It has been far too long since a post was made here regarding depleted uranium (DU). That is herewith rectified.

Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, was asked if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb.

“That’s exactly what they are. They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”

[snip]

Doctors in southern Iraq are making comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. They have numerous photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities goes on an on. Such birth defects were extremely rare in Iraq prior to the large scale use of DU. Weapons. Now they are commonplace. In hospitals across Iraq, the mothers are no longer asking, “Doctor, is it a boy or girl?” but rather, “Doctor, is it normal?” The photos are horrendous.…

[snip]

By far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved fetuses, scarcely human in appearance. Iraq is now seeing babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.

Dr. Hardan also states:

“I arranged for a delegation from Japan’s Hiroshima Hospital to come and share their expertise in the radiological diseases we are likely to face over time. The delegation told me the Americans had objected and they decided not to come. Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq.”

Not only are we poisoning the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we are making a concerted effort to keep out specialists from other countries who can help. The U.S. Military doesn’t want the rest of the world to find out what we have done.

[snip]

Verifiable statistics for Iraq will remain elusive for some time, but widespread field studies in Afghanistan point to the existence of a large scale public health disaster. In May of 2002, the UMRC (Uranium Medical Research Center) sent a field team to interview and examine residents and internally displaced people in Afghanistan. The UMRC field team began by first identifying several hundred people suffering from illnesses and medical conditions displaying clinical symptoms which are considered to be characteristic of radiation exposure. To investigate the possibility that the symptoms were due to radiation sickness, the UMRC team collected urine specimens and soil samples, transporting them to an independent research lab in England.

UMRC’s Field Team found Afghan civilians with acute symptoms of radiation poisoning, along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and smoke plumes rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations presented identical symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems and disorientation.

Two additional scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan. The first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the Jalalabad region. The second arrived four months later, broadening the study to include the capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 million people. The city itself contains the highest recorded number of fixed targets during Operation Enduring Freedom. For the study’s purposes, the vicinity of three major bomb sites were examined. It was predicted that signatures of depleted or enriched uranium would be found in the urine and soil samples taken during the research. The team was unprepared for the shock of its findings, which indicated in both Jalalabad and Kabul, DU was causing the high levels of illness. Tests taken from a number of Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations 400% to 2000% above that for normal populations, amounts which have not been recorded in civilian studies before.

Those in Kabul who were directly exposed to US-British precision bombing showed extreme signs of contamination, consistent with uranium exposure.…

[snip]

n the fall of 2002, the UMRC field team went back to Afghanistan for a broader survey, and revealed a potentially larger exposure than initially anticipated. Approximately 30% of those interviewed in the affected areas displayed symptoms of radiation sickness. New born babies were among those displaying symptoms, with village elders reporting that over 25% of the infants were inexplicably ill.

How widespread and extensive is the exposure? A quote from the UMRC field report reads:

“The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium.”

In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab results indicated high concentrations of Non-depleted Uranium, with the concentrations being much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was used as a testing ground for a new generation of “bunker buster” bombs containing high concentrations of other uranium alloys. Article

Always rcommended as an extensive resource of information and datra on DU is this site.

Summaries here and here and here.

Details sparse, but the failure of infrastructure is an unfortunate known.

Toxic water in the Tigris river killed thousands of fish and birds in Iraq’s Salahudin province, local police told Xinhua on Wednesday.

[snip]

The provincial water directorate, which produces drinking water for people in this area, ordered all its projects to suspend working and wait for the tests’ results, the source added.

The Tigris flows through Iraq and penetrates eight Iraqi provinces, including Baghdad, before joining Euphrates to form Shatt al-Arab. The river’s water is a main source for drinking water supplies for millions of Iraqis. Article

Wasn’t going to comment at all on Rice’s ‘visit’ as it is primarily window dressing for the U.S. midterm elections and of no substantive consequence whatsoever. Lots of feel-good photo-ops and sunny platitudes, but if this is what she touts as “progress” then she needs a proper dictionary. What other country (with the exception of Afghanistan) does the Secretary of State visit that involves such procedures?

Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation.

[snip]

Yet signs of progress were not much in evidence in the first hours of her visit.

It began inauspiciously when the military transport plane that brought her to Baghdad was forced to circle the city for about 40 minutes because of what a State Department spokesman later said was either mortar fire or rockets at the airport.

[snip]

Traveling from Israel on Thursday morning, Ms. Rice had to abandon her comfortable official jet at an American air base in Turkey and to board a C-17A cargo plane equipped with antimissile technology for the final, 90-minute leg into Baghdad; that procedure has become routine for all high-ranking Bush administration officials visiting Iraq.

From the airport in Baghdad, Ms. Rice flew by military helicopter to the heavily fortified American-controlled Green Zone, bypassing the dangerous, explosives-strewn airport highway into the city.

Reporters traveling with her were told of the Baghdad trip only hours before departure and were instructed not to share details with anyone, including their editors and families, until she had arrived safely. They were barred from reporting how long she would stay in Iraq until after she had left the country. Article

Related:

A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were confidential, said Rice told them that Americans do not see the long history behind ethnic and sectarian splits. Rice said Americans need to see Iraqis working together, according to the official.

“What they see are Iraqis killing Iraqis, and that is not a good image,” said the official, describing Rice’s remarks. Article

Also related: Was Rice’s trip really to plant the kiss of oblivion (and the next finger of blame) on al-Maliki, informing him that the U.S. intends to scapegoat and remove him after the midterm election?

The Washington Post has published two reports in the past week citing the views of unnamed US military officers that the “lack of strong Iraqi political leadership” was preventing the new Iraqi military from either replacing the American troops fighting the Sunni-based insurgency or being used to crush the Shiite militias. A US army battalion commander told the newspaper: “You fix the government, you fix the problem”.

[snip]

Behind the undisguised hostility toward Maliki is the view that his government has exacerbated the difficulties facing the US occupation. The elections in January have been followed by civil war and rising levels of anti-US attacks. US plans for Maliki to head a government of national unity, to reconcile alienated Sunni parties and divide the armed resistance, are in tatters. Over 3,000 Iraqis are being killed each month and large parts of the country, including much of Baghdad, have been plunged into utter chaos.

[snip]

The Bush administration is rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Maliki government is incapable of carrying out its demands above all for a crackdown on the Shiite militias. The consensus in Washington is that brutal repression must be carried out in Shiite working class districts of Baghdad and Basra—no different from that carried out in the past by the Baathist regime.

American hostility to Maliki is magnified by US preparations for military aggression against Iran. All the main Shiite parties in the government have close connections with Iran. In his efforts to bolster local support for his government, Maliki incurred displeasure by criticising the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Article

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Chaos abiides.

…a hospital worker says Mahdi Army spies are everywhere, and would only talk with both face and voice masked.

“A man was bringing his murdered brother to the morgue. They asked him if he knew who the killers were and he said ‘yes.’ They shot him right there,” she says.

More than 80 percent of the original doctors and staff where she works are gone, replaced by Shia supporters of the Mahdi Army.

“It’s going to get worse because there is no control and no accountability,” the hospital worker adds. “No one can stop them. They are terrified… No one will be safe. There will be destruction. Complete destruction is what we are watching with our own eyes, and it’s getting worse.” Article

Keeping up with the Hamdania courts-martial.

Update:

A U.S. medic who helped kidnap an Iraqi grandfather later killed execution-style by an American squad was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday, but will end up serving a year under a plea deal.

[snip]

Bacos agreed to a plea deal earlier on Friday in which he agreed to testify in exchange for a lesser sentence.

The judge appeared surprised to learn the plea deal set a year limit on the sentence and also nullified his earlier sentencing that called for a dishonorable discharge. The judge learned the details of the plea agreement on sentencing only after announcing his ruling. Article

Keeping up with the British war crimes trial.

Summary here.

Identifying a sourecepoint of the spiral.

On October 7, 2001 the first bombs of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom pounded Taleban positions and jihadist camps in reprisal for the September 11 attacks blamed on the Al Qaeda terror network.

Ironically the methods taught in those camps are now appearing in attacks in Afghanistan and across the world, whereas the Taleban of the time engaged in conventional warfare.

‘They did not need training in terror operations and Al Qaeda did not want to draw attention to the Taleban, so it could use them as a base,’ said Afghan defence ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi, a former mujahedin commander.

According to Olivier Roy, a French specialist on Afghanistan, ‘until 2001 there was a division between the Afghans and internationals.’

‘They were connected only by Mullah (Mohammad) Omar at the head’ of the Taleban regime, he said.

But the American-led operation closed the gap between the Taleban and the foreign jihadists.

[snip]

The UN has counted more than 90 suicide attacks this year compared to 21 in 2005 and only 10 between September 2001 and December 2004.v

The government in Kabul blames the attacks on foreigners but according to a NATO official, ‘Suicide bombers are of mixed nationalities, including Afghans.’ Article

Hmm. The threads almost always lead right back to Pakistan.

Nato’s report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban’s military capability and states clearly that Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it.

Commanders from Britain, the US, Denmark, Canada and Holland are frustrated that even after Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf met George W Bush and Tony Blair last week, Western leaders are declining to call Mr Musharraf’s bluff.

[snip]

During the battle the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells, which slowly arrived in Panjwai from Quetta over the spring months. Ammunition dumps unearthed after the battle showed that the Taliban had stocked over one million rounds in Panjwai.

In Panjwai the Taliban had also established a training camp to teach guerrillas how to penetrate Kandahar, a separate camp to train suicide bombers and a full surgical field hospital. Nato estimated the cost of Taliban ammunition stocks at around £2.6 million. “The Taliban could not have done this on their own without the ISI,” said a senior Nato officer.

Gen Musharraf this week admitted that “retired” ISI officers might be involved in aiding the Taliban, the closest he has come to admitting the agency’s role. Article

The woebegone G. Walker administration has no affinity for actual science. Remain askance at their inflated fearmongering.

Let us be clear about one thing: there is no evidence that Iran is anywhere near enriching uranium to weapon-grade capacity at the rate and quantity required to produce nuclear bombs that could effectively threaten the US or any of its allies in the area within a decade. Nor is there any evidence that Iran is capable of manufacturing plutonium bombs on the quick. Washington is simply keen to start yet another war for “regime change” based on lies intended to terrorize the US public into compliance.

Enriching uranium to 3.6% is needed to make “pellets” to fuel nuclear reactors that generate electricity. This level of uranium enrichment is recognized to be for civilian use. The troubling kind of uranium enrichment involves intensively raising the enrichment level to over 90%–or enriching Uranium-235 to weapon-grade capacity.

Pakistan is said to own up to 50 nuclear bombs. These are devices obtained by enriching Uranium-235 by 90%. Pakistan is said by scientific experts to be the only country in the world using highly enriched uranium to produce fission bombs. They have done so as a matter of preference, because A. Q. Khan, the “father” of the Pakistani nuclear-weapons program, learned how to produce weapon-grade uranium while employed at URENCO, the highly-enriched-uranium-production plant in Europe. He mastered the technique of enriching uranium through a “cascade” of centrifuges (explained below). As you probably know, the aim of enrichment is to increase the proportion of fissile Uranium-235 atoms within uranium in order to increase uranium’s energy-release potential as a result of nuclear fission–the process by which certain atoms of uranium are split to cause a chain reaction. What becomes enriched uranium-235 is mined as ore, pounded and converted into “yellow cake,” prepared for enrichment by dissolving “yellow cake” in nitric acid. Then, it is subjected to a series of chemical processes that convert it into a gas, uranium hexafluoride. This highly corrosive gas is then processed at conversion plants, using pipes and pumps constructed from aluminum and nickel alloys. The gas-centrifuge method of enriching U-235 requires that uranium hexafluoride gas be spun in a cylindrical chamber at high speed, which causes the slightly denser U-238 to split from the lighter U-235. Extracted from the bottom of the chamber where it gravitates, U-238 becomes depleted uranium, a heavy, radioactive (said to be “slightly” radioactive by the military) metal, capable of piercing tank armor and other munitions. Clustering at the center of the chamber, U-235 is collected and fed into another centrifuge, in a process repeated many times and known as “cascade.” A U-235 atomic bomb requires 20 kilograms of enriched uranium, and has an explosive power of 50 kilotons. As previously mentioned, Pakistan has 50 of these in its unregulated, unsupervised nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has been accumulated in secret, without inspections or regulations because Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT, 1972). Iran, of course, is a signatory of the NPT-an international courtesy that the US is apparently eager to use against Iran’s interests.

Now, even if we assume that Tehran is seeking to build a uranium nuclear bomb, it would need a cascade of 1,500 to 1,800 centrifuges, processing uranium round-the-clock to produce the twenty kilos of enriched U-235 needed to build a primitive uranium bomb (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jul/August issue). At its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, Iran already has an operational cascade of 164 centrifuges and plans to build another one. However, the latest UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report reveals that at Natanz plans were behind schedule and a second 164-machine cascade was not up and running in August 2006.

[snip]

A small amount of plutonium (about 1%) can be obtained via the U-235 enrichment process that produces fuel “pellets” (enriched to 3.6%) for nuclear-energy reactors. Called “reprocessing,” this routine involves stripping away the metallic outer casings of used fuel rods in nuclear reactors before dissolving them in hot nitric acid. What one gets from this reprocessing of nuclear waste is some more if highly radioactive waste (about 3%), uranium (96%), and plutonium (1%). This amount of plutonium obtained from a reactor’s nuclear waste, however, is a negligible and legitimate by-product, which poses no weaponizing threat according to the scientific community and the IAEA.

To make plutonium bombs, there is a more productive route: the heavy-water-reactor route. Heavy-water reactors derive their name from the use of so-called “heavy water,” which contains deuterium. Heavy water is a modified form of hydrogen with more neutrons in its nucleus, which makes it not only literally “heavier” but also potentially more energetic or explosively “fissile.” Heavy-water reactors offer the advantage that they can use unrefined natural uranium as fuel (and Iran has that uranium to mine). In addition, a plutonium nuclear weapon is smaller in size and weight than its uranium equivalent. The amount of plutonium required to make a nuclear weapon is only 3.5 to 4 kilograms. Its explosive capacity is 20 kilotons.

Iran’s planned heavy-water reactor at Arak is a small reactor, designed to replace another, outdated reactor, on its last leg. The Iranians say that the Arak reactor is used to produce radioisotopes for medicine and industry, which may be accurate. But even if they were lying about its civilian use, the heavy-water reactor, if used to produce plutonium for weapons, could produce at most enough for a couple of weapons per year, under the best conditions-and that might be sometime after 2009, the year the plant becomes operational. Article

Surprising? Sadly, no.

“From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice,” the sergeant wrote. “Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees.” Article

Blunt talk for someone so immersed in diplomatic circles, but assuredly not without foundation.

Chief UN warcrimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte hit out at international double standards, saying some serious crimes such as during the Israel-Lebanon were just simply being ignored.

“We are faced with conflicts where, according to credible reports, serious violations of international humanitarian law were committed, for instance during the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict, but no independent criminal investigation is taking place,” she told a seminar of international prosecutors here.

[snip]

“While some crimes are being investigated and prosecuted fully by domestic or international judicial bodies, others are simply ignored.”

Del Ponte, the Swiss chief prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), is known for her straight-talking often abrasive approach.

[snip]

“As we speak, in vast parts of the world, ‘double standards’ has become a catchword being misused to foster extremism and violence,” Del Ponte said. Article

Keeping up with Hungarian discontent.

Granted, this is not a cut and dried situation, but ye old scribe comes down on the “it’s your secular job” side.

London police excused a Muslim officer from standing guard at the Israeli Embassy, but insisted the decision was based on his safety rather than personal beliefs.

The Sun newspaper reported Thursday that Alexander Omar Basha sought to be excused from duty at the embassy because of moral objections to Israel’s bombing of Lebanon. However, the police officer’s union said he expressed fears for the safety of his family. Article

Teens straining to forge independence and rebelling? Unheard of (not).

Despite their packed megachurches, their political clout and their increasing visibility on the national stage, evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.

At an unusual series of leadership meetings in 44 cities this fall, more than 6,000 pastors are hearing dire forecasts from some of the biggest names in the conservative evangelical movement. Article

CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

Go. Read. Now.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

[snip]

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

[snip]

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

It is not our freedom, nor our country-your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

You want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it.

These are lies about the Democrats — piled atop lies about Iraq — which were piled atop lies about your preparations for al Qaida.

To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries — as crushing, as immovable.

They are not.

If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.

But if you stop — if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same — you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.

Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics. Article

HAVOC IN THE LEVANT

So it only took, what, 2 months for this to hit the Big Media?

Since the war between Israel and Hezbollah ended in August, nearly three people have been wounded or killed each day by cluster bombs Israel dropped in the waning days of the war, and officials now say it will take more than a year to clear the region of them.

United Nations officials estimate that southern Lebanon is littered with one million unexploded bomblets, far outnumbering the 650,000 people living in the region. They are stuck in the branches of olive trees and the broad leaves of banana trees. They are on rooftops, mixed in with rubble and littered across fields, farms, driveways, roads and outside schools.

As of Sept. 28, officials here said cluster bombs had severely wounded 109 people — and killed 18 others. Article

What’s tomorrow’s up-to-the-minute headline — “Movies Talk?”

THEY’VE GOT A GREAT BIG HONKING LIST

Ineptness, coupled with an awe of technology, mated with a near-Teutonic obesiance to the power of what’s on a piece of paper. If it weren’t so damned serious, it would be right out of a Hal Roach Studios Keystone Cops two-reeler.

60 Minutes, in collaboration with the National Security New Service, has obtained the secret list used to screen airline passengers for terrorists and discovered it includes names of people not likely to cause terror, Bolivia, people who are dead and names so common, they are shared by thousands of innocent fliers.

[snip]

The “data dump” of names from the files of several government agencies, including the CIA, fed into the computer compiling the list contained many unlikely terrorists. These include Saddam Hussein, who is under arrest, Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. It also includes the names of 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers.

But the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists or suspects are kept off the list.

The 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for more than a year.

[snip]

Berrick says Homeland Security would probably agree that leaving such names off the list is a concern. The Transportation Security Administration is trying to fix the list through a program called “Secure Flight,” says Berrick, but after three years and an estimated $144 million spent on the program, there’s “nothing tangible yet,” she says.

Even if the list is made more accurate, it won’t help thousands of innocent travelers who share a common name on the list and who get detained, sometimes for hours, when they attempt to fly.

Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson are some of those names. Kroft talked to 12 people with the name Robert Johnson, all of whom are detained almost every time they fly. The detentions can include strip searches and long delays in their travels. Article

DEFENSIVE 3:16

Choices, choices. Have to let this one attempt to stand on its palsied legs with just a link. There are more holes in it than in Caesar’s toga.

FOOLS RUSH IN

Were the time available, would love to travel and interview Dennis Hastert’s grade school classmates.

It is becoming increasingly clear that he never quite got the hang of that who’s rubber and who’s glue thing back on the playground.