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
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