|
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.
|
