Nearly half the bombing survivors studied had an active postdisaster psychiatric disorder, and full criteria for PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder] were met by one third of the survivors. PTSD symptoms were nearly universal, especially symptoms of intrusive reexperience and hyperarousal. 4

Martin Kelly, publisher of a nonviolence website:

We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.

CHAPTER 12 : Depleted Uranium

The United States, wrote international environmental activist Dr. Helen Caldicott several years ago, has conducted two nuclear wars. The first against Japan in 1945, the second in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991.

We can now add a third. Yugoslavia in 1999.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the production of enriched fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons. Its used in the manufacture of armaments such as tank cartridges, bombs, rockets and missiles.

Because DU is denser than steel, shells containing it are capable of drilling a hole through the strongest of tank armors. But depleted uranium does have a drawback-its radioactive. And like all heavy metals, uranium is chemically toxic. Upon impact with a target, DU aerosolizes into a fine mist of particles, which can be inhaled or ingested and then trapped in the lungs, the kidneys or elsewhere in the body. This can lead to lung cancer, bone cancer, kidney disease, genetic defects and other serious medical problems. Or a person can be hit by DU shrapnel, and have a chunk of radioactive metal imbedded in their insides. One atomic scientist has asserted that DU particles thrown into the air by the rounds impact, or by resultant fires and explosions, can be carried downwind for 25 miles or more.1

In the Gulf War, countless Iraqi and American soldiers breathed in the deadly DU dust, the product of tens of thousands of DU rounds fired by US aircraft and tanks. A study by the Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Association revealed that out of 10,051 Gulf War veterans who have reported mysterious illnesses, 82 percent had entered captured enemy vehicles, the main targets of DU weapons.

They did so in full innocence of even the existence of DU, let alone its danger.2

In 1991, a report of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that there was enough DU radioactive and toxic rubble left behind in Kuwait and southern Iraq to cause 500,000 deaths through increased cancer rates. This is not a realistic calculation because for it to happen all the DU munitions would have to be pulverized into dust and half a million people would have to line up in the desert and inhale equal quantities. But the fact remains that the DU debris was left lying there, in various states of smash-up, subject to any mishap, and with surface radioactivity that will last forever. Moreover, if DU gets into the food chain or water, the potential health problems will be multiplied.3

And now it may well be in the soil, the ground water, the air and the lungs of Yugoslavia.

In 1995, Iraqi health officials reported alarmingly high increases in rare and unknown diseases, primarily in children, and presented a study of this state of affairs to the United Nations. The increases occurred in leukemia, carcinoma, cancers of the lung and digestive system, lateterm miscarriages, congenital diseases, and deformities in fetuses, such as anencephaly (absence of a brain), and fused fingers and toes, not unlike those found in the babies of Gulf War veterans. The Austrian president of the International Yellow Cross, Dr. Siegwart Gunther, stated that there was one significant common denominator: the allies use of depleted uranium in the bombing of Iraq.4

In Scotland as well, DU has been linked to a leukemia cluster around the Ministry of Defense firing range at Dundrennan, near the Solway Firth. Communities close to the range, where 7,000 shells have been tested since 1983, reportedly show the highest rate of childhood leukemia in the UK.5

Victims at home

The United States radiates and poisons its own as well. In training exercises, DU is dropped on the island of San Clemente off the California coast, and perhaps only on some future day will we realize what the effects were of what drifted across to the mainland by air and sea. That island is at least uninhabited, unlike the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico, where over 9,000 American citizens dwell Theyve had to endure almost 60 years of aerial target practice and war games, including the dropping of napalm, and in recent years, depleted uranium shells. Puerto Rican activists claim that Vieques has become contaminated with radioactivity, which contributes to a cancer rate among the islands inhabitants that is twice the national average. Studies have in fact shown that Vieques cancer rate is by far the highest of any of Puerto Ricos 78 municipalities. 6 Moreover, the islands drinking water has reportedly been contaminated by the chemical soup formed by the myriad pieces of ordnance that have fallen from the sky over the years; a civilian security guard was killed and four others were wounded in April 1999 by a bomb that missed its mark by three miles; the landscape is littered with bomb and shell casings, including some that the US Navy warns are still live; a container with three unexploded anti-tank rockets (presumably DU-tipped) was found in a civilian sector in 1997; and, amongst other mishaps, four years earlier five 500-pound bombs were dropped, and exploded, one-and-a-half miles from civilian homes. 7

In response to rising protests, US military officials told members of the Puerto Rico Senate that they couldnt conduct the exercises on the US East Coast because population centers were too close. For obvious reasons, this remark served only to increase the rage of many in the country.8 President Clinton, however, showed a bit more sensitivity. He announced that the Navy will abandon the Vieques bombing range. Within five years.9 Subsequently, Washington offered $40 million in aid to the island, and a further $50 million if the people, in a scheduled referendum, would vote, in effect, to stop putting their health and safety ahead of national security .

And while we were all quietly and unconsciously living our lives these past decades, the military-industrial complex was quietly paying off members of Congress and state legislatures, and anyone else who could wink and nod, to allow the acquisition of large tracts of public land, primarily in western states, and permit end-runs around existing environmental and other laws, as well as pesky environmental activists. These hundreds of thousands of acres were then turned into depleted-uranium-weapons testing grounds in California, Nevada, Washington, New Mexico and other states.

In New Mexico, open-air testing of DU has been going on in some parts since 1950. Los Alamos National Laboratory, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque-these are some of the famous institutions that blast DU munitions into mountains and soil, contaminating the ground, water and air; at the same time, using their not-inconsiderable influence to convince the states citizens that-even though they admit the contamination-radiation levels are no more than the proverbial background level , or within EPA safety levels, etc. As the old saying goes, just dont breathe the air or drink the water. And dont raise your babies anywhere nearby.

In Socorro, the residents did not know until 1986 that DU testing had been taking place since 1972 less than two miles from the town square, which is downwind from the proving grounds. Over the years, there have been a few scattered surveys and anecdotal evidence of a high incidence of the congenital birth defect hydrocephalus, but the year 1999 saw an increasing movement of Socorro citizens demanding broad epidemiological and contamination surveys of the area. 10

In April 1995, French general and military author Pierre-Marie Gallois observed, If we equip these tanks with these sorts of munitions [DU], that means that chemical-nuclear war is morally allowable. 11 And legally allowable as well, perhaps, inasmuch as the United States is establishing precedents, albeit by the law of force rather than the force of law, as well as facilitating other prec-edents-Washington is doing a thriving business selling DU. As of late 1996, the Pentagon had already sold DU ammunition to Thailand, Taiwan, Bahrain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Korea, Turkey, Kuwait and other countries.12