilty of war crimes for waging
DU warfare.
The vice-president
of the Indian Lawyers Association, Niloufer Bhagwat, sat on an international
panel of judges for the unofficial International Criminal Tribunal for
Afghanistan.
Bhagwat and her
fellow judges ruled that the US had used "weapons of extermination
of present and future generations, genocidal in properties".
"Bush was guilty
of knowingly using DU weaponry against his own troops," Bhagwat
told Aljazeera.net, "because the president knew the effects of
DU could not be controlled".
A prominent US international
human-rights lawyer, Karen Parker, says there are four rules derived
from humanitarian laws and conventions regarding weapons:
> weapons may
only be used against legal enemy military targets and must not have
an adverse effect elsewhere (the territorial rule)
>weapons can
only be used for the duration of an armed conflict and must not be used
or continue to act afterwards (the temporal rule)
> weapons may
not be unduly inhumane (the "humaneness" rule). The Hague
Conventions of 1899 and 1907 speak of "unnecessary suffering"
and "superfluous injury" in this regard
> weapons may
not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment (the "environmental"
rule).
Illegal weapons
"DU weaponry
fails all four tests," Parker told Aljazeera.net. First, DU cannot
be limited to legal military targets. Second, it cannot be "turned
off" when the war is over but keeps killing.
Third, DU can kill
through painful conditions such as cancers and organ damage and can
also cause birth defects such as facial deformities and missing limbs.
"Use of DU
weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the Geneva Conventions"
Lastly, DU cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment.
"In my view,
use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the Geneva
Conventions," says Parker. "And so its use constitutes a war
crime, or crime against humanity."
Parker and others
took the DU issue before the UN in 1995, and in 1996, the UN Human Rights
Commission described DU munitions as weapons of mass destruction that
should be banned.
Deceit
Despite the evidence,
Rokke says Pentagon and Energy Department officials have campaigned
against him and others trying to expose the horrors of DU.
That charge is echoed
by Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who has worked at the Lawrence Berkeley
and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons research laboratories in California.
White House denials
are part of a long-standing cover-up policy that has been exposed before,
she says.
"For example, the US denied using DU bombs and missiles against
Yugoslavia in 1999," she told Aljazeera.net. "But scientists
in Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria measured elevated levels of gamma
radiation in the first three days of grid and carpet bombing by the
US."
Moret said: "A
missile landed in Bulgaria that didn't explode and scientists identified
a DU warhead. Then, Lord [George] Robertson, the head of NATO, admitted
in public that DU had been used."
Even the US army
expressed concern about the use of DU in July 1990, some six months
before the outbreak of the first Gulf war. Those concerns were later
echoed by Iraqi officials
But brushing his
own army's report aside - now said to be "outdated" - US President
George Bush has dismissed such warnings as "propaganda".
"In recent
years, the Iraqi regime made false claim that the depleted uranium rounds
fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq,"
says Bush on his White House website.
"But scientists
working for the World Health Organisation, the UN Environmental Programme
and the European Union could find no health effects linked to exposure
to depleted uranium," he said.
Bush can point to
a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2001 that said there was
no significant risk of inhaling radioactive particles where DU weapons
had been used.
It said the level
of radiation associated with DU debris was not particularly hazardous,
but it accepted that high exposure could pose a health risk.
WHO also commissioned
a scientific study shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that warned
of the dangers of US and British use of DU - but refused to publish
its findings.
The study's main
author, Dr Keith Baverstock, told Aljazeera.net that "the report
was deliberately suppressed" because WHO was pressed by a more
powerful, pro-nuclear UN body - the International Atomic Energy Agency.
WHO has rejected his claims as "totally unfounded".
The study found
DU particles were likely to be blown around and inhaled by Iraqi civilians
for years to come. Once inside a human body, the radioactive particles
can trigger the growth of malignant tumours.
Bush's claim that
the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) gives DU pollution a clean bill
of health is also disingenuous.
UNEP experts have
yet to be allowed into Iraq, its spokesman in Geneva Michael Williams
told Aljazeera.net, citing security concerns.
And a scientific
body set up in 1997 by Green EU parliamentarians - the European Committee
on Radiation Risk (ECRR) - found that DU posed serious health risks.
An eminent Canadian
scientist involved with the ECRR, Dr Rosalie Bertell, says the deadliness
of DU derived not just from its radioactivity but from the durability
of particles formed in the 3000-6000C heat produced when a DU weapon
is fired.
"The particles
produced are like ceramic: not soluble in body fluid, non-biodegradable
and highly toxic," she told Aljazeera.net. "They tend to concentrate
in the lymph nodes, which is the source of lymphomas and leukaemia".
The US military
and political establishment cannot plead ignorance. As early as October
1943, Manhattan Project scientists Arthur Compton, James Connant and
Harold Urey sent a memo to their director, General Leslie Groves, saying
DU could be used to create a "radioactive gas".
In 1961, two nuclear experts, Briton HE Huxley and American Geoffrey
Zubay, informed the scientific community that DU targeted human DNA
and "the Master Code, which controls the expression of DNA",
Moret said.
In September 2000,
Dr Asaf Durakovic, professor of nuclear medicine at Washington's Georgetown
University, told a Paris conference of prominent scientists that "tens
of thousands" of US and UK troops were dying of DU.
"There has
to be a moratorium on the manufacture, sales, use and storage of DU,"
geoscientist Moret says, warning that this will not happen unless more
Americans realise what is happening.
The Middle East
has been severely contaminated, warns Moret. "That region is radioactive
forever," she says, but worse is yet to come.
Moret says the air
carrying DU particles takes about a year to mix with the rest of the
earth's atmosphere.
The radiation released
by DU nuclear warfare is believed to be more than 10 times the amount
dispersed by atmospheric testing.
As a result, DU
particles have engulfed the world in a radioactive poison gas that promises
illness and death for millions.
Rokke went to Iraq
a fit and healthy soldier, but the major is now beset with a variety
of illnesses and each day is a struggle.
He suffers from
respiratory problems and cataracts while his teeth - weakened by DU
radiation - are crumbling. At least 20 of the 100 primary personnel
he worked with on the US army's DU project have died. Most of the rest
are ill.
Meanwhile, WHO says
cancer rates worldwide are set to rise by 50% by 2020, although it does
not link this publicly to DU.
"They would
never say that - they offered various strange explanations," said
Moret. "But DU is the key factor. People will slowly die."