Gulf War Syndrome II About to Break

[Hard Idle]

Blackmail by WMD

It will take some time to catch up on this thread and cover the links and research provided, but I it's certainly worth keeping in play. As with Agent Orange, the facts will trickle out while the denials continue in the hope that the victims just die out quietly. DU must be brought up again and again, especially since the crusaders who've made weapons of mass destruction such a buzzword are in fact the people who have used such weapons most often.

I believe that too much emphasis is placed on the issue of radioactivity and not enough on heavy metal poisoning. While the radiation effects vary widely from one individual to another, the damage to people, crops & water by the heavy element retention from DU dust is more universal and proveable.

Since the penetrative powers of DU can be duplicated with tungsten, the real reason for it's continued use is clearly intimidation. A person might choose to fight and risk one's own life. But when that means becoming a vessle for poisoning your own family, and exposing your whole country to a slow poison, it must eat away at resolve.

 

[WoodPeckr]

U.S. wants Agent Orange suit dismissed

Hard Idle

Funny you should mention Agent Orange. It seems Agent Orange is back in the news.
Below is an update on that lingering issue that many in the MI Complex would like to fade away along with DU munitions issue:

U.S. wants Agent Orange suit dismissed

By William Glaberson
The New York Times

03/01/05 "IHT" - - NEW YORK The U.S. Justice Department is urging a federal judge in New York to dismiss a lawsuit involving one of the most contentious issues of the Vietnam War: the use of the defoliant, Agent Orange.

The civil suit, filed last year on behalf of millions of Vietnamese, claimed that American chemical companies had committed war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, a highly toxic substance.

The suit seeks what could be billions of dollars of damages from the companies and the environmental cleanup of Vietnam.

In preparation for legal arguments scheduled for Monday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, Justice Department lawyers filed a brief in January that described the suit as a threat to the president's power to wage war and an effort at a "breathtaking expansion" of the powers of federal courts.

Though the case drew little attention when it was first filed, it has become an important test of the reach of American courts - drawing worldwide interest and setting off a fierce debate among international law experts.

The government's filing said that, if the claims were accepted, they would "open the courthouse doors of the American legal system for former enemy nationals and soldiers claiming to have been harmed by the United States Armed Forces" during war.

One of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Constantine Kokkoris, said that the Justice Department's argument was misplaced because the government had not been sued in the case. He said the lawsuit raised questions about the conduct of the corporations that were limited to their supplying what he called contaminated herbicide.

The chemical companies argued that they had produced Agent Orange following government specifications and that its use in Vietnam was necessary to protect American soldiers. They also argued that there is no clear link between exposure to Agent Orange and the health problems attributed to it.

During a hearing last March, Judge Jack Weinstein of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn said the case raised important issues and "has to go forward seriously," suggesting that it might eventually need to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

He asked whether precedents concerning the treatment of makers of Zyklon B, the hydrogen cyanide gas used in Nazi death camps, might be applicable. After World War II, two manufacturers of Zyklon B were convicted of war crimes and executed.

Agent Orange was widely used in Vietnam. Its use was discontinued in 1971; but it has survived as a confounding legal issue. In 1984, after years of court battles, seven American chemical companies paid $180 million to settle a class action suit by American Vietnam War veterans, who claimed that Agent Orange caused cancer, birth defects and other health problems.

Weinstein, who also presided over those cases, said at the time that the veterans would have difficulty proving a link between their health problems and Agent Orange. Some scientists say the link would be easier to prove today.

Because of the federal government's legal immunity, it was not part of the 1984 settlement and was not named as a defendant in the new suit on behalf of the Vietnamese.

Thousands of pages of legal arguments have been filed in preparation for the arguments on Monday. International law experts have argued on both sides on the central issue: whether Agent Orange should be considered a "poison" that was barred during warfare by international law.

George Fletcher, an international law professor at Columbia University wrote that: "in warfare it is permissible 'to stand and deliver' - to look the enemy squarely in the eye and shoot him - but not to look the other way and then use dioxin" to poison his food, land and water.

Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/28/news/orange.html

 

[WoodPeckr]

Documentation of DU Exposure Appearing

Revived this thread as more is coming to light on the after effects of DU.
As expected, medical records are being kept and they show alarming results in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The use of depleted uranium weapons by the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is as horrific a crime against humanity as there ever could be. This one crime takes its ghastly toll not just on the existing humanity, but successive generations continue to suffer for eons to come. A look here (too graphic, be warned) would confirm that the hideous beginning has already been made.

According to recent studies, the rate of birth defects, after increasing ten-fold from 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001, is soaring further. There have been 650 cases of birth deformities in total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals in Iraq. That is a 20% increase from the previous regime.

Also, a dreadful increase was registered in the rate of cancer among children under the age of 15 in southern Iraq from 1976 to 1999. In the province of Basra, the occurrence of cancer of all types rose by 242 percent, while the rate of leukemia among children rose 100 percent. Children living in the area were falling ill with cancer at the rate of 10.1 per 100,000. In districts where the use of DU had been the most concentrated, the rate rose to 13.2 per 100,000. Appalling as these results were then, the last six years have witnessed a further rise in the number of children under 15 falling ill with cancer in Iraq. The rate has now reached 22.4 per 100,000, more than five times the 1990 rate of 3.98 per 100,000.

The medical crisis is being directly blamed on the widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the US and British forces in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the even greater use of DU during the 2003 invasion.

According to a August 2002 report by the UN sub commission, laws which are violated by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9218.htm

 

[WoodPeckr]

Heads roll at Veterans Administration

Just another scandal that is getting harder to contain/coverup.....

Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed

by Bob Nichols - 12/21/05

Project Censored Award Winner

Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war.

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.

Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”

Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.”

He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

“The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” wrote Bernklau. “He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!”

“Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that ‘Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans,” said Berklau.

“The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as ‘spectacular … and a matter of concern!’”

When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for “destroying things and killing people,” Fulk was more specific: “I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!”

Principi could not be reached for comment prior to deadline.

References

1. Depleted uranium: “Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: A death sentence here and abroad” by Leuren Moret, http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml.

2. Veterans for Constitutional Law, 112 Jefferson Ave., Port Jefferson NY 11777, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director, (516) 474-4261, fax 516-474-1968.

3. Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter. Email Gary Kohls, gkohls@cpinternet.com, with “Subscribe” in the subject line.

Email Bob Nichols at bobnichols@cox.net.

http://www.sfbayview.com/012605/headsroll012605.shtml

 

[Questor]

The implications of the use of DU are so horrific that they will continue to be denied for as long as possible. As the death count of American soldiers continues to grow, it will be harder and harder for the American public to live in Fantasy Land with regard to this issue.