[News] Pentagon Dirty Bombers

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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 what’s 
called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains 
of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s 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 that’s 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 site’s 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.

It’s 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 
military’s 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 JFK’s 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 doesn’t 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. Martin’s Press, 2006 
and now available in paperback). He can be 
reached at <mailto:dlindorff at mindspring.com>dlindorff at mindspring.com




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