Depleted Morals

The use of depleted uranium by US and British military forces is a fact. They use it and, most likely, have a better understanding of its long-term effect than they are admitting. In a March 18, 2003 article the BBC quoted Colonel James Naughton of US Army Materiel Command as saying, regarding the use of depleted uranium ammunition and armour, "Who's asking the question? The Iraqis tell us 'terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time'.

"Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them, OK?

"I mean, there's no doubt that DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks. They lost a lot of tanks.

"Their soldiers can't be really amused at the idea of going out in basically the same tanks with some slight improvements and taking on Abrams again."

Contrast that with statements made by Professor Doug Rokke. Clearly a man with some credibility when it comes to the effects of depleted uranium weapons, Rokke, a ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project, 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 was quoted in the article as saying, There is a moral point to be made here. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction -- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves. Such double-standards are repellent,

Later in the article, Rokke is further quoted as saying, A nation's military personnel cannot wilfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions.

'To do so is a crime against humanity.

'We must do what is right for the citizens of the world -- ban DU.

So what is depleted uranium? It is basically waste left over from the production of nuclear weapons or nuclear energy. It is free to the arms manufacturers because it is waste. It is used to harden shells to give them more penetrating power. It is more effective than tungsten because it is much easier to work, tungsten is expensive, and depleted uranium weapons have the added advantage of being self-sharpening. It is a very effective weapon for attacks on armoured vehicles and under ground bunkers.

It is also more dangerous than we are being officially led to believe. Studies on it by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have largely ignored the internalisation of depleted uranium material, instead looking only at the external radioactive effects. The oft quoted Rand Report has left out some evidence and the epidemiology the report is based on dealt with naturally occurring uranium dust, not depleted uranium.

When that is pointed out, the usual retort is that depleted uranium is less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium. That is, like many of the official lies, almost true. Depleted uranium, in a pure form, is less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium. What gets used in weapons is of questionable purity though.

Depleted uranium used to manufacture weapons is a byproduct of the nuclear industry, waste that somebody found a use for. It is not pure. It may contain plutonium and other impurities that makes depleted uranium far more dangerous.

While it is convenient for users such as the US government to deny the long-term detrimental effects of depleted uranium, those effects are becoming more and more clear. The potential contamination from deleted uranium caused the UN, in an April 2003 press release on environmental problems in Iraq to state, The report says another priority should be a scientific assessment of sites struck with weapons containing depleted uranium (DU). It recommends guidelines be distributed immediately to military and civilian personnel and to the general public on how to minimize the risk of accidental exposure to DU. The intensive use of DU weapons has likely caused environmental contamination of as yet unknown levels and a study would require receiving precise coordinates of the targeted sites from the military. Clearly, even with the inadequacies of the UNEP report on depleted uranium, the United Nations recognises that depleted uranium is not harmless, as its advocates claim it to be. The UN Sub-Commission on Protection and Promotion of Human Rights designated depleted uranium to be a weapon of mass destruction 1996 and resisted attempts by the United States and United Kingdom to have depleted uranium stricken from the list of weapons of mass destruction in 2002.

The United States and Britain love depleted uranium weapons though. They used them extensively in the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq and Kuwait, again in the Balkans, then in Afghanistan and once again during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The use of depleted uranium weapons is increasingly linked to Gulf War Syndrome in American and allied soldiers who served in the Gulf War, and allied troops who served in the Balkans. Cancer rates and other health problems among veterans who served in these wars and the civilians who were innocent bystanders have skyrocketed in the time since the wars, as have birth defects among their offspring. Despite the growing evidence that these weapons cause serious health effects years after their use, the US and UK defend their use. Increasingly, being an ally of a country that uses depleted uranium means that your people are being exposed to the risk of debilitating toxins. This alone should be enough to discourage countries like Canada from taking part in the foreign adventures of the United States.

The United States is estimated to have sold depleted uranium weapons to almost thirty countries, and has used depleted uranium weapons in urban, suburban, and agricultural areas, yet there is little doubt that if such ammunition was used in a populated area in the United States it would be dubbed a dirty bomb and the people who used it accused of using weapons of mass destruction. Depleted uranium weapons are nuclear devices, after all. They contaminate air, land and soil. They affect the DNA of human beings.

While the US tries to muddy the issue by bringing in the possibility Saddam Hussein exposed his own people to biological and chemical weapons, thus causing the rising rates of cancer, they cannot explain the rising cancer rates among people who were exposed to depleted uranium in Bosnia and Kosovo. While those who believe in the destructive power of depleted uranium mutter platitudes and lies to defend their unconscionable use of such a weapon, real people are dying. That includes children not yet born and soldiers who did not sign up to be exposed to elements likely never heard of before becoming soldiers and were not told the dangers of being exposed to radioactive weapons.

It is time that the Canadian government stepped up to the plate and called for a complete ban on the use of depleted uranium. Up until 1998 Canada did have depleted uranium tipped weapons on some of its ships, but changed to tungsten-tipped ammunition after that...presumably because it had been listed as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations It is time we admitted that the use of such weapons is a crime against humanity, owned up to our error in ever having them in our arsenal, and moved to bring those that continue to use them to trial in international court. The use of depleted uranium weapons is against international, British, and US law. A war crime is a war crime no matter who commits it, how much money they have, or whether they refer to the head of their country as the leader of the free world.

Nobody is free when such weapons are used with impunity.