Pollinate

Your humble servant has again been busy with the OCR.

Check out "Is The Pentagon Giving Our Soldiers Cancer?", from the October 2, 2003 edition of Rolling Stone magazine. The piece, an expose of the use of "Depleted" Uranium (AKA the "Silver Bullet"), is not available on Rolling Stone's website, but is now available here -- including photographs and graphics.

This excellent and damning piece -- while it doesn't touch on the likelihood that the U.S. military utilised non-"depleted" uranium in both Afghanistan and Iraq -- is very possibly the best (as well as most current) general introduction to the vagaries of the United States' radiological warfare.

In addition to a thorough examination of the topic, the article offers harrowing eyewitness accounts from a Gulf War vet since stricken with all manner of disabilities and sicknesses, as well as from the venerable Maj. Doug Rokke (the Vietnam veteran originally tasked with looking into the Gulf War's DU "externalities", since become whistle-blowing nemesis of the Pentagon).

Also notable are two fairly astounding quotes from U.S. Colonel James Naughton.

In first trying to minimise the effects of DU, he asserts that, "DU is not any more dangerous than dirt," and wonders whether, "Aside from the fact that we're bombing the crap out of Iraq, and did so twelve years ago, what is the general state of the environment over there?"

The U.S. military might've tried to determine the answer to that question before it began "bombing the crap out of" Iraq a second time. (Moreover, one can't help wonder how preclusive this rather candid admission that the "coalition" was busy "bombing the crap out of Iraq" renders the military's vaunted claims of "liberation" through the use of "sophisticated precision weaponry" such as "smart" bombs and missiles.)

Later, Naughton comes clean (so to speak), acknowledging that, "It's radioactive -- I wish it wasn't, but I can't change the laws of physics. The issue is...did the crew survive long enough to really care whether it was tungsten or DU that hit them? Anyone who does should count themselves damn lucky. I'm sure every one of them would thank God that they lived forty years to contract lymphoma."

Gotta love the "Support Our Troops" team spirit, huh? Wonder how long they'd have survived if there hadn't been an unneccessary, illegal, immoral, barbaric, unjustifiable war in the first place?

Anyway, read the article. Then, if you're as sickened and disgusted as you're sure to be, pass on the link, link it to your website, cut-and-paste it into an e-mail, print and distribute it, etc..

Then contact your congressperson, demanding a ban on all future use of radiological munitions, as well as a serious attempt to clean up the mess left behind in Iraq, Afghaniston, the Balkans, Okinawa, and Vieques, as well is in our own back yard.

Posted by Eddie Tews at October 8, 2003 05:39 PM