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By Root 2246 0

ovens, those in power decided to get rid of it by adding it to our municipal water supplies and toothpaste, which means that the old John Birchers were right when they averred that fluoridation was a dangerous plot (“to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” as General Jack D. Ripper might have put it): they just had the wrong conspirators. Another similarity between fluoride and DU is that both are dangerous: not only does fluoride derived from toxic waste contain impurities such as lead and arsenic, but even at relatively small doses fluoride itself can cause cancer, osteoporosis, skeletal fluorosis, arthritis, and brain damage, among many other conditions.70 Here’s another thought: just for grins, if you’re ever in your grandparents’ basement, see if you can find an old container of rat poison. Check out the toxic ingredient—the killer. Yep, you guessed it, sodium fluoride. Happy brushing.71

The list of countries using or purchasing weapons or shells made with depleted uranium is long, and includes, among others, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, the monarchies in the Persian Gulf, Taiwan, South Korea, Pakistan, and Japan.72 Spreading these toxic, radioactive materials around the world is bad enough, but the real danger comes when the weapons are used. And they are used often. In 110,000 air raids against Iraq during the so-called First Gulf War (“so-called” because my understanding is that for something to be called a war the other side has to actually be able to fight back: casualties in the First Gulf Massacre corresponded closely to premise four of this book), U.S. A-10 Warthog aircraft fired about 940,000 DU projectiles.73 When a depleted uranium projectile hits a target, about 70 percent of the round vaporizes into (hot) dust as fine as talcum powder, as does part of the target, which may also have been constructed of depleted uranium. Three hundred tons of DU are estimated to be blowing in the wind from this particular desert storm. An American soldier in charge of a crew assigned to clean up DU around tanks destroyed by these shells said, “When we climbed into vehicles after they’d been hit, no matter what time of day or night it was, you couldn’t see three feet in front of you. You breathed in that dust.”74 Once the dust has been respirated, it can lodge in the lungs or make its way to other organs, such as kidneys. In any case, you’re in trouble. Uranium 238 and the products from its decay—including other isotopes of uranium, thorium 234, and protactinium—release alpha and beta radiation that cause cancer and genetic mutations in exposed individuals and their descendants more or less into perpetuity. Two of that soldier’s fifteen crew members are now dead, and even the Department of Energy admits that this soldier’s internal uranium contamination is five thousand times that permissible. Ninety to one hundred thousand American Gulf War veterans have reported medical problems associated with the “Gulf War Syndrome,” and rates for malformations in their children approach 67 percent in some communities.

As well as affecting U.S. soldiers, DU has probably already harmed 250,000 Iraqis. The same can be said for residents of Bosnia, and soon we’ll be saying the same for the people of Afghanistan. Leukemias and cancers have gone up by 66 percent in recent years in southern Iraq, with some locales experiencing a 700 percent increase.75 And there have been birth defects. Oh, how there have been birth defects. One doctor began her report, “In August we had three babies born with no heads. Four had abnormally large heads. In September we had six with no heads, none with large heads, and two with short limbs. In October, one with no head, four with big heads and four with deformed limbs or other types of deformities.”76

Which finally brings us to the pictures. There are two groups: pictures I have not seen, and pictures I have. Here is what one person wrote about those I have not (and of course I don’t expect to soon see similar text in America’s much-vaunted