Depleted Uranium: Confusing Ends and Means

War is brutal. This is not news, as we all know innocent lives are inevitably lost in the pursuit of "strategic goals." Hawkish foreign policy wonks explain it away with shrugged resignation: "You’ve gotta break some eggs to make an omelet." But, it turns out, our military technologies do more than that, they annihilate the eggs while also altering the genetic legacy of the hen.

In Gulf War I, we broke plenty of eggs; the image of carbonized bodies of Iraqi soldiers along the road to Baghdad is a wrenching depiction of the immediate horrors of war. Here’s the long-term horror: the use of depleted-uranium (DU) warheads—which are frighteningly effective in piercing and destroying tanks—is causing severe birth defects in the children of Gulf War veterans and Iraqi citizens, according to Dr. Siegwart Horst-Gunther, President of the International Yellow Cross. And scientists are strongly suggesting a link between their use and Gulf War Syndrome.

In one particularly graphic account, babies are being born with extreme hydrocephalus, without eye sockets and arms, some with a mysterious white substance shrouding their entire bodies, enormous tumors, and fused fingers, not to mention respiratory disorders and leukemia. And the Pentagon remains firm in its plans to use depleted uranium warheads in our upcoming confrontation with Iraq.

Depleted uranium has been in wide use by the US military for years: made from low-level nuclear reactor waste, DU warheads were used by the US in the first Gulf War, in Kosovo, in Vieques, and in Afghanistan—although the Pentagon denied each of these uses for many months. In the first Gulf War alone, some 400,000 vets were exposed to depleted uranium, according to Pentagon estimates, and when our troops pulled out they left between 300 and 800 tons of the stuff on battlefields between Kuwait and Iraq. The government denies any link between DU and Gulf War Syndrome or other ill effects, despite this reference to its hazards in Appendix D of the armaments, munitions, and chemical command report "Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategy Study, July 1990":

Aerosol DU (Depleted Uranium) exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. …Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably ground troops that re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armour-piercing munitions. …We are simply highlighting the potential for levels of DU exposure to military personnel during combat that would be unacceptable during peacetime operations. …[DU is]a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. …Short term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been linked to cancer. …Our conclusion regarding the health and environmental acceptability of DU penetrators assume both controlled use and the presence of excellent health physics management practices. Combat conditions will lead to the uncontrolled release of DU. ...The conditions of the battlefield, and the long term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators for military applications.

According to Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a Gulf War vet and former DU researcher for the VA (he was fired when his research implicated the military) interviewed yesterday on Democracy Now, more than 60% of veterans referred to him at the Uranium Medical Research Center contain depleted uranium in their bodies. (Democracy Now also reports that soldiers shipping out to Iraq, fearing another round of Gulf War Syndrome, have been banking their sperm in anticipation of DU’s effects.)

Depleted uranium warheads are made by Honeywell and its subsidiary Alliant Techsystems, the latter of which is headquartered right here in the Twin Cities. Alliant makes at least two such weapons, 120mm tank ammunition (dubbed "the silver bullet") and 30mm Gattling gun ammo. While Alliant's promotional copy ironically boasts how these warheads save Allied lives (presumably in the short-term), the words "depleted uranium" never appear. Instead, they use the almost-happy term "kinetic energy."

When hawks suggest that the "ends justify the means," I contend they have no clue what that truly means. It takes 4.5 billion years for depleted uranium to lose its radioactivity. Is the "ends" of a "liberated Iraq" really worth an eternity of "means"?

History Gone to the Dogs

Do dogs have history? In his book The Pawprints of History, psychologist Stanely Coren raises the question. According to this New Yorker review, dogs have a colorful place in history: in the 30-year reign of shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, born in the Year of the Dog (1646), between 60,000 and 200,000 people were put to death or exiled for violating the Laws of Compassion, which protected dogs from abuse, death, or even being ignored. Coren includes other examples: Columbus brought dogs with him to the Americas because he believed one dog to be more effective than 50 soldiers in killing natives; dogs saved the lives of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Lincoln, Lewis and Clark, to name a few; the Church of England might not have been had Cardinal Wolsey's greyhound not bitten the pope's foot--thus severing relations between the annulment-seeking Henry VIII and the Catholic church; etc. Whether dogs have history of their own or not isn't, to me, the question. Clearly they've left their prints all over ours.

A Run for the Money

Democratic presidential contender John Kerry is loaded. Congress' richest member, he reported assets worth up to $688 million (gained, in part, from his wife's inheritance of the H.J. Heinz ketchup fortune), according to The Center for Public Integrity's "Buying the President" database of candidate wealth. But he's not alone: of the eight men who've already declared their interest in running for president, seven are multimillionaires. With biographies of the declared candidates and a searchable database of nearly 200 financial documents, the site will be an invaluable tool in deciding who we the (poor) people want to be our next president.

Rushin' to Leave

When Rush Limbaugh called antiwar protesters "fascists," the fascists got pissed off. Their boycott/letterwriting campaign has forced key Limbaugh adverisers like Bose, Radio Shack, Overstock.com, and Amtrack to pull their sponsorship. Put pressure on the remaining sponsors here.

Proud to be an American?

"I'd like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States," said the Episcopal Church's top bishop in a scathing rebuke of US foreign policy.

Word.

The White House cancels a poetry symposium out of fear that, gasp, the poets might have something to say about the war. "While Mrs Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum," Laura Bush's spokesperson said.

Things Left Unsaid

I don't meant to be petty, but the best part of William Rivers Pitt's assessment of the State of the Union, responding to Bush's self-congratulatory list of accomplishments, is this:

At one point during the reading of this fiduciary laundry list, Bush demanded fiscal responsibility from the government. A roving camera caught House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi bursting into laughter when that line came across.

Pettiness aside, Pitt writes a superb piece on what the Prez failed to mention:

• Osama bin Laden

• On linking Iraq to al-Qaeda:"He failed to mention that Hussein is a secular dictator who has spent the last thirty years crushing Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq, failed to mention the death threats levied against him by al Qaeda, and failed to mention the absolute fact that Hussein would never be so stupid as to give weapons or aid to blood enemies."

•"He proposed the development of cleaner energy technology while increasing energy reliance at home, but failed to explain that this was code for the despoiling of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge."

• After proposing $1.2 billion in spending to develop hydrogen-powered automobiles, he "failed to explain how he can afford any of this, and likewise failed to parse the hypocrisy of touting hydrogen cars while his new tax plan provides tens of thousands of dollars worth of write-offs for owners of gas-guzzling SUVs."

•"He spoke of holding corporate criminals to account, failing to mention the incredible number of Enron executives - including his beloved Kenny-Boy - who still walk free and clear across the nation they defiled with their fraud and deceit."

•And much, much, much more.

The Green State of the Union

Minneapolis' own Natalie Johnson Lee, city council member from the Green Party, steps up to offer the real state of the union. Part rebuttal, part GP party platform, it's a welcome bit of spunk from a party on the mend. Johnson Lee is such a forceful, eloquent speaker, it makes me wonder if such a high-profile national gig means she's the Green Party's Nader in training. Let's hope so.

Bush is no reluctant warrior, he is a warmongering draft-dodger, and together with a weak and compliant Democratic Party in Congress, he is threatening American interests.  

The President claims the inspections have failed. He is wrong. In fact, his attempts to drum up a war fever are what has failed.

Poets for Peace

A free e-book:

Over 100 of the world's leading, mid-career and emerging poets who work in the English language, have gathered their work together in a book of new peace poems. 100 Poets Against The War is perhaps the fastest-assembled world anthology ever--one week from Todd Swift's call for entries 'til the ebook was uploaded. All the contributors have donated their poems, so download the .pdf file, share it, host it on your own site, print it and make it into a book of poetry.

Man-Made Evil

When the President spoke of "man-made evil" last night, he was referring to international terrorism, but I couldn't help wondering if there was any other kind. There is no evil in the natural world, as animals lack forethought. A hyena munching on a gazelle isn't the same thing, no matter how nastily he eviscerates said beast, so evil is our species' alone. Makes me wonder: does Bush understand the nature of evil at all (i.e. that the capacity for it resides, in varying degrees, within us all)? Does he think that by naming evil he's exempted from its definitions?

I've always been stunned by this guy's hypocrisy: Iran, Iraq and North Korea are the Axis of Evil, yet he's rabid about killing up to 260,000 people in Iraq, seemingly to get access to their oil. Out of one side of his mouth comes words like: our "conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted and defend the peace," yet he's approved a military tactic called "Shock and Awe," in which the US aims to shatter the people of Iraq "physically, emotionally and psychologically." In the plan, the US will rain down some 800 cruise missiles in two days--as much as was dropped during the entire 40-day Persian Gulf War I. (A modern-day Guernica, some say.) If this terror campaign against civilians--based on little or no evidence of UN resolution breaches--isn't "man-made evil," what is?

Clouds...

The shock of delight you get when you hit on the right combination of words to talk about what you've just seen--say, the slow parade of words in Great Blue Heron for a particular bird that one morning stately alights, and statelily looks out to sea--is closely tied to why poetry is political, why our attempts to name what we know something about is a saving thirst, an instinctual need, a more-than-gesture towards what Adrienne Rich calls a more "humane civil life."

...and Dirt

Sometimes a garden is just a garden... Are our basest instincts noble enough? In and of themselves, can the struggle to grow things--to combat weeds and suffering alike so that people everywhere have a chance to thrive--retain its dailiness even in our ideas about them? Can we resist that everloving urge to try to make everything we do appear to be somehow more and more noble? (Obviously, even as I write this I'm finding it can be tricky.)

Just as Adrienne Rich comes at the earth from the point of view of one chasing down words to incarnate the birds of the air, Ron Sulllivan here comes at the earth from under the soil, and asks if it isn't enough that we engage in politics as ordinarily and with as much gusto as we do when we eat, laugh, talk across the fence, dance.

The Fruits of War

Florida and the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo produce about 90% of the world's orange juice. As relations have soured over a potential free-trade agreement, Florida wants to keep a closer eye on its powerful rival. So Florida's Department of Citrus is considering aiming a satellite at Sao Paulo's massive groves--one of the same satellites that has photographed nuclear facilities in Iraq. (Link requires subscription.)

Say Your Peace

Sure, it's a given that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, Susan Sarandon and Martin Sheen don't want war. But who else is speaking up? More than 1000 historians, more than 40 American Nobel Laureates, the more than 600,000 members of MoveOn.org, and one cautious Schwarzkopf, plus the author of this gutsy letter to the editor, that ran in--guess where?--the U.S. military's own newspaper, Stars & Stripes:

Soldiers and sailors: Go to the brig, not to Iraq.

If President Bush declares unilateral war, I will not support our troops.

They will be guilty of unprovoked aggression and the unnecessary killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis. These Iraqis will not be defending Saddam, but defending their homeland, motivated by blind patriotism, just like many of our troops.

Our troops will be fighting to replace Saddam with a new American-puppet warlord, or worse, a neo-colonial governor. God bless America, but forget about an American empire. They will be obeying the orders of a corrupt government, not the wishes of most Americans.

When more than 68 percent of Congress voted for unilateral war, only 37 percent of their constituents supported such a war. By obeying these orders, our troops will be supporting this corruption. Corrupt dollar politics has created corrupt dollar diplomacy.

Our troops should refuse to fight. Aside from the moral basis, there may also be a legal basis to refuse. Our troops have sworn to uphold the Constitution. Congress voted, but it cannot delegate to the president its responsibility to declare war, and how can its vote be considered tantamount to a declaration of war when there was not then and is not now a clearly stated “cause for war?”

America now needs moral courage, not physical courage.

Going to the brig is the single most important duty an American servicemember can now perform for their country.

John F Scanlon
San Diego, Calif.

For the Love of God (or Oil)

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who made public the Pentagon Papers, credits George Bush’s zeal to destroy Iraq to his love of three things: oil, oil, and oil. But he offers a fourth (more ominous) motivator: his and the Republicans’ election bids. Bush is creating a rally-‘round-the-president scenario (the same one that helped GOP candidates fare so well in 2002) in which he hopes to:

shift American Jews from the Democrats to the Republicans, semi-permanently, by the total backing of Sharon's (Greater Israel) policy, while gratifying the Christian Right by the same policy, in their current alliance with Likud and Likud-supporters in the US, reflecting the Christian Right's bizarre apocalyptic beliefs (about the necessary in-gathering of Jews in Israel as a precursor to Armageddon: at which time, incidentally, the Jews either convert, belatedly, or are doomed along with other unbelievers).

Say what? Armageddon? What may sound like a fringe theory actually isn’t. Remember the October 8, 2002 episode of 60 Minutes when Jerry Falwell called Muhammad a "terrorist"? The furor over that lame-brained comment distracted us from the real terror of Jerry: his belief (shared by 70 million fundamentalist Christians) that a war in the Holy Land will prompt Christ’s return:

Why do they love Israel so much? The return of the Jews to their ancient homeland is seen by Evangelicals as a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ. Therefore, when the Jewish state was created in 1948 they saw it as a sign. Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967 deepened their excitement, heightened their anticipation. And today’s war between Jews and Arabs was also prophesized, they say. They’ve seen it all before – in the pages of the Bible.

…it all winds up here in Israel where, according to the Book of Revelations, the final battle in the history of the future will be fought on an ancient battlefield in northern Israel called Armageddon. It will follow seven years of tribulation during which the earth will be shaken by such disasters that previous human history will seem like a day in the country. The blood will rise as high as a horse’s bridle here at Armageddon, before Christ triumphs to begin his 1000-year rule.

And the Jews? Well, two-thirds of the will have been wiped out by now. And the survivors will accept Jesus at last.

Bush’s baffling deafness to the peaceful wishes of those who elected him now makes a bit more sense: there’s something beyond mere greed that fuels his war-at-any-cost zeal. Fulfilling Biblical prophecy, now that’s something you can put on a resume.

More Roy

The ArundhatiRoy/Howard Zinn interview I mentioned below is so good I have to excerpt more. Visit Democracy Now to hear her speech.

Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. government (myself included) have been called "anti-American." Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology.

The term "anti-American" is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

But what does the term "anti-American" mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to freedom of speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government's foreign policy (about which, thanks to America's "free press", sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.

Flags...

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

-Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, from an interview with Howard Zinn

Quick Links

•Helen Thomas, who has reported on every president since JFK: “This is the worst president ever. He is the worst president in all of American history.”

• We're a nation of enablers, and Bush is our Enabler in Chief: "At times, it seems that the U.S. political system is dedicated to treating George W. Bush like he's some addicted adolescent in a family that won't confront the youngster's behavioral problems and "enables" the problem to get worse."

• As Colin Powell gets on the war bandwagon, his son Michael, chair of the FCC, gets on the corporate bandwagon, positioning himself to deregulate the telecommunications industry and do away with infodiversity in the process.

Gun Types

It's no coincidence that the gun manufacturer Remington offered America's first typewriter in 1874, writes Barry Sanders in the ever-quirky Cabinet Magazine. Both gun and type-layer utilize the same rifle-stamping equipment in their production, but the similarities don't end there:

The typewriter was a machine in a way that the pencil or the pen was obviously not. No one would ever ask an author, “How many words a minute do you write?” But people do, as a matter of course, ask that question about typing. For typing is a skill in itself, requiring manual dexterity, and a degree of hand/eye coordination. One can refine and master it through practice. The typewriter, by definition, mechanizes writing, the way the rifle mechanizes killing. The cold metal of a rifle or a typewriter insinuates itself between a person and his or her passion. A pen and a knife both have a distinctive immediacy. Both can be deadly. With his usual Dust Bowl brilliance, Woody Guthrie warned that in an America already in deep Depression, you’ve got to watch your back and front, for “some men will kill you with a shotgun, and some with a fountain pen.”

Read this fascinating history.

The Voice of National Public Radio

Former NPR journalism fellow Brian Montopoli writes an interesting piece in Washington Monthly about the Voice of NPR:

The Voice is tough to describe, but you know it when you hear it: It's serious, carefully modulated, genially authoritative. It rings with unspoken knowledge of good wine and The New York Times Book Review.

In short, it's a voice that mimics the majority demographic of NPR's 20 million listeners: white, affluent, passively liberal babyboomers. No problem if you fit the demographic, but tough luck if you don't. Even the diversity on NPR is molded to conform with The Voice:

In an interview with the Philadelphia City Paper, Tavis Smiley, the former host of Black Entertainment Television's "BET Tonight" and new host of "The Tavis Smiley Show," pointed out that at NPR, "I have to be authentically black, but not too black." And his show bears that out: It's a good program about black topics that follows the same respectful, all- sides-of-the-issue formula of all the other good, respected programs that came before it.

Merton on True Identity (and More)

The late Trappist monk Thomas Merton on the solitary life, identity, war, rain, Ionesco's "Rhinoceros," the sixth century Syrian hermit Philoxenos, "Lord of the Flies," and Coleman camp lanterns. A sampling:

Now if we take our vulnerable shell to be our true identity, if we think our mask is our true face, we will protect it with fabrications even at the cost of violating our own truth. This seems to be the collective endeavor of society: the more busily men dedicate themselves to it, the more certainly it becomes a collective illusion, until in the end we have the enormous, obsessive, uncontrollable dynamic of fabrications designed to protect mere fictitious identities-- "selves," that is to say, regarded as objects. Selves that can stand back and see themselves having fun (an illusion which reassures them that they are real).

Read the full essay,"Rain and the Rhinoceros," as an html file, or download it as a pdf.