March 1, 2005
Let's Talk WMD or Do You Know Where your DU Is?
Depleted Uranium (DU) is back in the news (kind of). Leuren Moret had a piece in the Feb. 23, 2005 SF Bay Review - A death sentence here and abroad - discussing findings about DU usage in Iraq (both in 1991 and the present) and the health effects on the troops. The statistics are stunning. If the statistics are accurate, then there is little doubt about the link between DU exposure and "Gulf War Syndrome." According to the reports, 325,000 out of a total of 581,400 Gulf War I veterans are now on permanent medical disability. That is 56% of those who served, and does not count the 11,000 who have died since 1991. There has been an average of 43,000 new disability cases Gulf War I Vets reported every year (last data from 2000).
This information is more than troubling given the number of troops in recent action in Afghanistan and Iraq where the United States has continued the heavy use of DU "hardened" munitions. Indeed, the reports of DU related problems are already starting to surface. There are reports of rapidly growing malignancies in US troops in Iraq during 2003. You may also remember the report by Juan Gonzalez from September 2004 about DU exposure of returning veterans.
As I discussed in the article Nukes are nukes, the Pentagon has continued to defend their use of DU munitions despite science and calls from other nations for its ban. Depleted uranium is not safe or dead. It has a radioactive life in excess of 4.5 billion years. In the latest invasion of Iraq, the U.S. has used over 200 tons of depleted uranium. Believe me, U.S. troops are not the only ones being exposed ... and suffering the consequences. The people of Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Kosovo) are, and will be, living with the radioactive remains for geologic time - long after the conflicts which dropped them there are forgotten.
For the safety of everyone, it is important that the emerging news of the effects of depleted uranium on the U.S.' own forces not be allowed to sink once again into oblivion. In the constant cacophony of "support the troops" let's inject a bit of reality. No one signs up to be permanently damaged and killed by the munitions that the Pentagon says are "safe." Another generation of veterans deserves better than to spend more than a decade getting their injuries acknowledged and recognized by the government that "put them in harms way."
Further pressure needs to be put on the Pentagon and the U.S. government to both ban the use of depleted uranium, and to clean up the mess that has been made. It is unconscionable to leave wide swaths of other nations the victims of weapons of mass destruction that maim and kill generation after generation.
Sources
2/28/05 Nichols, ICH, Heads roll at Veterans Administration
11/29/04 Wolf, UTJ, Weapons of Indiscriminate Destruction, 11/29/04
9/30/04 Gonzalez, Daily News, The war's littlest victim
5/22/03 Wolf, UTJ, Nukes are Nukes 5/22/03