http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2860759.stm
http://www.iacenter.org/du_forum504.htm
We’re dropping DEPLETED URANIUM all over Iraq???
What kind of weapon is it when you poison a country with radioactive material that leads to all kinds of terrible birth defects and cancer? Chemical, biological, nuclear? I say all three. And a WMD for sure.
This is not the way to win hearts and minds. You cannot expect a country to be grateful about something like that. Iraqis are not ignorant savages without knowledge of science and history. The know exactly what’s happening to them, and reacting in a predictable way.
It doesn’t matter whether you support the war or not, using depleted uranium is an act of indiscriminate, criminal barbarity. I remember what John Kerry said in his 1971 testimony, in reference to the napalm and Agent Orange we were using to douse Vietnam: “We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.”
I fail to see how using DU is saving a single American life or advancing our cause one bit. What say you, hawks?
And don't say I hate America.
8 comments:
I love that song.
The url led to an article from 2003 - has the news been updated at all? Did coalition forces indeed use DU, and if so, what effect did it have?
New link added.
We've used about 2200 tons of the stuff thus far.
The best you could come up with is the International Action Center?!?
Perhaps I'm being an evilfascistwarmongernazi(or whatever they're calling us these days), but I don't have much trust in critiques of U.S. military policy coming from an organization that, besides being a front for the Worker's World Party, has links like:
Support the Struggle to Free Lynne Stewart
Palestinian Resistance
Iraqi War Crimes Tribunal - People Judge Bush
Million Worker March:
http://antiwar4themillionworkermarch.org
Mumia Abu-Jamal - Political Prisoner
Any updates from an objective news source?
Huh. I wasn't aware of their sponsors.
Let's try again.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/
Now, that's a World Health organization report on the effects of depleted uranium. One of the previous articles involved a US commander bragging about using DU against the Iraqis.
Two and two combine to make four.
I think you need yet another try, because though two and two do indeed equal four, I don't think that equation applies in this situation.
So, the WHO report states that DU has (gasp!) negative effects on civilians. I don't think anyone disputes that.
BUT, the U.S. Commander who "bragged" about using DU was referring to Operation Desert Storm, NOT the current war.
My original question was: Did coalition forces indeed use DU, and if so, what effect did it have?
Perhaps, it was a mistake not to make clear that I meant coalition forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom using DU. As of yet, there is nothing to indicate that in this current war, DU has been used.
So, it might be prudent to actually receive updated information from a legitimate news source BEFORE accusing the U.S. military of heinous war crimes.
In regards to the IAC, the links I gave as examples were internal, not external. So...I really can't comment on "sponsorship".
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/133581_du04.html
An article, written after the fall of Baghdad, detailing the US use of depleted uranium in Gulf War II.
This is not a secret. The Pentagon maintains that DU is not poisonous and that Gulf War Syndrome does not exist.
I should be more careful about my sources in the future, but even if there had been no American use of DU after 1991, it would still be a terrible idea to use it the first time around.
Thank you for (finally) posting a link that confirms to a degree the use of DU. Now, I can (finally) make a comment about the usage itself.
As both the original article from the BBC and the later one from the Seattle PI mention - there is more than one side to the issue of DU usage.
On one hand, there are those terrible defects that result from exposure to DU. On the other hand, there is the fact that usage of DU was integral to ensuring a swift military victory (a great deal of damage to enemy tanks, not much damage at all to U.S. military tanks). One must realize that DU was (is?) not being used gratuitously.
Also, the U.S. is not the sole consumer of this nasty good - as the later article states, it also used by European forces in Kosovo just a few years ago.
Personally, I would be in favor of using it solely for battle purposes - where there is direct contact with the armed enemy and no *prolonged* exposure to U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. I don't know about the other "hawks", but I don't like the fact that civilians were exposed in either war.
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