{"id":82070,"date":"2016-10-31T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82070"},"modified":"2016-10-28T17:38:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T16:38:34","slug":"us-uranium-weapons-have-been-used-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/us-uranium-weapons-have-been-used-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"US Uranium Weapons Have Been Used in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"laforgejohn2\"<\/a>28 Oct 2016 – <\/em>This month, the Pentagon admitted<\/a> it has used uranium weapons in attacks inside Syria — violating its public promise last year that it would not use DU there, and contradicting the claim that US bombing is done in defense of the Syrian people, according to the Int\u2019l Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons.<\/p>\n

Like the Pentagon\u2019s past denials of the dangers of the chemical weapon Agent Orange, US military officials still claim publicly that its uranium weapons are not known to cause health problems. Made from waste uranium-238 — left from H-bomb and reactor fuel production — it is called \u201cdepleted\u201d uranium (DU) but is only \u201cdepleted\u201d of U-235. Ironically, the best evidence that it is dangerously toxic and radioactive — contrary to press pronouncements — comes from the Pentagon itself. A June 1995 report to Congress by the Army\u2019s Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) concluded: \u201cDepleted uranium is a radioactive waste and, as such, should be deposited in a licensed repository.\u201d<\/p>\n

Military studies done in 1979, \u201890, \u201893, \u201895 and \u201897, make clear that uranium weapons are chemically toxic, alpha-radiation-emitting poisons that are a danger to target populations and to invading\/occupying US forces alike. In spite of this cautionary written record, the military has been shooting its radioactive waste all over the world: into population centers in Iraq in 1991 (380 tons), in Afghanistan in 2001 (amounts unknown); in Bosnia in 1994-\u201895 (five tons); in Kosovo in 1999 (10 tons), in Iraq again in 2003 (170 tons); and now in Syria.<\/p>\n

The AEPI report also says that DU has the potential to generate \u201csignificant medical consequences\u201d if it enters the body. The Army\u2019s Office of the Surgeon General, in its Aug. 16, 1993 \u201cDepleted Uranium Safety Training Manual,\u201d says that the expected effects of DU exposure include a possible increase of cancer, and kidney damage. The manual also warns, \u201cWhen soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk \u2026 (lung or bone) and kidney damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Army\u2019s Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command reported way back in 1979 that, \u201cNot only the people in the immediate vicinity but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to air-borne uranium dust.\u201d This uranium \u201cdust\u201d is generated when DU shells hit and burn through hard targets like tanks or armored vehicles. The uranium is spread for miles by the wind, contaminating everything is its path including food, water, soil, schools, humans, hospitals, etc., and DU is radioactive forever, or 10 X 4.5 billion years, whichever comes first.<\/p>\n

In 1990, the Army\u2019s Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command radiological task group said that DU is a \u201clow level alpha radiation emitter \u2026 linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage.\u201d It added that \u201cthere is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

With evidence of its radio-toxicity so clear and redundant, any use of uranium weapons today appears to flout the military\u2019s own Field Manual prohibition — absolute and universal — against the use of poison or poisoned weapons.<\/p>\n

Historical Disregard Revisited<\/strong><\/p>\n

The military has a long history of deliberately exposing US citizens and others to deadly risks without their knowledge or consent, beginning with the open-air nuclear bomb tests it knew would contaminate vast areas. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chose not to evacuate or even warn downwind populations it knew would be hard-hit by radioactive fallout. (\u201cFallout risk near atom tests was known, documents show,\u201d New York Times, March 15, 1995) These bomb tests exposed Nevada Test Site workers to levels of radiation that the AEC knew could cause harm, but the agency chose not to reduce workers\u2019 exposures or to even inform them of the risks because doing so would have scandalized and halted the bombing tests. (\u201cRecords say workers faced high radiation: Suit contends US used no safeguards,\u201d St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 14, 1989)<\/p>\n

Likewise, the government refused to inform some 600,000 H-bomb factory workers that workplace radiation exposures posed serious health risks, although enough was known about radiation to warn them in 1948. (\u201cN-plant workers not told of risks: Report says US arms program exposed many to radiation,\u201d Associated Press, <\/em>Dec. 19, 1989) Between 1944 and 1974, \u201cmedicalized\u201d human radiation experiments were even conducted on unwitting US citizens, 16,000 of them (The Plutonium Files<\/em>, by Eileen Welsome).<\/p>\n

Today, the Pentagon extends this ghastly history into Syria where it is deliberately exposing human beings to weaponized radiation that it knows can cause cancer and other diseases. As if the undeclared, unconstitutional war in Syria weren\u2019t unlawful enough, now add the crime of using poison in violation of military law and the Hague Regulations of War on Land.<\/p>\n

It is so easy to prove that DU is poison, that a group of four non-lawyers, myself included, convinced a Minneapolis jury in 2004 that AlliantTechsystems\u2019 manufacture of the shells is unlawful enough to excuse an otherwise illegal trespass; our minor offense was justified in order to prevent the greater harm of DU weapons production. Like torture, the use of such poison in war is always criminal, akin to gas war. This latest US government war crime must be condemned in the harshest terms.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

John LaForge, syndicated by <\/em>PeaceVoice<\/a><\/em>, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of <\/em>Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Oct 2016 – This month, the Pentagon admitted it has used uranium weapons in attacks inside Syria — violating its public promise last year that it would not use DU there, and contradicting the claim that US bombing is done in defense of the Syrian people, according to the Int\u2019l Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}