The following is mirrored from its source at:
http://www.willthomas.net/invadinghiroshima.htm


                             INVADING HIROSHIMA
                             by William Thomas
                              4 February 2003
                              Lifeboatnews.com


     American and British troops entering Iraq are advised to bandage
     all cuts, keep their overheated rubber suits zipped tight, and
     stop breathing. It is dust, not bullets, that will likely pose the
     most lethal consequences to their invasion of Iraq.

     American military strategist Harlan Ullman will not be
     accompanying them. But Ullman is excited about seeing his plan for
     mass murder enacted. Only weeks away from a "live-fire"
     demonstration over the streets of Iraq's biggest cities. Ullman
     compares hundreds of cruise missiles hitting Baghdad to moments of
     total devastation directed at another war-ravaged population half
     a century before.

     "You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear
     weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes,"
     Ullman boasts. [The Sun-Herald, Jan. 26 2003]

     Intended as a lesson for a worldwide audience, the Pentagon says
     its plan is intended to shatter Iraq "physically, emotionally and
     psychologically" by raining down on its people in two days more
     than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40
     days of Desert Storm. The World Health Organisation estimates that
     "as many as 500,000 people could require treatment as a result of
     direct and indirect injuries" from this unprecedented onslaught or
     radioactive high-explosives. [The Mirror, Jan 29, 2003]

     In the annals of CNN, Time and similar mass media war pornography,
     the neighborhood-busting cruise missile is touted as a "smart"
     munition, able to strike infant formula factories with robotic
     pinpoint accuracy. But as all home computer users know, computers
     malfunction constantly, while carrying out the simplest tasks.

     In fact, Washington warmongers with oil and empire in their eyes
     must fire massive waves of missiles at Iraq's teeming cities in
     order to "take out" sporadically-functioning power stations,
     sewage and water purification plants -- and bring hundreds of
     thousands of already suffering families to their knees.

     Repeatedly blasted in 1991 -- and then denied spare parts under
     U.S. and British-imposed sanctions in order to deliberately cause
     waterborne epidemics -- these key city facilities are located in
     crowded neighborhoods.

     Extensive experimentation against urban centers in Bosnia, Libya,
     Afghanistan and Iraq have shown cruise missiles to be wildly
     inaccurate. Military insider Al Martin recalls a U.S. general
     laughing during Desert Storm at the inaccuracy of American cruise
     missiles. "The defense contractors will get paid as long as the
     things go off and hit the right country," the general said.

     The solution to inaccuracy is to fire 800 missiles at a few
     hard-to-miss cities in Iraq. As a Pentagon official boasted to CBS
     News, "The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never
     been contemplated before. There will not be a safe place in
     Baghdad."

     "The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been
     contemplated before," a Pentagon official told CBS News. "The
     sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been
     contemplated before. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad."

     It's not safe now! With a postwar count of perhaps 650,000 corpses
     from lingering wounds, illness and DU exposure, Iraq has already
     suffered more radiation deaths than the 130,000 corpses produced
     at Hiroshima through American know-how and acute radiation
     exposure. [UN and Japanese figures]

     Much of Iraq remains radiologically "hot" following undeclared
     nuclear attacks that have randomly distributed lethal air and
     food-borne radiation -- without any mushroom clouds. The same type
     of Depleted Uranium-tipped cruise missiles that have carried
     cancer into Bosnia and Afghanistan will only add fresh "rems" to
     the radioactive dust of this distant desert land. Even if
     resistance collapses along with already tortured and teetering
     cities, allied forces face the specter of severe casualties from
     the lethal legacy of their last munitions testing on Iraq.

     "If your son or daughter is in the military today, opposition from
     the hapless Iraqi army is not the greatest threat," warns Depleted
     Uranium (DU) investigator John Kaminski. "In southern Iraq,
     American soldiers will be sent into battle with inadequate
     protections against a proven health hazard that will almost
     certainly doom them to lives diminished by a variety of cancers
     caused by uranium 238, which means they may transmit these
     illnesses to their family and friends -- and birth defects to
     their children -- when and if they return home."

     JUST A DAB WILL DU YOU

     DU shells retain 60% of the radioactivity of unspent "hot"
     uranium. Radiobiologist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that "it can be
     breathed in by anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the
     sick."

     A speck of Uranium-238 can cause cancer. The Pentagon admits to
     firing 320 tons of DU into Iraq's farms and neighborhoods during
     Desert Storm. Greenpeace puts the figure at more than 800 tons.

     Foremost expert on radiation sickness, Dr. Helen Caldicott
     explains that DU dust is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting
     a heavy alpha particle that can lodge in open wounds, the lungs or
     the stomach depending on its pathways of ingestion.

     DU shells retain 60% of the radioactivity of unspent "hot"
     uranium. As Caldicott comments, Pentagon "studies prior to Desert
     Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield
     conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney
     damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders,
     chromosomal damage and birth defects." [San Francisco Chronicle,
     Oct. 10, 2002]

     The results are cancers in the lungs, bones, blood or kidneys.
     These devastating diseases are already surfacing in Afghanistan
     and Bosnia, while continuing to decimate the survivors of genocide
     in Iraq. With a half-life of 4.5 million years, if not buried by
     custom-equipped decontamination teams, Caldicott says that
     dust-laden winds in Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and Afghanistan "will
     remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time." [San
     Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 10, 2002]

     In his story on "Going Nuclear in Iraq", Ramzi Kysia interviewed
     Dr. Alim Abdul-Hamid at a major medical college in Baghdad. The
     dean of medicine says he has "plenty of firsthand experience with
     Iraq's unprecedented plague of cancers and birth defects."

     Dr. Abdul-Hamid is seeing breast cancer among women in their 20s.
     "In their 20s!" he repeats. "There are increased incidences of
     colon cancer, thyroid cancer -- in addition to, of course,
     leukemias and lymphomas." [Counterpunch, Dec. 28, 2001]

     TARGETING CHILDREN

     Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of
     radiation than adults. Today more than half of all cancers in Iraq
     are occurring among children under the age of five.

     Since the misnamed "end" of an ongoing Gulf War, helpless
     pediatricians in Basra have watched childhood leukemia and cancer
     increase up to 12-times peacetime rates. Hospitals throughout Iraq
     have reported as much as a 10-fold increase in birth defects since
     cities and countryside were strafed with radioactive munitions.

     Pointing to a map of Basra, Dr. Abdul-Hamid demonstrated the
     dose-response relationship between DU and cancers, saying, "Areas
     which have got the higher level of background radiation have
     higher levels of cancers."

     "GRUNTS EAT URANIUM!"

     Boot camp grads preparing to occupy Iraq could chant cadence with
     this catchy ditty. American and British military "doctors" insist
     that eating and breathing radioactive uranium is perfectly safe.

     So, they say, is being injected with mycoplasma-spiked anthrax
     vaccine. Believing these lies, an estimated 250,000 disposable
     Desert Storm troopers currently suffer from debilitating "Gulf War
     Illness". [Bringing The War Home]

     Because Depleted Uranium is unmatched as a shield and a weapon,
     international efforts to ban DU continue to be ignored by the
     U.S., Canada and Britain. Radioactive warfare is also a convenient
     way to explosively redistribute mountains of mutagenic debris from
     America's atomic annihilation factories to distant "colored"
     neighborhoods. As former South African President Nelson Mandela
     remarked two days ago, Bush's policy of "carnage" is fundamentally
     racist. [Independent, Jan. 30, 2003]

     The good news for black and Hispanic tank crews wheeling into
     attack formations on Iraq's borders is that Iraqi Army tank shells
     cannot penetrate their dense DU armor. The bummer is that
     expendable "tankers" are exposed to whole-body gamma radiation
     emitted by the uranium-tipped shells racked tightly around them.
     "It's like receiving a tiny X-ray every second," one DU expert
     explains. [Bringing The War Home]

     NO TANKS

     Dr. Doug Rokke knows these dangers internally. The American
     physician in charge of dealing with postwar contamination in Iraqi
     communities saw his medical records confiscated by the U.S. Army
     after long-delayed examination results showed radiation in his
     body at 5,000 times maximum "safe" levels.

     Rokke, who headed the army's Depleted Uranium program after the
     Gulf Massacre, told reporters after returning from Iraq, "'Oh my
     God' is the only way to describe it. Contamination was all over."

     Rokke's recruits measured dangerous levels of radiation up to 150
     feet away from DU-fried tanks -- including up to 300 millirems an
     hour in beta and gamma radiation. Alpha radiation registered in
     the thousands to the millions counts-per-minute on their Geiger
     counters.

     "That whole area is still trashed," Rokke remarked. "It's hotter
     than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."

     Rokke's team spent three months cleaning up 24 tanks for return as
     outdoor exhibits to the United States. According to the dying DU
     expert, the army took another three years to clean up the tanks.
     Some could not be decontaminated and had to be buried. [Bringing
     The War Home]

     But human tissue cannot be decontaminated. Just three days after
     commencing their work, Rokke and his crew started getting sick."
     Over the past decade, 30 men out of 100 servicemen dealing with
     DU, "dropped dead."

     ROKKE'S RADIATION

     Rokke says the biggest danger is the dust given off when a
     Depleted Uranium shell detonates. In heat fierce enough to melt
     armor plating, up to 70% of a DU round oxidizes. "This aerosolized
     power -- uranium oxide -- is the really dangerous stuff," Rokke
     says. "Particularly when it is inhaled."

     Rokke suspects that, like many Iraqi adults and children,
     radioactive uranium oxide dust is permanently trapped in his
     lungs. Rokke also has lesions on his brain. Pustules protrude from
     his skin. He suffers from chronic fatigue, and cannot stop
     wheezing for breath and coughing. His fibromyalgia inflicts
     chronic pain in his muscles, ligaments and tendons.

     Rokke's radioactive regrets reveal the hazards facing unprotected
     U.S. and British soldiers, as well as peacekeepers brought in from
     other countries to secure the second biggest oil fields on Earth.
     Caldicott warns that "these tiny particles travel long distances
     when airborne" -- infecting distant populations, peacekeepers, and
     the entire food chain.

     The misery of radioactive warfare extends to those who produce it.
     Serious health effects have been documented among DU processing
     workers and their families in Kentucky, Ohio, New Mexico,
     Tennessee, Washington state, New York, Tennessee, Iowa,
     Massachusetts, and the Four Corners area of southwest Colorado. In
     Yugoslavia, Depleted Uranium fired into agricultural areas has
     irradiated food. Scottish scientists recently verified that
     residents of the Balkans exposed to fallout from DU-tipped cruise
     missiles are excreting uranium in their urine. [Counterpunch, Dec.
     28, 2001]

     GULF WAR ILLNESS -- THE SEQUEL?

     Even before American and British troops enter Baghdad's
     radioactive environs to "liberate" families suffering the
     sickening strangulation of their sanctions -- allied casualties
     continue to mount.

     In preliminary announcements of what may later be called "Gulf War
     Illness II", Reuters reports that "Veterans groups on both sides
     of the Atlantic say up to one in three soldiers has fallen ill
     after taking the vaccine, and six of them died in the United
     States."

     "We have hard facts," says British-based National Gulf Veterans
     and Families Association coordinator James Moore. "Two and Three
     Parachute Regiments have had anthrax injections. At least a third
     come down with flu-like symptoms and have been very poorly. In the
     United States, over 30 percent have come down with symptoms and
     six have died after taking the vaccine." [Reuters, Jan. 8, 2003]

     As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune
     systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer
     little defense against further exposures to chemical weapons,
     industrial toxins, stress, caffeine, insect repellent and
     radiation leftover from the last war.

     This is a war even the victors will lose.

     # # #

     William Thomas served as a member of a three-man Gulf
     Environmental Emergency Response Team in Kuwait during and
     immediately after Desert Storm. Producer of the award-winning
     documentary, "Eco War", he is the author of Bringing The War Home
     and All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass Persuasion.

     Copyright © 2003 William Thomas
     Reprinted for Fair Use Only.




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