www.globalresearch.ca Centre for Research on Globalisation Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation Did Coalition Forces use Nukes in Iraq?
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/EXP309A.html
The recorded levels of radiation in Iraq do not conform to the patterns observed in the case of depleted uranium ammunition.
Several reports suggest that Coalition Forces may have used tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq. Policy statements made by the Bush Adminstration and the Blair government, are explicit. The coaltion will not hesitate to use of nuclear weapons against Iraq "if attacked with WMDs"
Blurring the Nuclear Boundaries, Reuven Pedatzur, 14 Aug, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/PED308A.html
Bush Nuclear Policy: A Recipe for National Insecurity, Alice Slater, 14 Aug http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SLA308A.html
Nukes used in Afghanistan?: Discovery of a new type of Nuclear weapon, Report of UMRC Field Trip, 17 June http://www.umrc.net/downloads/destruction_effects.pdf
Liberating Iraq� with Nuclear Weapons , Michel Chossudovsky & Ian Woods, pdf version , http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303A.html
Another U.S. war crime? Iraqi cities 'hot' with depleted uranium, Sara Flounders, 18 Aug http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FLO308B.html
Uranium radiation: Mysterious Diseases Haunt U.S. Troops In Iraq, Islam Online, 19 July http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ISL307A.html
See also CRG's archive: Nuclear threat: key articles http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CRG204C.html
Michel Chossudovsky , 5 Sept 03
Daily Express, 1 September 2003
Iraqi Health Risk from Ammunition used in Attack: Radiation Time Bomb
David Swift
Soldiers and civilians in Iraq face a health time bomb after dangerously high levels of radiation were measured around Baghdad.
Levels between 1,000 and 1,900 times higher than normal were recorded at four sites around the Iraqi capital where depleted uranium (DU) munitions have been used across wide areas.
Experts estimate that Britain and the US used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armour-piercing shells made of DU during attacks on Iraqi forces.
That figure eclipses the 375tons used in the 1991 Gulf War. Unlike that largely desert-based conflict, most of the rounds fired in March and April were in heavily residential areas.
DU rounds are highly combustible and tiny particles of the radioactive material are left on the battleground.
If inhaled the material can attack the body causing cancers, chronic illness, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects - none of which will be apparent for at least five years.
Veterans of the first Gulf War believe that DU exposure has played a role in leaving more than 5,000 of them chronically ill and almost 600 dead.
The Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific body, described America's failure to confirm how much or where they used DU rounds as an "appalling situation".
Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the society's working group on DU, said:
"The Americans are really giving us no information at all and think it is a pretty appalling situation that they are not taking this seriously at all.
"We really need someone like the UN Environment Programme or the World Health Organisation to get into Iraq and start testing civilians and soldiers for uranium exposure."
Evidence of massive uranium radiation has emerged in recent weeks. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle analysed swabs from bullet holes in Iraqi tanks and confirmed elevated radiation levels.
Last month Scott Peterson, of the respected Christian Science Monitor, took Geiger counter readings at several sites in Baghdad. Near the Republican Palace, his radiation readings were the "hottest" in Iraq at nearly 1,900 times background radiation levels.
Even the Ministry of Defence, which has consistently refused to accept there are dangers involved in DU exposure or that it has played role in Gulf War illnesses is addressing the problem. Soldiers returning from this year's conflict will be routinely tested for uranium poisoning. Professor Malcolm Hooper, who sits on two committees advising the Government on Gulf health issues, said he is not surprised by the radiation levels.
He said: "Really these things are dirty bombs. Exactly the sort of device that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair keep talking about being in the hands of terrorists."
Dozens of US soldiers, backed by armoured vehicles and helicopter gunships, searched farms on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday in their hunt for followers of Saddam Hussein.
Thousands of Iraqis packed into northern Baghdad yesterday for the funeral of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric slain by a car bomb which also killed scores of his followers.
A senior official in Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said the Americans bore some blame for Friday's attack as they had failed to ensure adequate security measures.
Up to five suspects, all of them Iraqi, have been detained over the car bomb attack, the local governor said yesterday.
Japan Economic Newswire, August 16, 2003
Iraq cancer cases caused by depleted uranium shells
An increasing number of Iraqis are suffering from cancer and leukemia allegedly caused by depleted uranium shells the United States military used in the area, two visiting doctors from Iraq said in presentations in Japan over the past two weeks.
Around 116 out of 100,000 people were diagnosed in 2001 with cancer in the vicinity of Basra in southern Iraq, where the U.S. military used depleted uranium shells in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, according to one of the doctors. The number marks a 10-fold increase from the 11 cases diagnosed in 1988, he said.
Jawad Al Ali, 59, a doctor from Basra, said an increasing number of families have members who are suffering from cancer, and the death toll from cancer has risen 19-fold during the same period.
Several Japanese civic groups jointly invited Ali and Janan Ghalib Hassan to Japan as part of their activities to make known the harmful effects of depleted uranium shells. The two delivered presentations in cities including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were devastated by atomic bombs the U.S. dropped in 1945 in World War II.
Hassan, 47, said that in 2001, 611 babies were born with no limbs, no eyes or other birth defects, compared with 37 such cases in 1990.
Ali expressed concern that a high number of cancer patients will emerge in Baghdad and other parts of the country due to the recent U.S.-led war on Iraq.
Depleted uranium, a metal remainder left when natural uranium is refined, is used in artillery shells and bombs designed to penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles. The metal is believed to turn into small particles when a shell hits its target, and can be toxic in humans if breathed or eaten.
The U.S. has been denying, including via embassy Web sites, such adverse effects, asserting there is no basis to claims that depleted uranium causes cancer in newborns.
But Yuko Fujita, an assistant professor at Keio University who examined the effects of radioactivity in Iraq from May to June, said that damage from depleted uranium will be more serious in the future due to the recent war.
'I doubt that Iraq is fabricating data because in fact there are many children suffering from leukemia in hospitals,' Fujita said. 'As a result of the Iraq war, the situation will be desperate in some five to 10 years.'
Regarding efforts by Japan in helping to rebuild Iraq, he said, 'Japan should build up-to-date hospitals for children with cancer instead of sending Self-Defense Forces personnel.'
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