 |
Radioactive Hell in the Garden of Eden | |
A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material. At the end of World War II the germans came close to delivering them to London in V2 rockets and the Japanese by airplane from an aircraft carrier submarine.
A dirty bomb does not just kill during a war. Because its radioactivity is very difficult or impossible to clean up it keeps killing after the war is over. It makes land useless for many generations or permanently. Its radioactive materials spread far and wide for thousands of miles, even worldwide. It inevitably enters the food chain to be consumed by wildlife and people. That it keeps killing after the war is over makes its use a violation of the Geneva Convention making it a legally recognized war crime. Its use is a crime against humanity for all the generations that must contend with it.
There has been a lot of concern lately about the ability of terrorists to detonate a dirty bomb in a populated area, an act that would kill thousands. But if they succeed they will not have been the first to use a dirty bomb. The first is already the United States.
Depleted uranium is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process that separates the highly radioactive U235 isotope from the mildly radioactive U238 isotope. Its the very unstable U235 isotope that is used for nuclear fission in reactors and bombs. The U238 isotope is a very hard and dense metal that is ideal for coating ammunition to easily penetrate armor. This isotope also known as Depleted Uranium was first used in the First Gulf War, used again in Kosovo, and now in the Second Gulf War and Afghanistan. It is used in bullets, armor piercing shells, and the bunker busting bombs that penetrate earth and cement before detonating.
No separation process is ever perfect. Trace amounts of U235 is still in this ammunition. The half life of Uranium 235, the time in which it loses half its radioactivity, is 713 Million Years. Were the half life not so long none of it would be left to mine. The problem is not only U235. U238 is a toxic heavy metal that is just as dangerous in the environment and damaging to health as other heavy metals such as mercury and lead are. And U238 is mildly radiactive in that it decays into other radioactive elements begining with Thorium at a very slow rate of a 4.46 Billion Year half life. This is about the age of the earth. The decay products are more radioactive than U238 so the radioactivity level of contaminated areas will increase with time
When bullets and armor piercing shells penetrate armor uranium metal gets hot enough to oxidize. Uranium metal is flamable. It can sustain its own combustion. It burns and burns everything and everyone the weapon is directed at. The oxide product becomes a radioactive heavy metal dust composed of particles as small as a vireus. This dust is dispersed by the the wind and/or the ammunition's explosives if it is a bomb. The dust gets into lungs were some of it gets permanently trapped, or pass into the blood. It can pass into the brain through then nasal passage ways. It settles in fields used for agriculture. The result has been devastating not just to the civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, but to American soldiers as well. The effects are comparatively not so visible to most Americans because we have only the returning soldiers complaining of "Gulf War Syndrome" (a casualty rate that has become 56% of the first Gulf War veterans.) But it is the civilians in the countries where it was used that are left to live with this Gulf War Syndrome for generations to come and perhaps permanently. It will be a legacy that is a constant and reminder of Americans having been there for the rest of time.
The radioactive materials will not stay only in the those countries. It gets into the rivers that eventually empty into the ocean. It is spread by the winds world wide. Once dispersed these particles are there forever. The entire world will experience the effects of its dispersal into perpetuity.
Once Depleted Uranium has entered the food chain some of the ingested U235 and U238 will become permanent parts of bones and teeth. The alpha and gamma radiation they emit damages body structures and DNA. It also gets into the soldier's semen making Gulf War Syndrome a sexually transmitted disease that slowely kills wives, girlfriends, and children born afterwards.
The United States Military does not care about the legacy it leaves behind. Not for the civilians who must continue to live there, and not for its own troops who must live with the effects after coming home. It cares only about defeating the enemy as easily as it can today. It is not convenient to acknowledges this problem and so it does not. It continues to assert Depleted Uranium is not a problem and to cover up the scandal. There has been politcal pressure to halt research into its effects, while at the same time NATO troops in Kosovo are advised not to drink local water or eat locally produced food. They have both of these flown in.
That Depleted Uranium is the cause of Gulf War Syndrom has been proven by the research of Dr Leuren Moret.
Although something can be done to reduce damage to radiation during exposure, the damage done is permanent and cumulative over a lifetime. There is no eventual repair of and recovery from the damage.
When historians judge the actions of the Bush administraion they may well villify it. Dictators may come and go. But the radioactive contamination left there will remain forever and may some day cause these regions of the world to be considered permanently uninhabitable.
Among many other places, depleted uranium was used during a forty day carpet bombing campaign in the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys in the First Gulf War, and again in the second. If there are any apple trees remaining there eating an apple from one now will definitely make an immortal person mortal.
Depleted Uranium - NATO's Dark Secret
Pictures of the Genetic Damage Horror - Not for Weak Stomachs:
Silent Genocide, Iraq War Pictures
News Story of the Effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq
This is a Japanese newspaper. Why is there no domestic (to the U.S.) newspaper source for this information?
Beyond Treason
A DVD with information on Depleted Uranium, and horrific experiments on U. S. citizens done without their knowledge.
Technical Article About Depleted Uranium and Radioactive Isotopes
DEPLETED URANIUM: ETHICS OF THE SILVER BULLET
DU: Washington's Secret Nuclear War
Dark Secrets in a Blighted Land
Scientists uncover radioactive trail in Afghanistan
Low-Intensity Nuclear War: Radioactive "Wasting" with the New Agent Orange
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Dolphins, War and the Environment
Iraq: The State of the Postwar Environment
Horrors of war: US, UK munitions ‘cause birth defects in Iraq’
If you find what you read in these pages disturbing you have a duty to write your congressman and your senator. You can follow the progress of bills you write them about as well as look at voting and sponsorship records at http://www.govtrack.us.
The information on these pages is presented at some risk to myself. So please be advised that I am in good health, and am enjoying life with every desire to stay alive. I am entirely absent of any suicidal thoughts.
Hidden Castle's Home Page (The Bailey)
Contact
Webmaster: 
