On the
evening of July 25, 1945, President Truman confided to his diary that
the atomic bomb “seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered,
but it can be made the most useful." Twelve days later it was “useful”
in Hiroshima, and again three days later it was “useful” in Nagasaki.
In a
radio speech the day Nagasaki was obliterated, Truman told his American
audience, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped
on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first
attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
The
world took note that as many as 140,000 civilians were killed instantly
or later died of injuries and radiation poisoning at Hiroshima.
To
prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power in the Middle East,
President Bush has tasked the Pentagon with developing plans for a
surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, which is buried
under 75 feet of earth and rock.
One
option on the table is the B61-11, the smallest tactical nuclear weapon
in the U.S. arsenal. The B61 is a variable yield bomb. It can be
calibrated to yield as low as 0.3 kilotons or has high as 170 kilotons
of atomic power. Its maximum yield is ten times that of the bomb
dropped on Hiroshima.
In
keeping with our country’s “humanitarian” effort to minimize civilian
casualties in a nuclear strike, “low” yield tactical nuclear weapons,
such as the B61, have been reclassified by the Pentagon as "safe for
the surrounding civilian population.” Because these weapons are now
considered as “safe” as conventional munitions, their use is at the
discretion of the theater commander. Presidential approval is no longer
needed to start a nuclear war.
But
the world should note that America has been waging a “low yield”
nuclear war that has been killing civilians for almost two decades.
Missing from this war are mushroom clouds and very loud booms. Present
is nuclear fallout with its insidious long-term effects on both
combatant and civilian and its perpetual contamination of land and
water resources.
The
United States began waging nuclear war in Kosovo in 1990 and has
continued through the Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The “nuclear tipped” weapon of choice in each of these theaters of war
has been depleted uranium (DU) munitions.
To
build atomic bombs, and later to fuel nuclear reactors, the United States began
enriching uranium ore mined from the earth’s surface. In the process,
the fissionable isotope Uranium 235, which accounts for 0.7 percent of
the ore, is extracted, while the remaining 99.3 percent of the
unfissionable isotope, Uranium 238, becomes “low yield” radioactive
waste. By the middle of the 1950s there was approximately 600,000 tons
of DU waste being stored at various facilities throughout the United
States.
Depleted
uranium has several properties that attracted the U.S
military-industrial complex. It is cheap and plentiful and 1.7 times
denser than lead, which makes it an idea metal for armor piercing
bullets and tank rounds, armor plating on tanks, and ballast for cruise
missiles and aircraft. Consequently, much of what has been dropped,
launched, fired or destroyed during combat operations involving the
United States and its allies in the last two decades is radioactive and will
remain so for as long as the Earth exists.
When
a “nuclear tipped” DU tank round, containing 10 pounds of uranium,
strikes the armor plating of an enemy tank, it ignites and burns
through to the interior, setting off the tank’s ammunition. The
resulting fire and explosion creates a radioactive dust cloud of
submicroscopic insoluble uranium oxide particles, which is suspended in
the air and ultimately settles on the ground to be inhaled and ingested
by combatant and civilian alike.
Depleted
uranium, though it sounds safe, is still one-third as radioactive as
the original natural uranium, and will lose only half of its
radioactivity in 4.5 billion years -- the age of the solar system.
Depleted uranium emits alpha and gamma radiation, which can be
mutagenic and carcinogenic in the human body and result in cancers and
birth defects. It is a nuclear-plated Trojan Horse that continues to
kill civilians long after the fighting has moved on.
In
April 1991, only one month after the end of the first Gulf War, a
secret report prepared by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
was leaked to The Independent of London. The report described the
hazards of the radioactive dust from expended DU munitions and
destroyed DU-armored tanks getting into the food chain and water
supply. The report warned that 40 tons of radioactive DU debris left on
the battlefield could, in the decades ahead, cause as many as 500,000
civilian deaths.
The
United States left behind 375 tons of DU debris in the Gulf War, 800 tons in
Afghanistan, and 2,200 tons during the current invasion and occupation
of Iraq.
Children
are particularly susceptible to DU poisoning and the resulting cancers
due to a higher absorption rate in their blood, which is instrumental
in building bones and soft tissue. In March 2001, Dr. Aws Albait, a
physician practicing in Baghdad from 1990 to 1999, reported a 12-fold
increase in leukemia and lymphomas in Iraqi children and a six-fold
increase in adults during that decade. In 2004 it was estimated that
children under the age of five accounted for 56 percent of all cancer
patients in Iraq, compared with 13 percent 15 years ago.
It is
not only Iraqi children who are the victims of our perpetual nuclear
war, but American children as well. A Veteran’s Administration study of
251 Gulf War veterans in Mississippi found that 67 percent of their
children born since the war had birth defects and severe illnesses. In
addition, 90,000 veterans suffer from the chronic, debilitating effects
of the Gulf War Syndrome, which many researchers believe may be related
to exposure to DU fallout.
In
1995, a U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute report stated, “If DU
enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical
consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both
chemical and radiological.” Regardless, the Pentagon steadfastly
refuses to conduct studies of its effects on both military personnel
and civilians exposed to DU fallout. In fact, its policy is to silence
those who would sound an alarm.
Dr.
Asaf Durakovic, founder of the Uranium Medical Research Centre and the
former Chief of the Nuclear Sciences Division at the Armed Forces
Radiobiology Research Institute, was fired from his position as Chief
of Nuclear Medicine at the veterans’ hospital in Wilmington, Delaware
when he refused to terminate his research on Gulf War veterans with
symptoms of radiation exposure.
Dr.
Durakovic stated, "The Veterans Administration asked me to lie about
the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body . . .
uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium
does kill . . . [It] is a threat to humanity.”
If
the Bush administration follows through with its plan to attack Iran
with tactical nuclear weapons, they will, in essence, only be adding a
sound track to the silent nuclear war America has been waging for
decades.
But
this perpetual nuclear war is not a clash of ideology or religion, nor
is it to spread democracy or to fight the long war on terrorism. It is
about the immoral war profiteering of the U.S. military-industrial
complex, and the even more morally repugnant dumping of its radioactive
waste in someone else’s backyard. It is about the maiming and killing
of civilians who are not yet born.
Robert
Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear in The Capital Times
in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, and Freethought Today. He can be contacted
at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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