Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

reply to post by Rapha


You do realise we bombed it as well....

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Originally posted by neformore
.Is abnormal, and frankly, it looks like "we" caused it.

Maybe. Or maybe it was all the chemical crap that Saddam had there that got spread around during the battle. Or maybe it was a combination of both. (which is more likely). At any rate ... the pictures of the children show that something VERY bad happened. It should be a lesson on going to war. Sometimes you have to. Sometimes you don't. It should be avoided if possible. Damn crazy people running the world ....

Iraq was going to sell oil to China as soon as the sanctions against them from the first Gulf War ended.
That's why the second war happened and they irradiated the whole area to make sure China wouldn't want to come in after.

I have seen this and similar articles over the last few years, and it always irks me when I see the detractors trying to paint DU and other nasties as being perfectly safe! More so when they then start asking for "proof" that such stuff is responsible for all the birth defects and cancers now mushrooming in scale where they were not before.

I don't think you need to be a scientist or Miss Marple to deduce that, where there were little or no cases previously, but now there are huge numbers then the answer must lie in what we were bombarding them with that has caused all the problems.

Not that I expect anyone will ever be brought to account for it, and hey, they need to do something with all that spent power station fuel.

reply to post by Britguy

I don't think you need to be a scientist or Miss Marple to deduce that...

This kind of thinking disturbs me. What if it isn't DU and we incessantly pursue a cause that may not apply? Would we not then be ignoring the cause of the suffering to begin with? In war time, as I have maintained throughout this thread, there are many toxins and environmental contaminants that could certainly cause these kinds of effects in the population. I content that DU is NOT present in sufficient quantities to cause these effects. The US Army and Marine Corp. use XM855 steel core rounds. The have an outer lead core and a copper jacket. No DU.

DU penetrator rounds for armor are used against...ARMOR. There was a lack of armor in Fallujah considering these insurgents didn't have tanks. I cannot speak for the toxicity of any other weapons used. And in no way am I denying that people are being hurt by the after effects of warfare, indeed I fully acknowledge it. But I don't think that DU saturation is such that it could be causing anything of this scale. Even the article and scientists involved in the research weren't capable of giving a definitive answer.

Maybe it would be prudent to avoid making conclusions on what is causing this before all the facts are known...You know, denying ignorance and all that jazz?

reply to post by DCPatriot


Guy...That was the Mahdi Army. A particularly vicious militia who share a belief in the Mahdi...Men who believe death and chaos is necessary to bring back the 12th Imam. Funded, sheltered, equipped and trained in Iran, they were the most formidable force facing US troops in Iraq.

They were NOT the civilian population. Who don't deserve to suffer.

reply to post by Thunder heart woman


Uranium Ore is typically highly radioactive. I do not disagree with the dangers of mining uranium. I never said the practice was safe. But that isn't what we're talking about is it? No it's not. It's about DU, U238. Not uranium mining.

reply to post by DCPatriot


I remember a thread a couple of months ago about the biggest weapon of TPTB. It's this..."patriotism"...the illusion of separation. I'm sorry man but anybody who thinks that it's okay to make babies collateral damage for ANYTHING is completely f***ed.

Originally posted by projectvxn
reply to post by DCPatriot

 

Guy...That was the Mahdi Army. A particularly vicious militia who share a belief in the Mahdi...Men who believe death and chaos is necessary to bring back the 12th Imam. Funded, sheltered, equipped and trained in Iran, they were the most formidable force facing US troops in Iraq.

They were NOT the civilian population. Who don't deserve to suffer.

Ultimately, it IS the responsibility of the citizenry to rid themselves of these rogue militias.

We had to go house to house in the hell hole to root out these SOBs.

Enough casualties and eventually, the bad guys will leave....which is exactly what happened.

The only thing they understand is raw power and might....otherwise the killing will NEVER stop among these tribal sects.

reply to post by DCPatriot


Sure, when you're talking about the militias themselves. But to say we should salt the earth and ensure the suffering of the population is entirely another matter.

We are attempting to have a conversation about what is causing the deformities. Until now the conversation, while not entirely fruitful and agreeable, has been about just that. I'd like to return to it if it's alright with you.

reply to post by speculativeoptimist

But to the people the particles do settle on in the briefness, is it cause for concern in your opinion?

Any heavy metal exposure should be cause for concern.

I can see this issue has many facets and I appreciate your view. Do you think the shrapnel and shell casings that remain long after the battles can cause any harm?

It depends on the level of saturation. In my opinion, we should focus on cleaning this stuff up. Anything we bring in should come back with us, period.

I like to use a more personal analogy when considering these things, and I ask this in general, not just towards you, would you let your kids play around such environments with DU shrapnel and shell casings?

DU has many uses, it's not just used in weapons of war. Aircraft counterweights, flywheels, the orange color in ceramic plates, green glass, so forth and so on. DU is very much part of our lives. Obviously I don't want children playing with shell casings, which is why I said that anything that the US Army brings with them should come out with us when we leave. I wouldn't want kids playing with ammo, not just for it's explosivity, but because the lead exposure which can cause many of the same effects as DU poisoning.

If the answer is no, then that kind of supports the notion that just the uncertainty alone is enough to warrant further investigation from independent investigators.

There is always cause for further investigation. Not having all the pieces is indeed no excuse for ignoring dangers, however misdiagnosing a problem can and will have it's own set of issues that may augment problems down the road.

Originally posted by ezekielken
reply to post by projectvxn

 

What could possibly be propoganda regarding Anti-war. You my friend should go play on the I-15.

How civilized of you.

You don't like someone's view? Hope for their death.

How's that anti-war view doing now?

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It comes down to this... the use of anti-vehicle and anti-armor ammunition against personnel is a war crime and clearly defined in the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
Unless I missed something, we were not fighting armored vehicles in Fallujah. I have a real problem with this.

One could argue that if in the heat of battle one were to fire at advancing enemy troops with a anti-vehicle type of weapon the action could be argued as within reason. However that is not the same thing as arming an anti-armor aircraft, such as an A-10, with anti-armor ammunition, such as DU 30mm and sending them into a battle area that has no armored vehicles.

If enemy personnel were to recover these materials and detonate a dirty bomb with them (and I think it will eventually happen somewhere) we will decry it as terrorism.

What it comes down to is that prevention of human suffering should never be allowed to be an excuse for not letting old men to use their toys and other old men from making tons of money resupplying them.

Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist. When the Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a passionate voice for peace, travelling the country to speak out. The following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors

QUESTION: Any viewer who saw the war on television had the impression this was an easy war, fought from a distance and soldiers coming back relatively unharmed. Is this an accurate picture?

ROKKE: At the completion of the Gulf War, when we came back to the United States in the fall of 1991, we had a total casualty count of 760: 294 dead, a little over 400 wounded or ill. But the casualty rate now for Gulf War veterans is approximately 30 percent. Of those stationed in the theater, including after the conflict, 221,000 have been awarded disability, according to a Veterans Affairs (VA) report issued September 10, 2002.

Many of the US casualties died as a direct result of uranium munitions friendly fire. US forces killed and wounded US forces.

We recommended care for anybody downwind of any uranium dust, anybody working in and around uranium contamination, and anyone within a vehicle, structure, or building that's struck with uranium munitions. That's thousands upon thousands of individuals, but not only US troops. You should provide medical care not only for the enemy soldiers but for the Iraqi women and children affected, and clean up all of the contamination in Iraq.

And it's not just children in Iraq. It's children born to soldiers after they came back home. The military admitted that they were finding uranium excreted in the semen of the soldiers. If you've got uranium in the semen, the genetics are messed up. So when the children were conceived—the alpha particles cause such tremendous cell damage and genetics damage that everything goes bad. Studies have found that male soldiers who served in the Gulf War were almost twice as likely to have a child with a birth defect and female soldiers almost three times as likely.

www.yesmagazine.org...

the US government knew the stuff was deadly back in the cold war
the A44s that have STOLEN our western governments are effing us all
no ...doubt...about...it

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk
reply to post by usmc0311

 

Yes, but the April operation ended abruptly for political reasons. Your certainly right that every civilian did not get out as I saw firsthand but many who stayed were helping the insurgents as well. Not all but some. I definitely do not feel that our cause was just but at the time we were facing an enemy that was hell bent on killing us. We were ordered to be there and we did what we felt was nesassary for our survival. Given what I know now the whole war was a warcrime so you can take what you want from that.

In what ways did you see or find evidence of the Fallujah civilians helping the insurgents? Did you see them as legitimate targets because of this? What were the ROE set done by your commanding officer in relation to this?

I am not asking these questions in a confrontational way, genuinely interested in how you saw it as I just recently typed a paper on the different types of violences Iraqis found themselves at the mercy of following the invasion.

Some were willingly helping care for the wounded, harboring enemy fighters and munitions, and transporting munitions around the city. Some were doing it only for money and some were doing it out of fear of what the insurgents would do to them. Our ROE stated that anyone with hostile intent was a valid target. Basically, if we felt a threat we could engage at will. Some were legitimate targets but alot were just caught in a bad situation.

Originally posted by milkyway12
reply to post by usmc0311

 

Careful what you say. If you are still in , you do know you limited your Freedom of Speech when you signed the dotted line.

Even if the war was to secure Oil Assets. Oil is just as vital as fresh water to pretty much all nations.

Also , the US does not recognize international law.

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You should also know , we are around DU materials often and nothing happens , hell we even handle the materials and sit next to them for hours. Nothing.

edit on 28-5-2012 by milkyway12 because: (no reason given)

No longer in and off of IRR so I am free and clear. That is until I get a visit from the DHS lol. your right we do handle DU ammo alot. I used to sleep on belts of 25mm DU ammo. The problem arrises once it is exploded so all of the buildings we went into after DU was used on them were contaminated.