BRITISH and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction. DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children.

Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a 'war crime'. A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.

[Note from Fred: Rokke's rank was that of Major, rather than Colonel.]

Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - Canada's ABC)
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/

A year after war's end, [Gulf War Vet Jerry] Wheat got startling evidence from his father -- a technician at the famous Los Alamos Nuclear Research Centre, who just out of curiosity tested the shrapnel that came from his son's body and gear. The shrapnel was radioactive. Today, eight years after the Gulf War, that shrapnel still lights up a Geiger counter. He also keeps other pieces.

Jerry's great fear is that whatever he brought back with him from the Gulf is now afflicting his family. His older son Joe was hospitalized with breathing problems the day after Wheat dragged his contaminated gear into the house. Derrick, his youngest son, who was born after the war, suffers strange blisters on his hands. His wife suffered a miscarriage. Jerry himself recently had a tumour removed from his shoulder. He now worries continually about cancer. Jerry says the military has never shown any interest in his shrapnel. The military said Jerry's health problems are due to post traumatic stress.

WHO ‘suppressed’ scientific study into
depleted uranium cancer fears in Iraq
Sunday Herald, Feb. 22, 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/40096

An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret. The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.

Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year’s war, and to clean up afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.

For more information, The Christian Science Monitor has a compilation of 16 articles exposing the dangers of depleted uranium at http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/

BBC also has a webpage listing 10 of their articles both pro and con regarding depleted uranium at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/europe/2001/depleted_uranium/default.stm

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