[Note: As a Nation Institute Fellow, I was amused by the following from a reader commenting on my last dispatch, which included a piece by George McGovern from the Nation Magazine. “The scariest thing about this group of articles is that a Democratic presidential candidate is reduced to writing for the Nation.” Somehow, this reminded me that I perhaps offer too little credit to others for tomdispatch. I’m certainly something of a one-man band, but I’m also incapable of reading more than a certain amount each day and leading anything like a life as well. So I rely first of all on the people who staff websites like Antiwar.com, Znet, The War in Context, History News Network and others I’ve linked to (at the right of the screen at www.tomdispatch.com), and who, without knowing it, sort through so much material for me. No less important I rely on all those of you who send in the e-addresses of remarkable articles I would otherwise never stumble across. You know who you are and I thank you enormously. By the way, the e-mail-a-friend button, which only worked erratically last week, now seems to be ready to roll.]
So far, here’s the only example I’ve come across of the soldiers of either side in this three-week old war using chemical warfare suits. It’s from a March 31 Guardian piece by Audrey Gillian, “‘I never want to hear that sound again’: Five British soldiers have died under ‘friendly fire'”:
“The troops could do nothing but evacuate the casualties and leave the gunner’s body behind. When daylight came, the squadron leader, a padre and a number of the troops returned to the scene to bring the body out. Chemical warfare suits had to be worn because of the threat from the depleted uranium used in the American weapons. A remembrance service yesterday was interrupted by the thuds of incoming Iraqi artillery and the padre saying, “And the Lord said, oh, that was a bit close, get down.”
The Pentagon, which once again is using depleted-uranium sheathed weaponry widely, denies that there are any dangers in depleted uranium or DU, which both armors tanks against attack and hardens shells and warheads for better penetration of targets. (Obviously, the Brits in the incident above as well as Gulf War I veterans don’t believe the Pentagon on this issue.) It’s true that definitive scientific studies of DU may not be completed for years, or for all I know, decades. In the meantime, as the Los Angeles Times op-ed below indicates, DU weapons in essence are tiny “dirty bombs” and unlike in the first Gulf War where the fighting took place largely in the desert areas of Kuwait and Iraq, in Gulf War II depleted uranium weapons are undoubtedly being widely used in the ground fighting in Iraq’s cities.
This is a reminder that weapons of mass destruction or mass contamination lie in the eye of the beholder – or perhaps I mean in the power of the definer. It is certainly a remarkable development that, after so many post-1945 decades in which atomic weaponry proved unusable, the Pentagon has in the last decade finally managed to slip under the radar screen and create the first radioactive battlefields.
It is worth remembering that the army of 100,000-plus young men and women who will occupy Iraq for who knows how long – and of course the Iraqis who have nowhere else to go – will all be putting their health on the line so that we can create a certain degree of greater target penetration with our weaponry. As the LA Times piece suggests, the famed epitaph for the Punic Wars might apply: “They made a desolation and called it Peace.”
Our response? According to Col. James Naughton, director of munitions for the U.S. Army Materiel Command, quoted in a recent article, Depleted Uranium Shells Propaganda Target by Iraqis in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The Iraqis tell us terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time.They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them — OK? There’s no doubt that DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks”
The Pentagon, which once again is using depleted-uranium sheathed weaponry widely, denies that there are any dangers in depleted uranium or DU, which both armors tanks against attack and hardens shells and warheads for better penetration of targets. (Obviously, the Brits in the incident above as well as Gulf War I veterans don’t believe the Pentagon on this issue.) It’s true that definitive scientific studies of DU may not be completed for years, or for all I know, decades. In the meantime, as the Los Angeles Times op-ed below indicates, DU weapons in essence are tiny “dirty bombs” and unlike in the first Gulf War where the fighting took place largely in the desert areas of Kuwait and Iraq, in Gulf War II depleted uranium weapons are undoubtedly being widely used in the ground fighting in Iraq’s cities.
This is a reminder that weapons of mass destruction or mass contamination lie in the eye of the beholder – or perhaps I mean in the power of the definer. It is certainly a remarkable development that, after so many post-1945 decades in which atomic weaponry proved unusable, the Pentagon has in the last decade finally managed to slip under the radar screen and create the first radioactive battlefields.
It is worth remembering that the army of 100,000-plus young men and women who will occupy Iraq for who knows how long – and of course the Iraqis who have nowhere else to go – will all be putting their health on the line so that we can create a certain degree of greater target penetration with our weaponry. As the LA Times piece suggests, the famed epitaph for the Punic Wars might apply: “They made a desolation and called it Peace.”
Our response? According to Col. James Naughton, director of munitions for the U.S. Army Materiel Command, quoted in a recent article, Depleted Uranium Shells Propaganda Target by Iraqis in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The Iraqis tell us terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time.They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them — OK? There’s no doubt that DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks”
“How likely is it that DU would be used in cities?” the article asks and Naughton answers,” The only reason we would be using it in an urban environment is if our opponents take their tanks into an urban environment and we have to kill themSo is it likely? That’s a tactical choice, and if our opponents take that tactical choice, you could see that activity.”
I include as well as piece on DU weaponry from Scotland and a piece from the Christian Science Monitor by a former US Navy captain who was once a “custodian” of nuclear weapons at sea on the global nuclear battlefield and the increasing dangers of “atomic signaling” in a proliferating world. Tom
Uranium Warheads May Leave Both Sides a Legacy of Death for Decades
By Susanna Hecht
The Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2003Although the potential human cost of the war with Iraq is obvious, not many people are aware of a hidden risk that may haunt us for years.
Of the 504,047 eligible veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, about 29% are now considered disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the highest rate of disability for any modern war. And most are not disabled because of wounds.
These guys were rough, tough, buff 20-year-olds a decade ago. The vast majority are ill because of a complex of debilities known as the Gulf War syndrome.
These vets were exposed to toxic material from both sides, including numerous chemicals, fumes and weird experimental vaccines. But the largest number of the more than half a million troops eligible for VA benefits — 436,000 — lived for months in areas of the Middle Eastern desert that had been contaminated with depleted uranium.
Susanna Hecht is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Social Research at UCLA. She is head of the environmental analysis and policy program.
US forces’ use of depleted uranium weapons is ‘illegal’
By Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor
The Glasgow Sunday Herald
March 30, 2003British and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.
DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon’s depleted uranium project — a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up — said use of DU was a ‘war crime’.
Rokke said: ‘There is a moral point to be made here. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction — yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves.’ He added: ‘Such double-standards are repellent.’
To read more MacKay click here
Listen to the nuclear chatter
The noise of war distracts attention from dangerous escalation of threats.
By Larry Seaquist
The Christian Science Monitor
April 3, 2003GIG HARBOR, WASH. – As we immerse ourselves in the cacophony of military operations in Iraq, let us not forget to keep an ear cocked for the dangerous nuclear wrangling in the background.
Apparently wishing to put a lid on the Korean problem while dealing with Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon last month made a show of flying two dozen nuclear bombers forward to the Pacific island of Guam. The North Koreans responded promptly, shooting an old, nonnuclear missile on a “test flight” into their own coastal waters. They’d done the same two weeks earlier on the news of the US “warning order” telling the bombers to get ready. By twice choosing not to lob a newer weapon over the heads of the Japanese on a trajectory toward the US as they had last year, the North Korean regime seemed to suggest a degree of restraint.
Larry Seaquist, a former US Navy warship captain, has been the custodian of nuclear weapons at sea and a contributor to nuclear deterrence strategy in the Pentagon.