VETERANS OF MODERN WARFARE

Bridging the Gap

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Depleted Uranium

 

 

 

One soldier is in a tropic region where the sun beats down on him.  In a very short time, he receives enough radiation from the sun to get a sun burn.  He has damaged his body by exposure to the suns radiation.  A lot of radiation in a little time obviously can cause problems. Thankfully, a sunburn heals quickly.

 

Another soldier goes to war and is exposed to  small amounts of  radiation released by munitions that  are constructed from

Depleted Uranium.  He inhales the radioactive dust, or perhaps ingests it.     

These tiny particles of radioactive material attach themselves to the soldier at the cellular level. This contamination remains with him until his dying day.  Each day doing damage to the soldiers body.  A little radiation over a long period of time also causes problems, but it does not show up as quickly as a sunburn, as we see in our first example.

 

Who is better off?   The answer here  is the crux of the DU debate.

A tale of two soldiers

Since the conclusion of the fist Gulf War, at least 13,000 American veterans have died from DU-related causes, far more than the 148 who died in combat; and of the nearly 700,000 who served in the war at least 250,000 are now (in 2007) permanently disabled; a percentage far higher than in any previous war.

FOR AT LEAST 50 YEARS, DOD HAS KNOWINGLY EXPOSED MILITARY PERSONNEL TO POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SUBSTANCES, OFTEN IN SECRET

Iraqi doctors are making renewed efforts to bring to the world’s attention the growth in birth deformities and cancer rates among the country’s children. The medical crisis is being directly blamed on the widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the US and British forces in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the even greater use of DU during the 2003 invasion.

Skeptical federal authorities acknowledged a possible problem ( with Agent Orange) in 1979, when the VA offered Vietnam veterans special access to health care and launched a nearly endless series of Studies by beginning the Agent Orange Registry Examination Program. It was a medical surveillance program tracking Vietnam veterans' health concerns. In 2003, after 25 years, the VA lead examined 334,000 of 3.4 million veterans who served in Vietnam and maintains a computer database to track their health concerns.

In 1993, Congress passed PL-103-160 Section271, ordering the DoD (Department of Defense) to study the effects of inhaled and ingested DU ( http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d103:HR02401:|TOM:/bss/d103query.html Thomas Legislative Information on the Internet). In violation of the law, the DoD has not funded a single study, instead focusing on embedded DU using non-battlefield scenarios.

Contrary to what the Department of Defense and the VA would  love for us to believe, ingested and inhaled DU is NOT the same as imbedded .

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