I can deal with living in a country where my so-called leaders routinely lie to me and routinely fuck over those people who put their lives on the line for all of us.
I served during Vietnam.
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Mystery pneumonia is being caused by America's weapons of mass destruction: A theory
by Steve Hesske August 8, 2003
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Could America's mainstream media be any more perfidious and derelict in its so-called reporting of the current so-called pneumonia epidemic among U.S. service personnel in Iraq and a few nearby countries? A quick, informal survey of this week's coverage of the pneumonia story by our bastions of truth and enlightenment — CNN, Fox, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post — shows that while all covered the story, none mentioned Gulf War Syndrome which befell maybe as much as 20% of the 700,000 Americans who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (PGW) or depleted uranium (DU) a radioactive weapon of mass destruction (WMD), outlawed by international treaty and world courts, that was used exclusively and extensively by the United States during the PGW and that was used by the U.S. during the recent invasion of Iraq at 10 times its PGW rate.
Here's what the mainstream press does tell you: Army brass have dispatched teams to Iraq and to Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany to investigate over 100 mysterious cases of pneumonia that have stricken American troops currently serving in the Persian Gulf. The puzzling disease has killed two and put another dozen or so in serious peril. According to the Army, a common geographical thread can not be established, a common bacteria can not be isolated. True enough. A military spokeswoman goes on to say that those who have fallen ill have not been exposed to biological or chemical weapons, a bald-faced lie. DU is a chemical WMD of the most destructive and virulent kind. The documentation is in. And the connection between DU and a "mysterious pneumonia-like disease" was established over 10 years ago.
DU — composed almost entirely of u-238, a radioactive heavy metal — is made from the waste product of nuclear plants. If ever a chemical WMD existed, here it is. Not only does ammo tipped with DU kill people and slice through armor (except for armor treated with DU) like butter, but its toxic byproducts can linger on former battlefields for centuries, causing a vast array of specific illnesses and also a general array of health difficulties such as immune system compromise.
In activity and effect DU is anything but "depleted." In fact, the WMD has a virtually endless shelf life. During the '91 PGW, the U.S. introduced over 300 tons of DU into the ecologies of Iraq and Kuwait. There was a large concentration in southern Iraq, near Basra where various cancers and other illnesses and birth defects now occur at roughly five times the rate they did pre-91. In one startling example, recent tests in the area showed that 20 out of 40,000 babies born in the region had been without eyes. The typical ratio for this birth defect is one in 50 million.
Closer to home, according to a September 2002 report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, over 221,000 of the Americans who served in the PGW were stricken with a smorgasbord of sicknesses that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome. All of this number are on some percentage of permanent disability except for those 10,000+ who are dead.
Among the many cancers, eye, ear, nose and throat troubles, cardio-vascular illnesses, kidney and liver failures, teeth and gum problems, a cornucopia of rashes, and on and on, thousands of PGW vets suffered from a mysterious, pneumonia-like illness that was first called Al Eskan disease after the Saudi Arabian village where it was first diagnosed. Since this first diagnosis in 1991, the Army has repeatedly claimed no link between Al Eskan (also known as Desert Storm Pneumonitis) and DU, but the Army has also been hard-pressed to explain how a disease declared to be indigenous to a village in Saudi Arabia has spread throughout the Persian Gulf into parts of the former Soviet Union and how thousands of American servicemen who were in the Gulf, but nowhere near Al Eskan, during the PGW, have been stricken by Al Eskan disease.
The primary cause of Al Eskan disease, according to vast medical consensus, is a combination of the fine, easily inhaled sand of the Persian Gulf, combined with many chemical pollutants, one of them DU.
An article written in collaboration by several MDs and PhDs in 1995 for the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology states: "Another contaminant of the Desert Storm environment was the presence of DU in ammunition and on battlefield weapons and damaged armor vehicles. Damancio Lopez (Bernalillo, New Mexico) discussed the hazards of DU which include radiation and heavy metal exposure. DU contains about 30% the normal amounts of the isotope 238U, a dangerous radioisotope with a half-life of over 4 billion years. DU particles can be easily inhaled in smoke resulting from the impact of armor piercing projectiles on hard targets and aerosolization of uranium into small particles. If even one small particle (<5 mm in diameter) is trapped in the lungs, the lungs and surrounding tissues can be exposed to up to 272-times the maximum permitted dose for workers in the radiation industry. Fortunately, exposure can be monitored and studies on Gulf War veterans should be initiated to determine their exposure." Unfortunately, I was unable to unearth any information regarding DU monitoring during the current conflagration, nor was I able to find any government studies on PGW vets that determined their exposure to DU.
During the PGW, the Army asked Dr. Doug Rokke, a Vietnam vet and out of the service for 20 years, to serve with the U.S. Army Preventive Medicine Command and help prepare troops for nuclear, biological or chemical exposures. As part of his orders, Dr. Rokke produced videos and training materials for assessing, containing and cleaning up DU munitions and caring for DU contaminated casualties. He and his team made several recommendations regarding immediate cleanup, medical screenings, use of protective gear and detection equipment and the prevention of the recycling of potentially contaminated materials. The Army did not disseminate these materials to its line troops, nor did it comply with most of Rokke's directives.
After the PGW, Rokke and a 100+ strong cleanup team were sent to the Gulf where they were able to do a general post-war, battlefield assessment and also attempt to decontaminate 24 American tanks that had been damaged by friendly (DU) fire. In the midst of the tank cleanup, which took Rokke and his team over four months and then took another three years at a stateside facility, it occurred to him that an overall DU cleanup of Iraq would entail astronomical costs and that such a cleanup might be impossible.
As to the battlefield assessment, Dr. Rokke, during his current international speaking tour where he invariably calls for a permanent ban on DU and for the U.S. to shoulder the costs of an extensive Persian Gulf cleanup, has condensed his evaluation to one sentence, "Oh my god!" He explains, "DU dust was everywhere. The contamination was extensive."
In a grisly side note, 20 of Rokke's 91 team are now dead and he, long out of the Army, is seriously ill. Rokke and his team wore no protective gear during their post-PGW mission. A 1995 physical exam revealed that Rokke had 5,000 times the permissible level of uranium in his body. Since his team's visit to Iraq, up to 2,000 additional tons of DU has been unleashed, every gram of it by the United States.
As to the current pneumonia, no one from the Army mentions DU or Gulf War Syndrome or El Askan, unless it is to discount these connections immediately, even though there are, according to former Army flight surgeon Dr. Dave Wiggins, disturbing similarities between the symptoms of El Askan and the symptoms of 20-year old Josh Neusche, one of the current pneumonia fatalities.
Neusche, a cross-country and track athlete, and a Missouri National Guardsman, was killed by a "pneumonia" that not only infected his lungs, but also his heart, kidneys and muscles. Ever hear of that kind before? Wiggins has, but it's extremely rare, which even the military admits, terming it "uncommon."
Colonel Robert DeFraites, the Surgeon General's senior preventive medicine physician and the Army's spinner for the Neusche case, goes on to say, though, that we can almost definitely rule out DU exposure. So, let's get this straight. On the one hand, the Army is baffled. On the other hand, the one thing it knows for sure is that there is no connection to DU. And then Col. DeFraites concludes by reiterating his otherwise complete bewilderment. Yet no one from the mainstream press questions this kind of clumsy, insulting spinning; they merely "objectively" report the "facts." Isn't it sad that our fellow citizens aren't more pissed off by such delusional, vile anti-journalism?
Of course there's more. The Pentagon and the Department of Defense have worked diligently to maintain a disconnect between DU and the variety of maladies that plagued Gulf War veterans, not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqi and Kuwaiti citizens after the PGW. The Pentagon continues to consistently deny that DU poses any danger to civilians and has quoted several studies to support this contention. Aside from many Army studies, the Rand Corporation has, apparently with a straight face, claimed that there was no "clear" connection between DU and Gulf War Syndrome. Other establishment dupes and nuclear industry shills, like The Institute of Medicine, have chimed in with their similar "scientific" findings, the same kind of science employed by those tobacco company doctors whenever there is another cigarette lawsuit.
Meanwhile, an impressive lineup of clearly established, well-respected physicians — Rokke, Wiggins, Dr. Arasaf Durakovic, Dr. Pat Horan, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, and Dr. Hari Sharam, to name just a few — have spoken and written convincingly about the links between even moderate exposure to DU and serious respiratory (among many other illnesses) ailments As early as 1943, Manhattan Project scientists warned — in writing — of a connection between DU and "bronchial irritation." As recently as June of this year, Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar for the Institute of Policy Studies has noted that those humans exposed to DU are 217% more at risk to contract pneumonia. In 2001 The World Health Organization unequivocally declared, "Brief, accidental exposure to high concentrations of DU has caused acute respiratory illness."
Extensive animal testing, on dogs and monkeys, has established a clear cause/effect link between DU and bronchial pneumonia. Organisms exposed to DU between 15 days and a year run much higher risks of dying from pneumonia than those organisms in the control group.
Page upon page of documentation indicate that the Pentagon has known about specific ill effects of DU since 1974. Yet, with the collaboration of their mainstream press lapdogs, the Army and other services are able to marginalize the expert opinion I have listed and present to the ovine American public the typical, deceitful buzz phrases like "mysterious pneumonia" and "Army gravely concerned" whereupon they are re-circulated without question and the truth once again finds itself swimming in a river of false reporting and typically mindless consumption of that reporting.
Here is a recent statement from the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute that clearly demonstrates the Army's "concern" regarding the recent outbreak of pneumonia. " ... no international law, treaty, regulation or custom requires the U.S. to remediate the Persian Gulf War battlefields." The preceding was issued before the current hostilities, but if anything has changed, I'll wager it's for the worse. What the Army's statement ignores is that there is much "treaty, regulation or custom" that declares DU use in battle as illegal. Therefore, why should there be any treaty, regulation or custom as to its remediation? Here the Army sounds like a bunch of petulantly chortling cannibals, guilt free because there is no law that says they have to do the dishes after feasting on human flesh.
The main reason the Army ignores or Deep Six's damning information about DU is because this WMD is an extremely effective, necessary component of many American military weapons systems. As a military spokesman recently brayed, "DU is here to stay!" Can the TV ads be far behind? An Army of One eagerly slurps up a DU popsicle and then cruises the obstacle course, no problem. Don't ask to see him a month — or maybe even a week — later though.
DU, since it's technically a waste product, is also relatively cheap, but it puts the "heavy" in heavy metal; DU is two and a half times denser than steel, nearly two times denser than lead. DU munitions can easily pierce most armor and concrete. The Army used to claim that when it struck wood DU released no contaminants, but finally had to abandon that conjecture, too ridiculous even for the Pentagon. In the PGW, DU ammo was used by tanks and the "Warthog" tankbuster aircraft; the tanks' armor was also DU treated. In 2003 the military's use of DU in ammo and armor is far broader and it's easier to list those weapons and vehicles without it.
American tanks fire DU shells that weigh over 11 pounds and contain 4,500 grams of DU. Upon impact, these shells release a fine dust that can be easily inhaled by humans and become imbedded in their lungs. Early Army studies indicated that the inhaled dust was quickly passed via feces and other waste elimination processes, but recent studies by some of the doctors mentioned in this article call this conclusion into serious question.
Current estimates have over a million rounds of DU ammo being fired during the current Iraqi war. Most medical and scientific authorities agree with Dr. Rokke who claims that the American troops' protective suits do not protect against the inhalation, absorption and ingestion of DU.
The final reason for the ongoing supression of the DU-"mysterious pneumonia" connection is that if this link ever gets established, then a wide variety of Persian Gulf illnesses can get connected to DU and the government would be looking at billions in payments to survivors, widows and widowers, maimed children and the citizens of Iraq for sure and probably several other Gulf nations.
I can deal with living in a country where my so-called leaders routinely lie to me and routinely fuck over those people who put their lives on the line for all of us. I served during Vietnam. But at least back then the mainstream press, in meaningful number, had enough backbone to question authority (especially if said "authority" was spewing preposterous gibberish) and even sometimes risk reputation and livelihood to expose a lie that needed exposing or tell a truth that needed telling. But today America's so-called liberal press can't even muster the energy to dig for a story. It passes off Pentagon press releases as "news." It doesn't point out even the most obvious of lies and, worse yet, it perpetuates those lies. Can anyone who has read what I've written here honestly say that while DU may not be the sole cause of the recent spate of "pneumonia," it certainly should be considered as a factor, as should Gulf War Syndrome? Instead the mainstream media propagates a disconnect with current fact and recent history. Watch out next week when Bill O'Reilly leads the charge to connect the (what will then be) pneumonia epidemic with Iraq's buried and as yet undiscovered WMD.
Do I seem pissed to you? I haven't even gotten to what really pisses me off. There are a number of people who have read this article in an earlier draft and claimed the mainstream media never gives the current Administration a pass, that the press would be all over President George W. Bush about DU if there was any "legitimacy" to what I've just reported here. What a fucking crock. Excuse my language, what a MOTHERFUCKING crock. Yeah, this impotent, chronically erroneous thing we call The Press would have been all over President Bush, just like they were for Enron. Just like they were during the recent 9-11 investigation. Just like they were for the PATRIOT Act. Just like they were about his insistence that there was a link between bin Laden and Hussein. Just like they are about Iraq's WMD. Just like they've been all over Rumsfeld, Rice, and Wolfowitz. Uh huh, All over him. All over his administration. Really?
Thanks to Amanda Green and Dave Wiggins.
© 2003, by the author.
Comments? newsuneed@yahoo.com
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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But today America's so-called liberal press can't even muster the energy to dig for a story.
It passes off Pentagon press releases as "news."
It doesn't point out even the most obvious of lies and, worse yet, it perpetuates those lies.
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