More Evidence that Depleted Uranium is the Cause of Gulf War Syndrome

[ This important piece follows up others printed here since March, 2003. Thanks to Bob Nichols — who has published on the topic in his own right — for forwarding this article. –BL ]

Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets

18 August 2004 | San Francisco Bay View

Keywords: depleted uranium

by Leuren Moret

?Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.?

– Henry Kissinger, quoted in Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW?s in Vietnam

Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating
large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally
the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S.
has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which,
like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons
of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central
Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of
Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that
?Gulf-era veterans? now on medical disability since 1991 number
518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year
period.

This week the American Free Press dropped a ?dirty bomb? on the
Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one
unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies.
That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed
malignancies in just 16 months
.

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium
(DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists
working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War
Syndrome
. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first
published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991
in Iraq, Dr. Andras Kor?nyi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno
from the Department of Defense?s Deployment Health Support Directorate,
that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides,
bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated
by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since
DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years
after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term
effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty
stuff.

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s
reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical
chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly
involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid
malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as ?spectacular — and
a matter of concern.?

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on
biological systems – radiation, chemical and particulate — the particulate
effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately
after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad
news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are
difficult to define.

In simple words, DU ?trashes the body.? When asked if the main
purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people,
Fulk was more specific: ?I would say that it is the perfect weapon
for killing lots of people
.?

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be
expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This
phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians
following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the
U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991
.
Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies
from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome
associated with internal DU exposure.

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian
Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf
War I
, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent
medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means
that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now
have medical problems
.

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing
by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs
told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled
vets now than even after World War II.

They brought it home

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields,
but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally
contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically,
some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed
soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies
because of health problems.

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who
had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their
post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born
with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and
blood diseases. In some veterans? families now, the only normal
or healthy members of the family are the children born before the
war.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not
keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.

How did they hide it?

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully
tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified
document from the Manhattan Project.

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed
poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project
by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry’s father
served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended
developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the
atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known
that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from
land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive
dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask
or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it
could kill or cause illness very quickly.

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which
could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies
and agricultural land with the radioactive dust
.

The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968,
and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S.
supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow
out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have
been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from
1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges
and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated
with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in
endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and
cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons
tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges
around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing
leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military
denies that DU is the cause
.

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up – just
as they were in hiding the effects from the American public – of
low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants.
A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by
the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started,
to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental
problems only.

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning
soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about
the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened
with jail.

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000
medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in
C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near
Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three
medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to
speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon
chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her
and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak
about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was
able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk
about DU in Oregon ?and nothing overseas — nothing political.?

Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto,
Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival
(PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When
that didn’t work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national
president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly
succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing
photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure
and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR,
reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to
lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had
pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position
on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job
had been with the CIA.

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving
in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone
informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American
Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans
had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing
in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical
information being transferred to new troops. The ?next DU war? had
already been planned, and those planning it wanted ?no skunk at
the garden party.?

The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret

A new book just published at the American Free Press by
Michael Collins Piper, The High Priests of War: The Secret History
of How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and
Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive
for Global Empire
, details the early plans for a war against the
Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the
DU ?show on the road? and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which
caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been
plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades
since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their ?godfather?
and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a ?war against
terrorism? long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by
the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential
men in the United States.

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby?s neo-conservative
network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has
ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say,
have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former
President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are
recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy,
who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy
the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs
and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia – just coincidentally
the areas where most of the world’s oil deposits are located – he
replied: ?It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger
.?

In Zbignew Brzezinski?s book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy
and Its Geostrategic Imperatives
, the map of the Eurasian chessboard
includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The ?South?
region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently
with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands
of tons of DU.

A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800
tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs.
The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent
of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times
the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric
testing!

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle
East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger
said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange,
?Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign
policy.?

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women
with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will
be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just
as the ?smog of war? from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits
in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press
release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020.
What else do they know that they aren?t telling us? I know that
depleted uranium is a death sentence — for all of us. We will all
die in silent ways.

To learn more

Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged
to consult:

American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn.
Part I: ?Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq,
Humanity,? www.americanfreepress.net/depleted_uranium.html; Part
II: ?Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium
Definitively Linked,? www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html

August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret: ?Depleted Uranium:
The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,? www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: ?Marin Depleted
Uranium Resolution Heats Up — GI?s Will Come Home To A Slow Death,?
www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01

World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October
16-19, 2004: www.worlduraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers/speakers.htm

International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. Written opinion
of Judge Niloufer Baghwat: www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm

?Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War? by Akira
Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret, www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who has worked around the world
on radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments
and Congress and other officials. She became a whistleblower in
1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after experiencing major
science fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. An environmental commissioner
in the City of Berkeley, she can be reached at leurenmoret@yahoo.com.

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