Depleted
Uranium: Enduring Risk
By John W. Warnock
10 October, 2007
The
Regina Leader-Post
Six
years ago this past Sunday, the U.S. government launched a war against
the government of Afghanistan.
Air power was the key. Two
B-2 Stealth bombers flew from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, each
carrying sixteen 2,000-lb satellite-directed bombs. Five B-1B and 10
B-52 heavy bombers flew from Diego Garcia, the U.S. island base guarding
the Persian Gulf. Twenty-five strike aircraft attacked from two U.S.
aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea. U.S. Navy F-18 Hornets and F-14
Tomcats dropped 500-lb guided bombs and 2,000-lb earth penetrators.
Fifty Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from U.S. and British ships
and submarines. The targets for the first few days were military facilities,
both those of the Taliban government and those used by Osama bin Laden’s
al Qaeda.
For the Tora Bora bunkers,
the U.S. Air Force allotted 32 individual GBU-31, 2,000-lb bombs, carried
by the B-1 Lancer bombers, launched from the U.S.A. and from Diego Garcia.
A single aircraft can carry up to 24 tons of bombs. The 5,000-lb bunker
busters and the earth penetrator weapons were dropped by B-2 bombers.
Within a few days, the U.S. government announced that they had destroyed
the main targets.
By Oct. 29, 70 per cent of
U.S. air strikes were in support of the Northern Alliance armed forces,
most guided by the U.S. Special Forces on the ground. The MQ-1 Predator
drone with Hellfire missiles was operating over Taliban forces, directing
air attacks and launching missiles.
By Nov. 5 the number of individual
air missions was up to 120 per day, adding F-16 and
F-15 fighter-bombers out
of U.S. bases in Kuwait.
The turning point in the
war to oust the Taliban government came on Nov. 6 at Mazar-e Sharif,
a key city in the northern plains. Attack aircraft rained down hundreds
of MK82 500-lb bombs. B-52 bombers used carpet bombing to kill thousands
of Taliban forces. It was here that U.S. forces dropped the first BLU-82
Daisy Cutter bomb, each weighing 15,000 lbs, producing devastation over
a 600-yard radius. All the weapons used by the U.S. air attack included
depleted uranium shielding.
Depleted uranium (DU) is
produced during the uranium enrichment process. The U-235 used to produce
fuel for reactors generating electricity is removed, leaving the U-238
isotope. The material is extremely dense and increases the penetration
ability of weapons; it is used to coat shells and warheads on missiles
and bombs. On impact, the shell, with its uranium and traces of americium
and plutonium, vaporizes and becomes very tiny particles of radioactive
dust. When it is inhaled it can stay in the body, emitting radiation.
The DU used in U.S. weapons
comes from the uranium mines in Saskatchewan.
In the 1991 Gulf war, DU
was delivered almost exclusively with shells from tanks and ammunition
used by aircraft. It is used in all armour-piercing ordnance. In the
wars in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999, NATO allies added DU missiles
and bunker busting bombs. Thousands of DU bombs and missiles have been
used by U.S. forces in the Afghan and Iraq wars. A typical bunker bomb
contains 1.5 tonnes of depleted uranium.
In August 2003 Scott Peterson
of the Christian Science Monitor used a Geiger counter to test several
sites in Baghdad near where bunker-buster bombs and missiles had fallen.
He found radiation readings that were between 1,000 and 1,900 times
higher than normal background radiation readings. DU weapons are still
being extensively used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After the 1991 Gulf War,
birth defects and leukemia rose dramatically in the areas around Basra
where these weapons were used. By 2003, the U.S. Defense Department
admitted that over 200,000 Gulf War veterans had filed for compensation
for death, illness or disabilities.
The veterans refer to this
as “Gulf War Syndrome.” In the first Gulf War, the U.S.-led
coalition suffered 148 deaths.
Since then 8,000 veterans
of this war have experienced early death.
In 1996 the U.N. General
Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that DU weapons were illegal
“weapons of mass destruction.” In 2002, the U.N. Human Rights
Convention passed a resolution urging a ban on the use of any DU weapons.
We will have to wait to find out the impact of these weapons on the
people of Afghanistan and the men and women in the U.S., Canadian and
NATO armed forces.
Warnock
is a Regina political economist and author. This is an extract from
his forthcoming book Afghanistan: The Creation of a Failed State, to
be published by Fernwood in 2008.
© The Leader-Post (Regina)
2007
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