Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere

2007-05-07

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Moret26feb06.htm
[links in original]

The Queen's Death Star
Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from
Battlefields in the Middle East
LEUREN MORET / Mindfully.org 26feb2006
[More by Leuren Moret]

Leuren Moret
President, Scientists for Indigenous People
City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner
Past President, Association for Women Geoscientists
Berkeley, CA
Phone/FAX (510) 845-3139
•••@••.•••

"Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War II result in contamination of 
Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment 
(AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK," reported the Sunday Times Online (February 
19, 2006) in a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. 
Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan 
(http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Contamination1jan06.htm).

The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in 
Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia;
of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 
2001, and the "Shock & Awe" bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003.

Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring 
facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston, was 
established years ago to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear 
power plants and atomic weapons facilities.

The British government facility (AWE) was taken over 3 years ago by Halliburton,
which refused at first to release air monitoring data to Dr. Busby, as required 
by law.

An international expert on low level radiation, Busby serves as an official 
advisor on several British government committees, and co-authored an independent
report on low level radiation with 45 scientists, the European Committee on 
Radiation Risk (ECRR), for the European Parliament. He was able to get 
Aldermaston air monitoring data from Halliburton /AWE by filing a Freedom of 
Information request using a new British law which became effective January 1, 
2005; but the data for 2003 was missing. He obtained the 2003 data from the 
Defence Procurement Agency.

The fact that the air monitoring data was circulated by Halliburton/ AWE to the 
Defence Procurement Agency, implies that it was considered to be relevant, and 
that Dr. Busby was stonewalled because Halliburton/ AWE clearly recognized that 
it was a serious enough matter to justify a government interpretation of the 
results, and official decisions had to be made about what the data would show 
and its political implications for the military.

In a similar circumstance, in 1992, Major Doug Rokke, the Director of the U.S. 
Army Depleted Uranium Cleanup Project after Gulf War I, was ordered by a U.S. 
Army General officer to write a no-bid contract "Depleted Uranium, Contaminated 
Equipment, and Facilities Recovery Plan Outline" for the procedures for cleaning
up Kuwait, including depleted uranium, for Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a 
subsidiary of Halliburton.

The contract/proposal was passed through Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of 
State, to the Emirate of Kuwait, who considered the terms and then hired KBR for
the cleanup.

Aldermaston is one of many nuclear facilities throughout Europe that regularly 
monitor atmospheric radiation levels, transported by atmospheric sand and dust 
storms, or air currents, from radiation sources in North Africa, the Middle East
and Central Asia.

After the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq in 2003, very fine particles of 
depleted uranium were captured with larger sand and dust particles in filters in
Britain.

These particles traveled in 7-9 days from Iraqi battlefields as far as 2400 
miles away.

The radiation measured in the atmosphere quadrupled within a few weeks after the
beginning of the 2003 campaign, and at one of the 5 monitoring locations, the 
levels twice required an official alert to the British Environment Agency.

In addition to depleted uranium data gathered in previous studies on Kosovo and 
Bosnia by Dr. Busby, the Aldermaston air monitoring data provided a continuous 
record of depleted uranium levels in Britain from the other recent wars.

Extensive video news footage of the 2003 Iraq war, including Fallujah in 2004, 
provided irrefutable documented evidence that the US has unethically and 
illegally used depleted uranium munitions on cities and other civilian 
populations.

These military actions are in direct violation of not only the international 
conventions, but also violate US military law because the US is a signatory to 
The Hague and Geneva Conventions and the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol.

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 40 > § 2302

§ 2302. Definitions


Release date: 2005-03-17

In this chapter:
(1) The term ³weapon of mass destruction² means any weapon
    or device that is intended, or has the capability, to
    cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant
    number of people through the release, dissemination,
    or impact of‹
      (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors;
      (B) a disease organism; or
      (C) radiation or radioactivity.
(2) The term ³independent states of the former Soviet Union²
    has the meaning given that term in section 5801 of
    title 22.
(3) The term ³highly enriched uranium² means uranium
    enriched to 20 percent or more in the isotope U­235.
source 27feb2006

Depleted uranium weaponry meets the definition of a Weapon of Mass Destruction 
(WMD) in two out of three categories under US Code TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40 Sec. 
2302 [at right].

After action mandates have also been violated such as US Army Regulation AR 
700-48 and TB 9-1300-278 which requires treatment of radiation poisoning for all
casualties, including enemy soldiers and civilians, and remediation.

Dr. Busby's request for this data through Halliburton from AWE, and subsequently
provided by the Defence Procurement Agency, was necessary to establish 
verification of Iraq's 2003 depleted uranium levels in the atmosphere.

These facts demonstrate why Halliburton (AWE) refused to release the 2003 data 
to him, and it obviously establishes that weaponized depleted uranium is an 
indiscriminate weapon being distributed all over the world in a very short 
period of time, immediately after its use.

The recent documentary film BEYOND TREASON details the horrific effects of 
depleted uranium exposure on American troops and Iraqi civilians in the Gulf 
region in 1991; not to speak of those civilians continuing to live in 
permanently contaminated and thus uninhabitable regions.

Global increases since 1991 of melanoma, infant mortality, and frog die-offs can
only be explained by an environmental contaminant. Alarming global increases in 
diabetes, with high correlation to depleted uranium wars in Iraq, Bosnia/Kosovo,
and Afghanistan, demonstrate that diabetes is a sensitive indicator and a rapid 
response to internal depleted uranium exposure.

Americans in 2003 reported visiting Iraqi relatives in Baghdad who were 
suffering from an epidemic of diabetes.

After returning to the US following 2-3 weeks in Iraq, they discovered within a 
few months that they too had diabetes.

Japanese human shields and journalists who worked in Iraq during the 2003 war 
are sick and now have symptoms typical of depleted uranium exposure.

Likewise, after the US Navy, several years ago, moved depleted uranium bombing 
and gunnery ranges from Vieques Island in Puerto Rico to Australia, health 
effects there are already being reported.

The documentary film BLOWIN' IN THE WIND, has an interview with a family with 
two normal teenage daughters, living near the bombing range where depleted 
uranium weaponry is now being used.

The parents showed photos of their baby born recently with severe birth defects.
The baby looked like Iraqi deformed babies, and like many of the Iraqi babies, 
died 5 days after birth.

Other than anonymous British government officials denying that Iraq was the 
source of the depleted uranium measured at Aldermaston by AWE, and some unnamed 
'establishment scientists' blaming it on local sources or natural uranium in the
Iraq environment, there is no one, as of this writing, willing to lend their 
name or office to refuting this damning evidence reported by Dr. Busby.

All of the anonymous statements used by the media thus far are contradicted by 
the factual evidence found in the filters, which was all transported from the 
same region.

The natural abundance of uranium in the crust of the earth is 2.4 parts per 
million, which would not become concentrated to the high levels measured in 
Britain during a long journey from the Middle East. These particles traveling 
over thousands of miles would dilute the concentration rather than increase it.

There are no known natural uranium deposits in Iraq which make it impossible for
these anonymous claims to have scientific credibility.

Unnamed government sources blamed local sources in Britain such as nuclear power
plants; however that would also leave evidence of fission products in the 
filters which were not in evidence.

The lowest levels measured at monitoring stations around Aldermaston were at the
facility, which means it could not be a possible source. Atomic weapons 
facilities would be more likely to produce plutonium contamination, also not 
reported as a co-contaminant at Aldermaston.

In other words, all factual evidence considered, the question must be asked, 
what were the media's anonymous experts and government officials basing their 
claims on?

Dr. Keith Baverstock exposed a World Health Organization (WHO) cover-up on 
depleted uranium in an Aljazeera article, "Washington's Secret Nuclear War" 
posted on September 14, 2004. It was the most popular article ever posted on the
Aljazeera English language website.

See:
Radiological toxicity of DU
K. BAVERSTOCK, C. MOTHERSILL & M. THORNE
Repressed WHO Document 5nov01

Baverstock leaked an official WHO report that he wrote, to the media several 
years ago after the WHO refused to publish it. He warned in the report about the
mobility of, and environmental contamination from, tiny depleted uranium 
particles formed from US munitions.

Busby's ECRR report challenged the International Committee on Radiation 
Protection (ICRP) standards for radiation risk, and reported that the mutagenic 
effects of radiation determined by Chernobyl studies are actually 1000 times 
higher than the ICRP risk model predicts.

The ECRR report also establishes that the ICRP risk model, based on external 
exposure of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims, and the ECRR risk model, based on 
internal exposure, are mutually exclusive models. In other words, the ICRP risk 
model based on external exposure cannot be used to estimate internal exposure 
risk.

The report also states that a separate study is needed for depleted uranium 
exposure risks, because it may be far more toxic than nuclear weapons or nuclear
power plant exposures. In July of 2005, the National Academy of Sciences 
reported in their new BEIR VII report on low level radiation, that there is "no 
safe level of exposure".

The report also finally admitted that very low levels are more harmful per unit 
of radiation than higher levels of exposure, also known as the "supralinear" 
effect.

This is extremely alarming information on low level radiation risk, since the 
AWE data from Aldermaston confirms that rapid global transport of depleted 
uranium dust is occurring.

Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, a Japanese physicist at the University of the Ryukyus in 
Okinawa, has estimated that the atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 
Nagasaki bombs has been released into the global atmosphere since 1991, from the
use of depleted uranium munitions.

It is completely mixed in the atmosphere in one year. The "smog of war" from 
Gulf War I was found in glaciers and ice sheets globally a year later.

Even more alarming is the non-specific catalytic or enzyme effect from internal 
exposures to nanoparticles of depleted uranium. Soldiers on depleted uranium 
battlefields have reported that, after noticing a metallic taste in their 
mouths, within 24-48 hours of exposure they became sick with Gulf War syndrome 
symptoms.

Who is profiting from this global uranium nightmare? Dr. Jay Gould revealed in 
his book THE ENEMY WITHIN [see excerpt], that the British Royal family privately
owns investments in uranium holdings worth over $6 billion through Rio Tinto 
Mines.

The mining company was formed for the British Royal family in the late 1950's by
Roland Walter "Tiny" Rowland, the Queen's buccaneer.

Born in 1917 through illegitimate German parentage, and before changing his 
name, Roland Walter Fuhrhop was a passionate member of the Nazi youth movement 
by 1933, and a classmate described him as "...an ardent supporter of Hitler and 
an arrogant, nasty piece of work to boot."

His meteoric rise and protection by intel agencies and the British Crown are an 
indication of what an asset he has been for decades to the Queen, as Africa's 
most powerful Western businessman.

Africa and Australia are two of the main sources of uranium in the world. The 
Rothschilds control uranium supplies and prices globally, and one serves as the 
Queen's business manager.

Filmmaker David Bradbury made BLOWIN' IN THE WIND to expose depleted uranium 
bombing and gunnery range activities contaminating pristine areas of eastern 
Australia, and to expose plans to extract over $36 billion in uranium from mines
in the interior over the next 6 years. Halliburton has finished construction of 
a 1000 mile railway from the mining area to a port on the north coast of 
Australia to transport the ore.

See documentary:
The Carlyle Group Exposed
· Low Bandwidth Version
· High Bandwidth Version
· MP3 audio of the soundtrack

The Queen's favorite American buccaneers, Cheney, Halliburton, and the Bush 
family, are tied to her through uranium mining and the shared use of illegal 
depleted uranium munitions in the Middle East, Central Asia and Kosovo/Bosnia.

The major roles that such diverse individuals and groups as the Carlyle Group, 
George Herbert Walker Bush, former Carlyle CEO Frank Calucci, the University of 
California managed nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos and Livermore, and US and 
international pension fund investments have played in proliferating depleted 
uranium weapons is not well known or in most instances even recognized, inside 
or outside the country.

God Save The Queen from the guilt of her complicity in turning Planet Earth into
a "Death Star."

[See: Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of 
Europe? Busby & Saoirse1jan06]

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