Subject: [CTpeace-activists] Iraq and the CT Air National Guard

One year from now, units of the Connecticut Air National Guard, based at Bradley International Airport, are scheduled to fly to the Persian Gulf for military exercises. In an effort to have these plans cancelled, members of the CT Peace Coalition from New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport, held a protest demonstration at Bradley this past Saturday, September 30. Fifteen activists vigiled at the main entrance of the airport for nearly one hour, before being threatened with arrest by state police and airport security for trespass.

The demonstration then continued at the Bradley Air National Guard Base itself, where seventeen A-10 "Warthog" military aircraft are stationed. The aircraft, which are built around a 30 millimeter seven barrel gatling gun, carry depleted uranium, a by-product of plutonium production, which is developed into an armor piercing munition and which was used extensively by the United States and its allies during the Persian Gulf War and in the U.S./NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999. "It continues to be used in the almost daily bombings of Iraq, although its use has been declared by the World Court to be a violation of international law," stated Coalition member Joan Cavanagh.

"What is depleted uranium but a weapon of mass destruction, in essence an instrument of biological warfare? Its extensive use in Iraq leaves an environmental wasteland and a population vulnerable for generations to come to all forms of cancer and grotesque genetic abnormalities. In fact," she added, "the economic sanctions themselves are also a weapon of mass destruction."

Members of the Coalition delivered a statement to the Wing Commander, Col. Dan Scace, asking the unit not to participate in "the slaughter of an unarmed civilian population."

The Coalition plans further actions around this issue, and encourages other groups opposing the sanctions to investigate the involvement of their own state air national guard units.

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