Nuclear War
by
George Szamuely
New York Press

1/16/00

Two years too late, Western public opinion has at last turned to outrage over NATO’s aggression in the Balkans. It took the sickness and death of European servicemen to bring home to people the horrendous carnage the U.S.-led bombing wrought.

The United States rained down 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium (DU) shells on Yugoslavia. Depleted uranium is a by-product of the enrichment of uranium for the production of nuclear weapons and reactor fuel. As it is heavier than lead, DU is added to munitions to enable them to penetrate heavy armor. On impact, it erupts in a vapor cloud of radioactive uranium oxide, emitting dangerous alpha and beta radiation.

Seven Italian soldiers and one aid worker are now dead – as are five Belgian peacekeepers, two Dutch nationals, two Spaniards, two Portuguese and one Czech – all from leukemia and other cancers. NATO responded the usual way. It orchestrated an orgy of lying. "Negligible hazard," according to one NATO spokesman. "There’s absolutely no proof that there’s a connection" between DU and cancer, spluttered our repulsive, soon to be ex-Secretary of State. "We cannot possibly act on the perceptions of people or on the view of a word such as ‘uranium,’" declared the grotesque Secretary-General of NATO, Lord George Robertson. "This is a proven technology that has been independently tested."

Governments, bought and paid for by the United States, were then wheeled out to parrot the NATO line. Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova dismissed the concern about DU. It was all being whipped up by people trying to get Western troops out of the Balkans. The Kostunica regime in Belgrade, hoisted into power by a U.S.-sponsored coup, chose last week, of all weeks, to pay obeisance to NATO. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic trotted off to Brussels, tail wagging cheerfully, to frolic with Robertson. Yugoslav forces and NATO, a delighted Svilanovic announced, are "not enemy armies anymore." Serbs must have been surprised by the news. They had not considered themselves enemies of NATO – more victims of an unprovoked attack. Robertson and Svilanovic then solemnly agreed "to set up channels of communication to exchange information" on the issue of depleted uranium. "We need to continue this very open discussion," little Goran explained, "to have guarantees for the local population that they are safe." That’s so sweet.

Unfortunately, few share the new Yugoslavia’s faith in NATO, or the U.S. Certainly not the scientists of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). For more than a year they could not get Washington to divulge the location of the sites targeted with DU weapons. Finally, last November UNEP scientists visited 11 such sites in Kosovo and found evidence of significant radioactivity in eight of them. "We found some radiation in the middle of villages where children were playing," said Pekka Haavisto, former environment minister of Finland who headed the mission. "We were surprised to find this a year and a half later… [T]here were cows grazing in contaminated areas, which means the contaminated dust can get into the milk." Meanwhile, in Bosnia – hit with 10,000 DU shells in 1995 – cancer cases are dramatically on the rise.

In the face of widespread public fury, NATO governments are in full retreat. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who had insouciantly declared that he harbored a "healthy skepticism" about the DU-cancer connection, quickly changed his tune. Now he was "skeptical about the use of munitions that could lead to dangers for our own soldiers." The British government – the most reliably toadylike of all of America’s allies – is now offering to test any soldier who served in the Balkans and the Gulf War for depleted uranium.

What is causing outrage is the revelation that both the British and U.S. military had known for at least 10 years the disastrous consequences of depleted uranium. Prof. Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project, claims that as far back as 1991 he had told his bosses that DU could cause cancer, mental illness and birth defects. According to Scotland’s Sunday Herald, a British Ministry of Defense document, dated Feb. 25, 1991, explained that servicemen needed to wear full protective clothing and respirators when close to DU shells and that human remains exposed to DU had to be hosed down before disposal. In 1997 a British army report, entitled "The Use and Hazards of Depleted Uranium Munitions" asserted: "Inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance – if any… All personnel… should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk… [The dust] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph, and brain cancers." Just before NATO began its military occupation of Kosovo, commanders warned of "residual heavy metal toxicity in armored vehicles" that had been struck by DU missiles, posing health risks to anyone coming in contact with them. A report by the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, released four years ago, claimed that "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological."

That DU has continued to be used despite these warnings is testimony to the Pentagon’s spectacularly successful campaign of deceit. In the waning days of the Gulf War, a Lieut. Col. M.V. Ziehmn wrote a letter that has come to be known as the Los Alamos memo. He warned that unless the Pentagon was ready to lie on behalf of DU, the weapon would become politically unacceptable. "If DU penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities," Ziehmn wrote, "then we should assure their future existence...through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability... Keep this sensitive issue in mind when after action reports are written." With full knowledge of its long-term hazards, using DU in the Balkans was yet another war crime perpetrated by the United States.

Read George Szamuely's Antiwar.com Exclusive Column

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The Good Lieberman
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W's Oil Warriors
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Rupert's Hillary
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The Veep's No VIP
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Hollow Mexico
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Death of Innocents
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Poll Attacks
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Israel's Powerful Friends
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Defense Against What?
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Law as Ordered
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Arrogance of Power
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Al the Coward
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All articles reprinted with permission from the New York Press

 

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