You're Talking Out Of Uranium - Brief Article

The ongoing debate surrounding the use of depleted uranium in war has taken the British and American governments beyond their predecessors. The lies are perfectly normal, but the manner with which those lies have been delivered is worryingly new.

For uranium is not the only commodity to have been depleted. The other, it seems, is the thin veil of respect that has masked most previous governments' contempt for their electorates. Lies are always hard to digest, but at least there's a degree of flattery in those that have been elaborately crafted. What we've heard during the past few weeks has been, on the contrary, an insult. Making zero effort to paint official routine denials of wrongdoing as the truth, it is as if our leaders don't even care if we believe them.

When the last British government took it upon itself to misinform the public over the perils of beef, it bent over backwards to persuade us that the problem was a myth. Images of former agriculture minister John Gummer stuffing meat down his daughter's throat still haunt the Conservative Party. But at least he tried. I don't see Robin Cook munching on DU pate. 'Our medical advice has told us,' said an MoD spokesman, 'that DU is no more radioactive than for example a household smoke detector'. 'Scientist after scientist after scientist,' said Mark Laity of NATO, 'has been coming out saying they do not see a link between leukaemia and depleted uranium.'

Meanwhile, Geoff Hoon, our trusty defence secretary, assures us that 'there are no risks associated with the use of DU, and certainly no proven link between its use and any illness'.

The fact that official bodies have not bothered to seek that evidence might have something to do with its not being found. Testing urine samples of soldiers -- the method used by the US and Germany to support their 'no risk' hypothesis -- is like using a metal detector to track down a rat. The truth is, our official experts are deliberately twisting what they know to be the truth. NATO officials, for instance, have been wandering around Brussels carrying lumps of depleted uranium to reinforce their point, despite the fact that when blown up, DU ignites and turns into tiny hard particles, small enough to remain airborne. When inhaled, the DU dust can easily enter a person's bloodstream to be transported through to the bone, lymph nodes, lungs or kidneys where it can remain for long periods of time emitting low-level radiation indefinitely. 'If officials really want to convince us,' challenged the New Scientist magazine, 'let them inhale a pinch of DU dust, as they are asking the people of Kosovo and Iraq to d o.'

Deliberately looking in the wrong places for bogus evidence to justify routine madness is nothing new. And if that was where the matter ended there would be no real surprises. But the story is still unfolding, and what is beginning to emerge is a rather more sinister picture. For both the British and American governments have conducted proper research into the effects of DU, and both have concluded privately that there are serious problems involved.

Back in 1997 in an unpublished report, MOD medical experts warned that 'all personnel should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long term risk... [the dust] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers'. Perhaps the same MOD's Geoff Hoon had not been advised of these warnings when he announced the absolute safety of DU. The same cannot be said of the US military, according to Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project. 'Since 1991, numerous US departments of defence reports have stated that the consequences of DU were unknown. This is a lie. They were told. They were warned. DU is the stuff of nightmares. It is toxic, radioactive and pollutes for 4,500 years. It causes lymphoma, neuro-psychotic disorders and short-term memory damage. In semen it causes birth defects and trashes the immune system. The US and British military personnel wilfully disregarded health and safety and the environment by their use of DU, resulting in se vere health effects, including death. I and my colleagues warned the US and British officials that this would occur. They disregarded our warnings because to admit any correlation between exposure and health effects would make them responsible for their actions wherever these weapons have been used.'

If the UN is correct, then the recent flurry of humanitarian wars have been about as humanitarian as Saddam's use of the Kurds in the front line. Even the usually meek UN has said that the Kosovo mission 'has created a new type of complex humanitarian emergency,' such is the state of their environment and health.

Indicative of the depths to which we have allowed our leadership to sink is the fact that the mainstream media makes very little effort to counter these obvious lies. So commonplace is this approach by modern governments to serious issues that it has come to be expected that whatever the government tells us is the opposite of the truth. And no one seems to mind.

On the contrary, lying is accepted as the norm. But why should we allow these people to have their say, when their say is worth less than the time it takes us to hear them? Why should we settle so lazily for this dishonest mediocrity? Is it not a sign of our own weakness that governments can rest comfortable in the knowledge that they will get away with it?

COPYRIGHT 2001 MIT Press Journals
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group