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ANTIWAR, Wednesday, January 17, 2001

Nuclear War

by George Szamuely
New York Press

Two years too late, Western public opinion has at last turned to outrage
over NATO's aggression in the Balkans. It took the sickness and death of
European servicemen to bring home to people the horrendous carnage the
U.S.-led bombing wrought.

The United States rained down 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium (DU)
shells on Yugoslavia. Depleted uranium is a by-product of the enrichment
of uranium for the production of nuclear weapons and reactor fuel. As it
is heavier than lead, DU is added to munitions to enable them to
penetrate heavy armor. On impact, it erupts in a vapor cloud of
radioactive uranium oxide, emitting dangerous alpha and beta radiation.

Seven Italian soldiers and one aid worker are now dead - as are five
Belgian peacekeepers, two Dutch nationals, two Spaniards, two Portuguese
and one Czech - all from leukemia and other cancers. NATO responded the
usual way. It orchestrated an orgy of lying. "Negligible hazard,"
according to one NATO spokesman. "There's absolutely no proof that
there's a connection" between DU and cancer, spluttered our repulsive,
soon to be ex-Secretary of State. "We cannot possibly act on the
perceptions of people or on the view of a word such as 'uranium,'"
declared the grotesque Secretary-General of NATO, Lord George Robertson.
"This is a proven technology that has been independently tested."

Governments, bought and paid for by the United States, were then wheeled
out to parrot the NATO line. Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova
dismissed the concern about DU. It was all being whipped up by people
trying to get Western troops out of the Balkans. The Kostunica regime in
Belgrade, hoisted into power by a U.S.-sponsored coup, chose last week,
of all weeks, to pay obeisance to NATO. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran
Svilanovic trotted off to Brussels, tail wagging cheerfully, to frolic
with Robertson. Yugoslav forces and NATO, a delighted Svilanovic
announced, are "not enemy armies anymore." Serbs must have been
surprised by the news. They had not considered themselves enemies of
NATO - more victims of an unprovoked attack. Robertson and Svilanovic
then solemnly agreed "to set up channels of communication to exchange
information" on the issue of depleted uranium. "We need to continue this
very open discussion," little Goran explained, "to have guarantees for
the local population that they are safe." That's so sweet.

Unfortunately, few share the new Yugoslavia's faith in NATO, or the U.S.
Certainly not the scientists of the United Nations Environmental Program
(UNEP). For more than a year they could not get Washington to divulge
the location of the sites targeted with DU weapons. Finally, last
November UNEP scientists visited 11 such sites in Kosovo and found
evidence of significant radioactivity in eight of them. "We found some
radiation in the middle of villages where children were playing," said
Pekka Haavisto, former environment minister of Finland who headed the
mission. "We were surprised to find this a year and a half later…
[T]here were cows grazing in contaminated areas, which means the
contaminated dust can get into the milk." Meanwhile, in Bosnia - hit
with 10,000 DU shells in 1995 - cancer cases are dramatically on the
rise.

In the face of widespread public fury, NATO governments are in full
retreat. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who had insouciantly
declared that he harbored a "healthy skepticism" about the DU-cancer
connection, quickly changed his tune. Now he was "skeptical about the
use of munitions that could lead to dangers for our own soldiers." The
British government - the most reliably toadylike of all of America's
allies - is now offering to test any soldier who served in the Balkans
and the Gulf War for depleted uranium.

What is causing outrage is the revelation that both the British and U.S.
military had known for at least 10 years the disastrous consequences of
depleted uranium. Prof. Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's
Depleted Uranium Project, claims that as far back as 1991 he had told
his bosses that DU could cause cancer, mental illness and birth defects.
According to Scotland's Sunday Herald, a British Ministry of Defense
document, dated Feb. 25, 1991, explained that servicemen needed to wear
full protective clothing and respirators when close to DU shells and
that human remains exposed to DU had to be hosed down before disposal.
In 1997 a British army report, entitled "The Use and Hazards of Depleted
Uranium Munitions" asserted: "Inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide
dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance -
if any… 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." Just before NATO
began its military occupation of Kosovo, commanders warned of "residual
heavy metal toxicity in armoured vehicles" that had been struck by DU
missiles, posing health risks to anyone coming in contact with them. A
report by the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, released four
years ago, claimed that "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to
generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU
in the body are both chemical and radiological."

That DU has continued to be used despite these warnings is testimony to
the Pentagon's spectacularly successful campaign of deceit. In the
waning days of the Gulf War, a Lieut. Col. M.V. Ziehmn wrote a letter
that has come to be known as the Los Alamos memo. He warned that unless
the Pentagon was ready to lie on behalf of DU, the weapon would become
politically unacceptable. "If DU penetrators proved their worth during
our recent combat activities," Ziehmn wrote, "then we should assure
their future existence...through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency
is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat
capability... Keep this sensitive issue in mind when after action
reports are written." With full knowledge of its long-term hazards,
using DU in the Balkans was yet another war crime perpetrated by the
United States.