That the US used DU in Iraq is not news. It's never been a secret. But the US government has forever claimed it did not harm. This is from a June 24, 2003 report Rachel Carbonell did for AM (Australia's ABC):
RACHEL CARBONELL: United States and British forces used depleted uranium projectiles in both the 1991 Gulf War and in the recent military conflict in Iraq. In 1991 it is estimated US and British troops fired about 950,000 rounds, or more than 300 tonnes of depleted uranium weapons. Michael Kilpatrick from the US Department of Defence Health Affairs section says so far there is no medical evidence that soldiers have suffered ill health as a result of exposure to these weapons.
MICHAEL KILPATRICK: We have looked at some 70 individuals who were in friendly-fire incidents, they were in Iran vehicles that were struck with depleted uranium. About a quarter of those still have small fragments of depleted uranium in their body and they're excreting very high levels of depleted uranium in their urine, and Dr Melissa McDermott, who is following those individuals, has not seen any untoward medical problems in these individuals due to their depleted uranium exposure.
Wouldn't it be great if the incompetent or lying Kilpatrick could be put before the cameras now to explain just what made Katrina Brown ill? Or what about all the Iraqi children? Last month, Dahr Jamail reported for Al Jazeera on the birth defects in Falluja. Among those who interviewed were Falluja General Hospital's Dr. Samira Alani:
“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Alani told Al Jazeera at her office in the hospital last year, while showing countless photos of shocking birth defects.
Alani also co-authored a study in 2010 that showed the rate of heart defects in Fallujah to be 13 times the rate found in Europe. And, for birth defects involving the nervous system, the rate was calculated to be 33 times that found in Europe for the same number of births.
As of December 21, 2011, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later, when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.
Alani showed Al Jazeera hundreds of photos of babies born with cleft pallets, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.
Depleted Uranium. But the Pentagon's Michael Kilpatrick knows best, right? Because the Pentagon would never do anything that would harm anyone, right?
Last month, Rob Edwards (Guardian) reported:
Cleaning up more than 300 sites in Iraq still contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) weapons will cost at least $30m, according to a report by a Dutch peace group to be published on Thursday.
The report, which was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warns that the contamination is being spread by poorly regulated scrap metal dealers, including children. It also documents evidence that DU munitions were fired at light vehicles, buildings and other civilian infrastructure including the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in Baghdad – casting doubt on official assurances that only armoured vehicles were targeted. "The use of DU in populated areas is alarming," it says, adding that many more contaminated sites are likely to be discovered.
More than 400 tonnes of DU ammunition are estimated to have been fired by jets and tanks in the two Iraq wars in 1991 and 2003, the vast majority by US forces. The UK government says that British forces fired less than three tonnes.
DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear power industry. It is used in weapons because it is an extremely hard material capable of piercing armour.
However, it can contaminate the environment, and has been linked to health problems in civilian populations. Iraqi doctors have reported increases in cancers, and an alleged rise in birth defects is under investigation by the World Health Organisation and the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
It's amazing that the US news media had 31 days in March to do anything resembling actual reporting on Iraq and they did nothing. Even something as simple as a trip to the Pentagon to ask if they were standing by those 2003 remarks was beyond the media's scope. Why is that, do you suppose?
Because Iraq is a failed state and you can't sell war -- and that is what the American media is in the business of doing -- if you tell the truth. So they avoid telling the truth about Iraq because that might harm war on Syria or North Korea or Iran or who knows where the wheel stops?
The following community sites -- plus NPR Music, Pacifica Evening News, Antiwar.com, L Studio and Cindy Sheehan -- updated last night and this morning:
Wally's "THIS JUST IN! BARRY O COSTS US A LOT OF MONEY!" isn't showing up above. Trudy Rubin is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who is syndicated nationally. She's also a rare columnist who will admit when she's wrong, as she does as the top of "Have we learned from our waste of billions in Iraq?" (Columbus Dispatch; Sacremento Bee):
Two weeks ago, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, I wrote a column that laid out the losers in the conflict. I argued there still were no clear winners.
One reader responded that there are obvious winners: the private civilian contractors who provided security and supplies for the war effort, and were paid tens of billions of dollars by the U.S. government. A hefty chunk of those billions was wasted due to overbilling, shoddy work and fraud.
The reader was correct (although I disagree with his assertion that we began the war in order to fuel the military-industrial complex). He fingered an important problem we still haven’t come to grips with: Our military and civilian agencies seem unable to conduct massive nation-building efforts in war zones effectively, or to supervise the private contractors to whom we often outsource this job.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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