The US and UK deploy new uranium weaponsTue Aug 22, 2006 13:31
Why don't you show pictures of children and women, in Lebanon, who were the victims of Israeli bombs containing depleted uranium; the same used by the US in Iraq?
Aubrac@aol.com
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The US and UK deploy new uranium weapons contaminating Iraq’s environment,
civilians and the Coalition’s own troops
In September/October 2003, five months after the cessation of the Shock and Awe bombing campaign and the Rapid Dominance ground force advance into Iraq, the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) sent in a team to collect biological and environmental samples, conduct a public health survey, and a field radiation survey. UMRC’s objective for this field research is to determine the extent and nature of radiological contamination derived from the deployment of coalition weapons containing uranium. UMRC was guided by Dr. M. Al Shaickly. Dr. Shaickly and the UMRC staff, led by Tedd Weyman , traveled with Dr. Siegwart-Horst Guenther to survey Operation Iraqi Freedom battlefields in Baghdad and Al Basra. Dr. Guenther also conducted an independent survey of Iraqi hospitals and patients, interviewing physicians and surveying the medical effects and symptomotologies of both Gulf War I and the 2003 Iraq War of civilian patients coincidentally exposed to battlefield contaminants and the fallout of US and UK bombs and missiles.
The film, “The Doctor, Depleted Uranium and the Sick Children”, filmed in the field and produced by Frieder Wagner, chronicles aspects of Dr. Guenther’s and UMRC’s combined and independent activities during their field visit. It also contains an interview with and excerpts of a meeting between Dr. Guenther and Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC’s International Director of Research. Dr. Guenther was the first physician to identify uranium contamination in Iraqis and their environment after Gulf War I. Dr. Durakovic first brought to the attention of the professional medical community and the
NATO defence departments, Depleted Uranium contamination in US, UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans.
The recent Iraqi field samples collected by UMRC were analysed by plasma mass spectrometer by Dr Axel Gerdes, Institute of Petrology and Geochemistry, JW Goethe University, Frankfurt. The human and environmental samples have been found to contain Depleted Uranium and abnormally high levels of the artificial transuranic isotope, 236U. The isotope composition of Depleted Uranium found in civilians as well as in surface soils and water courses shows the weapons used in Iraq were manufactured from two and perhaps three different metallurgical sources (stockpiles of uranium metals). The soil and water samples indicate DU was deployed in both mechanized battlefields and urban neighborhoods where aerial bombing took place.
The purity and quantities (abundances) of the Depleted Uranium found in the samples of soils taken from US- and UK-led battlefields are some of the highest levels published since UMRC and others began independent investigations into the use of radioactive dispersion weapons in 1991 following Operation Desert Storm. The abundances of uranium in water samples taken from a fresh water supply tank and from a run-off catchbasin in Al Basra are much higher than published results for DU levels in water samples attributed to the by-products of uranium weapons in either the Balkans or Iraq.
Biological samples taken from Iraqi civilians present during the Shock and Awe bombing campaign against downtown Baghdad and its government and telecommunications facilities are positive for Depleted Uranium. It is not possible to know the source of inner-city civilian contamination as virtually the entire city is contaminated. Unlike biological and environmental samples collected in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, the team did not find deposits of Non Depleted Uranium. A biological sample taken from one Al Basra citizen, who was exposed to the urban bombing campaign in that city, has an unusual composition of isotopes showing an enriched, as opposed to a depleted or natural, ratio of 235U/238U. The enriched uranium was found in a person exposed to and living adjacent to the same battlefield led by the British Desert Rats, south of Al Basra. According to the DUOB (Depleted Uranium Oversight Board) of the UK Ministry of Defence, urine samples taken from members of the UK 1st Armored Division that fought the approach to Al Basra and occupied the city are excreting non-depleted uranium several hundreds of times the British biological norm. Smaller total uranium levels positive for DU have also been identified by the MOD in the UK forces that served in the Az Zubair – Basra – Shat Al Arabi area.
Viewers will see in the film, evidence of a new class of uranium weapons. The new weapons identified by their unique ballistic signature in the field are high explosive, anti-tank and bunker-defeat warheads (as distinguished from bunker-buster bombs). One example can be seen in the film where a high level of radioactivity is detected on the surface armor of an Iraqi tank displaying unusual spallation, surface craters and holes forged through the hull. The ballistics of this warhead is unlike the clean penetration channels of “inert DU kinetic energy penetrators” (non-explosive types) shown in other examples throughout the film.
The US and the UK have not yet publicly admitted to the use of uranium in their armor and bunker defeat warheads, which are a relatively unknown class of warheads called “explosively-loaded penetrators”. Two new types of explosively-loaded penetrators using uranium have been identified in Iraq: (1) explosively-formed penetrators; and, (2) shaped charge penetrators. The ballistic effects of the EFP-type can be seen in the film on a tank inspected by Dr Guenther. Similar radioactive and ballistic effects were logged separately by UMRC showing the use of uranium in explosively-formed penetrators along with the better known inert depleted uranium penetrators in both US and the UK battlefields.
UMRC’s biological samples show that some civilians exposed to battlefields and remaining in the bombed urban areas are contaminated with Depleted Uranium, which they were continuing to excrete in urine five months after the end of the major hostilities. Surface soils and water exposed to the uranium weapons are so highly contaminated that UMRC’s field team became contaminated by inhalation of Depleted Uranium during their field survey activities. UMRC has also identified Depleted Uranium contamination in US troops of the 442 Military Police Unit, stationed in As Samawah, the location abandoned by the Dutch forces because field readings indicated elevated radioactivity levels. Subsequently the Japanese Defence Forces have taken over the Coalition’s duties at As Samawah.
The laboratory results from the soils’ samples collected in Iraq by UMRC have been peer reviewed and presented at the 2004 Health Physics Society Annual Conference, July 2004. The biological sample results have been peer reviewed and will be published in 2004. Details of these results following their presentations at scientific conferences and publishing are made available in conference poster presentation format at http://www.umrc.net
Tedd Weyman
Deputy Director
Uranium Medical Research Centre
http://www.umrc.net
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CLICK: Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/du.htm
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