Brigadier General Brooks Lies about Depleted Uranium

[Il Anto]

In his ridiculous press conference this morning, he not only admitted to the U.S. using Depleted Uranium, but also lied about its harmfulness. Do these people really think they can just get away with this bullsh$!t? I am shocked and appauled by the ignorant arrogance of these leaders. I really want to puke.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Il Anto
Do these people really think they can just get away with this bullsh$!t?

Yes. They are.

[john williams]

Yes I agree Brooks is a liar, I saw it too. I would also, as a journalist asked, like to see the "smart bombs" that don't hit the correct target. I am deeply suspicious of anything said by the Rummy's military stooges.

However, Tommy boy is really polite when he lies, but I think brooks is just a lying piece of shit.

[Il Anto]

And who's using the weapons of mass destruction again? Oh yeah, Iraq is, right...

Last time I checked, DU causes a high and fatal amount of radiation. Who knows how many of our soldiers are becoming radiated, not to mention the people we are supposedly liberating.

[patricia]

I must say that I was facinated more by the questions which weren't really answered, at the press conference, than the ones that were. Apparantly the jury is still out on the dangers of depleted uranium. And that was just one bob and weave.
I kept thinking that that Brigadier General could certainly think on his feet. WOW!!

[john williams]

Yeah, the hypocrisy is unbelievable.


And there are still some dumb war supporters who just don't get it.

[Brian Olewnick]

I have a hard enough time guessing the two missing letters in "bullsh$!t".

[john williams]

Originally posted by patricia
I must say that I was facinated more by the questions which weren't really answered, at the press conference, than the ones that were. Apparantly the jury is still out on the dangers of depleted uranium. And that was just one bob and weave.
I kept thinking that that Brigadeer General could certainly think on his feet. WOW!!

That's why he's a Brigadier General.

About depleted urianium - there is a hospital in Basra full of kids dying of leukemia because of the DU from the last war. There have been numerous documentaries shown here about it but I doubt they would be shown in US as they were pretty conclusive.

[patricia]

Well, apparantly the favourable to the administration research is what they're going with. Holy Moley. Even *I* know that depleted uranium is at least suspected to cause cancer. If I know that, how come they're still investigating the ill-effects?

[willy]

"If I know that, how come they're still investigating the ill-effects?"

Because it's the government. It takes them 10 years to realize a light bulb has burnt out and another 5 years to replace it. They are quite efficient in extracting money from our paychecks every week though.

One area where I oppose Bush is the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the increase in the size of government. Whenever the government is involved in anything you can pretty much count on it turning to shit.

The exacerbation of a problem once the government gets involved is pretty much guaranteed.

[patricia]

Although we're all laughing about the "efficiency" of government, it's true. So, if depleted uranium is a suspected cancer-causer and is being used by the U.S. in Iraq to "liberate" the citizens, how come it doesn't seem to bother them that the non-combatants are breathing the same air and drinking the same water as the soldiers and other combatants. They presumably don't care if the "enemy" gets cancer, but what about the citizens, whose only crime is that they live in Iraq? Don't we care if they might die from cancer?
This seems particularly callous to me. What good is having control over your resources and everyday lives, if you get cancer and die?? Some liberation!!

[john williams]

Originally posted by patricia
Although we're all laughing about the "efficiency" of government, it's true. So, if depleted uranium is a suspected cancer-causer and is being used by the U.S. in Iraq to "liberate" the citizens, how come it doesn't seem to bother them that the non-combatants are breathing the same air and drinking the same water as the soldiers and other combatants. They presumably don't care if the "enemy" gets cancer, but what about the citizens, whose only crime is that they live in Iraq? Don't we care if they might from cancer?
This seems particularly callous to me. What good is having control over your resources and everyday lives, if you get cancer and die?? Some liberation!!

Well said Patricia

[patricia]

Originally posted by JBW
Well said Patricia

It just strikes me as ironic that the reason that this war is being fought, is to bring wonderful things, like freedom and democracy to the Iraqis as well as a healthy, productive lifestyle, in contrast to what they now have. It is supposed to be, among other things, a humanitarian cause. How humanitarian is this?? It doesn't injure the resources, which seem to be the first things of concern, guarding the oil sites. Something smells very bad here. I wanted to be wrong about the apparant avarice, but winning at any cost, including the health and safety of the citizens of the "liberated" country makes me very uneasy.

Depleted uranium has been used for many years in tank ammunition because of it's extremely high density together with a very high degree of hardness. The combination of these properties allows it's use as high velocity tank ammunition to punch through thick tank armor.
It is NOT radioactive. Whether it is in anyway carcinogenic, I don't know. Pure metallic uranium is a non-radioactive "heavy metal", and is a toxic substance, which can cause poisoning, not cancer when ingested or breathed in.
The point is, it has long been used in anti armor projectiles, this is not news.

[patricia]

So, not cancer, only poisoning. Neither one are good things. Why didn't the Brigadier General admit that this could be troublesome, instead of wobbling with the "we don't know so we assume it's OK" tack. It just seemed weasely to me and unbecoming to him.

[willy]

BTW-Who came up with this being "suspected" of causing cancer? Is this irresponsible reporting? Kind of like being a "suspected" terrorist or "suspected" thief?

Did some fool reporter at the news conference spew this out in a question without any knowledge of what he or she was talking about?

[john williams]

Originally posted by patricia
It just strikes me as ironic that the reason that this war is being fought, is to bring wonderful things, like freedom and democracy to the Iraqis as well as a healthy, productive lifestyle, in contrast to what they now have

Well, heaven save us from the well intentioned idealist. It is not anyone else's job but Iraq's to determine its future. I doubt whether the US govt realy want a democracy in Iraq. In the past they have preferred petty dictators who are happy cow tow to US.
And when said dictator does not lick the boot of US anymore...Oh deja vu.


I will put money on that a democratic govt will not exist for long, if at all in post war Iraq.

[patricia]

Originally posted by JBW
Well, heaven save us from the well intentioned idealist. It is not anyone else's job but Iraq's to determine its future. I doubt whether the US govt realy want a democracy in Iraq. In the past they have preferred petty dictators who are happy cow tow to US.
And when said dictator does not lick the boot of US anymore...Oh deja vu.


I will put money on that a democratic govt will not exist for long, if at all in post war Iraq.

I hope you're wrong, JBW, but only time will tell now. Let's not sit on our hands and just hope. Being pro-active is not reactionary, simply participating in the democratic process, our responsability.

[john williams]

I hope I am wrong too Patricia.

[jesus marion joseph]

I have an idea. Let's use rubber projectiles in our tanks, so that if we miss, they'll just bounce off of the unintended target.

Damn, I'm good.

[patricia]

Good idea, jmj. Maybe just ripe bananas. For heaven's sake. We're, none of us, suggesting that the soldiers not have real guns and real ammunition and real tanks and real bombs. What I'm asking is whether it's necessary to visit a future plague of unidentifiable chronic illness on a whole population. This is not to mention the troops who, like the former Gulf War veterens, may well suffer from whatever they have developed. You know, "Gulf War Syndrome"? Disease is the same as chemical warfare, isn't it?? Whether it's deliberately introduced, or by accident, it's a disaster, waiting to happen, I think.
What say you???

[S.Eden]

I don't even know if Gary would remember it, but I posed a question to him specifically on depleted uranium-tipped weaponry a few months ago in another thread when it was still an object of government denial(maybe in anticipation of things to come?). And now pray tell here it is staring us right in the face. This is just despicable, and I can't even believe he would have the nerve to lie about it directly to a nationwide audience, tell us that the danger they pose is "questionable". I've given the vast majority of war coverage about two seconds of my attention, but I happened to catch that lovely little blurb today, and it made me sick. He can tell that to my cousin, who suffers from that mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome".

[john williams]

Originally posted by S.Eden
This is just despicable, and I can't even believe he would have the nerve to lie about it directly to a nationwide audience, tell us that the danger they pose is "questionable". I've given the vast majority of war coverage about two seconds of my attention, but I happened to catch that lovely little blurb today, and it made me sick. He can tell that to my cousin, who suffers from that mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome".

Absolutely, whenever I say the generals wheel out their propaganda and lies I am disgusted. I saw a telemovie a few years ago called "The Gulf War", largely about returning soldiers who began suffering from this "mystery illness". What was most frightening was the Army's complete disregard/contempt for their own soldiers. Ted Danson was in it and it if only half of it was true, then I think this war will be even worse on the soldiers/civilians than the last one and the military/administration need to be held accountable for once. What the Generals and ttheir lackeys are doing now very much reminds me of the their callous disregard of their own.

I am not trying to trivialise your cousin's condition by referring to a film, but it truly shocked me. I am really sorry your cousin has this condition as it sounds so awful and completely debilitating.

Hey, cut them a little slack. No one new anything about "Gulf War Syndrome" until after it happened, any more than the military knew about Agent Orange poisoning before the fact, although the civilian chemical companies may well have known. Then Navy CNO Zumwalt's own naval officer son died from Agent Orange exposure.

Any guilt is that of forever denying the facts *after* they come to light, to avoid responsibility and economic troubles. That is indeed reprehensible, that our military be treated that way.
But, our big corporations wrote the book on that. Anyone for asbestos?

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally posted by patricia
What say you??? [/B]

I say bananas would eventually gum up the workings of the tank's gun, so that's a bad idea. Besides, when they start to ripen they attract fruit flies, which could carry diseases to the local populace, thereby creating further collateral damage. I'm sticking with rubber. Safe *and* sanitary.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by FredC
Depleted uranium has been used for many years in tank ammunition because of it's extremely high density together with a very high degree of hardness. The combination of these properties allows it's use as high velocity tank ammunition to punch through thick tank armor.
It is NOT radioactive. Whether it is in anyway carcinogenic, I don't know. Pure metallic uranium is a non-radioactive "heavy metal", and is a toxic substance, which can cause poisoning, not cancer when ingested or breathed in.
The point is, it has long been used in anti armor projectiles, this is not news.

I agree, it's not really news - from what little I know, DU is also used to make the ammo in lots of weapons, and it has been thusly used for quite some time (including the Gulf War). Examples include various high-speed cannons in various calibers (20, 25, and 30 mm, among others) and the USN's CWS (close-in weapons system or something like that, affectionately known as "Sea-Wiz" or "R2-D2"), which is an anti-missile defense on ships.

However...DU is mildly radioactive - it is the byproduct of separating U238 and U235 to enable the U235 to be used in reactors, and it has a half-life of 4 to 5 billion years, I believe. While that's a *very* low level of radioactivity, it's not nil. DU is, per the defense department's own briefings, about 40% less radioactive than naturally-occurring uranium...again, that's not nil. The Rand Corporation has issued studies under the auspices of DoD which indicate no real radiation risk from DU (and here, they're most likely talking about risks to soldiers and those working with the stuff, not civvies, I'm guessing), but obviously there is not complete agreement on that.

It's worth noting that we probably don't really know what the effects are of DU littering the environment are, whether that seeps into groundwater and the like, since those sorts of studies require long-term work and are difficult to control in post-battle situations, I'm guessing. (I am surmising here, I admit, but it seems reasonable to me.)

Google on "Depleted Uranium Ammunition", there is a wealth of info out there, some good, some the usual "I have a web page therefore I can spout whatever crap I want people to believe" stuff.

[Gary Sisco]

If you're staring at the wrong end of a tank or any other kind of armor, you're damned glad to have armor-piercing capability, I'll tell you what, whatever it's made out of. It is a toxic substance, if exposed to huge amounts of it, but it's not anywhere near as dangerous as most peaceniks make it out to be (aside from its armor-piercing capability, I mean).

The US's source of Gatling guns is right here nearby my home, where it's always been. I've been hearing them test fire at a range a few miles over the ridge from us since 1965 (and a friend and I used to have a lot of fun monkeywrenching the place during the air war in El Salvador, where they put the guns to savage use). They fire that shit all the time into a sandbank, and have been for years, without any effect on the local population and no detectable harm from any kind of runoff.

I'm going to tell the peace movement something right here: The intelligent thing to do is to win soldiers over to one's side. That doesn't happen if it sounds like you're wanting to get them killed by denying them the ability to protect and defend themselves in combat. They did not issue the orders for war or have anything else to do with it except go where they're ordered to go.

War is a mess. Shitty things happen. Lots of people get hurt and killed. Litter, harmful and otherwise, gets left all over the place, and nobody cleans up afterwards. Thus it has always been, in every war.

By the way, people often seem to forget, if they ever knew, that conventional explosives aren't exactly ecological. TNT in quantities liked used by the US will make for as much of an ecological nightmare as anything else. It basically reduces soil to an inert substance, devoid of organics, and leaves behind it's own toxic stew.

[S.Eden]

[Depleted uranium has been used for many years in tank ammunition because of it's extremely high density together with a very high degree of hardness.]

Their first large-scale combat usage(edited on my error of omission) was in 1991 in Desert Storm/Desert Shield, so let's not pretend this has been going on for all that long.


[The combination of these properties allows it's use as high velocity tank ammunition to punch through thick tank armor.]

That's only the half of it. It's also pyrophoric; when it strikes, say, steel, the friction causes it to burn and its particles spread massive fire.


[It is NOT radioactive. ]

When DU burns, it shoots tiny particles of poisonous and radioactive uranium oxide out in aerosol form, which can then travel for miles in the wind. And studies have shown that up to 70% of DU will aerosolize on impact.

The medical problems our own soldiers have suffered from the first "war" range from respiratory, liver and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, headaches, fever and low blood pressure, to birth defects among their newborn children. And that's from an estimated 130,000 of the almost 700,000 we sent over there.

Call it more than a feeling we're being lied to...

[Pure metallic uranium is a non-radioactive "heavy metal", and is a toxic substance, which can cause poisoning, not cancer when ingested or breathed in.]

Natural uranium is both toxic and radioactive!

The debate over the amount of toxicity and radioactivity strikes me as null when you're on a crew that has to clean up a mess created by this type of weaponry.

[jesus marion joseph]

Hmmm....perhaps if we could develop a DPB-NR (depleted uranium banana-non ripening) we could avoid unintended damage *and* leave behind a biodegradable residue....

[Gary Sisco]

The Gulf War was not its first use in combat. As I said above, they've been using it for quite a while. El Salvador, especially.