The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Robert Weitzel: Nuclear war has been happening under our noses
By Robert Weitzel
March 16, 2007
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.
In keeping with our country's "humanitarian" effort to minimize civilian casualties, "low" yield tactical nuclear weapons, such as the B61, have been reclassified by the Pentagon as "safe for the surrounding civilian population," while its 2005 "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" allows theater commanders to authorize a nuclear strike.
But the world should note that America has been waging a "low yield" nuclear war 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 combatants and civilians 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 munitions.
To build atomic bombs, and later to fuel nuclear reactors, the U.S. 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 were approximately 600,000 tons of depleted uranium 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 ideal 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 U.S. in the last two decades is radioactive and will remain so for as long as the Earth exists.
When a "nuclear-tipped" depleted uranium tank round, containing 10 pounds of uranium, strikes a target, the resulting explosion and fire creates a radioactive cloud of submicroscopic insoluble uranium oxide particles, which ultimately settle on the ground to be inhaled and ingested by combatants and civilians alike.
Depleted uranium is still one-third as radioactive as the original natural uranium. It 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 depleted uranium munitions getting into the food chain and water supply. The report warned that 40 tons of radioactive depleted uranium debris left on the battlefield could, in the decades ahead, cause as many as 500,000 civilian deaths.
The U.S. left behind 375 tons of depleted uranium debris in the Gulf War, 800 tons in Afghanistan, and 2,200 tons during the current invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Whatever "timetable" John or Hillary or whomever have for getting us out of Iraq, in truth we'll never be out of Iraq. Our teratogenic debris will be there for decades causing disease. Our returning vets will be developing strange cancers and having weird reproductive problems. The current dead and wounded will be joined by more victims for decades to come.