DU weapons cause depleted health: IVAW speaks out ( main article previously published in Works In Progress)

Today, BBC reported 2-3 babies are born daily in Fallujah with birth defects.

Yesterday they reported the US is having a hard time figuring out what to do with their nuclear waste.

More nuclear power means more nuclear waste means more DU weapons means more babies with horrific birth defects, and people with illness. 

I was exposed to DU.  

I want justice.

In the 1991 invasion of Iraq, the US went in with weapons made from radioactive material called depleted uranium (DU). Internationally recognized scientists say DU, or so-called “depleted” uranium, has caused, and continues to cause a wide range of health problems in areas where these weapons are manufactured, tested and used in warfare.

Two years ago, five members of Iraq Veterans Against the War–Olympia Chapter took truth on tour. They spoke about their own boots on the ground experiences and circumstances surrounding the current occupation of Iraq. The subject of radioactive weaponry, still in use, was a major talking point.

Thom Cassidy was in Iraq from 2003–05. He told audiences of concerned citizens, “In the first Gulf War the level of radiation was 300 times what is considered normal. In this invasion we used even more DU bullets. The effects are horrible.” Indeed, US strategic command admits to using over 2000 tons of DU in this invasion. The effects in Iraq since the first invasion continue to worsen. There are five times more leukemia sufferers, a tenfold increase in cancer, and a 600 percent increase in children born with devastating defects, if alive at all. Compounded by sanctions, DU weaponry has truly caused millions of deaths.

Joe Hatcher, who was in Iraq from Feb. 2004 until Mar. 2005 with the 4th Cavalry Brigade, talked about the invasion of Basra, a city with a population of 2.5 million. “I got a call from Bravo team, who was on the other side of town” Hatcher explained. “They said ‘Stop firing, the DU bullets are coming through at us!’”

When DU explodes, it disperses into microscopic dust that can be breathed in. It can remain airborne or settle on soil and equipment. It contaminates the entire environment, food and water supply.

Hatcher describes further exposure to DU: “Before I went home on my last tour of duty, I was assigned to clean the trucks that we had used. As they were, they wouldn’t pass environmental standards to come into Germany, because of the radiation they were around. I tell this to folks here in America, and often times they’ll freak out, but back there it was just normal, just another assignment.”

According to the Royal Society (Britain’s pre eminent science organization), DU’s behavior in the body is identical to uranium. It has been known for decades that uranium targets DNA. Through private testing, five soldiers have found they suffered extensive genetic damage.

While US officials maintain inhaling small amounts is not dangerous, Dr. Rosalle Bertell, foremost in the field of radiation, says the opposite is true. Sparse distribution heightens the probability of free radicals reaching and reacting to the cell wall. The resulting health effects include respiratory damage, urinary tract damage, reproductive problems, brain lesions, depleted immune systems and cancers of the organs and skin. Many of these ailments begin with symptoms like extreme fatigue, brain dysfunction, a cough, or pain. Soldiers are often misdiagnosed or scantily compensated for what officials call undiagnosed illness.

The US spent $52 million on DU weapons in one month. Officials say it’s used in weapons for its penetrability and because it’s cheap. IVAW has joined scientists and activists across the globe in raising awareness of the true human cost of DU weapon use.