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Depleted Uranium Weapons used in Afghanistan to be used in Iraq

By Dai Williams, Eos, Surrey, UK

eosuk@btinternet.com -- http://www.eoslifework.co.uk –

Fowarded with permission of author.]

UK Defence Ministers Hoon and Moonie have denied the existence and use of depleted uranium weapons to MPs and have not disclosed potential radiation hazards to UK troops in Afghanistan although this was promised. Dr Moonie denied knowledge of US penetrator warhead materials in November 2001 -- despite a Lockheed Martin patent from 1997 specifying both tungsten and depleted uranium warhead options. This must have been known to the MOD.

If Messrs Hoon and Moonie still believe Pentagon propaganda and misinformation -- despite evidence of uranium warhead developments in US Patents and the MOD website -- then they have probably misled the Prime Minister.

These guided weapons and their secret warheads are central to US air attack plans for Iraq. The US plan to use 9700 guided bombs and 700+ missiles at the start of the war (New York Times, 2nd Feb). Of these I estimate that at least 30% are likely to be equipped with "hard-target" warheads. These contain a secret, high density metal with powerful incendiary effects designed to destroy suspected chemical and biological targets. Tungsten is high density but not incendiary. Only Uranium has both these properties.

IF this secret metal is Uranium then these weapons are radiological bombs -- which would explain why the Pentagon and NATO have protected such a closely guarded secret.

US Patent records confirm that the most common of these -- the upgraded 2000 lb BLU-109/B guided bomb warhead, and the new Tactical Tomahawk penetrator warhead -- specify Uranium warhead options.

Recent contamination data from Afghanistan indicates that these weapons may be using Undepleted Uranium -- a subtle way to camouflage contamination as "natural background" and to deflect political questions that have naively assumed that only "Depleted" versions of Uranium has been used in high energy weapons. The sick Afghan civilians tested were suffering 100 times normal Uranium contamination. Have UK troops been tested yet?

Systematic deception to conceal the existence and use of these weapons, and Uranium health hazards has been developed over several years but is now obvious from multiple sources. US DOD records confirm that NATO deliberately delayed UNEP inspections in the Balkans by 16 months to enable 10 other "environmental" teams to clean up sites. Bomb and missile targets were totally excluded from UNEP's studies.  The resulting UNEP report re-assured governments and the media that there was minimal DU contamination in the Balkans (despite airborne radiation reported in Greece and Hungary soon after the bombing began).

Sadly the US controlled Afghan Government has not "requested" Uranium testing by UNEP despite being warned about potential Uranium weapon hazards last April.

A group of MEPs were fully briefed about these issues in Brussels last October. In November several Security Council members (France, Denmark, Russia, China) were sent details about suspected US Dirty Bombs. Copies were given to other diplomatic teams in Geneva in December.

This week the European Parliament will debate these questions in Strasbourg on Wednesday, 12th February (contact Carolyne Lucas MEP).

There appear to be reporting restrictions on raising these questions in the UK media, including the BBC. The facts are from public domain sources.  Recently UK MPs have begun to question these hazards in the House e.g. Alice Mahon and last week Valerie Davey MP when she asked Tony Blair to give an assurance that "Uranium, Depleted Uranium and Bunker Busters" would not be used in the Iraq war. BBC listeners would have been a little puzzled about her question, as Tony Blair seemed to be, because the weapons concerned are secret and have still not been reported in the UK media.

Hopefully these weapons will become public knowledge after the Wednesday EU debate -- unless NATO manages to gag the debate in some way.  Some of the facts and questions that will be raised are included in the new Presentation. Perhaps these facts -- and the lethal threat of widespread low level radiation exposure to allied troops as well as Iraqis -- may help to explain why France and Germany are so opposed to US war plans.

Just how tightly is UK press and broadcasting controlled because of US war plans?  Can UK editors question potentially lethal health risks for our troops from US weapons before they are deployed into another radioactive battlefield? And what precautions are planned for UK media teams to be deployed to Iraq?

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Other background notes:

The presentation has been compiled as a briefing for MEPs who will be debating US weapons almost certain to be used against Iraq in Strasbourg on Wednesday 12th Feb. It is based on 2 years research into secret warheads in guided bombs and cruise missiles. The full reports that it summarises are also available online via:

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm (Mystery metal nightmare in Afghanistan? -- Jan 02).

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u232.htm (Hazards of Uranium weapons for Afghanistan & Iraq -- Oct 02).

I hope my suspicions prove to be wrong. But the new warhead technologies with Uranium options suspected in January 2001 were confirmed during 2002 from UK MOD and US Patent Office data.

I hope these weapons have not been used in combat. But the prevention of UN inspections of bomb and missile targets in the Balkans and Afghanistan increase my suspicions. Medical samples tested by UMRC showed that sick Afghan civilians living near recent US bomb targets had severe (100x normal) Uranium contamination. These results indicate an urgent need for further Uranium testing.  Refer reports on the UMRC website at http://www.umrc.net (see What's New -- Field trip report).

Donald Rumsfeld referred to the Afghan bombing as a "dirty war". The health hazards for civilians and troops in Iraq of widespread radiological contamination from a US Dirty-bomb war are potentially far more serious that UK politicians, the media or even the MOD realise. These potential health hazards should be the basis for an absolute veto on US military action using these weapons until they, and their recent combat targets, have been fully inspected. Use of large uranium warheads (up to 1.5 tons on existing weapons and potentially 50-75% of the latest 10-ton US bunker buster) will be a crimes against humanity. Effects and consequences are summarised in the presentation. Full details are in the second report (link above).

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Additional references ============== You (or your readers) might be curious how I can justify these claims.  They are mainly based on evidence published in my two reports published last year plus some other sources:

1)  Depleted Uranium weapons 2001-2002: Mystery Metal Nightmare in Afghanistan? (31 January 2002, 140 pages) available in PDF format via http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm [Part 2 includes verbatim quotes from correspondence with Dr Moonie and written questions from MPs to Defence Ministers Hoon and Moonie.  Part 3  contains weapons data with sources and illustrations.  Part 4 contains potential hazards, contamination scenarios and examples of Deception up to January 2002 (Delay, Deny, Deceive summarises the cover strategy -- see paper by Piotr Bein last year. I don't have a link for this but can look).

2) The second report Uranium weapons 2001-2003: Hazards of Uranium weapons for Afghanistan and Iraq (20 October 2002) is available in several files via http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u232.htm .  This includes a Summary and Full report updating the January report, plus US Patent Data and letter to Tony Blair.

3) Key issues are summarised in the PowerPoint presentation on my website "Last chance to question US Dirty Bombs for Iraq" available on the Internet at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/Uhaz7feb03/index.htm  (HTML and PPT versions) added to my site last week. (I must notify DU List).

You are welcome to download, quote and print off copies of these reports for reference or advocacy.  If you would like a CD-ROM with all these files on (PDF and Word) please give me your postal address.

4) To verify the Afghan contamination, and the statement that it was undepleted not depleted Uranium, see the UMRC website (Dr Durakovic and Tedd Weyman) at http://www.umrc.net .  Detailed test results have not been published yet because further items are being tested. However I know and trust the people involved and have discussed the results with them.

I am an Occupational Psychologist.  I used to work with Shell in UK and Canada and commissioned an occupational health monitoring programme in Vancouver Refinery in 1982-3.  This alerted me to the hazards of low dose, high risk substances (e.g. aromatic hydrocarbons in the oil industry) and to the importance of epidemiology and toxicology. This is why I understood Dr Rosalie Bertelle's warning about risks of the US using DU weapons in the Balkans in 1999, and why I recognise deception in much of the official literature used to create the illusion that DU / U weapons are not hazardous.

So my initial motivation is a fundamental Health and Safety issue for employers of troops, aid organisations and other expatriates (e.g. media, construction workers) in Uranium combat zones.  The hazards for civilians in regions contaminated by Uranium oxides is even worse than the troops because they are subject to cumulative exposure over longer periods. Women and children are more vulnerable to radiation because they have more growing tissue.  So it may be several years before health consequences in the Balkans and Afghanistan become as obvious as in Iraq since 1991.

I offer these notes because I am raising profoundly serious challenges to US and UK government war plans.

Please critique my interpretations if you have any doubts or questions. You will find that I almost always refer to alternative scenarios where working with incomplete data (see page 125 of my first report).  It is vital to ask questions, rather than to make categorical assertions, about suspected use of Uranium weapons.

If you can publish any of these issues I would be interested to see them or have links I can quote e.g. to UK media.

It would be good to talk with you sometime.  I work from home so you can phone or leave a message any time.

yours in friendship

Dai Williams

Eos,

Woking, Surrey, UK

eosuk@btinternet.com

+44-1483-222017

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk

(see Community projects index for Uranium reports)

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