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This 4-year-old Iraqi boy is suffering from a tumor growing in his eye.Photo: BBC
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It always pays to listen, and to listen exactly, to what the senior
U.S. military officials say about fighting wars. In 1991, Gen. Colin Powell
sent 500,000 men with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, lots of 70-ton Abrams Tanks and
other soldier equipment for a 100-hour war against a weak third world country
– Iraq. It was called the Powell Doctrine and required a quick enemy defeat
by “overwhelming force,” “defined goals” and an “exit
strategy.”
Another George Bush, George Bush the second, sent only 145,000 troopers for
the much more ambitious conquering and occupation of Iraq 12 years later. What
changed?
Why send 355,000 fewer troopers for a much larger, tougher, sure to get you
killed job? The American war policies did not change. The answer is that the
Americans had millions of pounds of a deadly microscopic “helper”
called depleted uranium as a “force multiplier” deployed in Iraq.
A force multiplier is a technological method to multiply the aggressiveness
and lethality of an armed force. Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki of Ryukyus University
in Okinawa, a physicist, stated publicly that the atomicity equivalent of the
weaponized uranium gas deployed in Iraq by U.S. military forces is hundreds
of thousands of times the radioactivity of the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
Marion Fulk, who started working on nuclear weapons more than 60 years ago
during the Manhattan Project, says, “I would say that it is the perfect
weapon for killing lots of people.” A leading scientist, Leuren Moret,
speaking out on the use of depleted uranium today, says flatly, “Iraq
is uninhabitable,” due to widespread radiation poisoning.
Uranium weapons are criminal violations of international and U.S. federal law
in at least four ways. That is exactly what the U.S. military and politicians
demanded be used in Iraq and Central Asia. Noted humanitarian and war crimes
lawyer Karen Parker gives a simple four point test to determine that DU is illegal
and a war crime and a crime against humanity. However, using the four point
test as a weapons spec gives the Pentagon the super weapon they wanted. War
crimes lawyers, in many ways, wrote the spec for Washington’s latest genocidal
wonder weapon.
A weapon that:
strays off the field of battle.
lasts after the battle is over.
causes cancer and other major devastating diseases.
causes lethal harm to people and the environment, is an illegal weapon as
determined by a U.N. body. In short, its use is a war crime.
DU, or so-called depleted uranium, fits the profile perfectly. The senior American
military and political leadership had their super weapon. They then determined
that the Iraqi people and others in Central Asia’s resource rich lands
were in the way, had no right to live and had to go. They would be nuked by
uranium munitions.
The American war planners knew and assumed that the U.S. soldiers were expendable
commodities, like bullets. They would be nuked, too. As the famous American
secretary of state, His Excellency Henry Kissinger, said, “Military men
are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
The American expeditionary forces purposefully used a long lasting genocidal
weapon, uranium gas, in Iraq to decimate the Iraqi civilization. The Americans
are still using this genocidal weapon more than 15 years later. It’s estimated
that more than a million Iraqis died during the past 15 years from wars and
sanctions. There were only about 24.4 million Iraqis to start with in 1991.
The extermination minded American senior politicians and military leaders are
nothing if not determined, ruthless and relentless.
As the brutal American Marines say, “Kill their ass and steal their gas.”
The American privates and corporals, the so-called grunts, do not know they
are included in the soon to be dead or maimed, because poison gas weapons are
not controllable. The poison flies everywhere with the changing wind. Poison
gas is very unpredictable. The grunts are “throw away soldiers.”
The Pentagon reported 320 tons of deadly, radiation-dispersing weaponized ceramic
uranium oxide gas weapons were deployed on the nearly defenseless Iraqis in
1991. Cancers and other diseases soared. Ever since the American atomic bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, radiation dispersing uranium weapons
have been war crimes and illegal.
Since the Americans are the world’s only “super power,” the
world is in a quandary, wondering what to do to stop the Americans? The American
generals and senior politicians are addicted to the incredible lethality and
force multiplier properties of depleted uranium.
Uranium weapons deliver death and illness in a big way, forever. That makes
non-nuclear countries fear the United States. The American politicians love
it because they know fear is a great motivator.
Thousands of nuclear missiles remain on hair trigger alert, even today. The
lethal nuke birds can fly in 15 minutes. All world leaders know it. Just like
that, they could die in a global thermonuclear war in which everybody dies or
wishes they were dead.
After the U.S. nuked Japan in 1945 with large depleted uranium bombs wrapped
around a tiny core of A-Bomb and H-Bomb devices, it did not take long for the
U.S. monopoly on global thermonuclear weapons to evaporate into thin air and
for nukes to proliferate like fleas on a dog. As the famed scientist Albert
Einstein said, “There are no secrets.” Sure enough, soon Russia,
China, France, England, Israel, Pakistan, India and probably others also possessed
thermonuclear weapons.
A country has to have a nuclear reactor to start a nuclear weapons program.
Big American companies were very anxious to peddle the multibillion dollar Goliaths
or little baby “research” reactors all over the world. The only
difference in them is how much atomic bomb making material each can produce
in a year when set up right.
The big megawatt reactors can make the stuff for about 40 atom bombs a year.
Indeed, that is their primary purpose. The highly subsidized, very expensive,
very dirty “electrical power” the reactors heat water to make is
effective political cover. The couch potato – dumbed down American public
– does not see the reactors’ true purpose: atom bomb production.
More than 40 countries now have 430 reactors around the world. That means more
than 40 countries can produce, or already have produced, global thermonuclear
weapons.
The Pentagon wanted to be able to use radioactive uranium to kill and cause
deadly cancers without the very noticeable boom of an actual atom bomb. The
entire world was really down on the big atom bomb blasts on human populations.
Still, the Americans exploded 1,200 atom bombs before Dr. Ernest Sternglass
and others convinced the United States Senate to approve the Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty in 1962.
The amount of radiation released by the atomic bombs pales in comparison to
the huge amount of permanent killing radiation released in Iraq. The total radioactive
life span of uranium weapons is a majestically creepazoid 45 billion years.
The Iraqis have a right to ask, “Why do the Americans hate us so? Why
do the Americans want to exterminate us?”
Ordinary use of the big atom bomb was out. What were the U.S. political and
military leaders to do? Answer: Go directly to the major radiation dispersing
element in the atomic bombs and use it for radioactive munitions: dirty bullets,
dirty shells and dirty bombs – depleted uranium. Problem solved. The military-industrial-congressional
complex had their force multiplier back.
But, with budgetary battles and contending with those within the military who
opposed Radiation Dispersing Weapons, it took decades to craft and develop the
uranium munitions. Keep in mind that these are not “uranium covered”
or “uranium tipped” or “weakly radioactive” weapons
as Pentagon apologists, propagandists and other war promoters say they are.
They lie. Uranium weapons in use today are machined from solid uranium.
The most plentiful metal in the atom bombs used to devastate Japan and warn
the world about the trigger happy senior American leadership was so-called “depleted
uranium.” It was five feet thick and only fractionally less radioactive
than the feedstock uranium it came from.
DU would be ideal as a killer weaponized radioactive uranium gas fired in conventional
weapons. A vanishing small percentage of the radioactive uranium in a hundred
pounds of uranium is deadly enough to make atomic bombs; but it is all radioactive.
Take one half of the tiny amount of bomb making stuff out and it is called “depleted
uranium.” What a con, and hundreds of millions of Americans fell for it!
Thus, depleted uranium rounds, including bombs, were born. They were tested
in various wars – field tests for new weapons – and configurations
before the new genocidal munitions were ready for prime time in the 1991 Iraq
“war” turkey shoot.
The Pentagon admitted to using 320 tons of DU – of weaponized uranium
gas, aerosols and fragments – that left Iraq a cancer ridden radioactive
wasteland. The genocide embracing American forces were not through with Iraq
yet, though. They would be back.
The Americans have spent billions of dollars to set up and maintain a huge
industrial operation to produce nuclear weapons of all kinds. This ranges from
the publicly understood atomic bombs like those used on two Japanese cities’
civilian populations to the nuclear radiation dispersing bullets, shells, land
mines, missiles and bombs. The uranium weapon as a force multiplier is alive
and well.
Today, this vast industrial strength nuclear weapons establishment maintains
four ammunition storage dumps in the U.S. and an unknown number around the world.
Each of the U.S. ammo dumps in the U.S. is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to have 22,000,000 pounds of actual uranium on hand in uranium munitions.
When these huge war material centers move into high gear, they are a wonder
of lethal industrial killing efficiency.
To maintain “Class 1” status, the ammo dumps must be able to ship
3.2 million pounds of weapons a day for 30 days. That can total 384,000,000
pounds of radioactive weaponized ceramic uranium oxide poison gas dispersing
weapons per month.
George Bush the Second launched the “shock and awe” uranium bombing
campaign against Baghdad and the remainder of Iraq in March of 2003. Within
nine days, microscopic radioactive uranium oxide particles were detected in
special high volume air filters in Aldermaston, England, some 2,700 miles away.
Millions of pounds of uranium gas contaminated Baghdad yet again.
Government and university scientists estimated the five week uranium bombing
campaign exposed hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Britain to tiny
radioactive particles at the adult male lung dose rate of 23 million particles.
Cancers and other illnesses will follow, of course. For the first time in 41
years, the infant neonatal death rate is inching up. The tiniest babies die
first. Tony Blair, the English prime minister, tried to ride the tiger too many
times to no effect. The berserker Americans were uncontrollable. This is Bush’s
true legacy.
Now, we really must listen to the war criminals in the senior American political
and military leadership. The purpose of the illegal uranium weapons is to multiply
the effectiveness of a smaller force by killing or maiming the enemy continuously,
after the initial battle is over. The millions of pounds of radioactive ceramic
uranium oxide gas and dust all over Iraq are a deadly virtual army – killing
and maiming civilian Iraqi men, women and children continuously.
People have always thought wars against children are particularly gross. That
is not a problem for the American war machine planners at the Pentagon. Just
look at what they do.
The radioactive virtual army secures the Iraqi homeland. The American war criminals
are free to “redeploy” or ship the now radioactive, dying, constantly
replaced American Army veterans to whatever little country is next – Iran,
Syria or North Korea.
“Only” about 2,300 American troopers were sacrificed in the past
three years in Iraq. Those deaths are acceptable to the American leadership.
So were those of 250,000 Iraqis. They will move on and turn yet another country
into radioactive rubble. The only real question is: “Who’s next?”
Some Americans think that all this just could not happen in America. Foolish
American intellectuals think that mere words without acts will deter the in-control
American fascists. They simply do not understand that the old American Republic
is dead and gone.
Now, in 2006, the United States is the most successful fascist empire, with
the most lethal military, in the history of the world. The fascist government
of war criminals and crooks must be put out as soon as possible, certainly before
they invade Iran and use global thermonuclear weapons as promised and nuclear
munitions again to do so. Words do not count in this arena, though, only actions.
Because, ultimately, these senior American generals and politicians must be
cast out of office, tried and appropriately punished for committing these war
crimes. It is the right thing to do. What America is doing to the world is wrong
and criminal. All Americans are war criminals. We all bear responsibility –
all 300 million of us.
There are at least six individuals, probably hundreds more, affiliated with
the DOD, the CIA and the DOE who aggressively argue for the God given right
of the American Expeditionary Forces to use deadly uranium weapons. These public
relations masters work hand in glove with their programming counterparts in
the big media to maintain the lie.
Since this article will only be seen in the SF Bay View newspaper, which goes
all over the U.S. and the world, and on the Internet, it is fairly easy for
these despised characters to publish continuous “feel-good” articles
about these nuclear munitions. Already this series of anti-nuclear munition
articles is sent by you, the readers, all over the country and the world. You
must do more – always more.
Feel outraged? Helpless? Upset? Powerless? I do!
Do you want to stop these Americans from committing these war crimes? Then
you must “be the media.” Do the only thing you can control. Tell
your friends and neighbors about this. Just say, “The U.S. is using radioactive
weapons and is destroying the world. What can we do to mess with them? Let’s
do it.”
Working together, you will be able to figure out all manner of wildly inventive
and cool things to do to stop this worldwide menace. The generals and politicians
don’t stand a chance against a righteously angry American public. Just
go ahead and do it. Don’t wait for permission. You are right! Don’t
be timid! The whole world is watching.
Thank you for your time.
Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award Winner.
He is a correspondent for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper and a frequent
contributor to various online publications. Nichols is completing a book based
on 15 years of nuclear war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of the McAlester
Army Ammunition Plant. You are encouraged to write him at bob.bobnichols@gmail.com
or DUweapons@gmail.com.