US Forces' Use
of Depleted Uranium
Weapons is 'Illegal'
By
Neil Mackay
31 March, 2003
BRITISH and American coalition
forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq
and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies
the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.
DU contaminates land, causes
ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies
they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director
of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of
environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army
colonel who was tasked by the US department of defense with the post-first
Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a 'war
crime'.
Rokke said: 'There is a moral
point to be made here. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons
of mass destruction -- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction
ourselves.' He added: 'Such double-standards are repellent.'
The latest use of DU in the
current conflict came on Friday when an American A10 tankbuster plane
fired a DU shell, killing one British soldier and injuring three others
in a 'friendly fire' incident.
According to a August 2002
report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of
DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter
of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against
Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons
Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which
expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles
or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'. All of these
laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed
conflicts.
DU has been blamed for the
effects of Gulf war syndrome -- typified by chronic muscle and joint
pain, fatigue and memory loss -- among 200,000 US soldiers after the
1991 conflict.
It is also cited as the most
likely cause of the 'increased number of birth deformities and cancer
in Iraq' following the first Gulf war.
'Cancer appears to have increased
between seven and 10 times and deformities between four and six times,'
according to the UN subcommission.
The Pentagon has admitted
that 320 metric tons of DU were left on the battlefield after the first
Gulf war, although Russian military experts say 1000 metric tons is
a more accurate figure.
In 1991, the Allies fired
944,000 DU rounds or some 2700 tons of DU tipped bombs. A UK Atomic
Energy Authority report said that some 500,000 people would die before
the end of this century, due to radioactive debris left in the desert.
The use of DU has also led
to birth defects in the children of Allied veterans and is believed
to be the cause of the 'worrying number of anophthalmos cases -- babies
born without eyes' in Iraq. Only one in 50 million births should be
anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years.
Seven of the fathers had been exposed to American DU anti-tank rounds
in 1991. There have also been cases of Iraqi babies born without the
crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked to DU shelling.
A study of Gulf war veterans
showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood
infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.
Rokke told the Sunday Herald:
'A nation's military personnel cannot wilfully contaminate any other
nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the
consequences of their actions.
'To do so is a crime against
humanity.
'We must do what is right
for the citizens of the world -- ban DU.'
He called on the US and UK
to 'recognize the immoral consequences of their actions and assume responsibility
for medical care and thorough environmental remediation'.
He added: 'We can't just
use munitions which leave a toxic wasteland behind them and kill indiscriminately.
'It is equivalent to a war
crime.'
Rokke said that coalition
troops were currently fighting in the Gulf without adequate respiratory
protection against DU contamination.
The Sunday Herald has previously
revealed how the Ministry of Defense had test-fired some 6350 DU rounds
into the Solway Firth over more than a decade, from 1989 to 1999
Back ground on Depleted Uranium
ammunition
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/du.htm
http://www.miltoxproj.org/DU/DU_Titlepage/DU_Titlepage.htm