Subject: [du-list]
Radioactive Bombs Rain Down on Asia
Date:
Thu, 21 Mar 2002 19:45:05 -0800
From:
"Piotr Bein" <piotr.bein@imag.net>
To: <du-list@yahoogroups.com>, <du-watch@yahoogroups.com>
The Village Voice 20-26
March, 20002
<http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0212/ridgeway.php>
Radioactive Bombs Rain Down
on Asia
Glowing Reports
by James Ridgeway
President Bush may have frightened
most of America with big talk
about nuclear war, but people
in Afghanistan and Pakistan think they've
already been nuked by depleted-uranium
(DU) bombs.
"The use of reprocessed nuclear
waste in the U.S. air strikes
against the Taliban poses
a serious risk of radiation poisoning to
the human lives in Afghanistan
and Pakistan," said the Pakistan Weekly
Independent last November.
Added Dawn, Pakistan's big English-language
paper, on November 12: "A
leading military expert told Dawn that since
October 7 the United States
Air Force has been raining down depleted
uranium shells at targets
inside Afghanistan, especially against the
Taliban front lines in the
north. . . . 'There is widespread radiation
in many areas that could
adversely affect tens and thousands of people
in the two countries for
generations to come,' he said."
The U.S. reportedly employed
munitions containing depleted
uranium during the Gulf
War in 1991 and more recently during
NATO's campaign in the Balkans
and in Vieques, as part of
military exercises. In Afghanistan,
there have been reports of DU in
bunker bombs and other munitions;
some contain a "mystery" metal,
either tungsten (most of
which comes from China) or depleted uranium.
A 1994 report to Congress
by the secretary of the army said, "Like
naturally occurring uranium,
DU has toxicological and radiological
health risks." The report
goes on to say that "in combat, DU wound
contamination and fragment
implantation become more significant
pathways of entry. Based
on the lessons learned in Desert Storm, the
army is developing procedures
to better manage the internal exposure
potential for DU during
combat."
Carl Conetta, co-director
of the Project on Defense Alternatives in
Washington, told the Voice
that while experts argue, it seems possible
that depleted uranium inhaled
by a child could result in cancers later
in life. He, too, suspected
that hundreds of DU bombs are being used.
He noted that chances are
that depleted uranium is being used, if only
because it's cheaper than
tungsten.
But who's using it? In January
2001, a French TV documentary
reported that the DU in
munitions may come from a contaminated
reprocessing plant in Paducah,
Kentucky. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld told a French
publication in January that the U.S. had
found radiation in Afghanistan—but
that it was from DU warheads
belonging to Al Qaeda. On
Monday a spokesperson for the U.S. Central
Command said that it has
"not used depleted uranium in Afghanistan."
Dai Williams, a DU researcher,
has told reporters that if Al Qaeda is
responsible, there may be
even more of a risk: That could mean the DU
might have come from Russia,
and it could be even dirtier than that
from Paducah.
Links:
4. Janes report on Air and Missile strikes in the Afghan war
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jdw/jdw011007_1_n.shtml
5. FAS links to guided missile and bomb specifications:
http://www.fas.org/man/index.html
6. CDI Terrorism Project Action Update:
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/actionupdate.cfm
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