U.S using depleted uranium in Iraq
international |
anti-war / imperialism |
other press 
Thursday September 16, 2004 01:05
by moonwolf
Al Jazeera reports that U.smilitary are using depleted uranium coated weapons in Iraq.
Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2Over 4000 tonnes of DU have been used so far. And elsewhere it has been estimated that the amount of radiation that this can release is 250,000 times the amount released by the Negaski bomb.
I guess that's because only a few kilograms of Uranium were used to make the nuke bomb, where as 4000 tonnes is really 4000 x 1000 kg
Implying 4,000,000/250,000 = 16kg or so for first bomb, which seems about right.
Practically all of this 4000 tonnes will have been turned to a fine dust, made up of trillions x trillions of particles each containing 100s of thousands of Uranium atoms. Any one of this dust particles if injested or otherwise is capable of eventually causing cancer or any one of numerous other ill-health effects.
This is already and going to be a continual huge burden on the population for much of the area of Iraq and surrounding regions for the foreseeable future in terms of 100s or even thousands of years ahead.
The only chance is that this radioactive dust eventually gets buried in the sands and soil, but it will not be a uniform process and will still contaiminate food and water supplies for years.
I've seen reports elsewhere that huge numbers are already suffering the ill-effects of DU.
The military started using DU weapons quite awhile ago, with the specific long-term objective of using them as the bridge to enable the use of full-blown nuclear weapons to be more accepted. DU is used to murky the waters as it were, because when people object to nuclear weapons, such as the new round of 'bunker' busters, the military will be able to claim it's nothing new, since they have been using nuclear weapons for years already in the form of DU. Also the radioactive argument can be challenged, because they will be able to say,: look they are no more radioactive than the use of DU, which is broadly correct, but still no reason to permit their use. So beware folks and watch out for that argument in the near future.
The US aren't alone:
http://www.welt.de/data/2004/09/15/332689.html?search=Sudan&searchHILI=1
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