In statements attributed to them, Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Webster Tarpley and others are alleged to have warned that an attack on Iran by the American military is “imminent.” (1) Ray McGovern asks if we have the courage to stop the Bush Administration from making war on Iran. (2)

According to radiation experts, there can be no question of courage. If we don’t stop an assault on Iran (or any other country) using the same depleted-uranium (DU) weapons that have been used in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan,

1. Iran (or any other country) could become a wasteland, as Iraq may already have become.

2. Such an attack would release a load of hundreds if not thousands of tons of DU into the atmosphere to circle the globe with lethal effect for billions of years.

There is no excuse not to take a moment out to consider this question, wherever we live and whomever we are.

Dr. Rosalie Bertelle, an internationally-recognized radiation expert, has called our DU risk “omnicide.”

“The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it as omnicide."(3)

Dr. Bertell and another radiation expert, Dr. Leuren Moret, have done more to expose the dangers of DU contamination than anyone else. Listen to what they say, remembering that it comes from a time before a war on Iran was imminent. They are not addressing what will happen if we load another 1,000 tons or more of DU into the atmosphere. And yet already they are speaking of species extinction.

Dr. Bertell:

“Our collective gene pool of life, evolving for hundreds of millions of years has been seriously damaged in less than the past fifty. The time remaining to reverse this culture of ‘lemming death’ is on the wane. In the future, what will you tell our grandchildren about what you did in the prime of your life to turn around this death process?" (4)

Dr. Moret:

“There are just a few generations left before the collapse of our environment.” (5)

I offer these as the chief allegations made by radiation experts on the subject of the depleted uranium’s dangers. Please listen carefully because little time remains.

* Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons, when fired, create an aerosol of ceramic DU nanoparticles.

* Ingestion of DU or contact with it debilitates or kills.

* Simple exposure to unfired DU weapons can contaminate.

* There is no safe DU exposure limit.

* Protective gear does not protect.

* DU infects spouses/mothers through semen transfer.

* DU leads to horrible birth defects in babies.

* DU travels globally on the winds.

* DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.

* DU cannot be cleaned up.

* There is no known treatment.

* * * * *

* Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons, when fired, create an aerosol of ceramic DU nanoparticles.

Depleted-uranium weapons are used because uranium is a very dense metal that can penetrate concrete, steel, sandbag bunkers, or virtually anything else. (6)

When a DU shell explodes, it leaves two contaminating byproducts: fragments that break off on impact and DU aerosol or dust produced by the explosion. Both are lethal. Both contribute to the peril of local and distant populations.

The first byproduct, the fragments, emit Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and X-ray radiation at a rate of 4.15 million electron volts (the voltage in a normal body cell is 10 electron volts). Anyone in the immediate area of a DU explosion is usually killed outright from it or from the fragments. (7)

The weathering of remaining DU fragments on battlefields and in other areas provides new sources of radioactive contamination, washed into the water system by the rains, all with a half life of 4.5 billion years. (8)

The second byproduct, the aerosol or dust, is not the same as ordinary uranium dust from mining. It is infinitesimally smaller – a ceramic nanoparticle, around the same size as a virus or bacteria. It too has a half-life of 4.5 billion years and travels around the world in the winds. (9) When we release it on Iran, it will not stay in Iran. It will in all likelihood blanket friend and foe alike, Iran, Israel, and America. (10)

* Ingestion of DU or contact with it debilitates or kills.

Dr. Bertell warns us that airborne DU nanoparticles can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick. The radioactive ceramic dust will stay deep in the lungs for years, irradiating the tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a 30-micron sphere, causing emphysema and/or fibrosis. The particles can also be swallowed and do damage to the gastro-intestinal tract. In time, they penetrate the lung tissue and enter into the blood stream. (11)

Because DU particles are so small, they are invisible and difficult to detect. They reach sensitive targets such as the lymph nodes, spleen, heart, and central nervous system. (12) They can enter the semen, bone marrow, and lungs. (13) When they do, they give rise to a range of fatal cancers as well as more than 100 serious illnesses from fibromyalgia to Lou Gehrig’s disease. (14)

In Dr. Moret’s view, contamination with depleted uranium “is a death sentence.” (15)

* Protective gear does not protect.

There are several myths about DU that have kept us complacent. One is that protective gear can actually protect us from DU ingestion and contamination. Dr. Moret warns us that DU “will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging." (16)

U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke agrees. He was the man in charge of getting rid of the DU after the first Gulf War, what he called the “super garbageman.” He says the protective gear they were issued failed to save them or the other soldiers from DU ingestion.

“When I talked to senior Manhattan Project scientists that were expert particle physicists, they said – ‘Hey, we knew when uranium breaks up like this, it was going to be down in the .1-.2 micron range.’ …

“The gas masks, the respiratory protection issued to the troops – there’s no way [they] can protect against inhalation.” (17)

At this moment, I am not aware of any gear that can protect the individual. Moreover, unless the gear is worn forever, once the gear is taken off, contamination can result.

* Simple exposure to unfired DU weapons can contaminate.

Another disputable view is that simple exposure to unfired anti-tank shells and bunker-buster bombs will not result in DU contamination.

In the video, Beyond Treason, Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, offered this view: there is “a very minor amount of radioactivity [in an unfired DU shell, said he, holding one up to the camera], but it’s not anything. … As long as it’s in its bullet form it can be stored and it’s not any type of hazardous material.” (18)

What Lt. Col. Marks has been led to believe is refuted by emerging evidence. Dr. Moret reports, for instance, that gunners in Bradley vehicles who sat on boxes of DU shells are now being diagnosed with rectal cancer. Her reports are one indication that unexploded DU is not harmless. (19)

* There is no safe DU exposure limit.

A third disputable view is that there is in fact a threshold, a safe-exposure limit, below which one can contact DU and not suffer.

This too turns out not to be true.

According to Dr. Moret:

“Depleted uranium exposure risks … may be far more toxic than nuclear weapons or nuclear power plant exposures. In July of 2005, the National Academy of Sciences reported in their new BEIR VII report on low level radiation, that there is ‘no safe level of exposure.’” (20)

She adds that “the amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small.” “It is estimated that one millionth of a gram [of DU] accumulating in a person's body would be fatal.” (21)

The evidence so far is that DU travels in the air as a ceramic aerosol in infinitesimally-small particles; it cannot be protected against using current gear; and extremely-small doses are lethal.

* DU infects spouses/mothers through semen transfer.

According to Dr. Moret, if a soldier’s semen is contaminated from DU particles and he returns home, he can contaminate his wife or partner. (22)

In the video Beyond Treason, Staff Sergeant Bob Jones testifies. He is a former Army Ranger and veteran of Desert Storm, now retired. He is disabled due to what some people call “Gulf War Illness” – the largest single part of which is DU contamination.

Not only he but his entire immediate family all suffer from mycoplasma fermentans incognitos. (23)

As Sgt. Jones discovered, the veterans administration did not respond generously to his family’s situation. The treatment of this veteran and his family should be noted.

“It wasn’t so much my illness, but my family was also ill and they required medical attention and medical treatment – real medical treatment. I retired in June of last year – June 2003. As soon as I retired my family was completely dropped from the military medical system. … Although I begged and pleaded they would not let my family re-enroll back into the Womack Family Practice.

“So in essence, my wife was completely cut off from all the medications and all the treatment that she had received for the past seven years. … – Cause she was also a victim of these exposures that I brought home from the Gulf War – from my equipment and my personal exposure, as I eluded to earlier – from personal bodily contact… and uh that to me is the greatest travesty. I just can’t imagine how … you have innocent family members and loved ones that never put their hand up and swore allegiance to fight and defend the constitution of the United States and they get kicked to the curb and nobody cares.” (24)

In this case, DU contaminated the entire family. The reception from medical authorities was not sympathetic.

Craig Etcheson cites a January 2006 Washington Post article estimating that 518,000 of 580,000 Gulf War veterans were on disability, over half on permanent disability. Over 13,000 Gulf War 1 veterans have died since 1991. (25)

The number of civilian casualties is catastrophic; the number of military casualties is staggering.

Did we intend to commit genocide? Did we intend to sacrifice a generation to each war? Because both are what we appear to have done with DU.

* DU leads to horrible birth defects in babies.

British radiation researcher Dai Williams states that “women and children … are most vulnerable to internal radiation and chromosome damage owing to higher rates of cell division.” (26)

In the case of developing fetuses, when minute trace amounts of DU in semen bond with DNA, as one journalist put it, “they wreak havoc with cells.” (27) In some cases, there may be no visible evidence of DU contamination. As Sgt. Jones reports, babies apparently healthy at birth later died.

“Some of us that conceived children after the war – … I know of at least two individuals where their children were born perfectly healthy according to the hospital - and within six months after their return their hearts literally exploded in their chests.” (28)

Birth defects have burgeoned in every region where DU has been used. In Afghanistan since the invasion, children are "born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths ... deformed genitalia." (29)

In Iraq, the use of DU weapons in Iraq led to "increases in childhood cancers and leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, lymphomas, and increases in congenital diseases and deformities in foetuses, along with limb reductional abnormalities and increases in genetic abnormalities throughout Iraq.” (30)

Iraqi pedriaticians estimate that “childhood leukemia has risen 600% in the areas [of Iraq] where DU was used.” (31)

“Stillbirths, births or abortion of fetuses with monstrous abnormalities, and other cancers in children born since [the Gulf War in] 1991 have also been found.” (32)

A large collection of photos of deformed Iraqi children can be seen at

 http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Baby2003.htm.

Increasingly, this scenario will be repeated in countries around the world.

* DU travels globally on the winds.

According to Dr. Moret, as of 2004 DU was everywhere. She describes its dispersion and the load already in the environment.

“After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium-oxide nanoparticles on the battlefield, DU remains suspended in air and travels around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow, and moisture remove it from the atmosphere.

“Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The amount of low level radioactive pollution from depleted uranium released since 1991, is many times more (deposited internally in the body), than was released from atmospheric testing fallout.” (33)

Where is the winner in a DU war? DU is no respecter of sides or borders. For instance, Israel, an ally of the United States, lies downwind of Iraq and is suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes. (34) This cannot be a cause for celebration in Israel. Great Britain, one of the invaders, received the highest levels of DU in its history after the Tora Bora bombings and the “Shock and Awe’ assault of 2003. (35) In this case, the wind brought the contaminant back to the invader.

It doesn’t take DU long to travel. Within 7-9 days of the 2003 “Shock and Awe” attack, very fine particles of DU were being captured by filters 2400 miles away in Great Britain. (36)

According to Dr. Moret, researchers found the "smog of war" from Gulf War I in glaciers and ice sheets around the world just a year later. (37)

Large annual dust storms originating in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia can be expected to quickly spread the radioactive contamination to the rest of the world. (38)

* DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.

We must keep in mind that the conditions we are describing will not go away. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years, ironically, the same time span as the age of the Earth itself. (39) It is a problem which, far from lessening over time, will only increase as DU particles travel around the globe and settle in all global environments. It is a problem that will never go away.

* DU cannot be cleaned up.

As Dr. Rokke reminds us, the byproducts of “uranium munitions … can’t be cleaned up.” (40) In Dr. Moret’s words:

“Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps killing. … There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up.” (41)

It will be with us until we find a way to deal with it.

* There is no known treatment.

According to Dr. Moret, “there are no known methods of treatment.” (41) Dr. Rokke concurs: DU is “going to cause all [kinds of] health problems and there is no medical care and treatment. You can’t reverse radiation exposure damage to the body.” (42)

Parts of the world may well become uninhabitable wastelands

Unlike in the first Gulf War, when 300 tons of DU were fired off in the Kuwaiti and Iraqi desert, in the second Gulf War nearly 10 times as much DU was exploded and burned, largely in urban areas, putting the dust right in the path of millions of civilians. (43)

Vignettes of their future as DU has created it?

Near Sarajevo, Michel Chossudovsky found empty villages with full cemeteries. (44)

When a child is born in Iraq, according to Beyond Treason, the parents no longer ask, “Is it a girl or a boy?” They ask, “Is it normal?” (45)

Leuren Moret asserts that the Middle East and Central Asia and Yugoslavia “are contaminated forever.” (46) Dai Williams agrees: “Several areas of Iraq are now permanently contaminated.” (47) Dr. Craig Etcheson advises us that “we must … consider the real possibility of Iraq as an uninhabitable wasteland, with the residue of the DU aerosol blowing in the wind and flowing in the waters to adjacent lands, a residue with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.” He asks: “Is this outlook too bleak?” (48)

We will have to come to grips with how we are seen by the people we have transgressed against. We will have to encounter the Jhooma Khans of the world, who accuse us all (not just Americans). Khan lives in Laghman Province, Afghanistan.

“After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good, different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not escape." (49)

Omnicide: The end of life on this planet

Prof. Elias Tuma of Iran stated that “to attack Iran's nuclear facilities will not only provoke war, but it could also unleash clouds of radiation far beyond the targets and the borders of Iran." (50) This is undoubtedly true. But even more deadly would be the release of hundreds or thousands of tons of depleted uranium on Tehran and the rest of Iran in the event of an American assault.

To use Dr. Betrell’s word, the outcome could be “omnicide.” It could mean the end of life on this planet.

There must be a rapid shift in world opinion so that everyone sees the utter folly in tolerating another modern war. Another outbreak of conflict like the Balkans, Afghanistan or Iraq would endanger everyone on this planet, irretrievably – winner and loser, local and distant, man, woman, and child.

This planet cannot stand another conflict. Our time as a species is rapidly running out.

We must not allow a war in Iran.

Notes

(1) Jim Fetzer, “Scholars Endorse Kennebunkport Warning: Report Ominous Signs of a Privatized Takeover of the Nation,” 911scholars.org, 30 Aug. 2007, downloaded from  http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jim_fetz_070830_scholars_endore__22the.htm, 31 Aug. 2007.

(2) Ray McGovern, “Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?”, Opednews.com, downloaded from  http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ray_mcgo_070831_do_we_have_the_coura.htm, 31 Aug. 2007.

(3) Dr. Rosalie Bertell quoted in Dr. Leuren Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, 1 July 2004, downloaded from  http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm, 26 Aug. 2007.

(4) Loc. cit.

(5) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(6) Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, in Beyond Treason, video, produced by the Power Hour, 2005.

(7) U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke in Beyond Treason, ibid.

(8) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(9) Dr. Leuren Moret quoted in Robert C. Koehler, “Depleted Uranium (DU): Silent Genocide,” Tribune Media Services, 25 March 2004, downloaded from  http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Silent-Genocide25mar04.htm, 29 Aug. 2007; Dr. Rosalie Bertell cited in Michel Chossudovsky, “Low Intensity Nuclear War,” Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, 2001, downloaded from  http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/kosovo/chossudovsky_lowintensity.html, 26 Aug. 2007.

(10) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(11) Dr. Rosalie Bertell cited in Chossudovsky, ibid.

(12) Dr. Craig Etcheson, Center for Non-Violent Alternatives, Fort Ashby, W.Va., “Depleted Uranium: Pernicious Killer Keeps on Killing,” t r u t h o u t, 19 February 2007, downloaded from  http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021907G.shtml, 31 Aug. 2007.

(13) Dr. Moret in Beyond Treason, ibid.

(14) Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” ibid.

(15) Dr. Moret in video Beyond Treason, ibid.

(16) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(17) Rokke, id.

(18) Lt. Col. Marks in Beyond Treason, ibid.

(19) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” ibid.

(20) Dr. Leuren Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star: Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East,” Mindfully.org, 26 Feb. 2006, downloaded from  http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Moret26feb06.htm, 30 Aug. 2007.

(21) Dr. Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star,” ibid. and Koehler, ibid.

(22) Dr. Moret in Beyond Treason, ibid.; see also Capt. Joyce Riley, USAFR, in same video.

(23) Staff Sergeant Bob Jones in Beyond Treason, ibid.

(24) Loc. cit.

(25) Etcheson, ibid.

(26) Dai Williams, Hazards of Uranium Weapons in the Proposed War on Iraq, 22 Sept. 2002.

(27) Dave Lindorff, “DU, the Ticking Nuke in Bush’s White House War Room,” San Francisco Bay View, 25 Jan. 2006, downloaded from  http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Bush-War25jan06.htm, 26 Aug. 2007.)

(28) Staff Sergeant Jones in Beyond Treason, ibid.

(29) Koehler, ibid.

(30) Chossudovsky, ibid.

(31) Loc. cit.

(32) Loc. cit.

(33) The figure of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs is given in Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid. But note as well: “Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, a Japanese physicist at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, has estimated that the atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs has been released into the global atmosphere since 1991, from the use of depleted uranium munitions.” (Dr. Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star,” ibid.)

(34) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(35) Dr. Moret, “The Queen’s Death Star,” ibid.

(36) Loc. cit.

(37) Loc. cit.

(38) Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(39) Williams, ibid.; Dr. Etcheson, ibid; Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” ibid.

(40) Rokke, ibid.

(41) Dr. Moret cited by Koehler, ibid.and in her “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(42) Rokke, ibid.

(43) Lindorff, ibid.

(44) Chossudovsky, ibid.

(45) Beyond Treason, ibid.

(46) Dr. Moret in Beyond Treason, ibid.

(47) Williams, ibid.

(48) Etcheson, ibid.

(49) Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003 in Dr. Moret, “Depleted Uranium: the Trojan Horse,” ibid.

(50) Statement of Prof Elias Tuma, Arab Internet Network, Federal News Service, 1 March 2005 in Michel Chossudovsky, “Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran,” Globalresearch.ca, a May 2005, downloaded from  http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO505A.html, 26 August 2007.