Originally published in Shahrvand English (N° 8) – November 23, 2004
The commencement of the First Gulf War in August 1991, was not only a military offensive of proportions unseen in many years, it was also a flexing of military muscle for countries like the US, and the perfect showcase for their cutting edge and hi-tech arsenal of stealth bombers and fighting vehicles.
However, the most effective new weapon of that war, Depleted Uranium (DU) Munitions were not announced to the public until a year later. This was the first time that DU weapons were used on a vast scale in combat (the last and only recorded time they were used was in the Israeli-Arab war in 1973).
These munitions consisted mainly of armour-piercing missiles and various-sized firing rounds. DU was also used in the armour-plating of some of the Abrams tanks and the Bradley Fighting Vehicles of the US army.
Why then the silence?
The very UN resolution that banned the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) also stated that Depleted Uranium is considered illegal and should be banned. It urged “all states to be guided in their national policies by the need to curb the production and spread of weapons of mass destruction … in particular nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry and weaponry containing depleted uranium [emphasis added]”. Yet when the US illegally attacked a country like Iraq on the charges that they are harbouring weapons of mass destruction (which have yet to be found) they did so using their own weapon of mass destruction, which could be just as deadly if not worse than anything Iraq could have had. And yet no one will hear anything about it. No one will publicize it. No politician will even mention it. In fact, in the 2004 presidential campaign, only one candidate brought up the issue of DU.
The fact is that at the moment, the country-sides of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan now lie covered in a fine layer of Uranium dust. Thousands of destroyed tanks and contaminated fields are now the playground for children and the workplaces of adults, who are, everyday, inhaling the very thing which will eventually kill them.
Countries like the US and the UK did not even warn their own soldier about the dangers of the uses of this deadly substance, and to this day refuse to give them the proper medical attention. And all of this, because by doing something about DU they would be openly admitting to the fact that they are using a substance which is tremendously toxic and hazardous, illegal in use, and should be banned by all countries, because it is, at least for now, a valuable weapon in their arsenal.
What Depleted Uranium is, and its uses
Depleted Uranium is nuclear waste. It is what is left of Natural Uranium when the weapons grade portion is extracted. Ever since the end of the Second World War and the advent of nuclear technology, the US Department of Energy has amassed over 720,000 metric tonnes of DU as leftovers of the enrichment process needed to produce nuclear warheads and to fuel their nuclear power stations. It is one of the densest metals found, nearly twice that of Lead. Depleted uranium is still radioactive, even though its radioactivity is nearly 40% less than that of U-235.
Depleted Uranium is also pyrophoric, which means that it can burst into flames at room temperature. Despite it’s density in the solid state, when oxidized, uranium oxides can be suspended in air, in aerosolized form, and travel tens of kilometres in the air. Each of these particles can easily pass through the filter of gas masks.
Research done by the military showed that this substance would make a perfect anti-armour weapon. Upon impact with the target, it heats up very quickly to a high temperature and nearly 40% of it is oxidized. This high temperature combined with the extreme density of the metal allows it to pierce the armour like a ‘hot knife through butter’.
Once it has penetrated and reached inside the armoured vehicle, it ignites, causing a firestorm and many secondary explosions, which lead to death and severe injuries. Much of the oxidized uranium also settles in and on the tank and much of it is carried out by wind and dispersed in the area of the explosion.
All of this makes DU sound like some kind of a militaristic magic weapon, which in a sense it really is. But as is usually the case when dealing with a substance such as uranium, there must be some negative side-effects to the use of such weapons. And this is exactly where the controversy begins.
The military claims that they have studied the health effect of DU extensively over the last 50 years (http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm). Yet problems started to show up shortly after the Gulf War. One of the first groups to enter the battlefields after the use of these weapons were Major Doug Rokke (a Physicist, Vietnam vet, and former head of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project) and his team of researchers who were sent in to asses the damage and after-effects of DU, and find ways for its clean up. Within 72 hours, some of Rokke’s team members started to show signs of sickness. By the end of the decade, out of the 100 members of Rokke’s team, 30 are dead and most of the others are
suffering from various respiratory and kidney diseases, or cancer. Rokke himself has damaged kidneys and lungs. He believes that there is still a significant amount of uranium oxide trapped in his lungs. His brain has lesions, his skin contains infected sores and he suffers from Chronic Fatigue.
What then went wrong?
The Medical Effects of Depleted Uranium
Estimates put the number of Gulf War Veterans suspected to have been exposed to DU – in one way or another – somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000. Many of these have been diagnosed with the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome. Yet to this point the Military has refused to openly acknowledge any links between the massive usage of DU and the sick veterans.
The main biomedical hazards of DU lie in its oxidized form. Upon impact, when the DU bursts into flame, much of it is oxidized and aerosolized into extremely small particles that linger in the air around the destroyed target and are carried away by the wind as far as 40 km away from the site. This small form of oxidized DU can be easily inhaled.
The list of the adverse physiological problems that can be caused by DU are quite extensive and include Reactive Airway Disease, Neurological Abnormalities, Kidney problems, Vision Degradation/Loss, Lymphoma, various forms of skin/organ Cancer as well as sexual dysfunction and birth defects in the offspring.
During the First Gulf War, the US army used over 300 tons of DU weaponry. Surveys showed that of the 3700 Iraqi tanks destroyed, 1400 were hit by DU rounds. DU munitions were the military’s preferred weapon for war, and they used it to destroy everything from tanks to other vehicles and bunkers, with deadly success.
After the Gulf War
However, most – if not all – of the American soldiers had not been warned against the hazards of the DU dust and many climbed aboard destroyed Iraqi tanks to either collect souvenirs or to take pictures. What they were not aware of was that the entire time they were inhaling toxic Uranium oxides from their own weapons.
There were also many incidents of ‘friendly fire’, as American tanks or vehicles were destroyed or damaged by DU rounds fired by American troops. Thus, a great many more soldiers were exposed to the toxic DU dust in these cases or had fragment of DU shrapnel lodged inside their bodies.
Upon the return home of the veterans of the Gulf War (both American and British), many started to experience various sicknesses; everything from respiratory problem to kidney failure, to leukemia. Many found that their children were born with birth-defects.
The Military tried to explain that these could have been caused by the myriad of drugs and anti-chemical gas vaccination that many of the troops were inoculated with (some receiving up to 14 inoculations including anthrax), in addition there were the petrol fire smoke, and the caches of chemical/biological weapons which were destroyed by the American forces. What they failed to tell them was that the most likely cause of their malady was their exposure to their own DU weapons.
And what about Iraq and its people? After the war was over, the Iraqi country-side was littered with the remnants of the war. Children playing in and around destroyed tanks and vehicles (that were still covered with a layer of DU-oxide even a decade later), or with unexploded DU-munitions that could be found on the former battlefields. Reports have shown that after 1991, there has been an increase in infectious diseases due to severe immunodeficiency in a great part of the population. There have frequent occurrences massive Herpes and Shingles afflictions. People have shown AIDS-like symptoms. There has been much more cases of Renal/Kidney dysfunction, Leukemia, Aplastic Anaemia (failure of bone marrows to produce blood cells), tumours, and congenital heart deformations. In 1998, the respected British journalist, Robert Fisk reported, what he called, an “epidemic of leukemia and stomach cancer in the southern regions of Iraq”. Not only are these all most likely caused by the tremendous amounts of nuclear waste left by American/British troops, but to add salt to the wound, none of the afflicted have had access to any form of medication thanks to the severe sanctions placed on the country by the UN.
The situation in Yugoslavia is not much different, since the military action by NATO in Kosovo again used DU weapons extensively. The lands under attack too are now covered by a layer of toxic DU-oxides. And there have been increasing reports of similar sicknesses, both in the region and among NATO soldiers who were deployed there.
Lies and Cover-ups
The US Military’s stance has always been that DU poses no real problems health-wise or environmentally. They firmly stand behind their ‘research’ that none of the problems linked with the so-called ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ are in any way related to their use of DU weapons, and its by-products.
Yet, evidence cannot be brushed aside that simply; and the evidence for the medical horrors
of DU keeps on mounting. Despite their claims to the contrary, the US army knew of the dangerous effects of the gaseous form of Uranium as early as the Second World War. In a memo (http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Groves-Memo-Manhattan30oct43.htm) to General Leslie Groves (the Director of the Manhattan Project), some of the senior scientists (such as Nobel Prize winner Compton, and Conant, the president of Harvard University) proposed the development of battlefield weapons “which would behave as radioactive gas”. DU was mentioned specifically for this use stating that the inhalation of it would result in “bronchial irritation coming on in a few hours to a few days”. This was exactly what had happened to Doug Rokke and his crew, as well as thousands of war veterans, and Iraqi civilians.
In March 1991, a week before the end of the Gulf War, in a memo that has now become infamous in the anti-DU circles, Lt. Col M.V. Ziehm of the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Laboratory reminded his colleagues that :
“There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal. [paragraph] If DU penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities, then we should assure their future existence (until something better is developed) through Service/DoD [Department of Defence] proponency. If proponency is garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability. [paragraph] I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after action reports are written.”
Unfortunately, the US and the UK have chosen to give priority to maintaining a powerful weapon rather the health of their troops. For this reason, they have forced themselves to ignore anything that has to do with what could be considered a consequence of DU poisoning. The two groups hit hardest by this are the Iraqi (and Yugoslavian) civilians who are the most unfortunate victims in this sad saga, and the very war veterans who went to Iraq and were not told anything about effects of DU. Not only will the Military not give them any medical attention, but they aren’t even willing to test them for DU poisoning. Nearly a decade after the end of the Gulf War, out of the suspected half a million troops exposed to DU, only 63 individuals were receiving medical care from physicians assigned to the Baltimore, Maryland Department of Veterans Affair DU-program.
All reports, discussing the adverse effects of DU have either been suppressed or filed as secret.
When, some veterans who have been unable to get treatment through the VA or the military they turned to their own personal doctors for a cure. However whenever these doctors have reported that the symptoms shown by their patients cannot be explained by the cocktail of vaccines taken by them before going to war, or by the chemical fumes inhaled on the battlefield, and that the only reason why these symptoms are persisting ten years later is due to the Depleted Uranium deposited in their lungs and blood system, these doctors have been threatened to lose their jobs.
In February of 2004 news came that a report by a health expert, Dr. Keith Braverstock, on the adverse effects of the DU used by American and British Armies had been kept secret by the WHO (World Health Organization). The report stated that the children and adults of Iraq could contract cancer after breathing the dust containing DU. However, according to Dr. Braverstock, the WHO deliberately suppressed the report, even though he was originally commissioned by them to do the research. He is of the belief that if the report had been published in 2001, when it came out, it would have had a strong and negative effect on the US and UK to not limit their use of DU weapons, but to also have to clean up afterwards. Surely this would not have been what they would have liked going into Iraq, in March of 2003. Braverstock suspects the WHO acted the way it did due to the pressure exerted on it by the UN’s nuclear organization the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
So what is the reason that these countries continue to use DU, or rather justify the use of this dangerous material? They say that the material is much cheaper than tungsten which was what they used to employ for armour-piercing munitions. They claim that this gives them an advantage over enemy armour which will reduce our own casualties, while utilizing industrial waste and reducing cost of storage. But what they avoid discussing or fail to acknowledge, is that whereas the cost of DU usage is in fact less than that of tungsten (although not by much), when one factors in the cost of the required clean up, the numbers become astronomically higher. And unfortunately, they do not take into account the cost to the civilian population. They do not mention the fact that while it make give an advantage over enemy armour for now, soon enough other countries will add DU to their arsenal which means that soon it will be American and British soldiers who will be attacked by DU weaponry.
What Should be Done?
There are many people out there who are actively trying to bring awareness about this to the public. Doug Rokke is one of them. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, the founder of the independent non-profit Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) is another who is fighting to shed light on everything that the governments are trying to cover-up. There is the Afghan DU & Recovery Fund (ADURF) directed by Dr. Mohammed Miraki who is trying to bring awareness to DU bombings in Afghanistan after 2001, and to explore the potentials for remedial efforts and clean up to the war-stricken people of that country.
The US, as well as countries who use DU as part of their arsenal, must immediately and officially ban the use of Depleted Uranium and begin the process of dismantling their DU arsenal, and prevent the further proliferation of these weapons.
The US and UK must begin a systematic survey of all their veterans which could have possibly been exposed to DU in the past decade and begin to give them and their families the medical attention that they deserve for sacrificing themselves for their countries, and which they should have received over 10 years ago.
As of February 22, 2004, experts from the UN Environmental program (UNEP) had not been allowed into Iraq to report on the effects of the DU on the battlefield and the cities in Iraq. No reports have been publicized about Afghanistan, where these weapons were once again used.
And finally, a program must be started to locate all areas in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan which have been contaminated by DU due to US and UK militaristic actions, and to begin a thorough clean-up with the help of all other nations. Medical care must be given to the innocent civilians who, out of no fault of their own, were forced to live on a nuclear waste reserve.
