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“People just don’t know what to say. They always look very disturbed. It’s a whole level of suffering and misery even beyond being in a war.”
The genetic deformities caused by depleted uranium are not well-publicized. Military veterans are beginning to call for DU testing.
By Shirley Wentworth
Biologists have long known there’s more to mutant frogs than what meets the startled eye. Mutant frogs are born with displaced organs and extra limbs or missing limbs and other aberrations. Sometimes they have extra eyes and sometimes they have no eyes.
Their very presence announces something is out of whack in the environment. These aberrations... these frogs... are unwitting harbingers of ecological woes to come.
They don’t live long.
They can’t. Their disabilities make them easy prey.
Frogs generally don’t arouse the same level of affection as furrier creatures or even a clump of cells on the wall of a uterus.
Someone sets a cat’s tail on fire or pulls the wings off a butterfly. People exclaim: Who would do such a thing?
Indeed. Who would?
And who would torture a child?
A former director of the Portland-based Info Mission, saw her first deformed Iraqi baby shortly after 9/11 while working on the issues of "collateral damage" related to Afghanistan.
In layman’s English, collateral damage refers to the number of civilians killed during warfare as well as the amount of destruction wreaked upon civilian living conditions. Government and military officials high up in the war-making, decision-making process use the term when they ask each other how many civilian deaths the American public might tolerate.
Collateral damage is more than death. It’s also about what happens to the survivors.
The photographs of the mutations caused by depleted uranium are beyond any level of deformity many have seen.
Seeing these photograph prompted many to consider the necessity of launching campaigns against the use of DU in warfare. The photographs of effected Iraqi infants and children are monstrous. Some are born with hydrocephalus, a condition in which the head can be as big as a basketball and, in some cases, looking like a separate head is trying to take shape. Some have no recognizable facial features. Some have one eye in the center of the forehead; some have no eyes. Some have tumors growing out of their eyes. Some have internal organs such as intestinal paraphernalia and other viscera located on the surface of their bodies. Some are born with welts and open wounds covering their bodies. Some have amorphous, blob-like torsos with little spindly limbs attached to them.
That’s a short list.
Organizers created posters juxtaposing a healthy eight- or nine-month-old with its deformed Iraqi counterpart. At a peace rally, one activist handed out flyers with those photos with a “No DU” headline. People merely handed them back because they were too awful to look at.
Activists have since prepared presentations to educate people about the effects of DU. 90 percent of the people in audiences to these presentations were unaware of DU and what it means. Even Portland’s Amnesty International chapter was largely unaware.
Too many have found working against DU a disconcerting endeavor.
“I get this (reaction) in all the audiences — people just don’t know what to say,” “They always look very disturbed. They hand back the brochures and some say, ‘Well, what can you do about this?’ ”
It’s a response that can be interpreted any number of ways.
It’s easier to get outraged about an unborn clump of cells on the wall of a uterus than to get outraged about living, suffering children.
Just trying to survive is all-consuming.
There are too many things to get outraged about — it all takes too much energy.
The conquest of oil is more important than children.
It’s only Iraqi children.
Yes, it’s disturbing.
A number of international humanitarian groups, non-governmental organizations and members of the United Nations subcommittee for human rights have made presentations before the United Nations, arguing that the use of DU as a weapon violates international law – and could even be considered genocide. The specific criteria DU usage violates is that weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle and may not have an adverse effect off the field of battle; weapons can only be used for the duration of a conflict; weapons may not be unduly inhumane; weapons may not be unduly detrimental to the environment.
As Karen Parker, a San Francisco-based human rights lawyer argued before the U.N., “DU weaponry fails all four tests. 1) It cannot be “contained” to legal fields of battle and thus fails the territorial test. Instead the DU is air-borne far a-field of legal targets to illegal (civilian) targets: hospitals, schools, civilian dwellings and even neighboring countries with which the user is not at war. 2) It cannot be “turned off” when the war is over. Instead, DU weaponry continues to act after hostilities are over and thus fails the temporal test. Even with rigorous clean-up of war zones, the air-borne particles have a half-life of billions of years and have potential to keep killing and injuring former combatants and non-combatants long after the war is over. 3) It is inhumane and thus fails the humaneness test. DU weaponry is inhumane because of how it can kill — by cancer, kidney disease, etc. — and long after the hostilities are over when the killing must stop. DU is inhumane because it can cause birth (genetic) defects such as cranial facial anomalies, missing limbs, grossly deformed and non-viable infants and the like, thus effecting children who may never be a military target and who are born after the war is over. The tetragenic nature of DU weapons and the possible burdening of the gene pool of future generations raise the possibility that the use of DU weaponry is genocide. 4) It cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment and thus fails the environment test. Damage to the natural environment includes contamination of water and agricultural land necessary for the subsistence of the civilian population far beyond the lifetime of that population. Clean up is an inexact science and, in any case, extremely expensive — far beyond the ability of a poor country to pay for.”
One organizer said: “We need to stop manufacturing this . I believe that almost every other country quit manufacturing it. Other countries made that choice when they found out how dangerous it is,” “It’s such a superior weapon — (the U.S.) is really out there kicking ass so they’re not going to stop using it. What type of individual might exist [in our political system] who could rise to the level of making that decision? It’s hard to see it happening. I don’t see any positive change coming any time soon. What I do see is more people becoming aware, so I think the information is starting to get around. But we have information about a lot of things that people don’t seem concerned about. There seems to be a barrier.”
The push, though, is on to conduct a study that makes the definitive connections between DU and the various illnesses it is associated with — genetic mutation, high miscarriage rates, cancer, lung and kidney damage, neurological disorders, gastrointestinal illnesses, liver dysfunctions, and skin, joint and muscle conditions. Although Iraqi physicians have collected a lot of good data, getting the data up to the level of a Lancet study is extremely difficult while working in a war zone.
U.S. Forces have attacked Iraqi hospitals, and according to reports from independent journalist Dahr Jamail, many hospitals in Iraq are chronically plagued by a lack of both medical equipment and supplies. Although military spokesmen have denied impeding medical services, Jamail’s reporting has included accounts of soldiers conducting hospital raids; destroying hospitals, ambulances and equipment; obstructing delivery of medical supplies; tying up and beating up doctors and dragging patients out of their hospital beds — all in the search for “insurgents.” Jamail’s reporting also chronicled the events of the Fallujah seige as more of a civilian-killing spree with few real “insurgents” in sight. His reports were included among 2004’s top 10 most under-reported stories in the American media selected by Sonoma State University’s Project Censored.
Coal miners used to know it was perilous to ignore canaries.
The general public ignores mutant frogs at its own peril.
Americans ignore deformed Iraqi children at their own peril.
The chickens do come home to roost — and the roosting has already begun. Gerard Matthews, among a handful of returned Iraqi national guardsmen tested for DU exposure, not only tested positive, showing high contamination levels – but his now 14-month-old daughter was born missing three fingers from her right hand. Northwest Veterans for Peace, based in Portland, has already begun a campaign to push for state-wide legislation requiring provision and funding of DU testing for returned Iraqi soldiers, following the lead of Louisiana and Connecticut, which have already passed similar legislation.
Congressman Jim McDermott, D-Wash., has also introduced HR 2410 — for the second time — in the House of Representatives, a bill that requires studies begin regarding the health effects of DU exposure as well as cleanup and mitigation of DU contamination at U.S. sites of DU munition use and production. McDermott has the support of 21 congressional members including Oregon’s Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer.
To find out more about DU, go to www.info-mission.org.
A few other Web resources: www.bandepleteduranium.org, www.ngwrc.org (National Gulf War Resource Center), www.umrc.net, www.nukewatch.com www.cadu.org.
Shirley Wentworth is a freelance writer based in the West.