While the Pentagon stonewalls, insisting simultaneously that Depleted Uranium (DU) isn't what is killing NATO troops in Kosovo and that they warned European leaders it was deadly, the European officials (led by the Italians) are jumping ship. DU is deadly, they say, but the Pentagon failed to warn us; that's why we never warned the troops. We just didn't know.

As Mr. Fiske commented in the "Independent': This is worse than a scandal. It is an outrage.

Dr. Doug Rokke knew. He is the scientist the Pentagon put in charge of their field program for treating the affects of hazardous substances released during the Gulf War. Rokke insists he warned the Pentagon about DU back in 1991 after a harrowing effort to combat "Gulf War Syndrome" among Western troops and Iraqi civilians. He says the Pentagon stonewalled him then and they've been stonewalling him ever since. But even while the Pentagon seems to be saying DU is safe:

"In the (new) U.S. Army Manual of Common Tasks, the Department of Defense authors state that: "NOTE: Contamination [by Depleted Uranium] will make food and water unsafe for consumption." (Dr. Doug Rokke,
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/v2.htm )

The latest cover story from the Pentagon is: "Depleted Uranium is only dangerous of ingested." ('Agence France Presse', January 7, 2001)

Let us consider the logic of this statement.

1) Depleted Uranium is used in shell casings.

2) When the shells explode the DU turns into a super fine dust.

3) This dust is virtually indestructible. Like any dust, it travels wherever wind or people or animals take it.

4) There is no known minimum danger level for ingesting DU dust. One particle is one too much.

Given the above, can anyone explain what it is about the assertion that "Depleted Uranium is only dangerous if ingested'' that the Pentagon finds reassuring?

Eyewitness to hell

Tika Jankovic is a Yugoslav engineer now living in California. From 1996 to 1998 he conducted on-site investigations of the health effects of NATO's bombing and occupation of the Bosnian Serb Republic or Republika Srpska (pronounced Serpska).

I spoke to Mr. Jankovic this morning. He said:

"There's one good thing about the public uproar over the terrible sicknesses NATO troops are suffering after exposure to Depleted Uranium in Kosovo. For the first time, Western citizens are getting a glimpse of the horror wrought by last year's NATO bombing. But that horror did not begin for Yugoslavia in 1999. It began on August 31, 1995. From then until Sept 13, 1995, NATO conducted massive bombing raids against the Bosnian Serb Republic, or Republika Srpska. The official justification was to bring peace, that is, to force Serbian leaders to allow the total occupation of Republika Srpska by NATO. Whom did NATO bomb? They bombed people, ordinary people and their homes and work places and farms as well as schools and hospitals and markets in cities and the countryside. Peace through terror. The NATO attackers employed nuclear and chemical weapons in their arsenal. As the document I have sent you shows [this document is reprinted below] various chemical and biological substances continued to be sprayed on civilians by NATO troops after they occupied the area.

"The human consequences were horrendous. I know; I witnessed these horrors first hand during my investigative trips. I interviewed some of the victims, the 'collateral damage.' It is obvious that these attacks, and the use of hellish weapons, was intentional. How could it not be intentional? What I saw cannot be forgotten. It is burned into my mind."

Not so with the Western public. Up until now the mind of the Western public has been spared intimate knowledge of what NATO did to the Bosnian Serbs. The mass media withheld this information.

But if ordinary citizens were never told what happened when (as the TV newspeople used to say) "Today NATO planes bombed Bosnian Serb positions. Meanwhile, in other late breaking news..." - if ordinary people do not know whom those planes actually bombed, and with what, this is not true of Western leaders.

Here is Mr. Jankovic again:

"In May 1998 I visited Mrkonjic Grad [pronounced: Merkoneech grad] in Republika Srpska. A regiment of English SFOR troops was based in the area. Earlier, in October, 1995, the British had bombarded Mrkonjic Grad for 24 hours, dropping 10,000 shells on a city of 25,000 people, mainly Serbs…I spoke to several residents who worked at the British NATO base. They told me that the British commander had issued warnings to the troops not to drink the water or touch the soil or purchase food produced by local farmers for fear of DU and other contamination from their bombing and spraying."

Many scientific sources told the NATO governments about Depleted Uranium. (1) In 1997 Mr. Jankovic sent letters to Pentagon officials, the White House, over 40 UN Missions and important news outlets reporting what he had witnessed in Republika Srpska. Only one person responded. That was Mr. Harold Heilsnis, Director For Public Relations for Defense Secretary Cohen, 1400 Defense, Pentagon ,Washington, DC, 20301-1400.

Mr. Heilsnis called Mr. Jankovic's report "incriminating, false and inflammatory". Unfortunately for the population of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Mr. Heilsnis was wrong. Moreover, as Mr. Jankovic pointed out in his reply to Heilsnis, posted below, it is not just Depleted Uranium that NATO has used against the people of the Bosnian Serb Republic.

Here is Mr. Jankovic's report: I urge readers to distribute it as widely as possible. - JI

Consequences of the Use of Chemical, Nuclear and Biological Agents by NATO forces against Residents of Republika Srpska, 1995-1997

August 12, 1997 [with some current additions]

Dear Mr. Heilsnis:

I truly appreciate the time you spent reading my letter of July 8, 1997, sent also to Senator Trent Lott and Secretary William Cohen. I thank you for taking the trouble of writing me a response, with comments that my allegations were "incriminating, false and inflammatory".

Regretfully, I cannot retract the allegations in my letter to Senator Lott regarding the US/NATO's hideous, criminal activities, applying biological, chemical and nuclear weapons against the population in the Bosnian Serb Republic during the bombing in September 1995, followed by the occupation starting two months later and lasting to these days.

These 'inflammatory' allegations are based on my own field investigations the past two years, on the testimonies of victims, their families, eye witnesses, on medical records from hospitals that treated patients affected with airborne agents and/or nuclear contaminants, as well as other official reports and sources. These obnoxious chemicals have been and are being sprayed on Serbian territory and on the people from NATO helicopters and low flying airplanes. Serbian farmers have observed NATO military trucks spraying the fields and NATO soldiers using carry-on-the-back spraying devices, dispensing unknown chemicals, too. What follows is a small part of this still-unreported story.

1. The "herpes zoster intercostallis" disease has devastated the Serbian population in the Doboj Mountain-Ozren area since the arrival of NATO. Children have been most severely affected. Massive outbreaks of the disease followed NATO air 'reconnaissance' flights over this territory February 4 to 13, 1997. Source: The Department of Contagious Diseases at Doboj Hospital, Republika Srpska.

Testimony of D.B.

D.B. was a 12 year old boy, hospitalized with a massive attack of herpes. As with other witnesses, D.B's full name has been withheld to protect him from NATO reprisal.

Other sources: testimony of members of the medical staff who treated victims of the epidemic as well as records at the same hospital.

[Note from Tika Jankovic: On a trip to the Ozren Mountain region a year later (in 1998) I visited a girl suffering terrible pain from this disease. Her mother had 15 severe herpes sores on the palms of her hands from touching crops sprayed by NATO occupation forces. She could not even bear to wash her hands let alone work in the fields, the pain was so bad. In their village, Petrovo Selo, I heard there were similar cases.]

2. The wide-spread outbreak of other severe diseases such as leukemia, diabetes, high blood pressure, anemia, fatigue, psycho-neurosis, tuberculosis (a disease long ago wiped out in Yugoslavia) and other strange ailments and anomalous symptoms bewildered the most experienced medical staff in Republika Srpska. The problem of treatment was worsened by the US-instigated blockade which has kept all medical supplies out of the Bosnian Serb Republic, as well as out of Serbia proper, which therefore could not aid its neighbor.

Consider the timing, my friends. These diseases have plagued the Serbian population only since the US/NATO bombing began, August 31, 1995. The problems escalated with the arrival of NATO troops. A word on this. It is true that some NATO troops first arrived in Yugoslavia at this time . For example, in fall of 1995 the US First Armored Division roared in from Germany under the command of Gen. William Nash [presently the Governor of the Kosovska Mitrovica [pronounced Mitrovitsa] district in Northern Kosovo].

But many of what became known as NATO troops were already present. Until the fall of 1995 they were called 'UN' troops. After the so-called peace treaty was signed in Paris in November, 1995, these troops changed their insignia from the UN to SFOR or Stabilization Force, that is, to NATO in Bosnia. In so doing, they changed command structure; they came under the direct US control. And it was under U.S. control that the program of spraying poisons and, apparently, experimenting with new chemical and biological weapons on the local population, was carried out.

Sources: Testimony of Serbian victims from the towns of Doboj [pronounced Doughboy], Modrica [pronounced Modricha], Vukosavlje (Vukosavyeh), Derventa, Petrovo Selo and other towns and villages; medical records from hospitals in Doboj, Banja Luka [Banya Luka], Samac [Shamats], Brcka [Birchko] during 1996 and 1997.

3. The US, French and British air forces, that dropped over 8,000 tons of high explosive devices on the Serbian military (sometimes) and civilian (mostly) targets, used API PGU-014/B missiles and shells, fitted with Depleted Uranium (DU) , U-235 and U-238 core projectiles. The truck repair facilities at Hadzici [Hadjichi] a Serbian suburb of Sarajevo were showered with Depleted Uranium shells until the buildings were reduced to ruins. Hundreds of 30 mm shells, with DU cores 96 mm long, 16 mm in diameter, weighing 292.18 grams, were fired at this location from US Navy A-10 war planes equipped with 7-barrel "Gattling" guns. The same fate struck other Serb towns around Sarajevo, like Blazuj [Bladjooie] and Vogosce [Vogoshcha]. Samples of this ammunition, analyzed by the Nuclear Institute of Vincha near Belgrade (1), indicated its radioactivity was 1,000 times above the internationally accepted safe limit for humans. Sources: The official report by Vincha Institute as well as video documentaries by Serbian military reporters and the testimony of the victims of Depleted Uranium, as well as medical records at the hospitals in Doboj, Banja Luka, etc.

4. In 1997, symptoms similar to those described by veterans of the Gulf War - the so-called "Gulf War Syndrom" - were reportedly suffered by at least 20 Dutch troops previously on 'peacekeeping' missions in Bosnia at the town of Lukavica [pronounced Lukavitsa] near the city of Tuzla. These 20 soldiers appeared on Dutch TV to describe their unusual ailments and to testify that only US and British war planes fired radioactive ammunition on the Serbs. The 2,000 lb. cluster bombs dropped by NATO warplanes were also laced with DU; these left heavily DU-contaminated craters all over Republika Srpska. Sources: Official report by the Dutch Department of Defense, the testimony by 20 Dutch veterans from Bosnia on Dutch TV, and the public confirmation of the above by the Speaker for the Dutch Military Syndicate (a sort of union of Dutch soldiers). Also, 'Proceedings of the Yugoslav Nuclear Society International Conference', Belgrade, October 6-9, 1996.

5. ECO-disaster brought on by US/NATO germ-chemical-nuclear warfare against the Serbs is on par with similar vindictive campaigns the US carried out in Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Panama, Libya and elsewhere. These nations resisted the gaping jaws of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other Western predators and the planned exploitation of their labor and natural resources.

DU radiation and an apparent use of defoliants by US/NATO troops against Serbian land and population, have caused many birth defects among babies born after the US/NATO bombing and occupation; the magnitude of this problem has stunned Serbian medical experts and panicked the population. In addition, the eco-system has been turned upside down. Domestic animals and pets have suffered many deformities. Cats and dogs are born missing some body parts, or may have extra parts. I have seen a photo of a one-eyed cat, but litters without tails or ears have also been reported. Villagers in the Ozren Mountain-Doboj area, and in the Spreca, Bosna and Usora River valleys, which have been heavily and repeatedly sprayed by low flying NATO helicopters, report grotesque birth defects among calves and lambs. Villagers also told me of headaches, great difficulty breathing, choking, vomiting, fatigue, drowsiness, frequent urination, diarrhea, itching eyes, etc., after such uninvited showers from the skies.

The plants have also been affected. Farmers report that the growth cycle has actually changed. Blossoms fall off fruit trees too early and the trees do not bear fruits. Forests in the Ozren Mountain [area] were defoliated following NATO's nighttime 'reconnaissance' visits. People would be awakened by the sound of helicopters overhead, and soon after the leaves withered and fell off the trees. Villagers observed sparrows, crows and other birds, indigenous to the region, flying away. Some birds behaved very strangely, shooting up in the air, then swooping back down to hit the earth and die. Apparently the air had become poisonous to them. Source: The testimonies of the Serb villagers.

6. NATO helicopters even harass Serbian farmers burying their dead. On March 17, 1997, between 12:00 PM and 3:00 PM, at the Serb village of Lipac [Lipatz] near Tuzla, a NATO helicopter hovered over the cemetery spraying an unknown mist on a Serb burial procession. The pilot positioned the craft upstream so that the wind blew the mist onto the people beneath. The resulting choking and eye irritation forced the mourners to hastily bury the dead and flee the cemetery, running for shelter. After discharging this mist, the helicopter flew back to the Tuzla airport for a refill. A local newspaper quoted two male villagers, Dj. K. and B.P., who concluded after this experience with NATO harassment that the next burial would have to be performed at night, secretly, without the customary early death notice to the public. Similar stories of harassment of Serbs under NATO control may be heard everywhere. The witnesses recall similar raids being carried out on the Serbs at open markets, on soccer fields, at wedding parties and other outdoor events. Source: The eye witnesses' testimony.

Everything I have seen and read suggests that the residents of Republika Srpska have been the subject of extreme harassment and experiments by US/NATO peace-keepers, who are testing germ, chemical and nuclear weapons for use in future humanitarian wars.

Sincerely yours,
Tika Jankovic

[On subsequent trips to Republika Srpska, in December, 1997 and May and December, 1998, I collected further information. This reinforced earlier accounts of the US/NATO atrocities systematically committed against the Serbian population under this new colonial rule. From my observation the situation has gotten worse with time. - TJ ]

Notes

(1) In 1997 the Yugoslav Nuclear Society & VINCA, the Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Belgrade published a report on the use of Depleted Uranium against the Serbian people in Bosnia. It can be read at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/news/vincha.htm

2) After reading the above, Emperor's Clothes contributor Petar Makara made the following points: "The bombing of Yugoslavia, last year, and for that matter, the bombing of the Bosnian Serb Republic, in 1995, were flagrant violations of international law. The US and its NATO allies set themselves up as the International Community and gave themselves the right to force sovereign states to agree to NATO occupation. This is the most extreme sort of gunboat diplomacy. It fulfils the definition, established at Nuremberg, of the greatest international crime: launching aggressive war against a sovereign nation. Having so gravely injured the world's peace, NATO went on to insult its intelligence by claiming these bombings were humanitarian. If there ever was any doubt, certainly now the evidence is overwhelming: NATO deliberately used chemical agents, Depleted Uranium, cluster bombs and targeted toxic chemical facilities (4) , all the while knowing perfectly well that this would cause the gravest environmental disasters for years to come - in the case of Depleted Uranium, for millions of years to come. They contaminated not only areas inhabited mainly by Serbs, but also areas they had slated for ethnic cleansing - areas to be occupied by the people for whose protection they claimed to be waging humanitarian war: ethnic Albanians."

3) In our discussion this morning, Tika Jankovic provided more background on Mrkonjic Grad [pronounced: Merkoneech grad] the city where the British command warned its soldiers not to eat the food, touch the ground or drink the water:

"The British base in Mrkonjic Grad is located next to the city cemetery. After the massive British NATO bombardment, Croatian Fascist forces moved in and seized the city. Most residents fled or successfully hid from the Fascists, but some residents were found. The Fascists proceeded to torture and kill these people; 182 Serbian civilians were slaughtered. I paid my respects at the two long ditches where these poor souls lie buried. My guide showed me a piece of a welding torche which the Croatian Fascist forces used to torture these victims. Their cries, begging for someone to help them, could be heard by other residents, still hiding in the city.

"When the so-called peace agreement, that is, the forced peace agreement, was signed in November, 1995, the Croatian killers were supposed to leave the city because it was assigned to the Serbs. But the Croats did not leave until February, 1996. This gave them time to dynamite all those houses left standing by the British bombardment [of 10,000 shells], as well as to hunt down and slaughter any Serbs still in the city. Then, their work complete, the Croats departed. Serbs were allowed to return to this ghastly ruin. The British moved in and constructed a military base. (More on that construction project in a moment).

"This train of events clearly demonstrates the division of labor in the New World Order's humanitarian wars, a division we see again and again, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in the so-called border towns between inner Serbia and Kosovo, and so on. The U.S., British, French and German Gods provide air bombardment - this is clean murder, clean torture. Acceptable because performed from a distance; the hands do not get dirty. Then proxy forces (whether Croatian Fascists, Islamist terrorists or Albanian secessionists) move in and perform the dirty work - terrorizing the local population into submission. Finally the still-pure Gods set up their military bases 'to preserve order'.

"Here is how the British constructed their base in Mrkonjic Grad. Previously there had been two large employers: a shoe factory and a giant truck repair facility. Both were seized by the British who bulldozed the equipment from these factories into the river. When I visited the city I could see the immense pile of equipment, rusting like a grotesque island. The workers protested this British outrage and picketed the plants but they were brutally dispersed by the British soldiers. This pattern, of SFOR taking over and destroying production facilities, has occurred throughout Republika Srpska. It is part of the new colonialism, to break the spirit of the people, destroy Yugoslavia (and other countries) as functioning industrial entities and prepare the highly skilled population to work for a pittance in any job Western companies might offer."

4) Prof. Chossudovsky has assembled an ironclad indictment of NATO for deliberately releasing a tidal wave of toxic chemicals when it bombed facilities in Pancevo, Yugoslavia during last year's illegal war. See 'NATO Willfully Triggered Environmental Catastrophe In Pancevo, Yugoslavia' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/willful.htm