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>Thank you, Felicity, for writing this...for being so brave to go there and do what others have not done... ...to meet "our" children...words fail me.. ...yours, philippa (i'm thanking F on the list because she often doesn't get individual emails due to technical difficulties) ===== Original Message From farbuthnot <asceptic@freenetname.co.uk> ===== >· September 2001 >· July 20 >Search Features > FAR001IRA | 30/05/2003 | 1044 words >Depleted uranium: weapon of (long-term) mass destruction >By Felicity Arbuthnot >BAGHDAD (PANOS) The small city of Diwania in southern Iraq is home to >10-year- old Mustafa Ali who has acute myeloid leukaemia. Wan and wide-eyed, >the cancer has affected a nerve in his right eye. His embarrassment at >losing his hair because of chemotherapy is evident. His father, engineer >Ali Ismael Tamader Ghalib, gives up work a week every month to bring his son >to Baghdad for treatment. > >³If there is another war, more children will suffer,² he said weeks before >the latest war. ³We must stop this slaughter of innocents; what have these >children done to deserve this?² Tears streamed down his wife¹s face, >dripping on to her immaculate black abaya. > >The Al Mansour Teaching and Paediatric Hospital in Baghdad is Iraq¹s >foremost medical teaching centre. When the twice-weekly cancer clinics are >held, it is near impossible to squeeze through the crowds that spread into >the grounds; parents holding, carrying, clutching their children for >diagnosis and treatment. > >After the 1991 Gulf War, Al Mansour filled with a disproportionately high >number of patients from heavily bombed cities in the south of Iraq. Between >1978 and 1992 there were 270 cancer and leukaemia cases recorded there. But >between November 1992 and October 2002, the hospital recorded 1,714 cases >a six-fold increase. Those patients included 10-year-old Mustafa and scores >of other children from Diwania and other heavily bombed areas. > >With the latest war in Iraq and the post-war looting, treatment at Al >Mansour will have ceased, effectively condemning Mustafa, other children of >Diwania and all the first Gulf war¹s cancer victims to death. This war has >confirmed Ali Ismael¹s worst fears. > >Just 10 months after the 1991 Gulf war, Iraqi doctors were already >bewildered at the rise in rare cancers and birth deformities. They were >comparing them to those they had seen in textbooks relating to nuclear >testing in the Pacific in the 1950s. That depleted uranium (DU) weapons had >been used in Iraq was then unknown. >Basra, southern Iraq, was in the eye of the original Desert Storm. In 1997, >senior paediatrician at the Basra Maternity and Paediatric Hospital Dr Jenan >Hussein completed a thesis comparing the effects there with Hiroshima. >Cancers, leukaemias and malignancies believed linked to DU, she found, had >risen up to 70% since 1991. > >³There is every relation between the congenital malformations, cancer and >depleted uranium. Before 1991, we saw nothing like this. Most of these >children have no family history of cancer,² she said. > >DU, or Uranium 238, is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process. It >has little commercial value, but when conventional bullets and shells are >coated with DU, it makes them armour-piercing. Radioactive particles from >spent DU shells do not disappear after explosion. The Pentagon says there >are some 320 tonnes of DU left over from the 1991 war. Three weeks into the >latest war, independent Britain-based DU researcher Dai Williams said 2,000 >tonnes of residual DU dust is a conservative estimate. > >In April 1991 the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent a report to the Ministry >of Defence warning of a health and environmental catastrophe in Iraq. >It estimated that a residue of 50 tonnes of DU dust could now lead to half a >million ³potential deaths² from cancer ³in the region² within 10 years. With >estimates of 2,000 tonnes of DU residue, the ³potential deaths² could be >astronomical. > >The evidence on the destructive nature of DU is clear: sick Gulf war and >Balkans veterans, tested in 2000 at the World Depleted Uranium Centre in >Berlin, were found to have three times more radioactive contamination than >the residents of Chernobyl, Ukraine site of the world¹s worst nuclear >accident. A 1996 survey that studied the families of 267 US Gulf veterans >showed that 67% of children conceived after their fathers had returned from >the Gulf, had rare birth deformities. > >DU has thrice been condemned as a weapon of mass destruction by UN >Sub-Committees. Even the US Army Environmental Policy Institute agrees: DU, >it said in 1995, is ³radioactive waste and, as such, should be deposited in >a licensed repository². > >But in spite of all the evidence or perhaps because of it DU continues >to remain an integral part of the NATO arsenal. And now, attempts are being >made to cover up its devastating effects. > >When, in 1999, Finland¹s Minister of Environment, Dr Pekka Haavisto was >appointed chairman of the UN Environment Programme unit investigating the >use of DU in Kosovo, doors slammed in the face of this highly respected >expert. In Washington, de-classified documents relating to DU use were >suddenly re-classified a pattern followed in all the NATO countries he >doggedly visited, Haavisto told a UN conference in 2001. > >When his team arrived in Kosovo, their movements were restricted by the >military, but they still managed to produce a 72-page report outlining deep >concerns. However, by the time it underwent the tortuous UN Œeditorial¹ >process, it was reduced to two pages. > >In an internal memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico >(the laboratory that brought the world the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs) >headed The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators, the reason for the >apparent cover-up becomes clearer. Dated 1st March 1991, the day after the >Gulf ceasefire, a Lt Col Larson wrote to a Maj. Ziehman: ³There has been and >continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. >Therefore if no one makes the case for the effectiveness of DU on the >battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and therefore be >deleted from the arsenal.² > >The memo ends: ³I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind, when, >after action, reports are written.² > >With hospital records in Iraq being destroyed while US troops stand by and >do nothing, it is now unlikely we will ever know the true extent of the >health effects caused by the last war. As for the latest war, based on the >amount of DU used, the health effects can only be exponentially worse. > >Uranium 238 has a half-life of some 4.5 billion years, meaning the DU dust >will outlive the sun. Kuwait and Iraq may have been relieved of Saddam >Hussein, but the cancer patients, the Œliberators¹, the new born and the >unborn will pay the price until the end of time. > >Felicity Arbuthnot is an award-winning investigative reporter from Britain > >This feature is published by Panos Features and can be reproduced free of >charge. Please credit the author and Panos Features and send a copy to MAC, >Panos Institute, 9 White Lion St, London N1 9PD, UK. Email: >media@panoslondon.org.uk > _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk