My wife and I have included a concern about depleted uranium in our writings now going back almost five years. Recently - as members of a Google group that focuses on Veteran Health issues in Washington State - we received an email from another military veteran group member which included the following:
Since you are a former AF brat, wife of a Viet Vet and mother to soldiers still serving, I would appreciate it if you would contact me. You have been gravely mislead by a bunch of frauds about DU.
What made you even go looking for them (or did they come to you) -- you are the perfect person for them to make a dupe as they have made Congressman McDermott who was sent a forged document that is purported to be from 1943.
Part of his actual post on the group site included the following:
There is one major flaw in this study ..
Uranyl Acetate does not exist in nature and thus is unlikely to ever contaminate a soldier or civilian bystander's lungs.
Another major flaw is that the material that was used in the study contains natural, not depleted uranium. If anyone wants to write me or come to DUStory in Yahoo Groups, I will put you in touch with chemists who have analyzed this.
I am surprised that it was funded by a grant and intend to ask questions of the granting organization about why they funded this flawed study which seems made to order for the anti-depleted uranium crusade that wants to convince you that your soldiers are in danger, that you are in danger and that your children are in danger when their real goal is convicting your soldier of a non-existent war crime for intentionally poisoning the Middle East.
So, aroused from my aging veteran reverie, I knocked over my coffee, forgot to feed that cat and pounded on my keyboard.
On major flaws ...
(1) Uranyl Acetate - whether or not it exists in nature - "is unlikely to ever contaminate a soldier or civilians bystander's lungs."
Chemists have analyzed this you say?
So what is it we are discussing, the legitimate danger of depleted uranium or why the hell we are using it or need to use it in the first place?
And why would you say that any weapon - possessed of DU or not - is safe for civilian bystanders? What kind of doofus statement is that?
(2) Unless someone with an impressive educational and vocational pedigree (such as yours) can justify/defend America's need to involve nuclear crap in our weaponry as vital to the defense of the nation, what's the problem with crusading against the use of DU?
Are you trying to say that without DU our military is somehow emasculated and insufficiently potent to get the job done?
Do we need to go around shooting field mice with elephant guns because our generals and defense contractors need the viagra effect of DU to effectively rattle sabers?
(3) I'm not aware of any accusations of war crimes against soldiers for being in a war zone where their own government has authorized the use of depleted uranium. Who is doing the accusing of our troops? I'll help you smack them.
Actually, it sounds like you're on your own narrow and biased justify-the-use-of-depleted-uranium crusade.
Bottom line is that you can call everyone else's opinion flawed as hell, but in all honesty should you not state and clarify your own particular bias?
As a Veteran with a big mouth and an opinion I'm entitled to, I'll admit to the following biases of concern:
- I am the patriarch of our particular military family with it's own tradition going back decades. My deceased WWII father's flag sits on the wall in my study. My own medals and uniform fruit salad ribbons are in the special box I put them upon receipt of an honorable discharge thirty two years ago.
- I don't wear a silly little flag on my lapel nor stick cheap metal ribbons on my vehicle to prove how patriotic I am. I leave that to gullibles who think Fox News is honest broadcasting.
- I was against Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq from the get-go.
- I still am. Bush is the one most guilty of war crimes. More innocent civilian "bystanders" have been killed on Bush's orders than those killed by the dictator Bush lied about to justify an invasion that included the DU viagra.
- My family is not anti-war nor part of that political crowd. But we are also nobody's gullible puppets and nobody's pretend patriots conforming to false logic.
- Invading Iraq was never justified, necessary and is a false prop for Bush & Company's flawed definition of what a "war on terror" is or should look like.
- In that context, using depleted uranium - serious as that may be in terms of risk - is secondary to blowing up our soldier family members and innocent by-standing civilians based on what does or does not naturally occur in nature.
As a Veteran with a big mouth, you owe us clarification, not rhetoric.
- Your position regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq is what?
- your position regarding the reality of a "war on terror" and whose definition of that "war" is drinkable bathwater is what?
- you absolutely promise that depleted uranium has no lethal side effects based on nuclear radiation - being essentially then harmless except for the traditional lethal intent of those weapons with or without DU inclusion? You do acknowledge that original intent don't you? Blowing up people and things?
- You guarantee that my family and I and all who read here can absolutely sleep at night without concern about DU cause you've done our homework for us? We have absolutely no reason to worry about DU as the cause of any potential "agent orange" kind of illness or sterilization in our military sons and daughters? DU absolutely will not be the reason if our soldier families become parents of grandchildren with birth defects?
- You can guarantee that any increased incidence of sterilization and birth defects in the innocent by-standing Iraqi civilian population is not going to be a consequence of DU and that America should have no guilty conscience about DU's inclusion among the rotten eggs we've laid and left laying around in the Middle East?
If you can't make that guarantee then perhaps you should go do more homework before calling anyone or anything flawed.