URANIUM HYSTERIA SWEEPS EUROPE
DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, EUROPE'S MEDIA BLAME NATO AMMUNITION FOR CANCER IN SOLDIERS. THE SERBS, MEANWHILE, ARE HAPPY TO CAPITALIZE ON THE ANTI-U.S. SENTIMENT.
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV-0101280307,00.htm

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia It began with a series of articles in a far-left Italian newspaper and blossomed into media frenzy that has sent European governments into a panic over depleted uranium.

Il Manifesto, a feisty journal with roots in the Italian Communist Party, was the first to connect the leukemia deaths of three Italian soldiers with their service in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In a series of reports last autumn, the paper suggested a link between the fatal blood disease and depleted uranium shells used by NATO in 1995.

As the story unfolded, two more Italian veterans from Bosnia died, and then two more. By January, as many as 30 Balkan veterans from Italy had been diagnosed with various illnesses, and the Italian news media was in a full-throated howl, demanding that Italian troops be withdrawn from the Balkans until their safety could be guaranteed.

The British press soon caught the fever. A reporter for the normally sober Independent described the "cancerous gray snow" he saw in Bosnia, and blamed depleted uranium for the deaths of 300 Bosnian Serb civilians.

No one could produce any scientific evidence to support a linkage between leukemia and depleted uranium. Indeed, physicists and medical experts who have looked into the matter have long insisted that it is biologically impossible to contract leukemia from depleted uranium [?]. Other health authorities suggested that the badly polluted environment of Bosnia was a far more likely cause of the soldiers' illnesses.

But it hardly mattered. The finger pointing had started and all fingers were pointing at the United States.

The Pentagon owned up to the fact that some 10,800 rounds of ammunition tipped with depleted uranium were fired at Serb targets in Bosnia in 1995 and that another 31,000 rounds were used during the 1999 Kosovo campaign.

Most of the ammunition was fired at Serb tank positions by U.S. A-10 "Warthog" jets. Because of its extreme density, a depleted uranium shell is an especially effective weapon for penetrating tank armor or reinforced concrete.

Questions about the safety of depleted uranium munitions first arose after the Persian Gulf war when U.S. soldiers came down with a variety of mysterious illnesses. Depleted uranium was investigated as a possible cause.

Particular attention was paid to 15 gulf war veterans who still have fragments of depleted uranium embedded in their bodies. So far, none has developed cancer and now, after a decade of study, virtually every expert on so-called gulf war syndrome has ruled out depleted uranium as a cause [?].

But seven Italian soldiers are dead and no one knows why. France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal also are looking into cases of soldiers who served in the Balkans and later contracted leukemia.

To calm European fears, the U.S. government has released reams of data indicating that the risks posed by depleted uranium are minuscule.

For the most part, the European press chose to ignore or downplay evidence that got in the way of their story. And with NATO on the defensive and America portrayed as the nuclear polluter, it was an excellent story.

"We had more reporters here last week then we had in the whole previous year," said Susan Manuel, spokeswoman for the UN Mission in Kosovo. "Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Turkey . . . "

The story has become a propaganda windfall for Yugoslavia, ever eager to portray itself as the victim of NATO aggression. President Vojislav Kostunica, who succeeded Slobodan Milosevic last October, called NATO's use of depleted uranium shells "morally degenerate," and a government pamphlet distributed to the foreign media claims that depleted uranium had transformed vast tracts of Kosovo into "a radioactive desert."

Earlier this month, a team of United Nations environmental inspectors tested the soil, water and vegetation at 11 of the 112 sites in Kosovo where depleted uranium shells were deployed. At eight of the sites, they found low levels of Beta radiation--not enough to present any significant health hazard, but enough to send European politicians into a frenzy of recrimination.

Italy was the first to call for a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium munitions. Germany, Greece and Norway soon followed.

Over one-quarter of the 1,400 Greek troops serving in Kosovo already have asked to go home because of the alleged health risks.

German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping initially dismissed concerns about depleted uranium as "hysteria syndrome." But after German TV reported that depleted uranium sometimes contained microscopic traces of plutonium--a fact well-known in the scientific community [?]--Scharping reversed himself and summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires in Berlin to "express the concerns that are triggered by the word plutonium."

Almost every government with troops in the Balkans is now screening its soldiers for increased levels of uranium. The notable exception is the U.S.

These days, when NATO peacekeepers approach a site where depleted uranium was used, they wear white space suits and masks.

In marked contrast to the measures the soldiers take to protect themselves, virtually nothing has been done to protect the local civilian population. A week after the UN environmental inspectors held a press conference to complain that children were playing and cows were grazing in "contaminated" zones, UN administrators in Kosovo had yet to start marking off the areas with warning signs.

"We haven't felt any sense of alarm among the local population," said Edward Poultney, spokesman for the World Health Organization in Kosovo. "They look at it in a relative way."

This may be because the local population of Kosovo has come to realize that it was living in an environmental disaster area long before NATO came to visit.

In Mitrovica, the ethnically divided city in northern Kosovo, lead levels in the city's water and air routinely reach up to 200 times higher than the maximum safe levels established by WHO.

Researchers from New York's Columbia University first came here in the 1970s to study the poison's devastating effects on child development.

Last August NATO shut down the area's Zvecan smelter when French soldiers stationed in the area began showing elevated lead levels in their blood. The soldiers have been warned not to make any babies for at least six months.

Across the province, raw waste spills into village streets; abandoned factories leak toxic wastes; rivers and streams reek of sewage.

On the outskirts of Pristina, an ancient coal-burning power plant belches tons of ash into the atmosphere every day. Most children in this city seem to have chronic runny noses and hacking coughs.

In Gnjilane, a row of fast-food stalls has toilets that empty directly into a stream that flows past the base where American soldiers live.

Despite the concerns about depleted uranium, Italian troops based in Djakovica are still camped in an abandoned car factory. They have been there 18 months.

"They are living, eating and sleeping on the floor of a Zastava auto plant where you have lead and other heavy metals and God knows what else all over the place," said a Western diplomat.

A team of WHO experts has started sifting through hospital records to see if there has been any increased incidence of leukemia or cancers among the local population living near the depleted uranium sites. Thus far, they have found nothing, although it would normally take more than two years for such cancers to start showing up.

Kosovo's Albanian population has its own theory on the hazards of depleted uranium.

"They think it's all Serb propaganda aimed at scaring NATO troops out of Kosovo and depriving them of their independence," said UNMIK's Manuel. "They accuse us of inflating the issue."

U.S. soldiers in Kosovo have been instructed to direct all reporters' queries about depleted uranium to NATO headquarters in Brussels, but at Camp Bondsteel, the main American base in Kosovo, GI's scoffed at the concerns.

"See those Abrams tanks over there?" asked one soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"The armor is made from a depleted uranium composite, and you'll find less radiation inside one of those things than you would in most people's backyards."

    There is a lot of tainted evidence on DU, all originating in the US.

Follow the tainted trial below:

 The US likes to say the DU does not get to bone marrow, cause its a bone surface seeker.  However, they omit telling folks that deposits on the surface of bone make high concentrations of free radicals from the high energy short traveling alpha particles-----AND that these are free to travel right into the bone marrow------causing oxidant cell damages AND this effect can help to induce the leukemia like cell damage.  Strike one against the US for misleading from the truth.

  The US likes to say that DU only harms the kidneys and thus provides only urine testing. BUT the real truth is DU has a long half life in the body and damages cells and sets off the immune protection cells and this causes high concentrations of DU to form in the lymph nodes of the lungs and nodes elsewhere.  This is bad because it adds more toxicity to this critical cellular immune area that regulates cancer cells in the body. Strike Two against the US for again misleading from the truth.

 The US is trying to downplay that the immune system is a factor with DU and is dodging the issue that DU and many of the other long retained toxic materials generated from bombing and infrastructure destruction add to the lymph toxic burden. The same mechanism as DU applies to the many other war toxics and destructively adds to the immune system failings. The US has ignored this effect in the ills like CFS, MCS, and the mysterious diseases seen around DOE gas diffusion plants, as well as similar effects from the Gulf war.  Strike Three--------the US is trying to wholesale lie out of its delimia, its liabilties, and the Europeans are pressing the case.  The US is Out, for not telling the truth.

 The US tries to misinforms folks on shrapnel issues of DU.  The body can encapsulate DU shrapnel, typically with calcium deposits to keep it from getting into the body circulation and tissues and bone.  This effect and the one of breathing in the DU into the lungs is not a fair comparison. DU dusts have a huge area compared to isolated DU fragments. DU in lungs is absorbed into the body slowly, where are large sharpnels don't get absorbed at anywhere near the same rates.  This is just one last form of the US lying about how DU acts in the body and its mechanisms. The US is intentionally misleading, and Strike Four--------its now criminal.

    At any point in time a certain statistical cross section in any area will have a leukemia profile that is caused by regional toxics in the food chain and industrial releases.  If wars add to these releases and toxic fluences, especially some of the long retained DNA damaging toxics, then the statistical outcomes will show increased rates of diseases like leukemia.

   Final strike, Hold the US Govt and its negligent scientists accountable in front of the world.  Add in the Fluorides toxic effects and put all the misinformation under the spotlight, and bring on the criminal charges.