"The most (Lopez) expected in the battle area was 400 rads," Winters said. "This was unprecedented."

Damacio Lopez is a long-time DU activist (IDUST), and traveled recently to Iraq with Ramsey Clark's delegation.This is the first I've read of his test results. If the results are accurate, there is little doubt our country engaged in a [covert] nuclear war against Iraq.

Definition: RAD:The rad (radiation absorbed dose) measures the amount of radiation absorbed by body tissues. Rads usually describe doses from both external penetrating radiation and from radionuclides contained within the body, but do not measure specific biological damage.A rad to the hand, for example, is not considered as dangerous as a rad distributed over the entire body.

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[full coverage of Dan's trip: http://www.ccmep.org/danwinters.html]

A mother cares for her terminally ill child in a children's hospital in Basra, Iraq. More than 500,000 children are believed to have died as a result of the U.S.-backed economic sanctions that deprive the civilian population of food, medicines, clean water.

Boulder resident Dan Winters has returned from the Middle East after spending several weeks as part of an effort to deliver medical supplies to Iraq and to test for radiation linked to Gulf War battlegrounds.

The 46-person delegation to Baghdad that included Winters was coordinated by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark through the International Action Center.

In violation of the U.N. embargo against Iraq and U.S. law that makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to travel to Iraq, the delegation delivered more than $100,000-worth of donated medicine to Iraqi hospitals.

Winters and several members of the delegation, including Clark, flew to the Basra province across the no-fly zone imposed by the United Nations to visit hospitals.

Winters called Basra medical facilities "Spartan" and said doctors he spoke with expressed frustrations over the number of cancers they cannot treat due to a lack of medicine and facilities.

The United Nations has blamed sanctions for the lack of medicine, food and clean water that have declined since 1990 when sanctions were first imposed for the unnecessary deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis -- an estimated 500,000 of them children.

Doctors told Winters that birth defects have increased in Basra since the Gulf War. Cases of children born without a brain or their heart outside their chest cavity, for instance, have risen, Winters said.

"There's a real pain in the doctors' eyes," Winters said. "It's tough on them. They just want the medicine to do the treatments."

In one hospital, Winters said, a line of cots with sheets constituted the majority of care provided by doctors.

"They were dispensing medicine meant for five children evenly to 45 children," Winters said. "None of the doctors wanted to play God and decide which ones get to live. So they divided the number of pills by the numberof patients."

The delegation conducted research that might help explain the cause of the cancers.

Scientist Damacio Lopez, a member of the delegation who traveled to Gulf War tank battlegrounds, measured radiation levels that are connected to depleted uranium, or DU, weapons systems that are known to be used by NATO. As Lopez conducted his work on Jan. 17, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called for an investigation of sites in the Balkans hit by NATO shells containing DU.

DU rounds are dense armor-piercing ammunition that emit radioactive dust at impact that can be dangerous and linger in the environment for millions of years if not cleaned up. The IAEA said studies on at least 30 sites in the Balkans would help determine whether debris from the shells causes cancer.

DU has been named as a contributor to the medically anomalous Gulf War Syndrome.

Studies of soil and the destroyed Iraqi tanks rusting on the battlegrounds showed the existence of levels of radiation beyond Lopez's initial expectations, Winters said.

"He thought there might be something wrong with the machinery," Winters said. "As he approached a hole that was blast in a tank, (the Geiger counter) made a constant buzz, instead of clicking. At first he thought there was something wrong. But he tested the unit."

Lopez read 1,945 rads in examining the DU round impact point on the tank. Lopez also measured more than 2,500 rads while testing an unexploded shell investigators with the delegation said was likely fired by a NATO helicopter gun ship, Winters said.

"The most (Lopez) expected in the battle area was 400 rads," Winters said. "This was unprecedented."

Winters said members of the delegation believe spent nuclear fuel rods may have been combined with DU during the manufacturing process to make the shells more powerful, but also more radioactive.

"If we find that this is true," Winters said, "southern Iraq and even parts of Kuwait is a disaster just waiting to happen, if not happening already."

The causes of other health problems were easier to identify, Winters said.

The delegation found that many water treatment facilities were operating at unsafe levels. Because the chlorine used in decontaminating water is considered by the United Nations a "dual use" item -- something that may also be used to construct a weapon -- many facilities fail to fully treat water because they do not have access to the proper supplies.

Nutrition in Iraq is also substandard, Winters said. The controversial Oil-for-Food program is providing little more than sustenance, he said. Two U.N. officials responsible for running the program -- Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck -- resigned one after the other in protest of the sanctions, which they blame on the country's deepening humanitarian crisis.

Winters said he noticed many of Iraq's young men appeared to have missed puberty.

"There were 17-year-olds that looked like they were 12," Winters said. "Their condition is created by the low caloric intake combined with periodic sickness during childhood. This is pretty basic stuff that's easy to see for yourself."

Winters said he thinks poverty contributes to the problem.

"A school teacher, for example, makes $5 a month," Winters said. "Even though a house is provided for that job, that's not enough to get by on. The Oil-for-Food program provides care baskets of food, but it's just the bare minimums. People are on the border of starvation."

In one Basra village Winters visited, NATO shells recently hit a family home, killing a child.

"This runs counter to what most Americans are led to believe," Winters said.

Most Americans, Winters said, assume that NATO's last use of deadly force in Iraq was in 1998, when the U.S. and Britain launched Operation Desert Fox after weapons inspections efforts collapsed due to Iraq's refusal to comply with the requests of weapons inspectors.

"Most people don't realize that we are still bombing," Winters said.

NATO has discretion to identify "targets of opportunity" on the ground in the no-fly zone, Winters said. If NATO detects Iraqi radar, fighter jets may strike at a military target.

"We don't always hit the target," Winters said. "That's what people in Iraq have been saying. I saw the damage."

Winters said he was approached by the child's mother as he stood outside the home. "She said, why are we still at war with her country?" Winters said.

On Jan. 17, Winters witnessed a protest in Baghdad marking the 10th anniversary of the beginning of Operation Desert Storm.

"There were thousands of students from Iraq and elsewhere, and ordinary Iraqis all saying enough is enough."

The trip to the Middle East wasn't Winters' first.

Ten years ago, Winters came to Baghdad as a part of the International Gulf Peace Team that opposed the impending war, favoring further diplomatic negotiations.

But on Jan. 17, 1991, the bombs came raining down. Winters wound up stuck at the Al Rashid Hotel for nearly a week because Saddam Hussein International Airport was bombed and closed -- just 90 minutes prior to the departure of his scheduled flight.

He made his way out of the country to Jordan on a chartered bus.