[News] Pentagon Dirty Bombers
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Oct 27 10:43:26 EDT 2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10272009.html
October 27, 2009
Depleted Dirty Bombers
Pentagon Dirty Bombers
By DAVE LINDORFF
The Nuclear Regulator Commission is considering
an application by the US Army for a permit to
have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training
Area, a vast stretch of flat land in whats
called the saddle between the sacred mountains
of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaiis Big
Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the
island of Oahu. In fact, what the Army is asking
for is a permit to leave in place the DU left
over from years of test firing of M101 mortar
spotting rounds, that each contained close to
half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army,
which originally denied that any DU weapons had
been used at either location, now says that as
many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have
been fired at Pohakuloa alone.
But thats only a small part of the story.
The Army is actually seeking a master permit from
the NRC to cover all the sites where it has fired
DU weapons, including penetrator shells that,
unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and
burn on impact, turning the DU in the warhead
into a fine dust of uranium oxide. Hearings on
this proposal were held in Hawaii on Aug. 26 and 27.
Uranium particles, whether pure uranium or in an
oxidized form, are alpha emitters, and can be
highly carcinogenic and mutagenic if ingested or
inhaled, since they can lodge in one part of the
bodythe kidney or lung or gonad, for exampleand
then irradiate surrounding cells with large,
destructive alpha particles (actually helium
atoms), until some gene is compromised and a cell become malignant.
Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:
Ft. Hood, TX
Ft. Benning, GA
Ft. Campbell, KY
Ft. Knox, KY
Ft. Lewis, WA
Ft. Riley, KS
Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD
Ft. Dix, NJ
Makua Military Reservation, HI
Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:
China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA
Eglin AFB, Florida,
Nellis AFB, NV
Davis-Monthan AFB
Kirtland AFB, NM
White Sands Missile Range, NM
Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
An application for a 99-year permit to test DU
weapons at the NM Inst. Of Mining and Technology
claimed that that sites test area was so
contaminated with DU
as to preclude any other use!
DU weapons have also been used by the Navy at
Vieques Island off Puerto Rico (the Navy claimed it was a mistake.
The Pentagon continues a long history of claiming
that DU--which is the uranium that is left after
the fissionable isotope U-235 is removed to make
nuclear fuel and bombs--is not dangerous,
although this official stance is belied by the
warnings it has given to its troops (though not
to civilians in battle zones), to stay well clear
of tanks and other equipment destroyed by US
tanks, which used DU weapons as the ordnance of
choice in both the Gulf War and the current Iraq
War. During both wars, DU ammunition was used by
Army and Marine tanks, by the Bradley Fighting
Vehicle, the A-10 ground support jet, the Marine
Harrier jet, and specially equipped F16 fighter
jets. The Navy also switched from DU ammunition
to tungsten ammunition in its Phalanx
anti-missile ship defense system because of
health and environmental concerns with the DU ammo.
In both wars, a high percentage of troops have
returned with many physical ailments--auto-immune
problems, cancers, and later, birth defects in
offspring--which have been referred to as Gulf
War and now Iraq War Syndrome. As many as a
quarter of returning vets from the Gulf War have
reported strange illnesses and cancers and the
numbers are rising for Iraq War vets. As well,
statistics from the National Institutes of Health
show that counties hosting bases and test
facilities where DU has been uses also show high
cancer rates. This is certainly true for Hawaii's
Big Island, which has the highest cancer rates
for the Hawaiian archepelago. Meanwhile, the lung
cancer rate for the Ft. Knox area is 105-127 per
100,000 for the 2001-2005 period, high by state
and national standards. The rate is among the
highest in the state of Washington for Pierce
County, where Ft. Lewis is located.
The Pentagon denies that it uses depleted uranium
in bombs, missiles and cruise missile warheads,
but military personnel have reported their use in
all three delivery systems, and reports exist of
DU bunker-buster bombs, DU-tipped penetrator
warheads on Tomahawk cruise missiles and on some air-to-ground missiles.
Its a good bet that all US munitions containing
DU have been widely tested at various US military bases and testing grounds.
The bottom line is that at the same time that US
government is continuing to warn about the danger
of terrorists acquiring the materials to make a
dirty bomb that could spread radioactive
material in the US, the US military has for years
been doing exactly that, and continues to do so,
with no intention to clean up its messes, many of
which are allowing depleted uranium to percolate
into ground water or flow down streams to more populated areas.
Of course, it could have been worse. The M101
mortar shells that litters Pohakuloa were
actually designed to serve as a range-finders for
the Davy Crocket mortar, which back in the late
1950s and the 1960s, and up until 1971 was
designed to allow infantry troops to fire a small
tactical nuclear mortar shell at targets just
one to two miles distant. Some 700 of these
57-lb. little nukes, which had a power of
just several kilotons or less, were developed
and actually made their way into the arsenals of
troops in Europe and elsewhere during the Cold
War. Fortunately there are no reports of any of
them having been fired off at any of the
militarys firing ranges, although the test
detonation of one in Nevada at an elevation of 40
feet above ground was the last case of open-air
testing before JFKs open-air test moratorium
went into effect--especially given that their
radiation ipact radius was larger than their
firing range, meaning that launching one was by
definition an automatic suicide mission.
Then again, the Pentagon doesnt exactly have a
sterling record about telling the truth where
nuclear weapons and DU weapons are concerned.
(You start to notice as you look into this stuff
that with uranium weapons, the military's
attitude towards troop safety is not a whole lot
better than its attitude towards the people at the downrange end of the line.)
Nor is the NRC to be relied on to protect the
American public. As an administrative judge wrote
in a ruling on a case involving DU contamination
at Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, the NRC
exhibited a more than casual attitude with
regard to decommissioning of sites on which
radioactive materials remain as a potential
threat to public health and safety and to the environment.
In another case, involving cleanup of the
ShieldAlloy Metallurgical Corp.s site in
Newfield, NJ, where DU weapons were made, a judge
said, at the very least, the (NRC) staff has
countenanced
a situation that will leave the
citizens in the area surrounding the activity
site in doubt for close to two decades regarding
what measures will ultimately be taken for their protection.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist
and columnist. His latest book is
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031237254X/counterpunchmaga>The
Case for Impeachment (St. Martins Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). He can be
reached at <mailto:dlindorff at mindspring.com>dlindorff at mindspring.com
Freedom Archives
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