The Progressive magazine, 13 gennaio
Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons
http://www.progressive.org/wx011301.htm#anchorban011301

The United States used weapons containing depleted uranium in the Balkans.

More than 40,000 of them, in fact, if you count both the Bosnia bombing and the war in Kosovo.

At least fifteen European soldiers have died from leukemia that may be linked to exposure to these weapons, and the remnants of these weapons are still lying around in villages where children are playing or in fields where dairy cows are grazing, Marlise Simons of the The New York Times reports.

Gina Kolata of The New York Times cast doubt on the dangers of depleted uranium in a front page story on January 13.

But a 1999 document issued by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff warned of health risks surrounding depleted uranium weapons, Simons reported earlier in the week. And Robert Fisk of the London Independent noted that in training exercises with these weapons, the British government goes to extraordinary lengths to capture and then bury the radioactive dust that they release. Why would it do so if they aren't hazardous?

Even if there is some doubt about the safety of these weapons, the sensible, safe, and moral thing to do would be to suspend their use until a thorough investigation could be done on them.

But in a show of hubris rare even for NATO, the alliance "quickly shot down an Italian plea Tuesday for a moratorium on tank-busting weapons that contain depleted uranium," the A.P. reported. (Italy, by the way, has lost six soldiers who fought in the Balkans to leukemia.) "Several NATO members opposed any moratorium, some quite strongly."

Hmmm, wonder who they might be?

Simons confirmed my suspicion when she wrote on January 11 that the United States "has been the main proponent of the weapons."

The issue of weapons tipped with depleted uranium is not new.

Freelancer Bill Mesler reported on this problem in The Progressive back in August 1999 in an article entitled, "The Mess NATO Left Behind." Mesler wrote: "The use of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia could have put at risk many of the region's civilians."

He spoke to Dr. Hari Sharma, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who was conducting a study of Gulf War vets for the Military Toxics Project. Sharma said the full scope of the danger might not become clear for at least another decade.

A few lonely activists and journalists, especially Voices of the Wilderness, Mesler, and Fisk, have been trying to draw attention to the widespread use of these weapons during the Gulf War.

"I revisited the old battlefields around the Iraqi city of Basra," Fisk recalled in an Independent piece on Jan. 10. "Each time, I came across terrifying new cancers among those who lived there. Babies were being born with no arms or no noses or no eyes. Children were bleeding internally or suddenly developing grotesque tumors."

NATO--and especially the United States--has a lot of explaining to do.

--Matthew Rothschild



Commento: il New York Times ed il Washington Post hanno subito un triste declino: da simbolo di giornalismo investigativo a mero strumento di propaganda, ma talmente propaganda che anche alla CNN si sbudellerebbero dalle risa. Il vuoto lasciato da questi due mostri sacri lo può riempire ormai anche un nostro qualsiasi giornale di provincia: il Resto del Carlino, con gli articoli firmati da Lorenzo Sani, è più che sufficiente.