Simple fact: Bush was/is a douche. He was from birth and will be when he dies, (That cannot be too soon for me) He is responsible for somewhere around a million+ deaths, with many more to come from death by cancer due to DU munitions.
Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium
By
LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR
SOUTHERN DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Iraq -- On the "Highway of Death," 11 miles north of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military vehicles are rusting in the desert.
They also are radiating nuclear energy.
Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Six-year-old Fatma Rakwan, being held by her mother at the Basra Hospital for Maternity and Children, was recently diagnosed with leukemia.In 1991, the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies blasted the vehicles with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time such weapons had been used in warfare -- as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait. The devastating results gave the highway its name.
Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery.
Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.
Depleted uranium is a problem in other former war zones as well. Yesterday, U.N. experts said they found radioactive hot spots in Bosnia resulting from the use of depleted uranium during NATO air strikes in 1995.
With another war in Iraq perhaps imminent, scientists and others are concerned that the side effects of depleted uranium munitions -- still a major part of the U.S. arsenal -- will cause serious illnesses or deaths in a new generation of U.S. soldiers as well as Iraqis.
THE DANGERS
Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years.
Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and water everywhere on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities. Humans ingest it daily in minute quantities.
Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a radiation expert, holds a Geiger counter next to a hole in an Iraqi tank destroyed by depleted uranium weapons in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The shell holes show 1,000 times the normal background radiation level.
DU shell holes in the vehicles along the Highway of Death are 1,000 times more radioactive than background radiation, according to Geiger counter readings done for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a nuclear medicine expert from the Iraq Department of Radiation Protection in Basra, and Col. Amal Kassim of the Iraqi navy.
The desert around the vehicles was 100 times more radioactive than background radiation; Basra, a city of 1 million people, some 125 miles away, registered only slightly above background radiation level.
But the radioactivity is only one concern about DU munitions.
A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round hits its target. As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.
Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.
Whether this is ever proven or not, is really not important to the thousands of Iraqi children that come down with cancer. My take is the US military will suppress this and make it a non-issue, sort of like agent orange was for nigh on to thirty years. By that time, the atrocities in Iraq will be old news, except to the Iraqis, who will have done and be doing all the suffering. Maybe when enough US soldiers are diagnosed with leukemia, or some other cancer that can be traced to DU munitions, the real truth will come out. Roast in hell G.W.Bush.
I understand it's the fashionable thing to bash G Dub. I've never been a trendy guy. I've never owned a pair of jeans that cost more than $30. Never had a $100 pair of sneakers. I've never had a fancy car. I'm a relatively simple guy. I don't go around digging information like this up so I'm having a hard time relating to someone who has the time to do so just to prove a point.
