meehawl

So I keep seeing all these stories about how the US invaders in Iraq will, apparently, have to deal with those nefarious Iraqis who might dare, dare!, to use chemical weapons (apparently a notoriously ineffective battlefield weapon). Then I read about how the region is still suffering from the radiological pollution from the dirty bullets of poisonous and radioactive Uranium that the Pentagon scattered around the last time it went adventuring. Everyone seems so concerned about some “dirty bomb” threat, but nobody seems to care that the US will soon be scattering dirty bullets all over Iraq. In a country where half the population are children under 15, the mutagenic effects will have a long time to warp their DNA and breed a new generation of embittered super-mutant Jihad warriors.

Depleted uranium is essentially the same as natural uranium, which is considered to be chemically toxic and radioactive … When heated in air at 500 degrees Centigrade it oxidizes slowly, sustaining combustion and forming respirable aerosols. These aerosols of uranium are very light and can travel more than 42 kilometers (26 miles) from the release point … During the Gulf War an estimated 300 metric tons of DU were fired. The friction on reaching target causes it to aerosolize. Using a conservative estimate that only 1% aerosolized, this would have produced 3 million to 6 million grams of DU aerosol … The expected health effects of chronic lung burdens of depleted uranium include fibrosis of the irradiated lung tissue, lung cancer, eventual entry of the DU into blood over the subsequent years, with effects on liver and kidney, together with incorporation of DU into bone. When in bone, the uranium can irradiate the sensitive stem cells which form the white blood cells, especially the monocytes. Clinical manifestations of this toxicity and irradiation include kidney and liver damage, anemia, depressed cellular immune system and general heavy metal poisoning. Uranium can pass the placenta, causing congenital malformations, and can be carried to the infant in Mother’s milk. It can damage the ovum and sperm, causing genetic damage to offspring.

Using “depleted Uranium” in a battle in Iraq is just a clever, more directed way of using chemical-radiological weapons in the battlefield. Thanks to the notable lack of any progress in the Geneva Conventions since the mid-part of the 20th century, the old-fashioned and discredited gaseous agents are explicitly proscribed whereas radiological warfare has not been explicitly proscribed. I suspect that this lack of multilateral progress in restricting these new weapons has much to do with the influence of the main country that possesses the raw material and the will to engage in radiological warfare: the US.

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