(#4) High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians

URANIUM MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER, January 2003
Title: "UMRC's Preliminary Findings from Afghanistan & Operation
Enduring Freedom"
and
"Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction- Indiscriminate
Effects"
Author: Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team

AWAKENED WOMAN, January 2004
Title: "Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan"
Author: Stephanie Hiller

DISSIDENT VOICE, March 2004
Title: "There Are No Words…Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki
Bombs"
Author: Bob Nichols

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, April 5,2004
Title: "Poisoned?"
Author: Juan Gonzalez

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, March 2004
Title: "International Criminal Tribune For Afghanistan At Tokyo, The
People vs. George Bush"
Author: Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J.

Evaluator: Jennifer Lillig, Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Kenny Crosbie


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Civilian populations in Afghanistan and Iraq and occupying troops
have been contaminated with astounding levels of radioactive
depleted and non-depleted uranium as a result of post-9/11 United
States' use of tons of uranium munitions. Researchers say
surrounding countries are bound to feel the effects as well.

In 2003 scientists from the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC)
studied urine samples of Afghan civilians and found that 100% of the
samples taken had levels of non-depleted uranium (NDU) 400% to 2000%
higher than normal levels. The UMRC research team studied six sites,
two in Kabul and others in the Jalalabad area. The civilians were
tested four months after the attacks in Afghanistan by the United
States and its allies.

NDU is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU), which itself is
charged with causing many cancers and severe birth defects in the
Iraqi population–especially children–over the past ten years. Four
million pounds of radioactive uranium was dropped on Iraq in 2003
alone. Uranium dust will be in the bodies of our returning armed
forces. Nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police serving in Iraq
were tested for DU contamination in December 2003. Conducted at the
request of The News, as the U.S. government considers the cost of
$1,000 per affected soldier prohibitive, the test found that four of
the nine men were contaminated with high levels of DU, likely caused
by inhaling dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops.
Several of the men had traces of another uranium isotope, U-236,
that are produced only in a nuclear reaction process.

Most American weapons (missiles, smart bombs, dumb bombs, bullets,
tank shells, cruise missiles, etc.) contain high amounts of
radioactive uranium. Depleted or non-depleted, these types of
weapons, on detonation, release a radioactive dust which, when
inhaled, goes into the body and stays there. It has a half-life of
4.5 billion years. Basically, it's a permanently available
contaminant, distributed in the environment, where dust storms or
any water nearby can disperse it. Once ingested, it releases
subatomic particles that slice through DNA.

UMRC's Field Team found several hundred Afghan civilians with acute
symptoms of radiation poisoning along with chronic symptoms of
internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in
newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and
smoke plumes rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell,
followed by burning of the nasal passages, throat and upper
respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations presented identical
symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported symptoms
including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal
area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle
weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems and
disorientation.

At the Uranium Weapons Conference held October 2003 in Hamburg,
Germany, independent scientists from around the world testified to a
huge increase in birth deformities and cancers wherever NDU and DU
had been used. Professor Katsuma Yagasaki, a scientist at the
Ryukyus University, Okinawa calculated that the 800 tons of DU used
in Afghanistan is the radioactive equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki
bombs. The amount of DU used in Iraq is equivalent to 250,000
Nagasaki bombs.

At the Uranium Weapons Conference, a demonstration by British-
trained oncologist Dr. Jawad Al-Ali showed photographs of the kinds
of birth deformities and tumors he had observed at the Saddam
Teaching Hospital in Basra just before the 2003 war. Cancer rates
had increased dramatically over the previous fifteen years. In 1989
there were 11 abnormalities per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were
116 per 100,000—an increase of over a thousand percent. In 1989 34
people died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths. The
2003 war has increased these figures exponentially.

At a meeting of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan
held December 2003 in Tokyo, the U.S. was indicted for multiple war
crimes in Afghanistan, among them the use of DU. Leuren Moret,
President of Scientists for Indigenous People and Environmental
Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, testified that because
radioactive contaminants from uranium weapons travel through air,
water, and food sources, the effects of U.S. deployment in
Afghanistan will be felt in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China and
India. Countries affected by the use of uranium weapons in Iraq
include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and
Iran.

UPDATE BY BOB NICHOLS: (Oklahoma City) Throughout the world people
are familiar with the "smoking gun" solution so prized by murder
mystery writers. Many think that once the smoking gun in any mystery
is discovered, it is time for the "bad guys" to give up. Wish it
were only so.

The smoking guns are Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin
Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone from New York's 442nd Guard Unit—they
are the first confirmed cases of inhaled uranium oxide exposure from
the current Iraq conflict. Dr. Asaf Durokovic, professor of Nuclear
Medicine at the Uranium Medical Research Centre http://www.umrc.net/
conducted the diagnostic tests. The story was released April 3, 2004
in the New York Daily News. There is no treatment and there is no
cure. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html

Leuren Moret reports, "In my research on depleted uranium during the
past 5 years, the most disturbing information concerns the impact on
the unborn children and future generations for both soldiers serving
in the depleted uranium wars, and for the civilians who must live in
the permanently radioactive contaminated regions. Today, more than
240,000 Gulf War veterans are on permanent medical disability and
more than 11,000 are dead. They have been denied testing, medical
care, and compensation for depleted uranium exposure and related
illnesses since 1991."

Moret continues "Even worse, they brought it home in their bodies.
In some families, the children born before the Gulf War are the only
healthy members. Wives and female partners of Gulf War veterans have
reported a condition known as burning semen syndrome, and are now
internally contaminated from depleted uranium carried in the semen
of exposed veterans. Many are reporting reproductive illnesses such
as endometriosis. In a U.S. government study, conducted by the
Department of Veterans Affairs on post-Gulf War babies, 67% were
found to have serious birth defects or serious illnesses. They were
born without eyes (anophthalmos), ears, had missing organs, missing
legs and arms, fused fingers, thyroid or other organ malformations."

"LIFE Photoessay:"
http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html

Moret concludes, "In Iraq it is even worse where babies are born
without brains, organs are outside the body, or women give birth to
pieces of flesh. In babies born in Iraq in 2002, the incidence of
anophthalmos was 250,000 times greater (20 cases in 4,000 births)
than the natural occurrence, one in 50 million births. Takashi
MORIZUMI's photos: in http://www.savewarchildren.org/ record the
tragedy in Iraq."

For more information on the American President's continuing campaign
of contaminating the land, check the World Uranium Weapons
Conference, http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/ ,
Check the Uranium Medical Research Center and Dr. Asaf Durakovic at
http://www.umrc.net/ ,
and for updates on the related Nuclear Power Plants see Russell
Hoffman's website at:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm .

Write Leuren Moret, Independent Scientist and radiation specialist,
City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner, Past President,
Association for Women Geoscientists: leurenmoret@...

"Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" by Leuren Moret,
World Affairs Journal, July, 2004.
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

These YahooGroups host discussions about uranium munitions:
<mailto:du-list@yahoogroups.com>du-list@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:du-watch@yahoogroups.com>du-watch@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:pandora-project@yahoogroups.com>pandora-
project@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:nucnews@yahoogroups.com>nucnews@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:abolition-caucus@yahoogroups.com>abolition-
caucus@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:earthfirstalert@yahoogroups.com>earthfirstalert@...
om
Read Bob Nichols at: www.dissidentvoice.org .

UPDATE BY TEDD WEYMAN: UMRC found artificial uranium in bomb
craters, surrounding watercourses and the bodies of civilians
exposed to US Coalition bombing in Afghanistan. Civilians surveyed
presented with the classical symptoms of internal contamination by
uranium, which began after exposure to the bombing. The presence of
artificial uranium in environmental and biological samples indicates
that the bunker buster warheads used in Afghanistan are made of
uranium.

Uranium is a chemically and radiologically toxic element, clinically
proven to be a cause of various types of cancer and congenital
malformations (birth defects). Internal contamination of uranium is
responsible for variety of systemic and organ system problems, which
has never been considered or studied by the Defense Department or
Veterans health programs as possible cause of Gulf War Illness. The
symptoms of internal contamination by uranium in Iraq and
Afghanistan civilians are identical to the symptoms of US and
Coalition veterans complaining of Gulf War Illness.

The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's ability to have its
studies published by managing, a progressive and persistent
misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the
use of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC's
scientific findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC's scientific
staff, physicians and laboratories. UMRC is the first independent
research organization to find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US,
UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently, following
Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in the water, soils
and atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated by
Iraqi civilians.

The United States and several of its Coalition partners and NATO
allies have been deploying in battlefield and experimenting with
chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metals in various types of
bullets, bombs and warheads since the early 1970s. Uranium powder is
taken from the nuclear fuel reprocessing cycle, after it has been
mixed with nuclear reactor waste products and spent fuel, to supply
the non-fissile weapons' manufacturing industry.

Uranium is preferred over all other "ballistic" metals (e.g. lead,
iron, tungsten) because it offers a set of unique metallurgical
properties: it is extremely dense yet ductile metal (not brittle);
it is pyrophoric (uranium dust burns spontaneously at room
temperature); and, solid metal uranium is autoigniting at 170° F.
Uranium metal has a very unusual property not available in any other
metal; it is "self-sharpening", meaning that when it hits a target
at high velocities (1 km/sec) it erodes and breaks in such a way as
to continuously re-sharpen its point — the leading points of all
other warhead metals flatten or mushroom under these conditions.
These properties give uranium a superior performance as a
penetrating warhead alloy capable of breaching the hardest and
thickest armor plating, retaining penetration capabilities at 15 %
greater distances and lower speeds than the most common alternative
metal, tungsten. Burning uranium is hard to extinguish, and if
doused with water, it will explode. Uranium used in specially
designed high velocity liquid metal penetrators can bore through 20
feet of super-reinforced concrete bunkers in classified weapons
called "shaped charges" and "explosively formed penetrators". The
hard (dense), resilient (ductile) and heavy (sustaining momentum)
characteristics of uranium also make its optimal in the warhead of
robust earth-penetrating bombs to carry them into buried targets and
caves.

The mainstream press in the US and Canada does not show any general
interest in the story, let alone an investigative interest. European
mainstream press is more interested and follows key developments.
The NY Daily News April 5, 2004 has covered Gulf War II results by
UMRC's studies of US veterans. DoD has lied and misled the public
and the veterans in an attempt to undermine the significance of the
story. There is significant alternative press and internet press
coverage. The technique for coverage is to approach the story as a
debate between government and independent experts in which public
interest is stimulated by polarizing the issues rather than telling
the scientific and medical truth. The issues are systematically
confused and misinformed by government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO,
UNEP, IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the
weapons developers and manufacturers).

UPDATE BY STEPHANIE HILLER: This is a shocking story since it
suggests that experimental nuclear bombs were dropped around Kabul
at the end of the war Operation Enduring Freedom. (Did they mean
enduring radiation?) And what have they dropped on Iraq?

Continued research shows that we have all been irradiated here in
the United States, at an enormous cost to the public health. Cancer
rates alone show that genetic mutation has been rapidly increasing
since the first bomb was tested in Almorgordo, NM in 1945. But the
effects of low-level radiation have been systematically hidden from
public view!

In April after sick vets from the current war got no help from the
Pentagon, the mother of one of the soldiers went to the papers. Juan
Gonzalez of the New York Daily News launched an investigation. The
News paid for nine men to be tested by Asaf Durakovic. He found that
four of them were contaminated with uranium. The News got the
attention of New York Senator Hilary Clinton. She held a
teleconference— but Durakovic was not allowed to participate!

Amy Goodman interviewed Durakovic later the same month on Democracy
Now!— don't know if it was thanks to my story. AlterNet rejected the
story because their source on depleted uranium, John Fahey, did not
agree with it.
I don't know of any mainstream media that has picked up the story,
and I don't find any references to the Gonzalez piece either. The
BBC and the Seattle Post Intelligencer covered it before me.

To learn more about uranium weapons search the web! It's a huge
topic. Start with the world Uranium Weapons Conference held last
October in Hamburg: <http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de> The
Power Point by Dr. Ali shows the most excruciating consequences of
Persian Gulf One -- deformed babies. Also, Join WBW! Women for a
Better World has begun an information campaign to educate the public
about depleted uranium, especially young people who might be called
to join the military and their families, regarding the contamination
of Central Eurasia. Come to our web site for more information,
flyers, and to sign a petition opposing the draft for the same
reason. <http://www.awakenedwoman.com/wbw.htm>