HaloScan.com - Comments

I'MMA LET YOU FINISH

Okay, that is scary.
Just Another Zero | 11.30.04 - 2:23 pm | #

Just another zero: Can you explain it a bit before I view? I'm v squeamish.
Cookie Guggleman | 11.30.04 - 2:25 pm | #

no thanks.

I know how evil man can be.
da trufe is rob | 11.30.04 - 2:25 pm | #

I don't even say "depleted".
It's uranium.
It's chemical warfare.
Shoes For Industry | 11.30.04 - 2:26 pm | #

One day, history will revile the use of this weapon by our military.

Decades from now, there will be treaties banning the use of DU in weapons.

http://balta.blogspot.com
Balta | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:26 pm | #

Shoes for industy, it's not actually chemical warfare - the chemisty isn't the problem. I think you'd be much more accurate calling it radiological warfare.

http://balta.blogspot.com
Balta | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:28 pm | #

It's important to remember that the dangers of DU most likely aren't due to the radiation, which is minimal, but because it's a poisonous heavy metal.
Turnipseed | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:28 pm | #

What turnipsaid.
Shoes For Industry | 11.30.04 - 2:33 pm | #

Don't blame me - I didn't vote for the Anti-Christ.

BTW, I'm not fucking kidding...
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:35 pm | #

IS ANYONE SURPRISED?
I Am Dali | 11.30.04 - 2:38 pm | #

"It's important to remember that the dangers of DU most likely aren't due to the radiation, which is minimal, but because it's a poisonous heavy metal."

It's almost as dangerous as lead.

BTW, what do they make bullets out of besides depleted uranium?
Njorl | 11.30.04 - 2:39 pm | #

Yes, not that it matters but the radiation is very low, not capable of causing acute radiation poisoning. But uranium is a toxic heavy metal.

But anyway, what's the dif? If your're Iraqi, you have a choice. You can be shot with a 50 caliber machine gun, blown up by a tank shell or 500 pound bomb, napalmed (allegedly, I'll believe it until I have a reason not to), starved to death, poisoned by your drinking water, actually poisoned by radioactive materials from unsecured nuclear facilities, tortured to death, whatever. Heavy metal poisoning? Just another option.
cervantes | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:39 pm | #

Depleted uranium is dangerous for chemical reasons, not radioactive ones.

If you are going to scaremonger, be honest The half-life is not important, as almost all of the really radioactive element is gone -- hence the term depleted.
Timothy Klein | 11.30.04 - 2:40 pm | #

pablo,

Be a good boy and go read the Vanity Fair article.
Hecate | 11.30.04 - 2:40 pm | #

I was always concerned about this crap and this shows why. Think the SCLM will ever report on this? Not a chance.....
wolf-man | 11.30.04 - 2:41 pm | #

Oh my god - oh my god.

oh my god.

What, if anything can be done about this? I have to do something or kill myself. I can't live with this.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:42 pm | #

Wow. I just sent that clip to everyone I know. You're right, Hecate. Scary shit.
Vicki Stein | 11.30.04 - 2:42 pm | #

anyone got a spare page where I can post a gif animation of the protesters around the canuk Parliament ?
It's good and should be out there , I just don't have anywhere to show it
A.s.H. | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:42 pm | #

Oh bloody hell. Perfect. If we can't win the shooting war, we'll poison them into submission.

I imagine that the next growth industry will be decontamination gear.
John | 11.30.04 - 2:43 pm | #

Thanks for the mention, Hecate. I just wish it weren't for something so awful.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:43 pm | #

If you want to convince me that DU is really bad you'll need some actual data.

Howzabout I shove some up your ass?

Runalong, now - the circle jerk's calling...
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:43 pm | #

This issue alone should put Bush, Rummy, et al ad nauseum in the clink for war crimes.
gonzo | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:44 pm | #

Those terra-ists git whut they deserve...war is hard work, I know.
W | 11.30.04 - 2:44 pm | #

Thous shalt not suffer a poisoner to live...
Mr.Murder | 11.30.04 - 2:45 pm | #

Thanks, Hecate.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 2:45 pm | #

Howzabout I shove some up your ass?

Hey, asking for hard data showing a causal link isn't unreasonable.
rj | 11.30.04 - 2:45 pm | #

No, DU doesn't have a half life of 4.5 billion years. It's already depleted of radiation. If there was any significant radiation left over, it would have been reprocessed and used again. DU is what's left AFTER the radioactive isotopes have been removed to the level where it's uneconomical to remove any more. At that point, it's hardly distinguishable from normal background radiation.
I remind people that we live in a radioactive environment every day, we evolved in it and have developed tolerances to background radiation levels. You get more radiation exposure from flying in an airplane across the country than you would from walking around in a battlefield full of expended DU rounds. For that matter, we routinely get bombarded with random gamma-ray bursts from stars that are far more intense than DU exposure.
charlie don't surf | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:45 pm | #

It's called depleted Uranium for a reason.

DU is actually less radioactive than the pitchblende it's refined from.

From a radiological standpoint, it's rather harmless.

But as others have stated, it IS a heavy metal and there are chemical and biological aspects to it that make it a lonng term problem/danger.

This is important to keep in mind. Kneejerking at the word "Uranium" is bad. It makes our side look stupid and un-informed.
Chris Tucker | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:45 pm | #

Read the comprehensive account here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/commen...co04? print=true
tsynnott | 11.30.04 - 2:46 pm | #

Hard data on DU
John | 11.30.04 - 2:46 pm | #

Well, I truly do wish that that video was a public service spot. Phelps and his fetuses have nothing on the suffering of real people and I swear to god, most Americans haven't got a clue that this is happening.

They must be make aware. They must be.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:46 pm | #

...napalmed (allegedly, I'll believe it until I have a reason not to),

Actually, the military finally coped to using it. Their explanation for lieing about it initially was technically it wasn't "napalm" because it used a different petroleum excelerant.
wolf-man | 11.30.04 - 2:47 pm | #

charlie: DU does have a 4.5B year half-life (it's basically pure U23. That does not mean it's useful in nuclear reactors/bombs, nor is it dangerous from a radioactive standpoint
rj | 11.30.04 - 2:47 pm | #

For more information on DU go here
Shaw Kenawe | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:48 pm | #

Tena -

Second thread today where I've heard you mention suicide. Are you grandstanding? If not, you might want to talk to someone about depression. These are heavy times, but love still abounds. Take a break from this excellent, albeit depressing, blog and regroup sister.
davedave | 11.30.04 - 2:48 pm | #

Looks like Bushs pro life use of depleted uranium!

Fun guy that George!
zip it will ya | 11.30.04 - 2:49 pm | #

This is from the Daily Mirror. (Why don't we read about shit like this in U.S. newspapers? Just wondering.)

FALLUJAH NAPALMED

Nov 28 2004

US uses banned weapon ..but was Tony Blair told?

By Paul Gilfeather Political Editor

US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.

News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh.

Outraged critics have also demanded that Mr Blair threatens to withdraw British troops from Iraq unless the US abandons one of the world's most reviled weapons. Halifax Labour MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Since the American assault on Fallujah there have been reports of "melted" corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries.

Last August the US was forced to admit using the gas in Iraq.

A 1980 UN convention banned the use of napalm against civilians - after pictures of a naked girl victim fleeing in Vietnam shocked the world.

America, which didn't ratify the treaty, is the only country in the world still using the weapon.

cervantes | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:49 pm | #

Wow Hecate! Condescend much?

Dave- Keep away from my ass. I'm strictly a top.
pablo | 11.30.04 - 2:50 pm | #

WHO on DU. Circa 2003.
John | 11.30.04 - 2:50 pm | #

Life magazine ran an article before the election showing pictures of American babies deformed because their fathers handled or used DU weapons.
Elaine Supkis | 11.30.04 - 2:50 pm | #

What Chris Tucker said. Never mind the radioactivity, think of the poisonousness. Like the Bhopal disaster writ slow.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 2:52 pm | #

Can you explain it a bit before I view? I'm v squeamish.

Then do yourself a favor, seriously, and don't look. It's faster and more effective than syrup of ipecac. It's just... hell. I had to focus my eyes on the text and try to not see the images after the first blast hit.
Silleigh | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:52 pm | #

What Chris Tucker said. Never mind the radioactivity, think of the poisonousness. Like the Bhopal disaster writ slow.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 2:52 pm | #

Can you imagine what Saddam could have done with DU?!? Thank goodness we found and secured all of his nasty weapons!!!
Colin Powell | 11.30.04 - 2:52 pm | #

Remarkable.

Simply and sadly remarkable.
Bubba | 11.30.04 - 2:52 pm | #

As John and some others are cautioning us, be wary of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. There are a certain number of babies born with deformities at all times. Some deformed babies will be born in places where there may have been exposure to depleted uranium. That is not sufficient cause to draw conclusions.

That said, we hardly need this issue to be apalled, outraged, sickened, and profoundly hurt by what is happening to the Iraqi people as a result of Bush's imperialist delusions. What is beyond dispute is beyond the power of words to condemn.
cervantes | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:56 pm | #

John thanks for the links. It's nice to see a poster here who's actually helpful and not a jerk to someone who asks for information instead of accepting everything without question.
pablo | 11.30.04 - 2:57 pm | #

last summer, I saw an old friend who served in Vietnam. Over a couple of drinks, we were talking about the horror and folly of the current war. One of us, I'm not even sure who, brought up the issue of DU weapons being used.

He said "well, I'm still picking out pieces of shrapnel from my leg thirty years later, but at least it ain't DU shrapnel..."

The was a story in a NM paper last spring, IIRC, about how a returning soldier went to visit a family member who works at the Los Alamos Labs. Set off the radiation dectors when he walked in.

Maybe there won't be so many homeless and broken vets in ten years from this war. They'll all be dead from the effects of inhaling DU.

and in other news, our criminal adminsitration has been using napalm in Iraq as well.

I'm shamed, horrfiied, and digusted. Maybe it is time to ask for citizenship in Ireland if for no other reason than I can no longer abide being part of ongoing war crimes over which I have no control, no voice, no representation that will stand up and try and stop this obscenity.
NM Red | 11.30.04 - 2:57 pm | #

And this horror stems from this idiot:

"I'm the kind of fellow who does what I think is right," Bush said in the Canadian capital, with Martin at his side.
watertiger | 11.30.04 - 2:58 pm | #

If your're Iraqi, you have a choice. You can be shot with a 50 caliber machine gun, blown up by a tank shell or 500 pound bomb, napalmed (allegedly, I'll believe it until I have a reason not to), starved to death, poisoned by your drinking water, actually poisoned by radioactive materials from unsecured nuclear facilities, tortured to death, whatever. Heavy metal poisoning? Just another option.

seeeeeeeeee, FREE PEOPLE ARE FREE TO MAKE CHOICES!!!!
n69n | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 2:59 pm | #

OT:
So Drudge has a big story up on China "Communist Christmas." Rush Limbaugh is quoting a story about Ambrose Evan-Pritchard about China's threat to Europe's economy.* That's three hits on the right-wing echo chamber. Something is up. The emergence of China was an ignored story all during the Iraq war and now the right is propping it up. Now Rush just mentioned the Drudge story.

*Rush then devolved into a bashing of the Europe governemnts and pointed-headed intellectuals who think they are smarter than us.
KevinNYC | 11.30.04 - 3:00 pm | #

Okay. After looking at the video and a quick check of the Vanity Fair article, I have to agree with Pablo 100%.

Anyone can get a bunch of pictures, add some NIN-like music and make a flash movie with a desired effect. The only problem is that don't make it true.

Now before anybody flames me, I would like to say that I believe DU likely causes serious medical problems. However, if this video is to be taken seriously, then we need to know if some, any, all or none of those horrifying images are of babies exposed to DU. Until that point is merely an effective, but potentially misleading Flash video.
Espumoso | 11.30.04 - 3:01 pm | #

Horrific film.

Just this morning I saw a TV ad form the pentagon aimed at the hispanic population. A mother and son conversation. Mother tells son he should go to college - that was her dream for him. He tells her he is joining the army and that he got his strenghth from her. Sick, real sick.
Lima | 11.30.04 - 3:02 pm | #

You guys are welcome for the links, but please put me in the camp that says DU weaponry is one of those potential legacy weapons, like Agent Orange or land mines. Frankly, from the literature I found, DU can lead to greater health problems, and articles by WHO have this naive assumption that after a war, there are decon teams roaming the plains, sucking up all the radiological debris.

The fact is, DU is radiological, and we have no idea what will be a biological tipping point for someone to get cancer, or for a fetus to develop birth defects.

In my more emotional moments, I look at DU weapons and think "What, bullets are not good enough for you? You have to develop whole new methods of shredding human beings into pieces? You have to tamper with the radiological and chemical to inflict carnage?"

But then, when you have a policy of shoot-first-ask-questions-later-damn-the- intelligence, the ends find a way of justifying the means.
John | 11.30.04 - 3:04 pm | #

Lima:

irony is that many who can't otherwise afford college join up in order to get the scholarship the army provides.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 3:04 pm | #

The amount of uranium in soldiers serving in Gulf war I is not significantly higher than people who drink well water with higher than average amounts of uranium.

Tens (possibly hundreds) of millions of poeple have higher uranium concentrations in their body than the vast majority of those who suffer from gulf war syndrome. There are any number of toxins that could be causing it, but DU is almost certainly not the cause.

Rational people, who do not stop thinking just because they hear the word uranium, will consider the alternatives. You can use lead. It is less effective and more toxic. You will poison more people if you use lead, but it won't panic those incapable of rational thought. You can use tungsten. It is more effective, but it's toxicity is largely unresearched. It is also much more expensive. You can use more high-explosives. They have a much, much higher risk of collateral damage, so much so that the unwanted deaths dwarf all other methods.

Of course, you could just not fight. Sometimes that is the best course, but getting into a tizzy about DU is not the sensible way to protest the war.
Njorl | 11.30.04 - 3:04 pm | #

The baby pictures in that video were from Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

The video itself is a crock - the WHO has found no increase in cancer or birth defects on account of DU.
Richard | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:04 pm | #

Oh Christ.
Sweet Sue | 11.30.04 - 3:05 pm | #

I'm shamed, horrfiied, and digusted. Maybe it is time to ask for citizenship in Ireland if for no other reason than I can no longer abide being part of ongoing war crimes over which I have no control, no voice, no representation that will stand up and try and stop this obscenity.

No! Never give up! Just educate people to this! Never give up! We can't afford to give up!
zip it will ya | 11.30.04 - 3:06 pm | #

The video itself is a crock - the WHO has found no increase in cancer or birth defects on account of DU.
Richard

Yet.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 3:06 pm | #

I've explained it to students this way: the radiological consequences are minimal, to be sure, but what you are faced with as J. Random Iraqi is some foreigner spraying a Superfund cleanup site at you, in bits and pieces, at 2200 fps.
Davis X. Machina | 11.30.04 - 3:07 pm | #

What, if anything can be done about this? I have to do something or kill myself. I can't live with this.
Tena, don't say that. There is always the emigration option if nothing else.
Sweet Sue | 11.30.04 - 3:07 pm | #

Let's be clear: It's not radiation.

People who carve granite headstones get more radiation.

DU is a ferociously toxic heavy metal, and it is persistent.

Think lead to the 10th power.

That's the problem.
Matthew Saroff | 11.30.04 - 3:07 pm | #

Two problems with the Vanity Fair article:
1. Because of its obvious toxicity and radioactivity...

How is this obvious? What studies have conclusively proven the toxicity of uranium?

2. which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

When an element has a half-life measured in billions of years, its radioactivity is extremely low. But it seems the article uses this point to make DU seem more menacing to those who don't understand radioactivity (i.e., "It stays in the envionment FOREVER!!")

The effects of DU can be studied, since the US has used it before. Does anyone know of a study showing a conclusive link between a rise in birth defects and Gulf War I, or a definite causal link between DU use and Gulf War syndrome (NOT, as cervantes mentioned, a post hoc argument)?
rj | 11.30.04 - 3:08 pm | #

I managed to turn off the vid before the first blast registered. That should make for some really shitty dreams. Fucking great.

DFA meetups coming soon. Use your anger.
squirm | 11.30.04 - 3:08 pm | #

davedave - Yah, I know. My Hemlock Society rant is real - I don't want to end up sick, old and alone. If I get something debilitating, I intend to opt for euthanasia.

On this - I'm just sick. I can't stand this - things like this make me think that humans are just monsters and I cannot get mind wrapped around doing things like this to other people.

The thought that my country is doing this is almost more than I can bear, however, I am stronger than that and I have a husband whom it would shatter if I did something like that. And his family would be shattered. It's selfish on my part. No, I'm grandstanding here - but I frankly don't know what else to say.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:08 pm | #

But, but, the schools, how come nobody mentions the schools?
krsaz | 11.30.04 - 3:09 pm | #

Slightly tangential, but I just read in the morning paper that of the 1000 insurgents claimed as captured in Fallujah only 30 turned out to be "foreign fighters." Not really too surprising, but it certainly gives the lie to the "flypaper" argument that we're "killing them over there rather than over here, blah, blah, blah" that is one of the last refuges of pro-war scoundrels.
brucds | 11.30.04 - 3:10 pm | #

Article

In her paper, "Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions," Dr. Huda Sali Mahdi Ammash examines the effects of United States' use of depleted uranium during the first Persian Gulf War, the spread of electro-magnetic fields in the environment, chemical pollution, and massive destruction of Iraq's infrastructure on public health. Her assessment of the overall effect is that US actions are largely responsible for the deterioration of public health in Iraq. She writes: "Iraqi death rates have increased significantly, with cancer representing a significant cause of morality, especially in the
south and among children." This view is shared by other scientists and
experts.

[...]

The US occupation forces had listed Dr. Ammash among the 55 most-wanted
Iraqi officials. Dr. Ammash is the daughter of Saleh Mahdi Ammash, a former vice-president, defense minister and member of the Baath party's leadership. He was reportedly executed on Saddam Hussein order in 1983.
Susie Dow | 11.30.04 - 3:10 pm | #

As a country we are fearful of the "suitcase bomb", which would be a conventional explosion that disperses radioactive material over the blast area. In reality such an explosion would not be much worse than an ordinary explosion, but we are terrified by the idea of radiation.

What we are doing to people with DU is much, much worse. This country is being run by orcs who worship torture and death.
puppethead | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:10 pm | #

I'm with some of the folks higher up in this thread wanting some more info about where the photos in that video came from, where the stats came from.

Nothinig wrong with wanting more info and data.

Isn't that what we criticize the other side for NOT providing?
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:12 pm | #

On CNN now-big anti Bush demonstration in Ottawa right now.
Sweet Sue | 11.30.04 - 3:12 pm | #

True, let's have some facts.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 3:12 pm | #

On CNN now-big anti Bush demonstration in Ottawa right now.

Go, Canada!
watertiger | 11.30.04 - 3:13 pm | #

"Let's be clear: It's not radiation.

People who carve granite headstones get more radiation.

DU is a ferociously toxic heavy metal, and it is persistent.

Think lead to the 10th power.

That's the problem.
Matthew Saroff"

Actually, in most ways, lead is more toxic. Uranium causes more damage to the kidneys than lead, but on the whole, lead is worse.
Njorl | 11.30.04 - 3:13 pm | #

TheaLogie - that's true. But thi ad is directly aimed at hispanics. A little ethnic cleansing while making war. 2 birds with one stone. Sick.
Lima | 11.30.04 - 3:13 pm | #

To inject a bit of science into this...

In a recent issue if Science News, I read that uranium in the environment acts as an estrogen-like hormone. (Please don't ask me how, I'm just reporting what I read.)

My computer refused to show me the video, but from what I've gleaned from the discussion, there are yet more ways that DU can - and will - mess up everyone exposed to it.

Have I mentioned that I want the old virtuous United States back?
Crabby Old Lady | 11.30.04 - 3:13 pm | #

Statement On the detention of Dr. Huda S. Ammash

The U.S. publishers of Dr. Huda S. Ammash assert that there may be political motivations for her detention on Monday, May 5 in Baghdad by the U.S. military on allegations that she oversaw Iraq's purported development of biological weapons. Dr. Ammash, Dean of Baghdad University, is the author of "Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions," a peer reviewed research paper published in Iraq Under Siege (South End Press, 2002) an anthology that examined the effects of the Gulf War and sanctions on Iraq.

United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) spokesperson Hiro Ueki has confirmed to South End Press that based on earlier research "UNMOVIC did not single Dr. Ammash out for interviews because UNMOVIC did not have clear evidence to link Dr. Ammash to BW [biological weapons] programs" when visiting Baghdad University on January 13th, 2003.

[...]

Dr. Ammash's other publications include: "Impact of Gulf War Pollution in the Spread of Infectious Diseases in Iraq," (Soli Al-Mondo, Rome, 1999), and "Electromagnetic, Chemical, and Microbial Pollution Resulting from War and Embargo, and Its Impact on the Environment and Health," (Journal of the [Iraqi] Academy of Science, 1997).
Susie Dow | 11.30.04 - 3:14 pm | #

I need to know if this is really true. I mean, I really need to know that.

That video was just - well what can I say, honestly?
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:15 pm | #

For what it's worth, Googling "depleted uranium iraqi children" gets a whole bunch of interesting sites, including a Seattle P-I news story from 2002 about leftovers from the first Gulf War.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:15 pm | #

DU is an alpha emitter, which makes its emissions dangerous only when exposed within the body. Around 25% of sub-ten micron particles will be absorbed into the human body when inhaled. So there's a risk there -- not a systemic risk, but a risk to localized tissues.

As mentioned above, DU is hazardous largely for its being a dangerous heavy metal. Amongst other things, DU is known to cause significant renal dysfunction and urinary tract problems, both of which are commonly reported amongst veterans of recent military conflicts.

However, the clinical evidence is less clear-cut. Research using sample populations known to have been directly exposed to particulate DU during combat (such as tanker crews hit by blue-on-blue fire) has not shown any significant health effects. This does not rule out the possibility of DU being at the heart of post-combat medical problems, but it proves that it's not an easily-replicated condition.

I have not seen any clinical evidence linking DU usage in war to epidemics of birth defects. However, DU is a toxin, so it's not impossible -- but I wouldn't buy anything with that dollar.

From the military's point of view, DU is a spectacular material. A DU round, once its sabot shears off, speeds to its target like an ultra-dense javelin, then oxidizes and burns like a phosphorous round. It's the most effective way to take out enemy armor, bar none, and (in my opinion) it would be a shame to have to stop using them. However, the preponderance of evidence against the use of DU in battlefield conditions is becoming significant.

Ultimately, the possibility of spreading large amounts of toxic inhalants around a battlefield without any good way to clean it up, and the risk of exposing American troops, enemy EPWs, and civilian populations probably will relegate DU rounds to a "high threshold" weapon, usable only in extremis. I think it'll take a while for the Pentagon brass and the DoD to deal with it, but it'll come.

In the meantime, keep speaking out about it. Be careful in your use of evidence -- this slide show isn't what I'd call peer-reviewed science -- but tell everyone you know about the dangers. Keep the public pressure on.
WatchfulBabbler | 11.30.04 - 3:16 pm | #

I think we can all argee that the issue is viable, even palapable. Someone needs to get in touch with the vidmaker and see where s/he got the images from. Can't hurt.
John | 11.30.04 - 3:16 pm | #

Tena-
the world is made better by people like you.
spinoza | 11.30.04 - 3:18 pm | #

I'm in the Army and my military speciality is NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical weapons). When I was in NBC school our instructor told us that the offical Army position on DU was that was perfectly safe if handled correctly.

Off the record, our instructor told us that if we ever came across a tank or vehicle destroyed by DU rounds to stay as far away as possible.

This stuff is nasty and it's going to be decades before the military admits that it knew DU was harmfull all along. It's going to be the Agent Orange controversy of the early 21st century.
NBC NCO | 11.30.04 - 3:18 pm | #

The Canadians are protesting. I guess Bush couldn't get all of them to sign a "loyalty pledge" Aren't we all proud of our President?
Mad as Hell | 11.30.04 - 3:18 pm | #

spinoza - Oh, my - {{{blush}}}

Thanks.

Same to you, and all the Eschatonians, Atriosites and good lurkers.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:20 pm | #

OT-but this fuck is an arrogant asshole who should be shunned by the civilized world.

When asked about polls showing that Bush was unpopular in Canada, the president responded: "I haven't seen the polls you look at."

"We just had a poll in our country where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to stay in place for four more years," Bush said, referring to his victory in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month
focus | 11.30.04 - 3:20 pm | #

I'm kind of surprised that most people seem not to have seen those images already. Fucked up, though.

Also, for any remaining Clinton apologists out there, note that some of those are the result of the war in Yugoslavia.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:21 pm | #

Mad as Hell - I'm proud as hell of the Canadians. Does anyone know of a way to send them our heartfelt thanks?
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:21 pm | #

Calm down.

DU bullets are bad because it's a vaporized toxic heavy metal not because it's radioactive. It's probably less radioactive than the walls of your building.

Agreed, it's nasty, but hey, bullets are bullets (which vaporize into lead and other yummy things), and it's better to have one that go through armor if you want to win a war. If you want to lose a war, then use plastic bullets. DU can also be used for a fantastic shielding from other bullets, as you would expect.
kevin. | 11.30.04 - 3:22 pm | #

I think that video is the left-wing equivalent of the right-to-life "Silent Scream" movies, personally.

I am a skeptical person. I don't drop the skepticism just because something agrees with my political or personal beliefs.

That video appears--I don't know for sure, and of course that is one of the problems with it--but it appears to mix images from WWII with text from Iraq and Serbia. And if that is the case, then it is crap, just like the Republican ads mixing Hitler with images of Dean screaming and Al Gore being pissed.

A lie is a lie. Doesn't matter who tells it.

One gals' opinion.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:22 pm | #

it's better to have one that go through armor if you want to win a war. If you want to lose a war, then use plastic bullets

What do we do if we don't want to have a war at all?

Or is that not an option?

--
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:23 pm | #

Hey, we're using this shit over there so we don't have to use it over HERE, right!?!! Oh! By the Way. We're getting ready to drop a few kilotons of this stuff along the Pakistani-Afghani border, just rootin around for "He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken". Well, since THEY stopped lookin...
Chitler | 11.30.04 - 3:23 pm | #

A lie is a lie. Doesn't matter who tells it.

I have to take issue with this, just a little bit.

A lie told by our side is slightly better than one told by theirs.

For instance, I assume Kerry lied during the campaign when he said he was against gay marriage. But I don't really blame him, because he was just trying to avoid an unnecessary shitstorm.

Even if that video is a "lie", I'm sure it's more or less representative of some fucked-up, horrendous shit going on in Iraq, and if the "lie" makes people more aware of that, then you won't hear me complaining.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:26 pm | #

Guys, listen. I'm not sure either (although, having heard of the problem before, I'm inclined to believe -- if I weren't, I wouldn't have posted it). So I've e-mailed the guy regarding his sources. Let me find out about that.

In the meantime, I must say that all this hairsplitting on precisely how radioactive DU may or may not be, or its toxicity relative to lead, reminds me an awful lot of some noise a couple of months ago regarding the kerning on some old typewriters.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:26 pm | #

The video is clearly just pictures of horrific deformations from all over time/space. I recognize one of them as the old harlequin syndrome pics that used to be all over rotten.com and such.

They don't really reference anything authoritative either. Lots of self-citation on the website. I'd treat as mucho suspecto.
ben | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:26 pm | #

Would someone please call "atrios" and tell him that the morons have taken over his weblog?

Thanks.
hat | 11.30.04 - 3:27 pm | #

Oh, look what the orc dragged in.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 3:29 pm | #

recognize one of them as the old harlequin syndrome pics that used to be all over rotten.com and such.

Yeah, I recognized that too.

I saw many of those images about three or four years ago. But of course, the video itself is also referencing Gulf War I and Bosnia, so that doesn't really mean anything.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:29 pm | #

ARGH. People, for gods sakes. This is pure propagandist bullshit. I thought we were supposed to be the HONEST guys, the GOOD guys. But now here we go jumping into the briar patch of adding disinformation and misinformation to the already murky-beyond-belief public debate. If something has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, IT IS NOT VERY RADIOACTIVE. The SHORTER halflives are what are dangerous. The really hot, unstable stuff emitting alpha radiation.

There is radiation all around us. The sun bombards us with radiation on a constant basis, there are radioactive isotopes floating around our bodies right now. "Radiocarbon dating" anyone? That is a process for measuring the age of fossils by looking at the known decay rates for various isotopes that accrue in living organisms, for instance potassium-40 (half-life 1.25 billion years) or carbon-14 (half-life 5,730 years). The only way to live in a radiation-free environment is to wait for the eventual death of the universe, when nothing but globs of lead are left drifting through a black, empty void.

Additionally, an attempt to establish a causal relationship between depleted uranium and birth defects in a war zone is fraught with myriad hazards. There are many MANY other possibilities for even a sharp increase in birth defects and early deaths on a modern battlefield: poor food supplies caused by fighting, lack of access to clean water and a disruption of early medical intervention. ecological contamination caused by lead and metal debris entering the environment, disease caused by poor conditions and the proximity of livestock to dead human bodies (disease incubation and transfer between human and animal, as we see in China's hog populations magnified because certain livestock will gladly feed on rotting human corpses for example).

The worst thing about fearmongering to this degree is that RATIONAL, REASONABLE people can easily refute this nonsense. And after they do, everythng else you say to them is measured against the falsities you are already known to have spread.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 3:30 pm | #

Speaking of apologists, which are the bigger scumbags:

a) the scientific brownshirt fucks stealing their "we need more studies, all is well" lines from the tobacco industry of 40 years ago, or

b) the "it's all Clinton's fault" moron.

As I suggested earlier, I'll gladly participate in a study where I shove a bullet of delpleted uranium up the ass of any one of these motherfuckers, and then we'll wait and see what the damage is. What's the matter, scared? Don't give a shit if it's "only" happening to some sand nigger? Four words: shut the fuck up.
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:30 pm | #

Filkertom:
It isn't hairsplitting, however, to note that there is precious little citing in that video, or that it is implying that these images come from Iraq and/or Serbia. That is the obvious insinuation, and apparently that is a lie.

And, hey, Hat, fuck off. At least people here try to fiind out the truth about shit...can't say the same for your side.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:30 pm | #

TheoLogie - Ok, that is a great big LOL!

Yah, hat, call him for us, will you? I'm sure he'd love to hear from you.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:31 pm | #

DU is one of the major reasons the Marines were invited to vacate their Vieques (PR) training site. They were dumping barrels of guk in the ocean for decades off Vieques, and contaminating the land, groundwater and air with DU among other things no one wants to live around...
DeepEar | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:31 pm | #

"Depleted uranium" sounds so negative. How about "uranium reform," "no uranium left behind," or "freedom uranium"?
bebe rebozo | 11.30.04 - 3:31 pm | #

filkertom: It's somewhat unfair to call it hairsplitting. At worst, the years of scientific and medical research on DU have found its effects to be inconclusive. A propagandist video certainly doesn't refute that. It's a bit reminiscent of when I talk to Republican family members who declare, "It's so cold out today! There's no way this global warming thing is true."
rj | 11.30.04 - 3:31 pm | #

What do we do if we don't want to have a war at all?

Or is that not an option?

Of course no war is an option. I'd rather not be in this mess in Iraq either, but surely you're not proposing we dispand the entire military are you? This country needs to be able to defend itself and enter war when appropriate (see WWII).
kevin. | 11.30.04 - 3:32 pm | #

Chad - No offense, but who the hell are you?

If you are a long time lurker, please say so. Otherwise, I have to wonder what cred you are supposed to have here, when I don't recall seeing your handle around. I'm not trying to police the place, but if someone comes in and makes a lot of accusations over an unfamiliar handle, well...

It isn't just the video that one is skeptical about. Sorry - don't flame me people. I'm not trying to be rude, just to get an idea of who the heck is complaining.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:34 pm | #

And another thing. Let's save the word "depleted" for when we really need it, as in Liddy Dole has a depleted soul.
bebe rebozo | 11.30.04 - 3:34 pm | #

Would someone please call "atrios" and tell him that the morons have taken over his weblog?

Thanks.
hat

When did hat take over?
Holden Caulfield | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:34 pm | #

Life magazine showed and awful lot of deformed American babies whose fathers used or handled DU ammo.

This was way beyond background noise level deformities. There were many missing arms and legs and half faces etc.

This is real and this isn't normal.
Elaine Supkis | 11.30.04 - 3:34 pm | #

thought we were supposed to be the HONEST guys, the GOOD guys.

If you haven't noticed, that hasn't been doing us much good lately.

Politics sometimes requires lies; if we're not willing to lie, we shouldn't be involved in electoral politics. Sorta sad, but very true. For instance, if I thought it would have done any good, I would have held a press conference saying that GWB raped me when I was 12. Lies sometimes work: look at the Swift Boat nonsense.

the "it's all Clinton's fault" moron.

I hope this wasn't a reference to me. I definitely don't think "it's all Clinton's fault", and definitely would prefer Clinton to Bush any day of the week. However, I do notice some strange Clinton-nostalgia in progressive/left circles, and it is important to remember that Clinton, too, was a war criminal, albeit a lesser one than GWB.

You don't have to be a freeper to have a realistic perspective on Clinton.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

Tena -

I think Chad has been hanging around.

[/rimshot]
Holden Caulfield | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

dave -
the scientific brownshirt fucks...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right dude?
rj | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

Um.. those are just pics of deformed babies with some Trent Reznor type music in the background. A small percentage of babies are born deformed every year from various causes. If you want to convince me that DU is really bad you'll need some actual data.

If you want to convince us that you have an IQ above room temperature you'll have to try a little harder.

Asshat.
four legs good | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

I have to agree with Lisa on her criticism of the video and all of the posters above who advised caution--especially Watchful Babbler.

Put me in the "propaganda is always bad" camp. I want me some facts and measured discussion.
mothra | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

I hope this wasn't a reference to me.

It was.
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

The Canadians are feeding the Chimpo and Betty Crocker canadian beef for dinner tonight - the same beef that has been banned from the US market since last year for possible mad cow disease contamination. Ha!
Lima | 11.30.04 - 3:35 pm | #

Jesus, "hat", I didn't know "you" cared. Hell, if the morons took over, I'd think "you'd" feel right at home.
Backslider | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:36 pm | #

Good Tena, you had me worried. I'm usually just a wallflower here in Eschatonia, but I am concerned about rampant depression hitting us, I know I've felt it and this video certainly didn't help. But knowledge is power, so let's keep using our voices -- especially on issues like this that leave us speechless. A note to our Congressmen and Senators is always a good idea. Also, as suggested elswhere in this thread, it's important to have our science straight, this way we know we're dealing from truth. With truth on our side, and love for our fellow human beings in our hearts we will ultimately win out over the orcs (tip o' the hat to puppethead).
davedave | 11.30.04 - 3:36 pm | #

Keep in mind the attempts to downplay Agent Orange.

Frankly, DU may not be as dangerous as some here suspect, but there's enough evidence and history (on the part of the government to try to hush-hush it) that DU isn't harmless.
John | 11.30.04 - 3:36 pm | #

It's the most effective way to take out enemy armor, bar none, and (in my opinion) it would be a shame to have to stop using them.

Maybe so, but how much of a threat to us is "enemy armor"? Really, I look around the world and it ain't the guys with the tanks who are our problem.

I'm also baffled as to why the administration even wants "bunker buster" tactical nukes. I mean, I can't even come up with the bad rationale. Are we really at a national disadvantage because of our inability to effectively bust bunkers?

It seems like a shitload of money is being thrown (or is getting ready to be thrown) at dangerous weapons which from a strategic perspective really aren't all that necessary...
Thersites | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:37 pm | #

If you think that is bad, I was just flipping through the channels and came across a horrific BBC program about the major drug companies medical experiments on HIV-positive children in New York. They called ii Guinea Pig Kids and foster parents are paid $2000 a month to give these children their drugs; often resulting in painful side effects and/or rapid death. They showed a mass grave at a Catholic Church with a granite wall that had rows of children’s names inscribed into it. They had a nervous and totally lame City Council person mumbling about how difficult it was to know what was really going on.

What the hell is going on over there?

During a nine month investigation, the BBC has uncovered the disturbing truth about the way authorities in New York City are conducting the fight against Aids.

HIV positive children - some only a few months old - are enrolled in toxic experiments without the consent of guardians or relatives.

In some cases where parents have refused to give children their medication, they have been placed in care. (That’s British for being placed in a foster home)

The city's Administration of Children's Services (ACS) does not even require a court order to place HIV kids with foster parents or in children's homes, where they can continue to give them experimental drugs.
Kevin de Bruxelles | 11.30.04 - 3:38 pm | #

Is there still a Life magazine? I thought that was dead and buried... do they still come out with special issues?
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:38 pm | #

Dave- I have some pics of sick people whom I know became that way as the result of being an asshole to others. I don't have any studies to back that up but you should believe me. You are in danger!
pablo | 11.30.04 - 3:39 pm | #

Keep in mind the attempts to downplay Agent Orange.

And let's not forget "there's no such thing as global warming." They're called "scientific brownshirt fucks" for a reason.

Or as Tom Lehrer once sang:

"'Once rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,' says Werner von Braun..."
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:39 pm | #

I hope this wasn't a reference to me.

It was.

Take it back, then. I never said anything about this being "all Clinton's fault".

I did, however, mention that Clinton, too, was a war criminal. That's just the truth; again, you don't have to be a winger to see that.

I'm a die-hard leftist, ardent Kerry supporter. But I have no illusions about B. Clinton.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:40 pm | #

It seems like a shitload of money is being thrown (or is getting ready to be thrown) at dangerous weapons which from a strategic perspective really aren't all that necessary...

Akin to the argument over the SDI weapons. Won't protect anyone from a full-borne nuclear missile attack or a dirty bomb in a major city, but it does give whomever has a space-based weapons platform control of the skies as well as metaphorical club hanging over the head of other countries.
John | 11.30.04 - 3:40 pm | #

Holden - Ow! Ow! Ow!
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:40 pm | #

Dave, you idiotic windbag: In order to actually beat back the neo-primative jackasses running our country, we need to do two things:

[1] fix the disinformation train

[2] not turn into them.

While I dont look forward to having a DU shell "shoved up my ass," I would gladly eat every meal for a month off a plate made of DU... and then lick the fucking plate clean afterwards. Would it be poisonous to me? Yes. In the same way doing so off a plate of lead would be. Would it kill me? No quicker than the cigarettes I smoke, I'd warrant.

And your outrage over this needless war goes exactly NONE of the distance towards justifying lying about it. I play for this team because I am confidant it is MORALLY BETTER than the other side. Take that away and it is no longer worth fighting for.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 3:40 pm | #

Another Hecate post that doesn't wash. Sigh.
pepper | 11.30.04 - 3:40 pm | #

Lisa, rj -- perhaps "hairsplitting" wasn't the best word, and I apologize for my imprecision. I also don't know for sure about the pictures; that's why I've e-mailed the guy who produced the video, to get his sources. But I do believe there is a problem with DU, and the number of people on this thread saying, in effect, "Don't worry"... has me a little worried.

It may turn out to be not as extreme a problem as presented in the video. I rather hope so. But there is something to it. The question then becomes, what and how much?
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:40 pm | #

I am sure that DU is very bad. I am not a physicist or chemist and won't pretend to be. I have fought against this war since a year prior to the invasion. However, I would never try to use this video to convince anyone who has not agreed with me in the past.

I am sorry but it is a very sloppy piece. Why all the babies? Oh yeah, babies pull at our heart strings and fill us with the urge to protect. This is why Bush I paraded a Kuwaiti diplomat's daughter before congress in the lead up to the first gulf war where she posed as a nurse. She told a horrified nation that she personally witnessed Iraqi troops removing 150 babies from incubators in Kuwait City and hurling them into the streets. Only much later did thoughtful people begin to wonder why one Kuwaiti hospital had more incubators in its maternity ward than the entire city of New York had in all of its hospitals.

People - it is bullshit when they do it and it is bullshit when we do it.

Go ahead and point to the long term effects of pollution as an under reported tragic consequence of war but don't embrace obvious propaganda that can easily be picked apart to discredit us. We are the opposition, we cannot afford to be sloppy.

Side note: "The America can never do wrong crowd" will pick up right away on the film maker's use of the pronoun "we" (meaning US) while spelling tons the British way (tonnes). This alone will convince them that this film is a sleazy anti-American lie.
Tom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:41 pm | #

Ya know, my old man's got serious respiratory problems. He was in 'Nam during the heaviest usage of Agent Orange. It's only within the last five years that the VA admitted that, yeah, maybe his heretofore unknown respiratory condition coulda come from that lovely little defoliate. I got a number of friends and acquaintences who served during the First Big Iraqi Lie, and there ain't a one of 'em who doesn't have some sort of ailment that the military refuses to explain.

Someone above said that the amount of uranium in DU isn't much worse than the amount in well water, which reminds me just how fucking nasty drinking water is in America. Then there's dioxin in toilet paper and a marked increase in prostate cancer in men...

And I'm supposed to be worried about the detrimental effects of smoking marijuana?
Backslider | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:42 pm | #

but surely you're not proposing we dispand the entire military are you? This country needs to be able to defend itself and enter war when appropriate

No, not exactly. But I will note that since the end of WWII, the U.S. military has been responsible for very much that is bad and very little that is good.

"We" need to defend ourselves, but who defends the rest of the world from "us"?

,,
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:42 pm | #

What filkertom said. Facts needed, but it's clear there is potential for a lot of long-term crapola.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 3:42 pm | #

davedave - I know we are going to get our country back and I wouldn't miss that for anything.

Sorry to cause worry. There are some things that I just don't even know how to address anymore. If my life would somehow put a stop to these things - I'd surrender it in a second. Unfortunately or not, depending, it wouldn't make one bit of difference to anyone but the people who care about me. I can't do that to them.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:42 pm | #

What filkertom said. Facts needed, but it's clear there is potential for a lot of long-term crapola.
TheaLogie | 11.30.04 - 3:42 pm | #

Wow! Throw up a thread, go away to a meeting and come back to a broohaha!

filkertom has emailed the author of the video; let's see what he finds out.

Meanwhile, the Vanity Fair article provides more information and facts. Blogger, which hates me, won't let me link to the story in the thread, but tysnott at 2:46 provides a link:
http://www.vanityfair.com/commen...co04? print=true

The video certainly has a more immediate emotional impact, but you need to read the VF article, as well. Whether DU does its damage because of radiation or because it's a dangerous chemical seems less important to me than the fact that we're spreading this stuff all around Iraq and doing harm not only to our own soldiers but also to innocent Iraqi civilians.

It would make me more comfortable to believe that this just isn't true. But you can't address what you don't acknowledge. I was told during the Viet Nam war that Agent Oragne would wash away with the first rainstorm.
Hecate | 11.30.04 - 3:43 pm | #

I'll be convinced DU is no threat when they start using it as talcum powder in the white house.
spinoza | 11.30.04 - 3:43 pm | #

In scanning the thread, noticed nobody mentioned this video was out at least six months ago, think I got the link via email and forwarded it around.

Always wondered why Kerry or a 527 did not use it. Suspect they were as skeptical as many of the commenter's are on this thread (and myself). It's like the Bush IQ hoax IMO. Not saying DU is not bad...
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 3:43 pm | #

Anyone reading this is too damned old to emigrate. Get a grip. Now, if you have kids and can raise them somewhere else, living abroad might make sense, especially if you can HAVE the kids abroad and get 'em foreign passports.

But these things don't stop at national borders. A few nukes go off in the Middle East, and Europe gets the fallout in the spring. There's no way around this. The death monkeys are KILLING THE PLANET and Mother Nature is going to "speak up" very soon to ask them to stop it, pretty please.

I suggest building a wilderness shelter out of compressed worthless dollar bills. The irony won't feed you, but it might just keep you sane a little longer.
John H. Farr | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:43 pm | #

Kevin de Bruxelles - another horrific story. And brought to you by the Catholic Church of NY!
Lima | 11.30.04 - 3:44 pm | #

Tena,

You would have seen me posting to billmon or daily kos or the poor man. And what does that matter? Is this place open for public debate or not? Unless you've written a book about political philosophy or have worked for some liberal organization or the DNC in a serious lobbying capacity, or go around the country giving speeches that serious, knowledgable people attend in order to learn stuff, I dont see how your $0.02 is worth considerably mor ethan mine... especially so if my stuff is backed up by lots of numbers and yours consists primarily of telling me I have no credibility.

Has the left seriously been reduced to "whats the secret knock?" Because if so, it's going to be a long long long time before we retake any part of the federal government.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 3:44 pm | #

Another Hecate post that doesn't wash.

It washes fine, which is more than can be said for your rancid ass, smelly.
Thersites | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:45 pm | #

which reminds me just how fucking nasty drinking water is in America.

The local affiliate of NPR ran a story this morning about how, for the past 6 years, NYC has had higher amounts of lead in its water than is "acceptable."

And here I thought it was just that the Times crossword puzzles were getting tougher.

Backslider, don't bogart that roach, 'kay?
watertiger | 11.30.04 - 3:45 pm | #

It seems like a shitload of money is being thrown (or is getting ready to be thrown) at dangerous weapons which from a strategic perspective really aren't all that necessary...
Thersites | Email | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:37 pm | #

Hey, give the man a cigar. They ain't necessary, but Daddy still needs a new Lexus, ya know? What, you think it's only coincidence that we spend $400 billion on what we without-a-shred-of-irony call "defense", yet troops in Iraq are fighting with substandard equipment and armor, and the VA somehow manages to not get funded?

Shit, man, you wait until someone figures out how to make a buck on nuclear war...
Backslider | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:45 pm | #

"If you want to convince us that you have an IQ above room temperature you'll have to try a little harder."

Four legs, you're going to need to try a little less hard to convince us you're not just being nasty.
ben | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:46 pm | #

It would make me more comfortable to believe that this just isn't true. But you can't address what you don't acknowledge.

Even if this particular video isn't "true", this administration is still commiting war crimes in Iraq, and people are still suffering. So in a sense, we are splitting hairs here; video or no video, there is some seriously fucked-up shit going down over there.

A "true" video would, I'm sure, be just as horrific anyway.

,,
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 3:46 pm | #

More on DU

Studies at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute showed that human cells grown in culture dishes could be transformed into cancerous cells when exposed to uranium [28]. Researchers in Albuquerque, NM implanted DU metal into the muscle of rats (a model for shrapnel wounds), causing 18% to develop sarcomas (cancerous tumors around the implant site)[29].

It is a widely accepted principle in molecular biology that agents that cause mutations or damage DNA can cause cancer. Mutations in the DNA of germ cells (in the testes and ovaries) may lead to birth defects or miscarriage. It is plausible that uranium exposure in a man could lead to increased risk of birth defects in his children conceived after the exposure [27]
Central Scrutinizer | 11.30.04 - 3:48 pm | #

"It's important to remember that the dangers of DU most likely aren't due to the radiation, which is minimal, but because it's a poisonous heavy metal."
Turnipseed

This is the usual industry-explanation accepted position, one I have taken before as well.

INCORRECTLY.

Although DU is not a particular rad danger in air, BECAUSE it is a heavy metal, it accumulates IN TISSUE. Especially in delicate LUNG TISSUE and bone.

The dispersed form of DU is in tiny (micro-submacro), and globular...a result of being exploded at high temperature and pressure. These grains of DU lodge in the lungs of passing soldiers, even months or years later (ESPECIALLY IN A PLACE WITH SAND STORMS).

Lung (and other) cancer rates, BIRTH DEFECTS, and blood diseases like leukemia are properly to be EXPECTED from such exposures.

It isn't the rad danger on skin contact; it's the inhaled danger, the danger of accumulation of rad in water supplies, in the food chain, in the breasts of women, and in the reproductive organs of both genders. And it is NOT just the danger of a heavy metal.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 3:48 pm | #

Backslider - who the hell told you to worry about the effects of smoking marijuana?

The government doesn't even bother with that much any more. I mean, how many more generations of us have to come and go before they totally admit that all the propaganda about marijuana was and is lies? I've been smoking off and on for 48 years. I think there is sufficient proof by now that none of the bullshit about it is true. I never shot heroin once. Didn't even hold anyone up for drug money, either.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:48 pm | #

watertiger,
It's all because back in the '80s and '90s cities of any size decided they had to cut back on spending, so of course, the first place was water purification. Who in the hell wants clean drinking water? And, of course, you gotta crack down on pollution regulations. The glory of the free market and all that.
Backslider | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:49 pm | #

This thread reminds me of when all those civic minded protesters managed to get Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) facilities shut down so they would be replaced with nice safe Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) facilities.

I wonder if anyone who reads this will gett it.
Njorl | 11.30.04 - 3:49 pm | #

What are we to make of the GNN's geiger counter adventure? Are they just BSing?
BLT | 11.30.04 - 3:50 pm | #

The use of DU is INTENTIONALLY genocidal.

It is not just profit-motive. It is RACIST.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 3:50 pm | #

Tena,

damn, nice work, I've only been on the job for 27 years! Altough I never troll with a bake on!
da trufe is rob | 11.30.04 - 3:50 pm | #

Maybe the doubters will be less skeptical when they're paraded before the corpses? Isn't that what the allies did to the Germans who lived near the concentration camps to help convince them?

What do people still think of when they think of Germans? What will people soon think of when they think of Amerikans?
Cranky When Old | 11.30.04 - 3:51 pm | #

Tom and Chad. Please stop making sense!

You see, if *they* put up a propaganda piece background, data and facts are of the utmost importance. But if *we* make a slick propaganda piece, then all that pesky background, data and facts just get in the way of some good ole heart-string-pluckin'.

Oh and in case anyone hasn't figured it out yet, Tena thinks s/he is the Eschaton "den mother".

Make sure your thoughts meet the group-think quotient before posting.
Espumoso | 11.30.04 - 3:51 pm | #

Tena - So you started smoking when you were two?
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 3:51 pm | #

Tena,
Actually, I've seen some serious gearing up by the Moral Crusaders in the fight against the evil, wicked, mean and nasty weed, in the form of "medicinal marijuana", though. But specifically, ask Barndog about the yay-hoo he and I danced with the other night. The "live high or die" guy who harped on and on about how horrible pot was, yet never once called for the outright banning of alcohol or tobacco. Good times.
Backslider | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:51 pm | #

Filkertom:
I don't know what the deal is with DU. Have no idea. But mixing uncited stats and other info with pix of deformed babies that may have nothing whatsoever to do with DU makes the whole thing illegitimate.

It's like "Reefer Madness" stuff.

Just to add my two cents, it's shitty to flame people who ask for more info. It's shitty to compare them to tobacco scientists or wonder where they were on the whole Agent Orange question and that kind of thing (if indeed that is what was being done; it's kind of hard to tell sometimes who is being criticized for what).

Does the government lie? Of course. That's a no brainer. Does Bushco give a shit about side effects of anything it does? So far, the answer appears to be a resounding "no."

Does that mean I or anyone else should stop asking for facts or pointing out inconsistencies, or stop calling "shenanigans" when we see it? No. Absolutely not.

And calling "shenanigans" doesn't mean that I am denying that DU, for example, might pose problems. It may very well pose problems.

But someone claiming the Virgin Mary is on a cheese sandwich doesn't make it so. And mixing Trent Reznor music with images of deformed babies from god-knows-where and stats on DU...pretty much looks like a cheese sandwich to me.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:52 pm | #

What a great thread! It's what I love about being on the left -- we actually get to debate things. I'll take this over maga-dittoes any day! Blessings on y'all -- I really must get back to work.
davedave | 11.30.04 - 3:52 pm | #

Dec 3rd marks the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy. Union Carbide has never apologised to the Indian govt. Its then chairman, Warren Anderson has resisted extradition attempts to India and is still absconding. There is a screening of Bhopal: The Search for Justice
this Friday, at NYU. Eschatonians are most welcome.

WHAT: Join us for a free screening of the new documentary Bhopal: The Search for Justice to commemorate 20 years in the struggle for justice in
Bhopal, India. After the screening we will have a Q & A with writer and producer Harold Crooks. We will
conclude the evening with a call for individuals and organizations to mobilize for further NYC based
actions, in solidarity with the international campaign
led by Bhopal survivors.

WHEN: THIS FRIDAY DECEMBER 3rd, 7:00 PM, screening
with discussion to follow

WHERE: New York Univeristy, Room 802 in the Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East (at corner of
Waverly and Washington Place)

WHY: On the night of Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons
of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were
operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of
their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the
subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing,and gynecological disorders. The site has never been
properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and
well water testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage-and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the
water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50
times higher than EPA safety limits. Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5
trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women. In
2001, Michigan-based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims. Twenty years
later, Bhopal survivors are at the forefront of the struggle for human rights, environmental justice, and
corporate accountability.

WHO: This event is co-sponsored by Students for Justice in Bhopal, the International Campaign for
Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), AID-NY, INSAF, the Asian/Pacific/American Program at NYU, and United
Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) NYU.
A drain full of spittle | 11.30.04 - 3:53 pm | #

"This thread reminds me of when all those civic minded ... I wonder if anyone who reads this will gett it.--Njorl"

Boy, that is some HAUGHTY shit you're hauling around, Njorl.

This kind of nuke industry-friendly PUTDOWN is as old as the hills, as old as Dr. Radium, or whatever his name, who went around to schools in the 50s and ate the stuff to PROVE it was harmless.

Gee...whatever happened to that fellow?

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 3:53 pm | #

Backslider - Damn, I missed that one and I'm sorry I did.

I know the morality police are crawling all over everything these days, but it is such a waste of time when it comes to marijuana that I'm surprised they bother. Hell, 75% of the respondents to a Texas poll said it should be legal.

It's just a matter of time. And getting rid of the goddamned fundies and fascists.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 3:54 pm | #

Njor,

Or all those well meaning people who protested nuclear power plants which left harmful rods lying around, so now we get all of pour power from coal? Or all the people who insisted on crazy-assed additives to gasoline, which bonded with the aerosolized product and entered our water supply? Kneejerk leftism based entirely on outrage to specific keywords like "pollution" are every bit as disasterous to our environment as kneejerk wingnuts who go nonlinear at the mention of the word "abortion" are to our social progress. Idiots with no capacity to think things through making short-term plans to destroy our long-term chances at creating a better world.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 3:55 pm | #

It's not that I don't think DU is a problem. The Vanity Fair piece is horribly convincing.

However, that video is pretty crock-esque.

1. I don't know where the baby pictures came from, but they're just pictures of serious neonate deformities in general, not something you could credibly tie to DU. But that's clearly what Blumrich is trying to imply.

2. I didn't see anything personal about Blumrich in a quick skim of his site, but he keeps referring to this as something "we" did ("How much poison have we dropped?"), meaning Americans. But I don't know any Americans who spell tons "tonnes." So either he's terribly affected, I'm disinclined to believe him.

3. Did he really say that 67% of Gulf War vets' kids had "severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers" and such? This stat came from where, exactly? How about the one about cancer in Iraq increasing 400%-700%? Is that traceable in any meaningful way to DU or is just related to all the other crap they've put up with in the last 13 years?

This guy's supposedly on our side, but he's willing to make unsupported statements and implications to make his point. IMO, that's something best left to Republicans.
Molly, NYC | 11.30.04 - 3:56 pm | #

Guinea pig kids?
Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with this country?
And would someone please give me ONE good reason why I shouldn't pack up the kids and leave? (And please note that Mr. TJ is a citizen of both France and the UK, so it's not as difficult for us as it might be for others.)
TJ | 11.30.04 - 3:56 pm | #

filkertom - I'm all for careful, scientific studies of the effects of DU. It could indeed be dangerous. From the current evidence out there, though, there's no conclusive evidence that it causes health effects any worse than vaporized lead from conventional ammo. Even if DU is harmful, the VAST majority of people in Iraq are being killed by good ole bullets, bombs, and lack of sanitation and medical care due to US actions, and thus I believe that's where the vast majority of our attention needs to be focused.
rj | 11.30.04 - 3:57 pm | #

Those kids are faking it.
Number One Troll | 11.30.04 - 3:57 pm | #

I'm also baffled as to why the administration even wants "bunker buster" tactical nukes.

Thersites, I'll explain it all once I've actually got the nukes. Promise.
bunker buster | 11.30.04 - 3:59 pm | #

"Have I mentioned that I want the old virtuous United States back?"
Crabby Old Lady

Come on, we have never really been a virtuous country. Admittedly we are scary as hell right now, with Bush at the helm we are spiralling out of control, but let's not claim virtue for America, what nationstate is virtuous?
krsaz | 11.30.04 - 3:59 pm | #

"And calling "shenanigans" doesn't mean that I am denying that DU, for example, might pose problems. It may very well pose problems." --Lisa

It CERTAINLY poses problems, which is why most of the scientists in the world have come out in support of the view that use of such materials is a WARCRIME, which is certainly is.

Harming civilian populations for decades into the future, even risking that, is the very measure of Geneva Convention FORBIDDEN behavior.

Ask ANY American if they would mind if the USAF exploded air-to-air DU weapons above our major cities. NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT! the fliers would say.

You would be up to your ears in pitchforks in seconds. And for very good reasons.

The RACISM of considering Arabs less human MUST STOP. There is nothing ha-ha funny about this issue, nor is it the behavior of concerned non-racist scientists to scoff at the risks.

This is no different than the Japanese or German experiments on civilians. IT IS THAT.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 3:59 pm | #

Can't look at video, but guess it's a fake. Is it some infants all deformed from radiation? The time frame is off.

Could be from the first Gulf War though.

Going to Google, because our own troops suffer dearly to exposire to DU shells, and that's been verified by the DOD.
da trufe is rob | 11.30.04 - 3:59 pm | #

While I dont look forward to having a DU shell "shoved up my ass," I would gladly eat every meal for a month off a plate made of DU... and then lick the fucking plate clean afterwards. Would it be poisonous to me? Yes. In the same way doing so off a plate of lead would be.

You can start anytime, motherfucker.

Make sure you feed it to your kids, as well.
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:01 pm | #

Of course, he won't...
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:01 pm | #

"Come on, we have never really been a virtuous country. Admittedly we are scary as hell right now, with Bush at the helm we are spiralling out of control, but let's not claim virtue for America, what nationstate is virtuous?
krsaz"

Once again mistaking a government for America, eh?

This country is HIGHLY virtuous at the public level. We are one of the most integrated and free societies on the face of the earth, and no coup(s) by peckerhead medieval retreads changes that.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:01 pm | #

"tonnes" is synonymous with "metric tons", different from "tons" which are imperial. The UN, the scientific community and most of the world use metric measurements.

2000 pounds = 1 (short) ton = 0.907 tonne
puppethead | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:02 pm | #

oh dear, check this out....

video most definitely real...

http://www.geocities.com/iraqinf...gulfwar/ du.html
da trufe is rob | 11.30.04 - 4:02 pm | #

OK, I'm over.

An AF commanding officer friend of mine, lately in charge of airlift to Gulf II, as well as Bosnia and Gulf I, complained about how his men never had sufficient protection from the weapons they transported and those units taking DU weapons had (his words) over 1000% more cancer and radiation damage (including deformed babies) than similar units.

Pablo and others, "Depleted" is simply a marketing term and in no way can be construed to represent the radiological status of a sample. There used to be open tanks in the SE corner of the state of Washington that contain(ed?) a liquid that, should one immerse one's hand for just over four seconds, would guarantee your death in a few hours from radiation. That was also considered "depleted", in the sense it could not "usefully" be used further, just like DU.
Sky-Ho | 11.30.04 - 4:02 pm | #

Maybe the doubters will be less skeptical when they're paraded before the corpses? Isn't that what the allies did to the Germans who lived near the concentration camps to help convince them?

Bingo!
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:03 pm | #

Lisa: Listen, I'm trying to claim my due responsibility, okay? I didn't create the video, but I did post it to my blog. I'm trying to find out deeper facts about the specifics of its data and pictures; meanwhile, the info links others have posted here have confirmed my vibe about the video.

It's not illegitimate until it's debunked -- which, if it is, I'll be first in line.

I disagre with the "Reefer Madness" statement, however, because RM presented "evidence" directly contradictory to what was and is known about marijuana. We, on this thread, don't know exactly what effect DU really has, but it's closer to that video than the giggling psychotics in RM were to anybody any of us has ever known who smoked pot.

Meanwhile, if nothing else, it calls attention to an existing problem. We'll find out the details together.

And... I don't recall flaming anyone upthread. Especially not for asking for more info, as I'm trying myself to provide that. Did I say something you regarded as a flame? Or was that shifting from me to others in the group?

Espumoso: ... and you are...?
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:03 pm | #

One more part of the fantastic Bush legacy to us Americans.

Thing is, one day far in the future, Iraq will be a state again with leaders of one kind or the other. They will then be in a position to sue the hell out of the US.

And rightly so. Our descendants will cluck and shake their heads and wonder how we could ALL have been so stupid.

Some will attempt even then to justify it...maybe a variation on the Hiroshima (no one has even a convoluted excuse that I've heard for Nagasaki) excuses.

That is, if we are still a nation by then.

But...this is where Bush's genius is really shining through, he's going to bankrupt the USA and thereby declare chapter 11, and we won't be worth suing.
Tom Joad | 11.30.04 - 4:04 pm | #

" Would it be poisonous to me? Yes. In the same way doing so off a plate of lead would be. "

Forget 'eating it.' Inhale a fine dust of exploded DU particles just ONCE.

You think asbestos causes cancer? From a SINGLE exposure? That's right, we now KNOW that.

You ought to check out what these crystalline globules of still-radioactive heavy metals will do for your future. Check it out for yourself. Join the thousands of soldiers who are finding out in person.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:04 pm | #

Personally, I don't know if DU is as nasty as some are saying, but frankly, I find it telling that no one's saying it's good for people to breath, have in their water supply, etc.

Thousands of years of human evolution and we're still coming up with nastier and nastier ways to fuck each other up. Apparently, just flat-out killing folks is not good enough.

And I give a amen to krsaz's opinion on our "virtuousness". A country where black men were lynched for "looking" at white women, just to mention one, ain't virtuous. It's not what we are that solely defines us, though; what we try to be is a part of it, too. Unfortunately, we as a country really ain't trying too hard anymore, it seems.
Backslider | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:05 pm | #

Sky-Ho-Excellent point. Is "depleted" a quantifiable term (such as ton)?
spinoza | 11.30.04 - 4:05 pm | #

rj -- I'm with ya there, pal.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:07 pm | #

This kind of nuke industry-friendly PUTDOWN is as old as the hills, as old as Dr. Radium, or whatever his name, who went around to schools in the 50s and ate the stuff to PROVE it was harmless.

Gee...whatever happened to that fellow?

He grew to be 75 feet high and destroyed half of Tokyo before being killed by Mothra. Or so I have been told.
Marcus Wellby | 11.30.04 - 4:07 pm | #

"There used to be open tanks in the SE corner of the state of Washington...That was also considered "depleted", in the sense it could not "usefully" be used further, just like DU.
Sky-Ho

There are open pits, so-called "cooling pits," like that all over the country. In them, depleted fuel rods, so hot that they would explode if uncovered, sizzle away for years and years. They represent a major danger for terrorist attack; transporting them all over the country in order to store them in Nevada is an idea for the truly stupid.

Who seem to be looking for some more idiotic things to do.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:08 pm | #

Dr. Radium? I heard he became vice president.
spinoza | 11.30.04 - 4:08 pm | #

Sky-Ho-Excellent point. Is "depleted" a quantifiable term (such as ton)?

Yes - "depleted" would mean less radioactive than the pure, unadulterated element (i.e. the isotopic ratio found in the earth). So, depleted uranium is less radioactive than uranium straight from the mine. Since "natural" uranium has very low radioactivity, DU would be less radioactive. On the other hand, something like radium or plutonium would be extremely dangerous even if depleted.
rj | 11.30.04 - 4:09 pm | #

Seriously, anyone who thinks that the danger from DU is from radiation is ignorant of the biology and physics of the problem. You will literally get more of a radiation dose from smoking a cigarette than from breathing the air where a DU shell went off. Yes, it has a half life of 4.5 billion years, but that is irrelevant if there isn't a significant amount of radiation there to start with. The risk from DU is from inhaling the uranium, which is a harmful heavy metal, (like lead or mercury). Any replacement for DU would also be a heavy metal, and would be just as toxic. You never hear anyone moaning about the fact that we use lead bullets, after all. And the only way you're going to get a big enough dose is to be in the vicinity of the shell hitting...the IMMEDIATE vicinity. So the long term health risks of DU are really outweighed by the short-term health risks of GETTING SHOT AT by US or UK forces.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:09 pm | #

Doctors in Iraq have been documenting the huge increase in deformities since the first Gulf War.

A telling point is, the army manuals all tell our soldiers to stay away from vehicles and places that have been destroyed by DU.

Iraqi children play on them.

The naysayers are incredible...reminds me of the tobacco industry. There is NO excuse for using such a thing without extensive studies into their possible afteraffects, ASSUMING that they are not harmful, and demanding that the evidence that does show up is not "credible" because it hasn't been proven.

What you do is, you use more conventional artillery until it is shown not to be a danger to civilians.
That's what any moral country would do.

Put it this way, if you're so sure, you wouldn't mind your family living right next to a DU destroyed vehicle?

Don't bother answering, I know damn well you that want to "wait for the evidence" would be some of the first to decry it if it affected you and yours.
Tom Joad | 11.30.04 - 4:10 pm | #

I wish I could remember where I saw the interview but shortly after we began this foolish war I saw an interview with an Iraqi expert on the problem of desertification. He pointed out the existence of a somewhat firmer top layer in deserts that acts to mitigate the severity of sandstorms. When the fragile desert landscape is disturbed, rapid increases in desertification can result as the very fine granular layer of desert sands becomes exposed to powerful winds.

Wars are very bad for deserts. When soldiers dig in fortifications and when armies roll through fragile desert environments with heavy equipment terrible sandstorms result. This part of the Iraq war is over but how much damage did we do, both in the first Gulf war and this one?

How serious could it be? He believed that it was conceivable that cities such as Baghdad could be rendered uninhabitable by desertification in a short period of time. It would not be the first time that a desert civilization was wiped out. History is full of examples of civilizations succumbing to salt and sand. So if the DU doesn't get them maybe the sand will.
Tom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:11 pm | #

Depleted uranium doesn't mean it isn't radioactive. (Otherwise there would be no half-life mention) It just means the isotopes that are useful for bombs have been extracted. In addition it is extremely poisonous and the DU munitions disintegrate into a fine powder that is easily inhaled.

The United Nations has classifed DU munition as WMD (not because they explode but when used they poison the land forever) which means that the US has used WMD on the Iraqi people in Bush's illegal, immoral invasion but because Americans have also inhaled it one can say Bush used WMD on his own people.
George Johnston | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:11 pm | #

"He grew to be 75 feet high and destroyed half of Tokyo before being killed by Mothra. Or so I have been told.
Marcus Wellby"

I would have liked to hear the tiny twin fairies sing about that.

Mothra homepage:

http://tinyurl.com/6szbn

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:12 pm | #

"Charlie don't surf" on 11.30.04 at 2:45 pm wrote:

"No, DU doesn't have a half life of 4.5 billion years. It's already depleted of radiation. If there was any significant radiation left over, it would have been reprocessed and used again. DU is what's left AFTER the radioactive isotopes have been removed to the level where it's uneconomical to remove any more. At that point, it's hardly distinguishable from normal background radiation."

No, Charlie, depleted means that the uranium contains essentially no fissionable material, U235. The U238 does have a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The U235 fraction had a half-life of 700 million years. The resulting depleted uranium is still radioactive, just not as radioactive as naturally found uranium.

"I remind people that we live in a radioactive environment every day, we evolved in it and have developed tolerances to background radiation levels. You get more radiation exposure from flying in an airplane across the country than you would from walking around in a battlefield full of expended DU rounds. For that matter, we routinely get bombarded with random gamma-ray bursts from stars that are far more intense than DU exposure."

Everything you say is true, but it's also irrelevant. The issue with DU is the dust created when DU is used in taking out a target. If the battlefield consisted solely of the DU penetrators, it would not be a major problem. The soot-like material generated by the penetrators when hitting a target isn't so benign, since it tends to get ingested by folks living in the target area. The uranium is both a heavy metal and a low-level radioactive material, which is not a good combination. Folks who have worked in dusty environments have contracted serious ailments. Diesel smoke was also just declared dangerous and the uranium soot sizing would compare comparably to diesel smoke particulates. Unlike organic compounds, DU isn't likely to break down very soon.
PrahaPartizan | 11.30.04 - 4:12 pm | #

He grew to be 75 feet high and destroyed half of Tokyo before being killed by Mothra. Or so I have been told.

Shit, I'm crying here. Now the woman in the next office wants to know what was so funny.
watertiger | 11.30.04 - 4:12 pm | #

Did someone call my name?
mothra | 11.30.04 - 4:12 pm | #

STOP!! I can't see!
watertiger | 11.30.04 - 4:14 pm | #

It's a war crime. It continues to kill after the war is over.

Helen Coldicott has been talking over and over about this for years now.

I'm sick of people who profit from war. I have to fight, to not hate them.

Why can't people be thoughtful and kind. I have to say that WE are also responsible. Even if we didn't deposit poison in Iraq, we are not doing everything we can to stop this war. We should be in the streets demanding an end. Until then, we all share in the evil, to an extent.

When they suffer, WE suffer.
Mr. Nobody | 11.30.04 - 4:14 pm | #

matt k-

And the only way you're going to get a big enough dose is to be in the vicinity of the shell hitting...the IMMEDIATE vicinity

I disagree with this. Lead and uranium are both extremely rare elements. If you dump hundreds of tons on a small area (like a city), you're enriching the soil and air to far higher concentrations than humans are accustomed to. You can't discount the possibility of negative effects.
rj | 11.30.04 - 4:14 pm | #

And Dow Chemicals that took over Union Carbide has had a long and illustrous relationship with pollution and environmental disasters. Mokhiber and Weissman give you 5 examples- there are more.

5. Holmesburg Experiments -- In January 1981, a Philadelphia Inquirer story reveals that Dow Chemical paid a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to test dioxin on prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. Tests were conducted in 1964. Seventy inmates tested.

4. Worker deaths -- Dow has a long history of explosions and fires at its facilities, well documented by Doyle in Trespass Against Us. One example, in May 1979: an explosion ripped through Dow Chemical's Pittsburgh facility, killing two workers and injuring more than 45 others.

3. Brain tumors -- In 1980, investigators found 25 brain workers with brain tumors at the company's Freeport, Texas facility -- 24 of which were fatal.

2. Saran Wrap -- The thin slice of plastic invaluable to our lives.
Produced by Dow until consumers were looking for Dow products to boycott. Dow decided to get out of consumer products for this reason -- they sold off Saran Wrap -- and since just makes chemicals that make our consumer products.

1. Bhopal -- Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we seek to bring to justice those who trespass against us.
A drain full of spittle | 11.30.04 - 4:14 pm | #

"How serious could it be? He believed that it was conceivable that cities such as Baghdad could be rendered uninhabitable by desertification" --Tom"

This is a BIG problem for the 16 new airbases in Iraq (along with oil wealth, the primary reason for the invasion, bullshit aside). "Iraq is no more; there will be three territories" (genocidist H. Fucking Kissinger).

There are and will be teams of GIs or contractors driving bulldozers in the hundreds around the various strips, and if they aren't wearing respirators and washing off real good, they are going to be glowing by the time they come home.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:16 pm | #

This guy's supposedly on our side, but he's willing to make unsupported statements and implications to make his point. IMO, that's something best left to Republicans.

And this, ladies and gents, is part of the reason Dems keep losing elections.

We must be willing to do whatever it takes to demonize the Right, the way they have done to us. I don't give two shits if that means "unsupported statements" and "implications". Why are we so worried about doing right by the fucking Bush administration???

?
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 4:16 pm | #

"This kind of nuke industry-friendly PUTDOWN is as old as the hills, as old as Dr. Radium, or whatever his name, who went around to schools in the 50s and ate the stuff to PROVE it was harmless.

Gee...whatever happened to that fellow?"

You know, you can safely eat a fair amount of uranium. Before insulin was discovered, it was used as a treatment for diabetes. No one ever died from it.

There are all sorts of terrible things we are doing in Iraq. This isn't one of them. Wasting your time on this issue is a service to the warmongers.
Njorl | 11.30.04 - 4:18 pm | #

The was a story in a NM paper last spring, IIRC, about how a returning soldier went to visit a family member who works at the Los Alamos Labs. Set off the radiation dectors when he walked in.

Which doesn't mean crap. I know a guy who worked in the nuclear industry where they had to have detectors at the door and had to go through a decontamination procedure before they went *in*: the facility was located (and the staff lived) in an area with a lot of granite, and they were tracking very slightly radioactive dust in. It was enough to set off the detectors, and since the detectors were calibrated to be extremely sensitive in order to sound the alarm at the first hint of a radiation release from their work inside, the natural background radiation in the dirt was screwing them up.

By the way, any of y'all smoke? Do you know the increased radiation exposure in the lungs due to natural isotopes contained in the tobacco?

Anyone spend time in the great outdoors, hiking around hills with granite and soaking in the sunlight? How did you like your daily dose of radiation? Brush any dust off?

If life were a role playing game, "uranium" would be a Word of Power +5: causes unreasoning kneejerk reaction in people who should know better. Only beaten by "plutonium" (Word of Power +10).

By the way, nice pictures of Saturn from Cassini. Or are the people who protested about its killer powerplant that could wipe out human life on Earth (which I heard someone say with a straight face) boycotting those images?
Keith | 11.30.04 - 4:18 pm | #

"Perhaps there are higher rates of deformities because since Gulf I because the nutrition of mothers has gone down since the sanctions. This is a far more plausible scenario than DU being responsible."

That would, of course, not substitute for the risk, but INCREASE it. Low vitamin C stores, for instance, have a strong correlation to heavy metal storage in the body, since it is a chelator.

"It is also the view of any reasonable public health professional or scientist."

The fuck that's true. All kinds of reasonable scientists have strongly objected to the use of these materials.

Spread some more lies. G'wan.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:18 pm | #

I know damn well you that want to "wait for the evidence" would be some of the first to decry it if it affected you and yours.

Double bingo!!
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:19 pm | #

let's not claim virtue for America, what nationstate is virtuous?
krsaz

Point taken.

However -- I remember a golden time in my youth when I wasn't actively ashamed of my government, president, all that. Yep, I was madder 'n hell about Vietnam, but I really thought it was an abberation. Even yet, I want to believe that the majority of USAians are really in favor of truth, justice & the American Way. (Damn these rose-colored glasses, just can't get 'em off my head)

It fills me with the entire range of "bad" emotions that our gov. has been hijacked by international terrorists. Or emotional two-year-olds. Whichever.

Even Nixon, as much as I dispise him, didn't work to actively dismantle the American Dream as much as this dope fiend.

Yeah, I want the old America back.
Crabby Old Lady | 11.30.04 - 4:20 pm | #

Have to go feed Baby Mothra. I shall return.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 4:21 pm | #

BTW, if anyone had any doubts that that video wasn't a true document, the sudden and complete proliferation of never-before-seen nuclear industry trolls pretty much nails it...
dave | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:21 pm | #

Didn't Mr. Radium try to marry Ready Kilowatt? But they had some sort of legal problem with a homoradiomagnoelectric relationship.
bebe rebozo | 11.30.04 - 4:22 pm | #

Zolofter - tell it to Dan Rather.

Remember that we don't have to lie because the truth is on our side.
Tom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:23 pm | #

rj -- perhaps not, and I'm not saying that it isn't a potential LOCALIZED problem, in areas of very heavy fighting. But any substitute of uranium that is as hard and dense as DU would be just as toxic...ALL heavy metals are. And people ALWAYS point to the radioactivity, which is simply preposterous.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:23 pm | #

BTW, if anyone had any doubts that that video wasn't a true document, the sudden and complete proliferation of never-before-seen nuclear industry trolls pretty much nails it...

and youre telling me those kids werent cute as hell?
Keith | 11.30.04 - 4:24 pm | #

Have to go feed Baby Mothra. I shall return.

And I'm off to take a spin with Gamera. Later.
watertiger | 11.30.04 - 4:24 pm | #

Perhaps there are higher rates of deformities because since Gulf I because the nutrition of mothers has gone down since the sanctions. This is a far more plausible scenario than DU being responsible. It is also the view of any reasonable public health professional or scientist. Just because one thing (deformities) happened after another (DU shells) does not mean they are linked.
matt K

Okay...good news. Matt, you and your family can go on a list of people willing to try new..."possibly dangerous" articles.

you don't mind do you? We'll put all kinds of things that SOME (certainly quack) doctors claim is extremely dangerous, but which hasn't been proven dangerous....in your basement.

'kay?

You don't assume something like this is okay to use and wait to see if we just killed tens of thousands of innocent people, Or more...and then say "oops"...guess it wasn't okay.

You do the studies, you get results, you weigh the afteraffects against the actual need for the weapon. But you do the studies.

And even then if it appears that the studies didn't catch a problem, you don't blithely assume it will all work out fine.
Tom Joad | 11.30.04 - 4:25 pm | #

matt K -
Agreed, the radioactivity is a red herring. The dose of radiation you get from being near DU is lower than you'd get from eating a banana. However, there's no way in hell I'd breathe uranium dust, or lead or cadmium dust for that matter.
rj | 11.30.04 - 4:26 pm | #

Chad - go back and reread the comment, ok? I was asking who you are. It's open; can I ask?

Man, people sure get jumpy and sensitive when someone asks them who they are.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:27 pm | #

Remember that we don't have to lie because the truth is on our side.

It's one thing to try to tell the truth ourselves, and another to go after someone on our side and demand that he do the same. There are plenty of people on their side telling much bigger lies; save it for them.

Dems go in too much for this kind of canibalism.

For instance, I'm not sure how accurate Michael Moore is in his books and movies. I've seen analyses by liberal/leftish types -- not right wingers -- calling much of his stuff into question.

For all I know they are right. But I really don't care. As long as MM is out there convincing people that Bush is bad, you won't hear me complaining.

(Whether or not MM is actually effective is a different question.)

Take a page from the Repub. playbook: use what works, "truth" be damned. Usually, we don't need to "lie", because the truth is indeed on our side. But in the event that we do need to lie, or that it is useful to lie, we should have zero hesitation to do it.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 4:29 pm | #

"What you do is, you use more conventional artillery until it is shown not to be a danger to civilians.
That's what any moral country would do.
-Tom Joad"

No, you use DU if it is LESS of a danger to civilians than conventional artillery.

Ultra-high velocity weapons, like DU guns, are more accurate than conventional artillery. They use no high explosives, so they affect smaller areas than conventional artillery. They are therefore significantly less likely to blow up a house full of civilians than conventional artillery. The question isn't DU or nothing, it is DU or something else.
Njorl | 11.30.04 - 4:31 pm | #

Paul, you want to talk about spreading lies? How about the big one when you're talking about DU, which is it's radioactivity. Sure, depleted uranium might cause birth defects, and you're right to say that if someone injests a significant amount of U, it would excacerbate the heavy metal's effects, but the amount of DU used in Iraq is pretty small. I'll bet there's a bigger risk from lead paint.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:31 pm | #

Zolofter - I agree that we should not attack our own and we should save our fire for the enemy (god I hate to be caught using war imagery) but when I read comments suggesting that "we should quickly e-mail this link to everyone we know" I will attack that suggestion if I think it does not help our cause and may very well hurt it.
Tom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:35 pm | #

Tom - we ARE killing tens of thousands of innocent people, right now, and it has nothing to do with DU (other than those particular DU rounds that happen to directly impact innocent peoples' bodies). We are killing them with bullets, with bombs, with disease, with starvation, with every conceivable method at our disposal. Historical data show that effects from DU exposure will be negligible by comparison.
rj | 11.30.04 - 4:37 pm | #

rj -- yeah, I would walk briskly in the other direction if I saw a tank just blown up by a uranium shell. But I would probably be more worried about getting shot by jumpy American soldiers than possible health effects from the heavy metal. But sure, I try to stay away from Cd, Pb, U, P, Hg whenever I can. Nasty stuff.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:37 pm | #

er, that was directed at Tom Joad, not Tom
rj | 11.30.04 - 4:38 pm | #

No argument RJ - Bush is a mass murderer. Now how do we get rid of him before 2008?
Tom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:38 pm | #

when I read comments suggesting that "we should quickly e-mail this link to everyone we know" I will attack that suggestion if I think it does not help our cause and may very well hurt it.

Right. But note that you are attacking the suggestion because you don't think it will help or you think it will hurt, not because of some inherent refusal to spread "lies".

Incidentally, I doubt the video would have too much of an impact. In my opinion, people already know the horrors that war brings; they just don't care, as long as it happens to brown people in a faraway country. Remember, "they" started the fight on 9/11, in the minds of Bush voters.

But, maybe I'm being too cynical. I doubt it.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 4:40 pm | #

when I read comments suggesting that "we should quickly e-mail this link to everyone we know"

For those of you that missed my comment upthread:

This video has been out there for at least six months and has already been widely distributed.

If it had merit, don't you think we (political junkies that we are) would have heard about it already? It is a propaganda piece people...
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 4:41 pm | #

>>But thi ad is directly aimed at
>>hispanics. A little ethnic cleansing

How can you say that, Lima? W. (hearts) the little brown ones! Heck, his cousin George Prescott Bush is waiting in the wings to be preznit!
Ken | 11.30.04 - 4:41 pm | #

There are honest, well reasoned arguments, and then there is lying, manipulative crap. This post was the later. I know Atrios deserve a vacation and I am happy he is taking one, but I wish he had handed over the reigns to Eschaton to some guest posters who were less prone to spouting
propaganda and conspiracy theories. There is enough genuine, honest reporting on DU to be outraged about without making new ones up.

"A proud member of the reality-based community" would be best served
by cultivating a respect for reality.
thuddwhirr | 11.30.04 - 4:42 pm | #

Tom Joad -- The health effects of uranium (sans radioactivity) are as well known as any other heavy metal. That is to say, very well known indeed. And the effects of DU have been studied, by the UN, in Bosnia. And the UN (the UN, for god's sake) said that the health risk from DU was negligible.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:42 pm | #

chris/tx, not saying one way or the other, but that does work both ways. If it didn't have merit, we'd have likely heard that, too.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:43 pm | #

filkertom - took the words right out of my mouth. If in fact this has been circulating for months, then where are the definitive debunkings?

Oh and troll "say sos" aren't definitive.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:47 pm | #

Somewhere around 50% of Americans have no problem with this.None at all. Could care less. (Should come as no surprise).

Torture,ghastly radiation death, fascism! All good. God Bless America and vote Republican!

Don't you remember September 11, 2001? Payback is a bitch. Bad stuff happens in war.

Get used to it and support our troops. My neighbor had an Abu-Gharib t-shirt made up :

"Charles Graner" -An American Hero!

And I live in San Francisco which went nearly 90% against Bush. Fill in the blanks.
Jill | 11.30.04 - 4:47 pm | #

It is a propaganda piece people...

Well OF COURSE it's a propaganda piece.

What's wrong with that?

Propaganda is necessary sometimes, and is often useful. The video's being propaganda is irrelevant to whether we should embrace/spread it or just ignore it.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 4:48 pm | #

This thread is incredibly sad. So disagreement with the rampant me-tooism on this site basically makes one a nuke-industry troll? And that's if we have a right to post here due to the establishment of credibility at some point in the past? Even though anyone here can type in any handle they please for each comment?

I'm a liberal because i believe - deep down in the depths of my soul - that every human being is equal and has a right, endowed by our Constitution, to fair and equal protection under the law. I take the statement "to form a more perfect Union very seriously. And I get really pissed when some jackass religious nutjob tries to deny that right to others because he doesnt like their gender, skin color or what they do in their bedrooms.

But it is terribly disheartening every time I realize that, in order to try to advance those goals, I have to throw my lot in with people who have a deeply mythologized and inaccruate view of the way the physical world works, and who refuse to put aside their mythology in order to answer the - quite pressing - problems of how to keep our world from collapsing into uninhabitability due to irresonsible use of the energy resources available.

Dave - no matter how many times you call me a "fucker" you're still not going to know the first thing about the chemical properties of DU unless you go read some basic fucking textbooks and get up to speed on your background science enough to differentiate between articles with merit, and steaming loads of propagandistic bullshit. I'm also unhappy with the war in Iraq, but there are REAL problems there to be dealt with that are only clouded when you point and scream DU. FUCKER." over and over again. No one with half a brain *can* take that kind of stuff seriously.

Disagreeing with peoples conclusions about WHY depleted uranium are dangerous, and in what ways, does not make one an pologist for Dow Chemicals or Union Carbide. Insisting that this is the case does NOT GET YOU VOTERS ON YOUR TEAM.

There is serious shit coming down the pike thanks to the newly incarnated, extra right-wing, BUSH-II-v2.00. Making shit up is bth uneccessary and unproductive because it forces reasonable, rational people - who may have passed 7th grade science - to say "well, this team is full of shit as well."

The belief that we fight fire with fire - lie because they lie - is extremely counterproductive. The GOP didnt win the election because they lied, perse. They won it because they marketted themselves better than we did. If we market ourselves better than them, we will win. You cannot market non-existant policies, so we need to rejigger our policies in such a way that they are easier to sell to the populace... as an example: we lose alot of what would rationally be democratic constituencies because our urban-focused gun laws make no CULTURAL sense in rural areas.

Running around screaming about things that are factually untrue does nothing - EXACTLY NOTHING
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 4:51 pm | #

Given that DU is toxic and that it is being used we should be concerned, but the clip was nothing but propaganda crap ala Pro-lifer.
j swift | 11.30.04 - 4:51 pm | #

Kevin de Bruxelles: I'm stunned to be defending either the NYC Child Protective Services OR the Catholic Church--but as with the deformed baby vid, this article is really light on data.

The shocking part seems to be that kids with HIV are getting experimental drugs, but it doesn't say which ones, or what side effects are, and if their SIs are more tolerable than the usual protease-inhibitor cocktail (which is probably what their docs are trying for). Where do you think non-experimental drugs come from?

The next shocking bit was that parents who don't get their HIV+ kids treated can lose them, followed by
shocking bit #3, that some kid refused his meds and ended up with a stomach tube. The implication--coming from some anonymous juvenile--was that it was to force this stuff on him, and maybe that was the case: He was forced to take his meds instead of being permitted to let his virus run free.

HIV--which mutates like crazy-- will mutate around a given protease inhibitor within three months. That's why the pressure on HIV patients to keep up their meds. If someone--an adult--wants to die a hideous death, it's too bad, but we got bigger fish to fry and it's this: The HIV drugs we're using now aren't permanent, they're just buying us time, and the more patients dick around with their dosing schedules, the sooner the stuff we're using will become useless. And gee--the health department didn't let these kids make that call? That's what we pay them for.

There's certainly abuse in the foster care system, but this isn't it.
Molly, NYC | 11.30.04 - 4:52 pm | #

filkertom - I see your point.

At the same time I remember how many people (for over a year) were posting the Bush IQ link that turned out to be a hoax. With Al Jazeera, the BBC, Red Cross, WHO, etc - Not a peep about this? I have been one degree removed from the birthing of thousands of the US's sickest infants for over two decades. If this level of increased birth defects was showing up in Baghdad hospitals, I can ensure you health care workers would be screaming from the rooftops to all media outlets about this.

I am just saying, be skeptical because no media has touched this after six months of circulation.
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 4:54 pm | #

Chad, these people aren't lying so much as they're uninterested in the truth. They only want to scream BUSH KILLS BABIES!
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:54 pm | #

The Dems could use some fucking propaganda--this video has an immediate visceral impact. I got instant responses from the folks I emailed it to--I don't care if the baby photos are from Serbia or Gulf I or the present quagmire, and I don't care if the scientific community hasn't reached a consensus on the effects of DU. The central point is that this conflict will have negative effects long beyond the actual fighting, and it forces Americans to face the consequences of their votes and their country's actions. For the same reason, I would like to see a video of Iraqi civilians and another one of amputees/ coffins arriving home/ grieving parents/ wives/ children. There's a reason the administration DOESN'T want us to see this stuff.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 4:55 pm | #

Fine. Depleted Uranium is not radioactive. It's all just heavy metals poisioning. Right.

Then provide a more proximate cause behind the increases in cancer, birth deformity, et al., in Iraq shown in Erich Blumrich's Flash animation?

I note almost every person who posted to tell us this is all a *chemistry* problem, that there's no radiation release occuring... they didn't mention how horrific the situation is, or offer any sense of outrage.

Holy living *fuck*. What is wrong with you people?
Tom S | 11.30.04 - 4:55 pm | #

TJ gives an EXCELLENT example of my previous post.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 4:56 pm | #

Tom S - I agree with you - this is ridiculous hair splitting. "Oh it's not that bad because the half life doesn't mean what it sounds like and it's not radioactive."

Give me a fucking break, please.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:57 pm | #

CONTINUED...

...to advance the greater goal of returning america to a sound economic footing, getting jobs to our countrymen, ensuring that all American have health care, ending the senseless and distracting war in Iraq, re-establishing rational foreign policy and returning the levers of power to secular hands.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 4:57 pm | #

b) the "it's all Clinton's fault" moron.

Strawman lately? Seriously, this isn't remotely what the guy said. But if you read around these parts, you'd think that Bush personally invented DU and personally made the decision to start using it in warfare. Then you go to that WHO site and find out that their studies are based on the use of DU in Kosovo under Clinton.

So how do we explain that? Saying "fuck you" doesn't work--if you want this to become your next anti-Bush talking point you'll need to have a better answer, because that's how the right will answer this. If "fuck you" is your answer, people in the center will just tune you out or worse.

So either Clinton was a knowing war criminal, or we just learned about the harmful effects of DU somewhere between 2000 and 2003, or maybe this isn't the best way to make a case that Bush is evil.

As I suggested earlier, I'll gladly participate in a study where I shove a bullet of delpleted uranium up the ass of any one of these motherfuckers, and then we'll wait and see what the damage is. What's the matter, scared? Don't give a shit if it's "only" happening to some sand nigger? Four words: shut the fuck up.

It's always good to see reasoned discourse around here.

How bout I stick a few regular bullets up your ass and see how you do? Obviously if you get shot with one of these things, you're fucked. The question is whether DU is significantly worse than real bullets, and shoving them up people's asses is probably not the best way to make that determination.

And "sand niggers?" Please, we're better than that.
Dave in NYC | 11.30.04 - 4:58 pm | #

As the resident liberal skeptic, can anyone give any reasonable background evidence on this? Yes it is horrible and would forward it to some of my more hard-headed friends, but I am also hestiant to engage in the same type of knee-jerk activities our shrill non-brethern on the other side do.

A good part of me, and I hope everyone agrees with me, hopes this is a hoax. I dont want to just use this for the sake of destroying the chimp and his proxies. Would it suprise me if this is all true? Of course not, history shows that. But lets get all our ducks in a row before we start broadcasting this throughout cyberspace.
Hawthorne Wingnut | 11.30.04 - 4:59 pm | #

Tom S - If what we're seeing in the video is COMPLETELY unrelated to DU, then there's no reason to be outraged about DU. I'm plenty pissed off about all the babies and other civilians getting killed by 2-ton bombs, thank you very much.
rj | 11.30.04 - 4:59 pm | #

Tom S -- y'r a man after me own heart. That was what originally prompted me to post the thing on my blog. And enough of us here were indeed outraged upthread that I feel heartened for humanity.

Radiation, heavy metals, concussive force, shrapnel -- we're killing people. They don't care what it says on the death certificate, because they're fucking dead.

And if DU has anything to do in making a bad situation worse, then we damn well should know.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:00 pm | #

matt k --

Chad, these people aren't lying so much as they're uninterested in the truth. They only want to scream BUSH KILLS BABIES!

And he doesn't? Bush's policy in prosecuting this war does not involve bombing civilian targets? Denying aid to civilians?

Bush damn well does kill little babies. You fucking know it.

Pooh-pooh the hard evidence all you like, but depleted uraniam shells are as huge health hazard, one the UN recognizes, and so do we. Didn't we clean the DU out of Kosovo?

If DU is so goddamn harmless, why'd we go and that?
Monica_CA | 11.30.04 - 5:01 pm | #

Tom S -- you could find equally horrific birth defects here in the US. Birth defects happen; the twenty images in the propaganda I saw are not proof that DU caused them. As for the higher rate of birth defects, before the war I heard the UN said that sanctions killed something like half a million Iraqi children from malnutrition. Seems like if that many starved, it wouldn't be shocking if the birth defect rate went up due to poor maternal nutrition and lack of prenatal care.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 5:01 pm | #

Chad,

Good post. There are plenty of scientifically illiterate people on both sides of the political spectrum. The creationist types tend to go right-wing, the luddite earth-mother types tend to go left. To me the difference is that the right's leaders are perfectly content to exploit the ignorant on their side and even feed their ignorance. Real progressives try to educate the ignoramuses on the left. This video clip does nothing to educate anyone about the real issues in Iraq, it's pure sensationalism.
Harry O | 11.30.04 - 5:04 pm | #

The GOP didnt win the election because they lied, perse. They won it because they marketted themselves better than we did.

Their marketing IS a series of lies.

Making shit up is bth uneccessary and unproductive because it forces reasonable, rational people - who may have passed 7th grade science - to say "well, this team is full of shit as well."

We've already got all reasonable, rational people. Unfortunately, if we want to poke our heads above 50%, we've got to appeal to unreasonable, irrational people, a.k.a. the majority of the electorate.

,,
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:05 pm | #

I also got one email from a friend who is dating an ex-SEAL who is suffering from all kinds of unexplainable ailments. He's convinced the military exposed him to tons of radioactive shit. With this military's track record, you want to give them the benefit of the doubt? No thanks, pal.
And yes, BUSH DOES KILL BABIES. And the more Americans realize that, the faster this war will be over.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 5:06 pm | #

For all those DU apologists out there, I'd like to mention this:

When thimerosol (a heavy metal derived from mercury) was added to immunizations, rates of autism climbed from 1/20,000 to 1/200.

Thimerosol has now been banned from immunizations, and rates of autism has dropped every quarter as the tainted supplies have been used up.

Yet no studies have ever found that thimerosol is dangerous in any way.
George W. Bush | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:09 pm | #

heavy metal poisoning happens here in the U.S., too. And sure, you could see birth defects just as bad here. How do you know they're not from heavy metal poisoning?

Prove you know they're not from heavy metal poisoning. Give me you evidence that birth defects in the U.S. aren't caused by heavy metal in our enviroment. Show me your evidence that that's not the case. Show me your proof that it isn't the case in Iraq as well.
Monica_CA | 11.30.04 - 5:09 pm | #

And the more Americans realize that, the faster this war will be over.

Sadly, as previous folks have commented, I don't think this is true. As long as they aren't American babies. For example, if the Bhopal disaster had happened in Galveston instead, you can bet Union Carbide would've been raked over the fucking coals in a heartbeat.
rj | 11.30.04 - 5:09 pm | #

Christ, a lot of this thread reminds me of the ignorant crap at the FreeRepublic. That video is enormously irresponsible. DU may be bad stuff, and we really shouldn't be using it in a country we claim to be "helping", but there is no evidence I'm aware of that it can cause birth defects such as shown in the video. Even the link to the WHO site on DU on filkertom's website explicitly states that no developmental effects are known to result from DU exposure. It's not enough to say, well, we don't know just how bad DU is. The video makes a specific and unsupported claim linking DU with birth defects. It's irresponsible, and those who uncritically accept it are also being irresponsible. Aren't we better than this?

Kudos to those urging caution and more investigation, and a big fuck you to those challenging them or their bona fides.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 5:10 pm | #

I see some conflating in the arguments.

DU can be bad, or very bad, and this clip can very well still be propaganda using pictures of babies deformed years ago from who knows what, or might not even be Iraqi babies.

It's like Dan Rather and the AWOL story. Bush was AWOL, but Dan Rather took the story off the radar by using apparently forged documents to prove it.
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 5:10 pm | #

why are people saying it is NOT radiation?

the aerosolized particles will get in the lungs and DO release Alpha particles - the worst kind of radiation, but it is not a problem because Alpha particles cannot penetrate skin -

however in the body and lungs - these alpha particles zoom around destroying the DNA in cells - causing mutation during cell division thus causing cancer, etc.

it is a long-term problem not short-term

YAY!
deterministic non-locality | 11.30.04 - 5:11 pm | #

Uranium when it finishes decaying turns into lead btw, lead is non radioactive uranium
don't feed me du | 11.30.04 - 5:12 pm | #

My point didn't regard whether Bush does, in fact, kill babies. It regarded the fact that many of his critics don't care if their arguments are based in fact or not.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 5:12 pm | #

That's right about the fucking thimerosol. Amen. Just what I was thinking about when I wrote my last comment. My son is one of those kids, and every time I have to read through some excuse-laden tripe about how we shouldn't assume this and shouldn't assume that and birth defects happen, it makes me think of thimerosol.

- And thalidomide. Remember that? So safe even a pregnant woman can take it.

Better living through chemistry...
Monica_CA | 11.30.04 - 5:12 pm | #

Crap, that was me at 5:09.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:14 pm | #

We've already got all reasonable, rational people. Unfortunately, if we want to poke our heads above 50%, we've got to appeal to unreasonable, irrational people, a.k.a. the majority of the electorate.

This is exactly the kind of crap i love: 100% self parodying.

In one sentence, you both implicitly claim to be reasonable and rational, and at the same time make an unreasonable and irrational (and prejudiced) remark about Republicans. You also state that we need to convince people to vote for our team, while insulting them in the same breath.

It's going to be a long, long, long time before we reclaim a majority in the government.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 5:15 pm | #

Monica -- Birth defects in the US are caused by heavy metals, particularly by lead and mercury. DU certainly could cause birth defects, if injested in large enough quantities to be harmful. But studies by the UN showed that the uranium concentration around a DU-destroyed vehicle was only above the internationally recognized harmful levels within a few meters of the impact.

You say "prove to me that the defects are not caused by DU." This is a scientific impossibility; you can't prove that something is not harmful.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 5:18 pm | #

You also state that we need to convince people to vote for our team, while insulting them in the same breath.

You're new around here, aren't you?
fuhshizzle | 11.30.04 - 5:19 pm | #

Aren't we better than this?

Kudos to those urging caution and more investigation, and a big fuck you to those challenging them or their bona fides.

"Caution and more investigation". Sounds like a formula for political success to me!

I am beginning to think that all these supposed lefty/liberals who urge us to "be better" than the Repubs and not "sink to their level" are covert right-wingers trying to encourage us to keep being pussies.

"Aren't we better than this?" Don't be so goddamned sanctimonious. We do what it takes to win. Demonize the opposition. Make them responsible for hemorroids, traffic jams, and premature ejaculation. Throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

Or, we could keep losing election after election.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:19 pm | #

Unfortunately, since they control the media it's very difficult to get the upper hand. If we employ false propaganda, Mark Hyman shows up on 100 million TVs saying, "The Democrats just ran an ad showing babies deformed from DU. The thing is, those pictures were 40 years old and from Romania! What a bunch of liars. I'm Mark Hyman". On the other hand, if we speak the truth, the media figures do the EXACT SAME THING!! So it doesn't seem to make much difference if we tell the truth or not; what we need to do is figure out what sticks in peoples' minds and can't be washed away.
rj | 11.30.04 - 5:23 pm | #

matt K probably doesn't believe in global warming, either.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:25 pm | #

No developmental effects are known to result from DU exposure.

No harm from smoking. In fact, it makes you smarter!
Asbestos won't hurt you.
Lead paint is okay.
Benzene doesn't cause cancer.

As a defense lawyer, I know I can go out there RIGHT NOW and find experts willing to make those statements under oath. It doesn't make them true. And at some point in the past, the so-called scientific community backed them up. I know what chemical companies are capable of doing in order to suppress the truth. The military is worse. Just because you aren't aware of any evidence doesn't mean it isn't out there. Sorry, but I am too cynical to accept the "DU hasn't been proven harmful" argument seriously.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 5:25 pm | #

In one sentence, you both implicitly claim to be reasonable and rational, and at the same time make an unreasonable and irrational (and prejudiced) remark about Republicans.

Sorry, but support for the Bush junta is clear proof that one is irrational, or at least just full of hatred. There's nothing irrational about my pointing that out; nor is there anything prejudiced, for Christ's sake. I haven't met a Bush voter yet who didn't freely choose to vote that way. So they've chosen their own, irrational, stupid, evil path.

Sorry, but it's true.

You also state that we need to convince people to vote for our team, while insulting them in the same breath.

Yup.

I assume there are few "undecideds" here, so I assume I can speak candidly. This is exactly the situation we are faced with: facing a bunch of ignorant, ill-informed dickwads to vote for us. Sucks, but that's how it is.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:27 pm | #

hey zolofter, are you angling to be one of those getting the big fuck you? Don't accuse me of being a wingnut just because I disagree with you about this. It's not a matter of being sanctimonious, it's about being moderately responsible. Telling lies about the effects of DU is not responsible, and it's not a smart political tactic. We can't very well point out that the opposition lies like crazy if we're doing the same. And for the record, not everything's about political success. It's nice, damned nice even, but it ain't worth becoming Freepers.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 5:29 pm | #

What's sicker than a grossley deformed baby? Some assholes using them for some sort of political cheap shot. And lying while doing so. Nice.
2-pacs-o-sugar | 11.30.04 - 5:31 pm | #

One of the most chilling images I watched on TV during the early days of the war was an A-10 lighting up a hotel in downtown baghdad w/ du shells. All the while I kept thinking... that's 5 blocks of the middle of the city rendered radioactive...
rainlion | 11.30.04 - 5:34 pm | #

The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War">Iraq Under Siege
The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War

Dr. Huda S. Ammash, [former] Dean of Baghdad University, is the author of Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanction
Susie Dow | 11.30.04 - 5:35 pm | #

We can't very well point out that the opposition lies like crazy if we're doing the same.

WHAT??!!??

Why the fuck not?

That's what Republicans do ALL THE TIME, and they get away with it.

rj's post above said it best:

If we employ false propaganda, Mark Hyman shows up on 100 million TVs saying, "The Democrats just ran an ad showing babies deformed from DU. The thing is, those pictures were 40 years old and from Romania! What a bunch of liars. I'm Mark Hyman". On the other hand, if we speak the truth, the media figures do the EXACT SAME THING!! So it doesn't seem to make much difference if we tell the truth or not; what we need to do is figure out what sticks in peoples' minds and can't be washed away.

And for the record, not everything's about political success. It's nice, damned nice even, but it ain't worth becoming Freepers.

Well, in the context of electoral politics, everything IS about political success, just like in the context of a football game everything is about getting more points than the other team.

We won't "become Freepers" just because we pictures on some video are pictures of the actual atrocities committed by Bushco -- not that they haven't committed atrocities, mind you, but not these specific atrocities!!

You don't see how that's splitting hairs? There is a larger truth here: Bush = war criminal. The "truth" according to freepers is Bush = war hero. Big difference.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:36 pm | #

Filkertom:
No, I was not addressing you in the "please don't flame people asking for more info" group. Not at all.

And sorry if it feels like you are being personally piled upon here. I don't think any of us are taking you to task or anything on this.

It's very hard to convey context in this type of venue. So many apologies for any bad vibes you thought I was tossing your way. I don't mean to be doing that at all.

E-mail and comment-posting can seem harsh when there is no harshness intended. It's one of the down sides of this sort of communication.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:36 pm | #

Try again.

Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War

Dr. Huda S. Ammash, [former] Dean of Baghdad University, is the author of Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanction
Susie Dow | 11.30.04 - 5:37 pm | #

Shit. I keep screwing up the html.

Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War

Dr. Huda S. Ammash, [former] Dean of Baghdad University, is the author of Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanction a peer reviewed research paper published in Iraq Under Siege (South End Press, 2002) an anthology that examined the effects of the Gulf War and sanctions on Iraq.

Dr. Ammash, an environmental biologist and professor at Baghdad University, received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. She has earned international respect for her publications, particularly her documentation of the rise in cancers among Iraqi children and war veterans since the Gulf War. In Iraq Under Siege she writes: "Iraqi death rates have increased significantly, with cancer representing a significant cause of mortality, especially in the south and among children."

---

She spent 10 years documenting the effect of depleted uranium from Gulf War I. She is now in prison, one of the 55 "playing cards"
Susie Dow | 11.30.04 - 5:38 pm | #

I do believe that the earth is warming.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 5:38 pm | #

I agree that we need to back up these kinds of assertions with hard data, and not just appeal to emotion.

That said, while depleted uranium might not be as poisonous as lead, it looks plenty poisonous to me.

http://tinyurl.com/5ezpo
(abstract on Pubmed)
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 5:38 pm | #

Don't accuse me of being a wingnut just because I disagree with you about this.

For the record, I was being facetious about the undercover-winger remark.

ALong the lines of, boy, if I were Karl Rove, that's exactly what I would tell Democrats to do (i.e., be less aggresive).

[[
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:39 pm | #

And at some point in the past, the so-called scientific community backed them up.

Can we add the qualifier "some" here? "Some in the scientific community backed them up."

Some also didn't.

Thank you.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:39 pm | #

Molly, NYC,

Uh, these are experimental drugs that these kids are being forced to take; by major drug manufacturers. Sometimes they cause rapid death or painful side affects. It’s cool though I guess. All in the name of science. I mean these kids are just going to die anyway, why not make their short little lives useful.

Damn, sometimes I’m glad to be 3000 miles away from you fucking psychos.
Kevin de Bruxelles | 11.30.04 - 5:39 pm | #

The Dems could use some fucking propaganda--this video has an immediate visceral impact. I got instant responses from the folks I emailed it to--I don't care if the baby photos are from Serbia or Gulf I or the present quagmire,

Lordy save us.

What if the baby photos are from Hiroshima? Or Nagasaki? Or plain ol' congenital deformities due to nature?

It matters. It fucking matters.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:41 pm | #

The biologist you mentioned was active in Saddamm's biological weapons program in the 80s and 90s. She was a Ba'athist flunkie, which is why she was on the deck of cards. This is your source of information?
matt K | 11.30.04 - 5:42 pm | #

Zolofter,

So it's okay to lie and dissemble as long as your cause is noble enough? If that's the way you feel, fine, but don't expect me or a lot of other Dems to support you in it. Like I said, that sentiment is why I hate the damned freepers.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 5:42 pm | #

2-pacs-o-sugar... what/where's the lie?
rainlion | 11.30.04 - 5:43 pm | #

2-pacs-o-sugar... what/where's the lie?
rainlion | 11.30.04 - 5:46 pm | #

"what/where's the lie?"

That the du caused the defects depicted in the video.

Dumb fucks like you who have no idea what du does or doesnt do should be asking the host of this sick thread for some answers. Yeah right.
2-pacs-o-sugar | 11.30.04 - 5:47 pm | #

When thimerosol (a heavy metal derived from mercury) was added to immunizations, rates of autism climbed from 1/20,000 to 1/200.

Um...bet not.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:48 pm | #

Lisa -- thank you very kindly. And, all is cool.

No, I'm not taking any of this personally, for the best and most obvious reason: it hasn't been directed at me, for which I'm grateful. Actually, I'm flattered and delighted that I got noticed so quickly (although a bit rueful at the controversy I've inadvertantly stirred up).

I was far more worried that I'd said something you misconstrued as a flame. Which is why I asked. There didn't seem to be a segue.

I have gone to private e-mail now and then when it seemed to be necessary. I usually try to be even more polite than I would on the comment boards; if it's at that point, I want to settle something, not stir it up.

In any case, no, I just wanted to make sure I hadn't accidentally honked you off.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:49 pm | #

So it's okay to lie and dissemble as long as your cause is noble enough? If that's the way you feel, fine, but don't expect me or a lot of other Dems to support you in it

I don't know if a lot of other Dems will support this, but they damn well better, unless they like being a permanent minority party.

Are you really suggesting that the ends never justify the means? If you think that through, that's crazy talk. So yes, in some instances, "it's okay to lie and dissemble as long as your cause is noble enough". See Mill, J.S.

Or any utilitarian.

You don't think families in Germany who were hiding Jews in their attic told lies? Do you think that it wasn't okay for them "to lie and dissemble" despite the nobleness of their cause?

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:49 pm | #

What if the baby photos are from Hiroshima? Or Nagasaki? Or plain ol' congenital deformities due to nature?

It matters. It fucking matters.

It matters in so much as it hampers the effectiveness of the "propaganda". Otherwise, no, it doesn't matter one bit.

that sentiment is why I hate the damned freepers.

Hmm. I hate the freepers because they are FUCKING FASCISTS. They lie, too, in the service of their fascist aims. Lot, lot different.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:52 pm | #

Oh my. We're off the rails now, with the Germany/Jews/Hitler stuff coming fast 'n furious.

Thalidomide = thimerosol. DU = Hiroshima. Wanting more info on DU = "radiation apologists." Scientists are evil.

And apparently a few folks here think that the "up is down" argument is good if it serves a Greater Purpose.

Lovely.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:55 pm | #

Zolofter,

Are you really equating electoral success with hiding Jews from the Nazis?

Am I to assume that you have no problem with the lies about WMD, then? After all, they thought that their cause was noble, so were they justified in lying to us about it? Have some fucking standards.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 5:55 pm | #

um, lisa...I know a plaintiffs' attorney who is doing nothing but thimeresol/ autism litigation. It's true.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 5:56 pm | #

Maybe Prozac would be more help?
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 5:56 pm | #

with the Germany/Jews/Hitler stuff coming fast 'n furious.

If you're referring to my post, I only used that example because it is a classic and therefore familiar one in the literature on consequentialism.

I made no comparisons, other than to point out the obvious, which is that sometimes, it is not only morally permissible to lie, but morally obligatory.

--
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 5:57 pm | #

"it is not only morally permissible to lie, but morally obligatory."

Ladies and gentlemen, your neodems, nice.
2-pacs-o-sugar | 11.30.04 - 6:01 pm | #

Oh, a plaintiff's attorney says it's true?

Well. That settles it.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:01 pm | #

they thought that their cause was noble, so were they justified in lying to us about it?

Well, I'm not even convinced they THOUGHT their cause was noble, because I'm not even convinced they have a concept of "noble".

But regardless, there is a big fucking difference: their cause WASN'T noble. To lie in the service of an ignoble cause = bad; lie in the service of a noble cause = (sometimes) good. I don't know how I can make it plainer than that.

Unless you're some kind of dirty relativist about what is and what is not a noble cause, there is all the difference in the world between one who CORRECTLY believes his cause to be noble and one who INCORRECTLY believes the same thing. We are the former; Bushites are, at best, the latter.

..

Also, to reiterate, I am making no Nazi analogies, other than the simple point about consequences determining the morality or immorality of an action.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:03 pm | #

It's true because a plaintiff lawyer said it? Autism may have risen simply because it's being diagnosed more and more. It may have risen because of mercury in vaccines, but no one knows. These sorts of questions are never clear cut, but you wouldn't know it from threads like this.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 6:03 pm | #

TJ

I know a plaintiffs' attorney who is doing nothing but thimeresol/ autism litigation. It's true.

Allow me to suggest that your conclusion does not necessarily follow. How about some actual science to support it? I know, I'm a scientific brownshirt fuck, as I think someone above said, but I can't help it. I just like to have evidence for claims like this.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 6:03 pm | #

"it is not only morally permissible to lie, but morally obligatory."

Ladies and gentlemen, your neodems, nice.

Thanks for leaving out the "sometimes" that came in front of that, asshole.

//
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:04 pm | #

italics close test. Sorry
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 6:04 pm | #

That recruiting ad aimed at Hispanics
is beyond despicable. I saw it last
night and wanted to shoot my TV.
steve simels | 11.30.04 - 6:05 pm | #

Sorry, when dumb fucks like Zolofter say its ok to lie kids, its ok to lie.

Happy.
2-pacs-o-sugar | 11.30.04 - 6:06 pm | #

Sorry, when dumb fucks like Zolofter say its ok to lie kids, its ok to lie.

Okay, so I assume you believe that it is never okay to lie.

Are you aware of how drop-dead fucking stupid that is?

Have you read even a little bit of moral philosophy? There hasn't been a moral philosopher since Kant who didn't agree that under some circumstances, it is not only permissible but morally right to tell a lie.

Examples range from telling your friend that she's not ugly even if she is to telling a murderer looking to kill your friend that you don't know where he is even if you do.

It is ridiculous that I am even arguing for what should be an obvious fucking point that everyone accepts.

You can't really mean what you're saying, pacs, so I will just assume you are an asshole who is not even trying to be coherent.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:10 pm | #

That type of thing is Blumrich's stock in trade. He goes for the inflammatory whenever he can.

But while his flash animations have an undeniable visceral impact, they are quite vulnerable to being picked apart by anyone who wants to badly enough.

I personally get nostalgic watching his stuff - since he lifted most of his style points from me.
stranger | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:11 pm | #

assume there are few "undecideds" here, so I assume I can speak candidly. This is exactly the situation we are faced with: facing a bunch of ignorant, ill-informed dickwads to vote for us. Sucks, but that's how it is.

My point is that you are one of the ignorant hicks you accuse other people of being. I tried to be more circumspect, but you're apparently too high on yourself to twig to things unless they're stated very plainly. Unlike you, howeve,r who make blanket statements about people you've likely never met, based solely on the "popular wisdom" of a series of echo chambers like this website, I'm actualy backing my assertions up by quoting you, in context, as a statement of proof in favor of my proposition.

Please go become a Republican. That goes for everyone here who believes that it is okay to lie in the service of "greater truth," or that personal prejudice logically equals objective proof. You're wrong, you're ignorant, and you are fucking it up for those of us who want to defeat the GOP next time around (and wanted to beat them THIS time around). The very best thing you can do for the cause of defeating the GOP is to become them, because your transparent ignorance is far too easy to mock, deflate and disprove. Additionally, your blind, ridiculous adherence to unprovable falsities (like Monica_CA who demanded that someone prove a negative -- a classic Republican ploy) is the ideological equivalent -- and the moral equivalent, of the religious right. You literally ARE your enemy; you just wear a different jersey and practice a different rallying cry.

Ignorance is a disease; it is the disease that cuased this war, it is the disease that is causing global warming, religious intolerance and a host of other discriminations. Cure yourselves or don't, i don't know any of you and, thus, don't really care if you choose to continue living in the excrement of your personal stupidity. But you are fucking up this country and contributing to the decay of the planet as a whole. And the sickening thing is that you are doing this under the rubrick of fixing the country AND the planet. The same way that the religious right parodies the bible and claims to speak for christianity while they do it. The same way islamofascists taint Islam while claiming to defend it. Stop it.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 6:12 pm | #

Zolofter,

Of course it is sometimes acceptable to tell a lie, but you've got a ways to go to show that it's justified in this particular case. Or is your contention that any lie which may conceivably lead to greater success at the ballot box is ok? Did Kant say that, too?
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 6:14 pm | #

Strictly speaking, it is not a "nuclear" weapon simply because there is a form of uranium in it.

I would contend that it qualifies as chemical warfare, however. One could get similar results by infusing the air and water in an area with mercury or lead.

Reprehensible, yes, but not a nuclear war... yet.
Seraphiel | 11.30.04 - 6:15 pm | #

Well said, Chad.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 6:16 pm | #

Listen, guys, for whatever it's worth: As mentioned upthread, I'm trying to find out more about this. The info, the sources for data and photos. If and when Blumrich gets back to me, we can proceed.

There's no need to rip each other apart over this.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:17 pm | #

"Okay, so I assume you believe that it is never okay to lie."

Obviously you have no idea when it is ok to tell a lie and when it is not. Clearly it is not ok to make shit up about how babies got deformed which is what we are talking about no.

Who the fuck are you to say when it is ok to lie. What a fucking jerk you are.
2-pacs-o-sugar | 11.30.04 - 6:17 pm | #

Yes, plaintiffs' attorneys routinely spend all their time and efforts on cases with no possibility of success. It is a huge issue in the class-action world.
The dangers of thimerosal were first officially recognized by the US House of Representatives in May 2003. (See a report from the subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, Committee on Government Reform.) In November 2002, Eli Lilly lobbied for a provision that would protect them from legal battles involving vaccines and autism. Hmmm...wonder why? Mercury is the one of the most toxic substances known to man. Thimerosal is (IIRC) a mercury-based preservative. There is a link between autism and the vaccine, although there certainly is scientific evidence on both sides of the aisle. In any case involving the pharmaceutical industry, there will be competing scientific views. They're not going to concede the issue graciously.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 6:20 pm | #

There is no stable isotope of Uranium. All U is radioactive. "Depleted" does not mean stable, it simply means that the short lived isotopes are (U234 and U235) are depleted (the most abundant isotope, U238, is also the longest lived). It's still Uranium folks; naturally occuring Uranium is about 99.2% U238. DU is 99.8% U238. The short-lived isotopes are a factor of four depleted, but not gone. And, btw, U238 is no peach either.
Stooper | 11.30.04 - 6:20 pm | #

Daß man eine jede Anschauung auf irgend ein Substratum beziehet, ist eine Täuschung der transscendenten Einbildungskraft die, aus Gewohnheit, eine jede Anschauung als Vorstellung auf ein reelles Object (eine Synthesis) zu beziehen, endlich auf gar kein reelles Object, sondern auf eine an seiner Stelle untergeschobene Idee beziehet.
I. Kant | 11.30.04 - 6:20 pm | #

Chad, you really are an idiot, aren't you?

Where to begin?

you, howeve,r who make blanket statements about people you've likely never met

I see no problem with making a rationally justified "blanket statement". Like this: people who eat at McDonald's like to eat fast food. Or: mothers tend to be women. Tautologies? Yes; but so is, "Republicans are idiots." I don't HAVE to meet them; I know their character based on the fact that they support a fascist regime. That's all I need to know, frankly. What you're doing is like saying, "You can generalize by saying all rapists are bad people". Yes, I can, because they FUCKING RAPE PEOPLE. Similarly, I can say that all Bush voters are idiots, because VOTING FOR BUSH IS IDIOTIC.

That goes for everyone here who believes that it is okay to lie in the service of "greater truth,"

You must, like the poster above, be one of the handful of people in the world who does not believe that under some circumstances, a lie is morally permissible/obligatory. Please see my post above for an explanation of the sheer idiocy of that idea.

Please go become a Republican

I don't believe for one minute that you are NOT a Republican, by the way.

I do believe, however, that you lack the ability to think logically, as you repeatedly seem to be unable to recognize the simplest of logical implications.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:20 pm | #

Amen, Chad
matt K | 11.30.04 - 6:22 pm | #

BTW, I am indeed comparing rapists with Bush voters.

If the shoe fucking fits!

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:22 pm | #

Zolofter, you are a moron.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 6:23 pm | #

There's no need to rip each other apart over this.

filkertom - Ah, come on, it has been a good debate. It is after all a discussion board. All you did was post a link, so don't see why you "own it" per se. It's out there, and has been out there for a while. Me, I got to disagree with a lot of posters I normally agree with. And as Lisa said, nothing personal.
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 6:24 pm | #

Well said, Chad.

Agreed.
fuhshizzle | 11.30.04 - 6:24 pm | #

No, you use DU if it is LESS of a danger to civilians than conventional artillery.

Ultra-high velocity weapons, like DU guns, are more accurate than conventional artillery. They use no high explosives, so they affect smaller areas than conventional artillery. They are therefore significantly less likely to blow up a house full of civilians than conventional artillery. The question isn't DU or nothing, it is DU or something else.
Njorl

You can't judge if it is LESS of a danger until you know just WHAT kind of danger it is.

As for the house...I get a feeling a conventional or a DU is still going to have a pretty good chance of killing the inhabitants.

If it ISN'T so unsafe, why does the army warn its soldiers to stay well away from vehicles, etc that have been hit by it? That ought to tell you something right there.

For the rj that claims the UN approves DU, please back that up. At the moment I do not believe a word of it, because I have read in several places that the opposite was true.

Again, would YOU not mind having a tank-playground for your kids that had been riddled with DU?

EVEN if it is more accurate, it definitely is controversial as to whether it KEEPS ON KILLING after the fact. You can shoot everyone in sight, blow em right up...but poison the very earth around them and you will kill them for generations.
Tom Joad | 11.30.04 - 6:24 pm | #

Zolofter, you are a moron.
matt K

Thanks for your input.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:24 pm | #

Zolofter, I think you're a moron too if it helps.
I. Kant | 11.30.04 - 6:25 pm | #

matt K, you are a Republican.
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:25 pm | #

Zolofter, you are ugly and you smell bad. And you are dumb.
I. Kant | 11.30.04 - 6:27 pm | #

Tena, Don't worry about killing yourself darlin', just be content in knowing that certain humans, and those of us that are allowing it, are slowing killing the entire human race. Let's just hope it happens before we drag the entire earth down with us, so that it looks like Mars.

Yes, we are getting to Mars.
Tom P. | 11.30.04 - 6:27 pm | #

Um...bet not.

You are absolutely right. Here's a Repubs numbers, just to make you feel better.

According to Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), "Fifteen years ago, one in every 10,000 children in America was autistic. Today, the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that ratio may actually be as high as one in every 150 children."
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:28 pm | #

I agree with zoolofter....republican voters ARE rapists...rapists of the earth and of countless humans. They have blood on their hands, and yes, they are evil.
Tom P. | 11.30.04 - 6:28 pm | #

Zolofter, you are ugly and you smell bad. And you are dumb.
I. Kant

Big talk, coming from someone who wears tights and a powdered wig, and who remained chaste for his whole life.

And who is also dead.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:29 pm | #

This thread is depleted of intelligent people, and I bet it has a half life of a zillion years.
I. Kant | 11.30.04 - 6:29 pm | #

'I agree with zoolofter....republican voters ARE rapists...rapists of the earth and of countless humans. They have blood on their hands, and yes, they are evil.'

I suspect you think Republicans are evil and bad. and evil.
I. Kant | 11.30.04 - 6:30 pm | #

Depleted Uranium

it isn't true that DU is not radioactive. It is, the radiation is just only lethal for a very short distance around the metal. But what do you get when DU metals explode into a haze of dust particles? you get wind bourne particles of radioactive metal which can get lodged in lungs and in glands and get carried around the body. This stuff kills tissue immediately surrounding wherever it ends up. It definitely is responsible for some awful and painful and slow post-war deaths and destructive impossible to cure illness.

And we like to hurl around the WMD charge. Bah.
justin | 11.30.04 - 6:31 pm | #

Exactly--nothing personal and the arguments were good.
Zolofter--liked your analogy to the rapists. Of course, there are those out there who WILL make excuses for them ("her skirt was too short", "first she said yes, then she said no")...
TJ | 11.30.04 - 6:33 pm | #

Zoloftor, I'm not a Republican, and it pains me to defend what might be W's view. But your arguments have no basis in fact or truth. This is why you are a moron. About that, there can be no argument.
matt K | 11.30.04 - 6:35 pm | #

http://www.janes.com/defence/ new...10112_1_n.shtml

Here's an article on DU from Jane's.

'Lead bullets are probably more dangerous than uranium bullets.'
تماس & | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:36 pm | #

About that, there can be no argument.

Well, that bodes well for you, because you've yet to make an argument.

You have, however, managed to call me a moron. Kudos.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 6:38 pm | #

chris/tx -- eeyup, a fantastic debate. And I don't think I "own" it by any means. I just don't want to be even the indirect cause of nasty fights between members of our own side. Is all.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:44 pm | #

Zolofter, watch your fingers when you feed those critters.

Dr. Caldicott documents that the US military's own medical studies have shown that DU can cause serious kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, skin disorders, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 6:45 pm | #

I don't believe for one minute that you are NOT a Republican, by the way.

Hahahahahah. Awesome. I disagree with you, therefore I must be trolling? I guess that's as logical as everything else you've said, but it does go a long way towards finally wearing out my supply of righteous indignation at the yadda yadda of it all. So I'm going to put in this last post and then - please Jesus - try to just walk away from this thing while I am still capable of recognizing that I'm not changing any minds here.

Regarding your list of "rationally justified blanket statements:" The McDonald's bit isn't a tautology, and is in fact indicative of tje remarks you've made which I have taken issue with. For instance, I have eaten at McDonald's recently, during a cross-country drive. I do not, however, like fast food. I was in a big hurry and didnt want to stray off the highway since I had time constraints. I'm willing to bet lots of other people fall into this category.

"Republicans are idiots" also isn't a tautology, even leaving aside that you mean the word "idiot" in an informal sense. It is a statement of personal belief and, like so much else that you have said, conflates personal belief with objective truth.

Only your final statement, about rapists, has a tautological component, because we as a society have decided that rape is bad. Bad being, of course, a subjective term. Under the Taliban, atheism is "bad," but I am lead to believe that rape is only "bad" for the woman who is a victim of it. So your statement is a tautology of sorts assuming that every reader comes from a culture where rape is a bad on the perpetrator. Unless there are any Taliban reading this, I assume we can safely say that this is the case.

A more objectively accurate set of statements might have been:

Some people who eat at McDonald's like fast food. I don't understand how people could vote Republican. Rapists harm women.

Now, regarding your diatribe about lying in the service of a greater truth: I dont really care if my belief that it is important to be honest with Americans about what their government is doing DOES put me in the minority. And your response about the moral obligation to lie makes exactly no sense. The problem with leftism as a political philosophy is not one of substance, it is one of marketting. We lost the 2004 elections LONG before Nov. 2nd. Not because we failed to lie enough, or to be incendiary enough or whatever; we lost because we failed to convince Americans that it was culturally responsible to vote democrat. The GOP has managed to convince people that the party - not the policy - is what matters. They've made it so people who vote "from the gut" vote overwhelmingly GOP by constantly reinforcing the intangible belief that the GOP are the "good guys." It's marketting. You defeat marketting by countermarketting.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 6:53 pm | #

pixie,

That's all well and good, but noone is claiming that DU is totally benign. What I'm saying is that there exists no good evidence that it causes birth defects such as are shown in the video.

BTW, I don't like the implication that I'm a troll (the feeding crack). Not everyone that disagrees with you is a troll or a Republican.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 6:54 pm | #

Chad and Lisa, thanks for injecting some common sense and much-needed facts into this (rather depressing) discussion. Or, more properly, "discussion." I won't bother to add my own $0.02, since you said it better than I could, but I will throw in an appeal to a trusted authority:

"A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report giving field measurements taken around selected impact sites in Kosovo (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) indicates that contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of metres around impact sites. Contamination by DU dusts of local vegetation and water supplies was found to be extremely low. Thus, the probability of significant exposure to local populations was considered to be very low."

This from the WHO web site. I haven't seen a single assertion of DU's dangers based on anything other than rumor, anecdote, or willful falsification.

Let's can the histrionics and move on to something more important.

lty

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/f...heets/fs257/en/
Liam Yore, MD | 11.30.04 - 6:56 pm | #

I just did a very half-assed brief search and saw two whole books devoted to the effects of DU:
1. Metal of Dishonor: How Depleted Uranium Penetrates Steel, Radiates People and Contaminates the Environment, ed. Dr. Catalinotto (available at Wal-Mart for chrissakes);
and
2. Gulf War and Health: Volume 1. Depleted Uranium, Pyridostigmine Bromide, Sarin, and Vaccines, edited by Carolyn E. Fulco, Catharyn T. Liverman and Harold C. Sox, Committee on Health Effects Associated with Exposures During the Gulf War, Division of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

The science is there. The apologists just don't want to believe it.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 6:57 pm | #

Man, do I ever love depleted uranium. And George Bush. They both kick so much ass!
matt K | 11.30.04 - 6:57 pm | #

You're right, TJ, your search was half-assed. Look at the WHO website or the UN study on DU cited above. Just because someone wrote "two whole books" on a subject does not mean those books are accurate. Anyone can write a "whole book". Just look at all those crazy JFK conspiracy theory books.

Wow, "two whole books"
matt K | 11.30.04 - 7:01 pm | #

Um, people seem to be forgetting why these blogs exist, and why the comments sections exist. Werent they created out of skepticism for what the Government and media tells or doesnt tell us? You're SUPPOSED to apply critical thinking to something seemingly damning as this, and whether it was the poster's intention or not, this topic is what makes for reasoned debate. Thats why we have a comments section and Kaus Hackula, Michelle Malkin, etc. dont. Were supposed to be better than them.

There is a saying a friend told me awhile ago that keeps popping up in so many situations, "You are what you hate". If you ever read Animal Farm and finished it you know what I mean.

Please lets not morph into Freepers. We dont need to create another or add fuel to the fire of opportunistic swine like Tammy Bruce with their "you see!!! I am liberal, but this is what drove me away from them!!!" They love to use anything they can against us.
Hawthorne Wingnut | 11.30.04 - 7:02 pm | #

Perhaps Bush lied about the existence of WMD in Iraq because he felt entitled to do so in order to accomplish a goal which he thought was good.

I'm sure he would be comforted to know that Zoloft thinks this is OK.
Uncontainable Contempt | 11.30.04 - 7:03 pm | #

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/docume...ent.asp? id=1401

* The risks to the kidney and other organs and tissues from the use of DU in munitions are very low for most soldiers on the battlefield and for those living in the conflict area.
* In extreme conditions and under worst-case assumptions, soldiers who receive large intakes of DU could suffer adverse effects on the kidney and lung.
* Environmental contamination will be very variable but in most cases the associated health risks due to DU will be very low. In some worst-case scenarios high local levels of uranium could occur in food or water that could have adverse effects on the kidney.

Claims that DU poses a special risk to civilians are afactual.
Royal Society | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:05 pm | #

You know, I take my last post back.

I shouldn't have made a personal remark.

Sorry about that.
Uncontainable Contempt | 11.30.04 - 7:07 pm | #

I did go to the WHO website. Had you bothered to check out the books I mentioned, you would have learned that the first one is a compilation of articles by the following individuals, including former AG Ramsay Clark:

1. The Struggle for an Independent Inquiry (full text)
By Sara Flounders, Organizer--International Action Center

2. Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons (excerpt)
By Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark

3. A New Kind of Nuclear War (excerpt)
By Dr. Helen Caldicott, Founder, Physicians for Social Responsibility

4. International Appeal to Ban DU (full text)

Section II: How DU Weapons Harmed Gulf War Veterans

5. Collateral Damage: How U.S. Troops Were Exposed (excerpt)
By Dan Fahey, Gulf War Syndrome activist researching DU use in the Gulf region

6. Living With Gulf War Syndrome (excerpt)
By Carole Picou, Veteran of Medical Unit on the Iraqi Front

7. Another Human Experiment (exerpt)
By Dolores Lymburner, National Organizer of the Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network

Section III: The Politics of War and the Pentagon's Coverup

8. A Tale of Two Syndromes: Vietnam and Gulf War (excerpt)
By John Catalinotto, former organizer, American Servicemen's Union

9. Military and Media Collaborate in Coverup of DU (excerpt)
By Lenora Foerstal, N. American Coordinator, Women for Mutual Security; editor, Creating Surplus Population: the Effect of Military and Corporate Policies on Indigenous Peoples

10. Burying the Past, Protecting DU Weapons for Future Wars (excerpt)
By Tod Ensign, attorney; Director, Citizen Soldier

11. 'National Security' Kept Atomic Veteran's Suffering a Secret (excerpt)
By Pat Broudy, Legislative Director, National Associaion of Atomic Veterans and National Associaiton of Atomic Survivors

12. A Bizarre Recycling Program--the Arrogance of Power (excerpt)
By Alice Slater, President, Global Resource Action Center for the Environment

Section IV: Indigenous Peoples Victimized by Military Radiation

13. Uranium Development on Indian Land (excerpt)
By Manuel Pino, Environmental Activist

14. Uranium, the Pentagon and the Navajo people (excerpt)
By Anna Rondon, Southwest Indigenous Uranium Forum

15. Nuclear Testing, Government Secrecy and the Marshall Islanders (excerpt)
By Glen Alcalay, anthropologist; National Committee for Radiation Victims

16. Declaration of the Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Summit (excerpt)
Albuquerque, New Mexico, September 5-8, 1996

Section V: What Risks from Low-Level Radiation?

17. Depleted Uranium: Huge Quantities of Dangerous Waste (excerpt)
By Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY

18. Nuclear Testing, Power Plants and a Breast Cancer Epidemic (excerpt)
By Dr. Jay M. Gould, author, The Enemy Within

19.Nine-Legged Frogs, Gulf War Syndrome, and Chernobyl Studies (excerpt)
By Dr. Rosalie Bertell, GNSH, Founding Member/President, International Institute of Concern for Public Health; Editor in Chief, International
TJ | 11.30.04 - 7:08 pm | #

More articles:
20. DU Spread and Contamination of Gulf War Veterans and Others (excerpt)
By Leonard A. Dietz, physicist, charter member, American Society for Mass Spectrometry.

Section VI: Environmental Cost of Gulf War to Iraquis and Others

21. Gravesites: Environmental Ruin in Iraq (excerpt)
By Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz, anthropologist; journalist, WBAI-NY

22. DU Shells Make the Desert Glow (excerpt)
By Dr. Eric Hoskins, Medical Coordinator, Harvard Study Team's surveys of health and welfare in postwar Iraq

23. How DU Shell Residues Poison Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (excerpt)
By Prof. Dr. Siegwart-Horst Guenther, Founder/President, Austrian Yellow Cross International

24. Note From Permanent Mission of Iraq to UN Center for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland, May 21, 1996 (full text)

25. U.S. First to Target Nuclear Reactor (excerpt)
By Suzy T. Kane,Women's International League for Peace and Freedom; author, The Hidden History of the Persian Gulf War

Section VII: Can a Legal Battle be Waged to Ban DU?

26. The Role of Physicians in the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (excerpt)
By Dr. Victor Sidel, Co-president, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; co-editor, War and Public Health

27. UN Subcommission on Human Rights Votes Ban on DU (excerpt)
By Philippa Winkler, attorney; Project Director, Hidden Casualties, The Environmental, Health and Political Consequences of the Persian Gulf War

28. Depleted Uranium and International Law (excerpt)
By Alyn Ware, Executive Director, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy
TJ | 11.30.04 - 7:09 pm | #

TJ,

Did you actually read the conclusions of that second report you cited? They don't support your view in the slightest. The panel concluded that the existing evidence offered little or no support for the detrimental health effects of DU. And I'm not an apologist, I'd just like to see some actual evidence (other than a book at Wal-Mart) that supports your claims.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 7:09 pm | #

Holy shit ramsey clark thinks DU should be banned. Case closed!!
Royal Society | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:10 pm | #

OMIGOD the president of the "yellow cross international" thinks DU cause brain tumors in 9/10 babies born worldwide? Alert the media!
Royal Society | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:12 pm | #

This was a pretty embarrasing thread in some places, thanks to those who tried to infuse some thought and rationality.
agave | 11.30.04 - 7:14 pm | #

Wow, a former AG. Does that mean if I get John Ashcroft to say that DU is OK then their arguments cancel each other out?
matt K | 11.30.04 - 7:16 pm | #

That's it. This is the last time I am ever using the word outrage. There has to be something stronger for what was shown.
bcf | 11.30.04 - 7:16 pm | #

NOt just any attorney general, RAMSEY CLARK!!!!

The war criminal's best friend!!!
Royal Society | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:17 pm | #

"Great Powers" often use weapons they would never consider using on their own people or other "Great Powers". I learned something similiar in how the French and English "pacified" their colonial populations in South and Southeast Asia. It is much easier to spray lands with toxins when the people do not look like you.

Just an additional reason why I hate war of any kind, not matter what the justification. War is a dangerous beast intent on destroying people and the environment and is completely uncontrollable. I think the reason why we have wars is because men and women forget that lesson. Once again we are shown the outcomes of war are never what we expect them to be - who would have thought that WWII would have resulted in a fifty year Cold War or that it was the beginning of the modern Gay Rights movement?
Carlton Nettleton | 11.30.04 - 7:18 pm | #

Not everyone that disagrees with you is a troll or a Republican.

I don't call everyone I disagree with a troll, but I know a troll when I see one. And there are plenty of them here, of both the Rethug and DLC bent.

Zolofter replied to a lot of posters, why did you think I was singling you out? I wasn't.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:18 pm | #

Thanks guys, I needed a laugh tonight, and that Ramsey Clark reference did the trick. (he was attorney general doncha know).
Royal Society | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:21 pm | #

To all of you freeps who are pretending that DU is harmless - I think you should shove a handful in your Speedos and see what happens. Or better yet, enlist, and shut the fuck up.
Tsunami | 11.30.04 - 7:23 pm | #

pixie,

I don't think you were singling me out, but you certainly were lumping me in with those you refer to as "trolls". The troll label is grossly misused, both here and on right-wing sites. A troll tries to derail debate by making gratuitously provocative comments or other similar tactics. Nobody here is doing that. We're pointing out that many people here are making unsupportable statements. Someone who makes a legitimate point that you disagree with, or who goes against the prevailing consensus on the site, is not a troll. Do you want a debate or an echo chamber?
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 7:25 pm | #

Does anyone recall a couple of months ago a Flash video being circulated about why it was possible that a plane never hit the Pentagon (instead suggesting that it was, in fact, a missile?) Everyone I know who saw it actually started to buy in to this theory. It was also being promoted on this Eric Blumrich guy's website.

I wrote to Eric Blumrich (the guy who has posted both of these animations) after I saw the one about the Pentagon and asked him to explain someting to me. I asked him to tell me that if it was a missile that hit the Pentagon and not a plane, then how did he explain the deaths of all the people on the supposed plane? He wrote back to me and said that he didn't create the Flash animation, he just posted it on his site and that it was just a possible theory to consider.

You be the judge.
pny | 11.30.04 - 7:29 pm | #

Tsunami, doesnt that chickenhawk schtick get stale? Most of the non-chickenhawk military is republican. The guys most rabidly gung ho pro Dubya are the guys fighting this war, and arent likely to be fucking around on this silly web page. And if you're such an ardent peacenik, why arent you acting as a human shield, or volunteering for duty with an NGO or somesuch?
Karbon | 11.30.04 - 7:31 pm | #

' Do you want a debate or an echo chamber?'

DUH!
Karbon | 11.30.04 - 7:32 pm | #

Welcome, stranger. Your stuff is the shit, for sure.
Ronjazz | 11.30.04 - 7:33 pm | #

I hate Vor und depleted Uraniums.
Prof. Siegwart-Horst Günther | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:38 pm | #

Nobody here is doing that. We're pointing out that many people here are making unsupportable statements.

Oh, for fucks sake.

Zolofter, you are ugly and you smell bad. And you are dumb.
I. Kant

Again I ask: Why do you think I am singling you out?
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:40 pm | #

'Again I ask: Why do you think I am singling you out?'

nigga, please.
Prof. Siegwart-Horst Günther | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:42 pm | #

Backslider - you still around?

Typical pot head, me. I messed up my math by 10 years - I've only been indulging for 38 years.

If it matters.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:44 pm | #

Has filkertom heard back from the author of the video?

I just find it interesting how desperately some people want to believe that this just can't be true.
Hecate | 11.30.04 - 7:49 pm | #

Interesting how this thread plays out. I merely asked Chad who he was because I didn't recognize his handle; he came back with an aggrieved comment about secret handshakes, to show that he is not a troll.

After reading the thread so far, it appears that my misgivings were not misplaced. So funny how that happens.

This topic really drew fire from the trolls - must play Chopin on some nerves.
Tena | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:51 pm | #

Hecate,

It's not that we don't want to believe that the video is true, but rather there isn't any evidence that it is true. Put simply, there isn't any credible evidence that DU fired from tanks and warplanes is harmful on any sort of large scale. The video does nothing to provide proof, you do nothing to provide proof. And then you say the critics who provide all sorts of credible arguments against DU being harmful on a large scale are desperate?
matt K | 11.30.04 - 7:58 pm | #

My point (admittedly poorly made--sorry--trying to work and blog at the same time--never works--something always suffers) about the "two whole books" was that there is evidence out there on both sides of the issue. Those who are claiming that they haven't seen anything yet which demonstrates a link between birth deformities and DU are simply willfully ignoring articles which do indicate such a link. Obviously, you can choose to disbelieve such evidence, but you cannot continue to insist that there is NO evidence.
And yes, it is simply amazing how this brought people out of the woodwork. I guess I approach things from a "never believe what the military-industrial complex says" perspective. Others believe them until proven otherwise.
TJ | 11.30.04 - 7:59 pm | #

I just find it interesting how desperately some people want to believe that this just can't be true.

Deperately? For reasons I outlined in many post, I called bullshit like many others.
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 7:59 pm | #

Hecate, if you're referring to my posting, that's fine. I just think you shouldn't get so freaked out over this guy's work. It's really irresponsible and kind of tasteless to put so much production into something this serious especially when all his facts are not sourced.
pny | 11.30.04 - 7:59 pm | #

"Is "depleted" a quantifiable term (such as ton)?

spinoza | Email | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:05 pm | #"

That is my point.

"depleted", in DOD terminology, does _not_ mean none or even reduced "power".

What "depleted" means is the substance is no longer economically useful for the purpose to which it normally applies.

Like I said, it may or may not have anything to do with its radiation properties.

U-235 used to be the uranium needed for strong reactions (certain types of nuclear reactors and bombs). U-235 was "extracted" with a centrifuge from U-238, the uranium found in mines.

After the U-235 was extracted, the remaining U-238 is just as radioactive but was considered "depleted", meaning it was depleted of the U-235 isotope rather than "stripped" of radiation.

and,

"There are open pits, so-called "cooling pits," like that all over the country.

--
Paul in LA | Email | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 4:08 pm

Paul in LA,

My memory is weak but it seems the very shallow pits contained a cesium and/or iodine mixture and were actually in sheds.

They did have deep pits, numbering somewhat less than 200, for which half had partial or no records about their contents.

*******************
I have no problem with nuclear materials, the science is pretty darn good. It is the lack of science when it comes to safety and security that I have a major problem. Not to mention the idiots in charge now.............
Sky-Ho | 11.30.04 - 8:02 pm | #

matt K - It is two seperate arguments.

One - Does DU cause birth defects, etc.

Two - Their is no documentation with the video on when/where these pictures come from. That the video has been around six months and no MSM has picked it up, or what it purports to prove. That health care professionals in Iraq would be screaming from the rooftops. I could go on...

Because one argument may be true, has nothing to do with the other.
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 8:04 pm | #

pixie,

what exactly does "Oh, for fucks sake" mean, anyway?

I never said you were singling me out (thus the "lumping" comment). If all you were referring to as trolls was the guy posting as Kant, why do you say And there are plenty of them here, of both the Rethug and DLC bent.? One is not plenty. If I was not included among the trolls, just say so instead of playing coy with the "why do you think I'm singling you out" crap. And if not me, then who? Aside from the Kant joker, I don't see anyone responding to Zolofter who deserves to be called a troll. If you think there are plenty here, by all means name names.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 8:06 pm | #

TJ, you can cites references until you're blue in the face. Those who don't want to believe in the dangers of DU wouldn't believe Jesus himself. This thread really has been an amazing spectacle. I can't figure out if it's Father Romero syndrome, or something else. I strongly suspect the latter in a great many instances.

On the bright side, at least they've identified themselves.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 8:07 pm | #

merely asked Chad who he was because I didn't recognize his handle; he came back with an aggrieved comment about secret handshakes, to show that he is not a troll.

My God. Are you blind?

Why this insane insistance that those of us -- good liberals -- who dont believe the substance of that flash animation on simple grounds that it contains no substance whatsoever, just fearmongering imagery, are somehow trying to subvert this website? What the hell is wrong with you?

The actual text of my response noted my involvement on other left-leaning websites. If this unreal desire to dismiss all your critics as trolls is serious, I will furnish you with my handle on Daily Kos, The Poor Man and Matt Yglasias' site so you can verify it. Will that be enough to prove to you that I have a right to disagree? If so, respond to the email helpfullly included in ALL of my comments -- which resolves to an actual email address even -- and I'll submit those. Before that, however, i will note that it is incredibly draconian of you to dismiss my comments on the basis of the fact that you dont know who i am.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 8:08 pm | #

pny

Not referring to anyone in particular. I just understand how much easier it would be on everyone emotionally if this weren't true.
Hecate | 11.30.04 - 8:09 pm | #

Smokey, you're boring me.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 8:09 pm | #

1) The invasion of Iraq was not justified

2) Many Iraqis have suffered and died as a result of the invasion of Iraq, so many that it is an open question whether or not they are better off without Saddam, a truly perverse outcome.

3) This DU thing is a red herring. Although it is certainly not nice to aerosolize toxic heavy metals that are also a little bit radioactive in another person's country, the amoint of disease caused by them will scarcely stand out against the background. I know for a fact that some of the "facts" cited by this scare videao are just plain not true. Radiaion lervels in Baghdad 1,600 times background? Puhleeease! If you held a geiger counter up against a brick of DU, you'd probably get a reading of maybe 50 times background at most. As I said, the stuff is by no means a good thing, and I don't doubt that SOME people might get poisoned by it or that it might cause SOME birth defects, but this depiction of its use as an apocalyptic act of destruction is just stupid. Any decently educated scientist will tell you so. So I guess that means we're all trolls according to Hecate.
Blerb | 11.30.04 - 8:09 pm | #

folks,

the plural of anecdote is not data. what are the facts?

the flash piece was very moving, doesn't mean i should trust it.

this isn't a faith based movement.

-J.T.
Warlord of Silver Spring
JohnTomato | 11.30.04 - 8:11 pm | #

Hecate, this thing may well be true, but I just know that this guy (Blumrich) has a history of posting things irresponsibly on his own site and it's not worth getting too upset about when he can't even source his stuff. Now, if this were Michael Moore posting it, I would probably be freaking out too.
pny | 11.30.04 - 8:14 pm | #

Hecate/Tena/others,

For the last time, would you all please stop referring to those questioning the veracity of this video as "trolls"? I read this damn blog every day, I just don't comment because the comments are too unwieldy here. But I had to comment on this one, because the video is a piece of fear-mongering crap, and I'd like our side to stay away from stuff like that. Hecate, you say that people are desperate to believe that it can't be true. Given the complete absence of any reason to think that it is, wouldn't it more likely that you are desperate to believe that it is?
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 8:16 pm | #

pny,

You got a point, as I said upthread - Blumrich goes for the visceral reaction, and very rarely sources anything in his animations. This animation is about par for the course.

That's not to say that DU is not harmful, or that I don't want to believe that DU is harmful, or anything. It is to say that Blumrich is a rabble-rouser.
stranger | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 8:22 pm | #

This is just beyond pitiful.

for the record, Blerb is right, the hysteria over this is wrong

.
agave | 11.30.04 - 8:23 pm | #

TJ,

Again, I'd suggest you actually look at the conclusions in the DU section of the second paper you cited. It doesn't say what you think it says.

pixie,

Sorry if I'm boring you, but then why do you keep responding to me?
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 8:23 pm | #

Smokey - Ignore that shit. Seems a few regulars are acting like creationist.
chris/tx | 11.30.04 - 8:24 pm | #

I just find it interesting how desperately some people want to believe that this just can't be true.

A lot of people were desperate to believe that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster because it suited their political purposes.

I don't want to be a leflt-wing version of those people. I'm betting you don't, either.
Lisa | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 8:26 pm | #

Smokey, hear motherfucking hear.

People have accused me of lots of things in my life - mostly because i enjoy fucking with people. But to spend two years of my life fighting and killing my bank account to get Kerry elected, and then be called a GOP troll for trying to exercise some fucking science on a left-leaning website... that is incredibly insulting. It was kind of funny at first, when there didnt seem to be a hardened consensus on whether those of us who didnt rush out to embrace the RADIATION == BAD nonsense coming out of the less .... uhm .... bright people here. But to have the opinion harden that way is disillusioning at best. I think if I hadn't gotten my heart broken by Dubya less than a month ago it probably wouldn't be so dismaying. But man, these people are even supposed to be on our team.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 8:28 pm | #

Smokey,

I didn't call anyone a troll.
Hecate | 11.30.04 - 8:30 pm | #

or the record, Blerb is right, the hysteria over this is wrong

As someone recently said to me: radiation is the left's creationism.
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 8:32 pm | #

The question isn't really whether DU kills or causes birth defects; it's whether it is worse than other types of munitions in those respects. Unless you want to fight battles without bullets, that is.
Dave in NYC | 11.30.04 - 8:36 pm | #

Hecate,

Sorry, only the last part of that was meant to apply to you. BTW, you really ought to put a disclaimer on the original post noting that the video is not exactly reality-based.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 8:43 pm | #

As someone recently said to me: radiation is the left's creationism.

It's comments like this that make people think you're a Republican.

I don't trust supposed leftists who seem to spend most of their time expressing contempt for other leftists.

You remind me of Micky Kaus.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 8:46 pm | #

When thimerosol (a heavy metal derived from mercury)

It's statements like that that make liberal (and I am) scientifically literate people roll their eyes.

Mercury is a heavy metal. Thimerosal is a compound which contains mercury.

And before people raise a stink, no, this is not a minor issue. If you are talking about biological effects from materials, either get the very basics right or find out what the basics are before saying anything. People wouldn't take anyone's opinion on basketball seriously if they didn't know the basics of the game, and it's the same thing here. Those of us in science have enough of a problem with the loony toon creationists and nutbars on one side without having to deal with people on the other spouting off their own brand of ignorance.

By the way, for the record, just because a compound contains an element hazardous in its own right does not necessarily imply anything about the compound. This doesn't mean thimerosal is necessarily safe, but the presence of mercury in the compound doesn't necessarily mean it's dangerous.

After all, sodium reacts violently (explodes basically) on contact with water. Chlorine is a highly dangerous gas that was used to kill and main thousands in war. Sodium chloride sits on everyone's table during dinner.
Keith | 11.30.04 - 8:49 pm | #

Zolofter,

Yes, of course criticism = contempt. That said, if other leftists insist on believing things for which there is no evidence, perhaps they're deserving of a little contempt.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 8:51 pm | #

I am officially neutral on the DU thing, BTW.

--
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 8:52 pm | #

Yes, of course criticism = contempt

Do you mind not putting words in my mouth?

Thanks.

..
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 8:52 pm | #

Mercury is a heavy metal. Thimerosal is a compound which contains mercury.

Which one is safe to stick in your body?
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 8:56 pm | #

Smokey - Ignore that shit. Seems a few regulars are acting like creationist.
chris/tx

Took the words out of my mouth.
Emotion and what I 'know' rule.
Rational science and evidence must be stopped or atleast deridded.
Never thought I'd see the day here.

Looking at this thread, I feel like when I'm argueing with my girl friend, and nothing makes sense. The facts only piss her off, and she responds with shit that makes my brain hurt.

.
agave | 11.30.04 - 8:59 pm | #

seriously what the fuck is going on here? when did everyone agree to stop using their brains and decide to brand anyone who refuses to abandon reason as trolls?

fuck the debate about right and wrong, noble and ignoble causes. this is not why i hate propaganda. telling lies for whatever reason tends to be a bad strategy because of the currency known as credibility. look what happened to dan rather when he tried to pull this kind of crap, even though i dearly want the monkey king to eat shit and die. the right may lie like whores, but the only reason it works is because their subjects like the taste of their kool-aid, even though it's bullshit flavored, and a lot of them are simply stupid. i was on the (perhaps grossly incorrect) impression that most of us believe in critical reasoning and would rather think freely. give me the data, let me make my own conclusions. instead, this kind of thing is like saying: these people don't know shit, let's scare them into agreeing with us. my response to you who agree with this method: go fuck yourself. it doesn't even matter if the link is true, the way you go about demonstrating it is condescending and insulting. and what's the point of our party winning if it also becomes populated by lying sacks of shit willing to do anything to further their cause?
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 8:59 pm | #

Chad is insulted because people think he's a Republican troll.

Maybe it's because your rhetoric is awfully similar to that of most of the Repub. trolls. Witness:

Has the left seriously been reduced to "whats the secret knock?"

Kneejerk leftism based entirely on outrage to specific keywords like "pollution"

The GOP didnt win the election because they lied

Insisting that this is the case does NOT GET YOU VOTERS ON YOUR TEAM.

Unlike you, howeve,r who make blanket statements about people you've likely never met, based solely on the "popular wisdom" of a series of echo chambers like this website,

Anyone who's spend enough time on lefty blogs recognizes this kind of rhetoric.

You may not be a Republican. But if not, then you're something almost as bad: a Micky Kaus Democrat.

.
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 9:00 pm | #

Zolofter,

Did you not accuse Chad of having contempt for leftists for criticising some leftist's fears of radiation? What words am I putting into your mouth?

And your neutrality on the DU issue is exactly the problem. You don't care about the factual basis for the claims, as long as it helps advance your political agenda. We're the reality-based community, remember?
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 9:02 pm | #

I don't trust supposed leftists who seem to spend most of their time expressing contempt for other leftists.

There's our problem, I guess. I don't trust supposed leftists who spend most of their time trying to pass dogshit off as blueberry muffins because the world needs more blueberry muffins. You remind me of Rush Limbaugh.

And for the record, nothing... nothing should be above questioning if it doesnt pass as at least a reasonable attempt at accuracy. The people who disagree with the veracity of this flash thing aren't trying to impugne all liberalism or whatever, they are saying that this doesn't look accurate. Nobody is saying "radiation is good for arabs," we are saying "I dont think depleted uranium emits alpha particles to a degree significant enough to be harmful outside of a deeply limited radius." And they are saying "the effects of even aerosolized DU would probably be worse because of its' heavy metal toxicity than because of any kind of radiation you might be subject to."

This gets to the heart of a real question: Are DU shells a battlefield problem, or superior to the alternative (e.g. tank killing landmines, conventional explosives, napalm)?

Now, my question to you: assuming that we are already in iraq, and already fighting this war, do you want us to be using the LEAST ENVIRONMENTALLY DANGEROUS weapons, or do you want to be able to say "AMERICA BAD" and point randomly at stuff?
Chad Robinson | 11.30.04 - 9:07 pm | #

Did you not accuse Chad of having contempt for leftists for criticising some leftist's fears of radiation? What words am I putting into your mouth?

No, I accused Chad of contempt because of snarky comments like those I just posted above.

And your neutrality on the DU issue is exactly the problem. You don't care about the factual basis for the claims, as long as it helps advance your political agenda.

My neutrality is a function of the fact that I just don't really care about the issue enough to go through the trouble of figuring it out. I know war crimes are being committed, I know Bush & co are murderers, etc. Whether or not DU is dangerous is an important detail, but I simply don't have the time & energy to look into every single detail.

Let me ask you this: if you knew that by, say, lying about whether or not he ever met Jane Fonda, Kerry could have won the election, would you or would you not have had him lie? (Assume no one really knew but him & Jane.)

My claim: if you are a true leftist/liberal/democrat, your answer would be, "Fuck yes!"

.

PS Since apparently nothing goes without saying: I am not actually suggesting this would have made a difference: it's a hypothetical.
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 9:07 pm | #

do you want to be able to say "AMERICA BAD" and point randomly at stuff?

Another mark of a freeper: accusing critics of Bushco of being "anti-American".

You give yourself away again and again.

.
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 9:10 pm | #

and since i am in the health care field, i can't help but comment on the whole thimerosal brouhaha.

first of all, it doesn't matter now, because drug companies have decided to take it out of their vaccines. all it matters now is to people who are suing.

second of all, no one is forcing you or your children to get immunized. if you really want to (at least in the state of california) you can sign a little paragraph on that school physical form saying that you don't want immunizations. at that point, you are making a choice: are you willing to take your chances with having your kid catch a virulent and quite possibly fatal disease (and yes, you can--and people do--die from measles, mumps, rubella, diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, hepatitis B, influenza, pneumonia, etc., etc.) or would you rather take the chance that your kid might become autistic from mercury? personally, i say go with the mercury, because i've seen plenty of non-autistic kids who have gotten vaccinations as well as a few dead kids who didn't, but i'm not going to tie your kid down and give him/her an injection if you don't want it, and n=1 does not a scientific study make.
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 9:10 pm | #

Has filkertom heard back from the author of the video?

Not as of 9:05 p.m. EST.

I just find it interesting how desperately some people want to believe that this just can't be true.
Hecate | Email | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 7:49 pm

I tell ya, if I'd known the shitstorm this'd kick up on this blog, I might not have posted it on my blog. I'm still waiting for more evidence, although my heart and gut tell me there's more truth than propaganda... but about half the discussion has been stone cold ugly.

For the record, I actually detect very little of what I would call "trollishness" on this thread. Whole lotta folks who think they're right. Given the circumstances, some of 'em have to be. Dunno which ones yet. Hope to find out. But let's see if we can do it and remain friends, y'know?

[/soapbox]
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:14 pm | #

zolofter: that's just whack.

if the dems are just going to be another party of lying turds, then what the hell is the point? if i still can't disagree with whatever my "benevolent" rulers tell me without getting blacklisted, why do we even try?
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 9:14 pm | #

seriously, i have no idea whether it's true or not, but, you know what, all it would take is one goddamn lousy hyperlink. the info is out there on the internet. why is it that no one has bothered to dig it out? instead we're reduced to cannabalizing our own, with some of you completely buying into the left's own version of faith-based reality
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 9:17 pm | #

no one is forcing you or your children to get immunized

Must be nice to be you. The reality is children get immunized.

n=1 does not a scientific study make

There's a lot to be said for empirical evidence, especially when 'science' is not based on science at all, but rather on politics.

And it's a sad day when this is what we've become.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:19 pm | #

if the dems are just going to be another party of lying turds, then what the hell is the point?

Because one party of lying turds is going to fuck up the entire planet beyond belief, and the other party of lying turds won't.

I thought it was a given that politicians are lying turds, on both sides. I'll take the non-fascist lying turds over the fascist lying turds any day.

Why don't you just support Ralph Nader? I'm sure he never tells a lie.

.
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 9:20 pm | #

The _Journal of Radiological Protection_ in 2002 ran a few reports from the Royal Society on the risks of depleted uranium munitions. Basically, their findings are:

1) For most soldiers and civilians in a theater of war, the extra risk of cancer or kidney disease due to exposure to DU munitions is likely too small to measure.

2) For people with substantial exposure, i.e., soldiers surviving or cleaning up a DU-hit heavy vehicle, the risk of lung cancer is likely to be twice that of the general population.

3) Still, there's a lot we don't know and should be looked into. For example, the effects in a population of uranium oxides and metabolites on kidney function; risk among men heavily contaminated by DU; what are the real battlefield exposures and what's the range? Etc.

4) Efforts should be made to clean up areas where, e.g., children will play.

Much of this is based on data and theoretical models, since exposures of the magnitude of individual DU rounds are too small to quantify. There's no shortage of people willing to criticize this approach, but at the moment, it seems it has to do.
Tyson Burghardt | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:24 pm | #

I found this re DU in Iraq:

'The rate of cancer here has multiplied 15 times since the last Gulf war. In 2002 we had 644 deaths from cancer in Basra. We have approximately 123 patients per 100,000 of the population. (Basra's is Iraq's second largest city with an estimated population of 2-3 million). People living near the nuclear reactors are affected the worst, but overall, its estimated that 1000-2000 tons of Depleted Uranium were inside Iraqi cities and in west Basra and between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A10 planes were dropping it, and Apaches. Abu Khaseeb, North Rumeilla, and the airport were particularly hard hit. The results of the DU used in this war will not be seen for another 4-5 years - the incubation period for cancer'.

Caveat: Some of the info in the article seems to be at odds with some of what has been said here.

link to article

Did the flash say cancer rates were 19,000% higher? I'm not going back to look, and I suck at math.
stranger | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:25 pm | #

pixie,

There's a lot to be said for empirical evidence, especially when 'science' is not based on science at all, but rather on politics.

Umm, what do you think science is based on, if not empirical evidence? Science is a method for deriving knowledge from empirical evidence. If politics occasionally influences it for the worse , this is the fault of politics, not science.
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 9:30 pm | #

Went back and checked the flash - it said that cancer rates were up 700-1000% post-Gulf War.
stranger | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:30 pm | #

Damn!
Angie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:32 pm | #

Shit and I thought the video game comment thread was the low point for uninformed discour^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hscaremongering. Anyone who doesn't jump at a dubious video and scream "radioactive depleted thimesoral ate mah baby" is a freeper troll. Atrios come back soon!
Andy | 11.30.04 - 9:34 pm | #

A few notes on the birth defects in the video.

Cleft palates are frequently seen as developmental anomalies, but ionizing radiation is a contributing factor. One retrospective study found prevalence of cleft palate rose 9% in Germany after Chernobyl.

Harlequin ichthyosis is commonly thought of as a hereditary disorder, and I could find no literature suggesting a radiological cause; one authority suggested a mutant tyrosine kinase.

Another infant had an omphalocele, or protruding intestines. I couldn't find any literature to support the assertion that this is commonly caused by ionizing radiation.

Furthermore, many genetically-mediated birth defects result from small alterations in an otherwise well-functioning genome. It's my belief that heavy doses of ionizing radiation have the effect not of producing point mutations, but of seriously screwing up chromosomes ultrastructurally. The above article about cleft palates also found, if I remember correctly, a higher prevalence of trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, which can be caused if a large part of Chromosome 21 is fused onto another.

So, take all that with a grain of salt. I'm just a second-year medical student.
Tyson Burghardt | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:46 pm | #

pixie: true, most kids get immunized, and all holy hell breaks loose when you refuse, but, and this is my main point, you do have to option to refuse.

zolofter: who the fuck are you to deign to exclude me from being a democrat? and how do i know that "our" side of lying sacks of shits won't destroy the world either? people in power tend to end up fucking things up, which ever way you slice it. i don't care about that. what i care about is the right to think for myself, and the right to disagree. and supporting lying sacks of shit who use mind-fucking methods to gain power looks like a pretty good way to deny myself these rights.
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 9:50 pm | #

Umm, what do you think science is based on, if not empirical evidence?

Generally, most modern scientists eschew empirical evidence in favor of hypothesis, deduction, theory, and finally, fact.

Perhaps they've changed that, it's been awhile since I've been to school.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:55 pm | #

you do have to option to refuse

Not in this red state, you don't.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 9:56 pm | #

and how do i know that "our" side of lying sacks of shits won't destroy the world either? people in power tend to end up fucking things up, which ever way you slice it. i don't care about that

You don't care if the world gets destroyed, as long as you retain the right to think for yourself (who said anything about not being able to think for yourself, anyway?)? Kinda solipsistic, dontcha think?

If you don't think that "our" side won't destroy the world, then why on earth are you a democrat? If I thought there was an equal chance of global war with either party, I'd be hard pressed to give a reason why we should support the Democrats.

Or maybe you, like Chad, are a Republican in Democrat's clothing as well.

.
Zolofter | 11.30.04 - 9:59 pm | #

So, take all that with a grain of salt.

Christ, that's the first non-reactionary argument I've seen on this entire thread. If you get taken with a grain of salt, we're all doooomed.
pixie | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 10:06 pm | #

Most likely Blumrich got the photos for the flash animation from here:

EXTREME BIRTH DEFORMITIES

"The majority of the pictures were supplied to me by a source who prefers to remain anonymous at the current time. I was unable to acquire either original negatives, or prints from negatives. They arrived in the form of colour A4 copies. I scanned them into Photoshop and attempted to clean and sharpen them as best I could. There has not, and I repeat not, been any digital alteration other than the cleaning and sharpening process. No text documentation arrived with the pictures, so I have described them as accurately as I can. It is my understanding that the photographs were taken from 1998 onwards. I would be grateful to anyone who could potentially supply me with further information about these types of deformities; medical terms for them, etc."

"Additional pictures were taken by Dr. Siegwart Horst-Gunther, President of the International Yellow Cross. Most appeared in his 1996 book "URANIUM PROJECTILES - SEVERELY MAIMED SOLDIERS, DEFORMED BABIES, DYING CHILDREN" (Published by AHRIMAN - Verlag, ISBN: 3-89484-805-7)."
Anonymous | 11.30.04 - 10:12 pm | #

pixie,

I think you're a bit confused about the meaning of the word "empirical". Perhaps the meanings have changed since you were in school, but I don't think so.

Maybe you mean "anecdotal"?
Smokey | 11.30.04 - 10:13 pm | #

Still haven't heard back from the guy. I'm going to bed. 'Night, all.
filkertom | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 10:14 pm | #

zolofter: yeah i voted for kerry, gore, and clinton because i'm a republican. yeah i voted against the california recall and for cruz bustamante because i'm a republican. i gave hundreds of dollars to the 527s who supported the democratic party and the kerry campaign because i'm a republican.

zolofter, you can kiss my brown skinned ass.

look, we didn't win the election, but it doesn't mean we can't stand up for what we believe in. you think just because we aren't in power, we have to just stand here and let bush destroy the world? you think that kerry could've really singlehandedly turned around the juggernaut that is the american empire? don't be a shithead. what we need to counter this are individuals who are dedicated to freedom, and individuals like yourself who are willing to sacrifice their principles for the sake of power are the antithesis of what we need.

political power isn't the only weapon for change. mind-fucking people isn't the only way to change their minds.
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 10:17 pm | #

pixie: jeez, maybe the blue states really should secede from the union. what happens if you try to refuse immunzations? they won't let your kids go to school? how do they justify withholding your children's right to an education?
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 10:21 pm | #

anonymous: finally, references. thank you. was that so hard? now i'll just have to figure out a way to track these down.

for the record, i do believe that uranium 238 causes lots of health problems in humans, and that we'll be dealing with it for a long time. we have plenty of research supporting the idea that uranium 238 is hazardous. i also believe that it is likely to increase the chances for birth defects, hell, because everything pretty much can increase the chances for birth defects. but i also know that there hasn't been a study done on it, and may be our government will prevent there ever being a federally funded study on it. but if it really does cause birth defects, i don't doubt that we'll soon find plenty of evidence that will be very difficult to ignore.

look, struggle takes time. the government said that agent orange was harmless back in the day, but now veteran's administration hospitals have a special clinic to treat victims of agent orange. it may have taken years or decades to change the tide, but it did change, and not because of activists using scare tactics to get their way.
brown skinned man | 11.30.04 - 10:40 pm | #

> seriously what the fuck is going on here? when did everyone agree to stop using their brains and decide to brand anyone who refuses to abandon reason as trolls?

Uh, this is new? It has always happened almost every time someone dares to question the echo chamber here. It's exactly the same as on many wingnut blogs. People here love to think they're different, but sadly, they're usually no less willing to blind themselves, and I have certainly been guilty of that myself.

I have been pretty heavily involved in local Democratic politics for the past five years. While there are many funny, thoughtful, and sometimes inspiring posts on this blog, the great majority are no better than a straight mirror image of what people here profess to hate about their wingnut counterparts. It's sad, it's true, it's human nature.
Keev | 11.30.04 - 10:45 pm | #

The biggest tragedy of depleted uranium is that it could be used to make fuel in fast breeder reactors. Then we wouldn't "need" to wage war to begin with, or give money to people who will fly planes into our buildings.

I use DU at work, to SHIELD me from radiation. It's denser than lead and cheaper than gold.

Oh yeah, I forget all of your names, but sane, skeptical people: you rock. Gullible whiners including the poster: you suck.
loser | 11.30.04 - 11:18 pm | #

I recently read a book called "The Day we Bombed Utah" by John G Fuller.
In the 50s and early 60s we were busy testing atomic bombs in SW Utah and Eastern Nevada. Our government denied responsibility of the dead sheep, the leukemia, etc. In regard to the sheep dying, they said that it was because of malnutrition. They said the people exposure was within acceptable levels and so their cancer was not caused by the fallout.
I would remind people that back when the UN was in session, there were tapes in their rooms and pacts made by various countries with our country to make our coalition of the willing. We don't know what type of cover-ups were agreed to. When you get down to it, many of the military that came back from Iraq in 1991 did come down with some type of unexplained illnesses.
I, myself, want nothing to do with DU. We slather this shit on the tips of our bombs to make them harder and to get rid of the stuff.
oldwhitelady | 11.30.04 - 11:19 pm | #

bombs, warheads, what's the difference?
oldwhitelady | 11.30.04 - 11:20 pm | #

"And the UN (the UN, for god's sake) said that the health risk from DU was negligible.
matt K"

The poor UN. Used by the US at every turn, it is used by the US whenever it serves some purpose.

In the case of this study, flawed in many ways as I recall. Repudiated by many fine scientists. Pushed into publishing a risk-denying study, which is waved around as if the "UN" somehow approved every page so its true.

Hardly. As for the statement above that 'little' DU had been used; utterly untrue. LARGE amounts of DU has been used, is being used, in an environment which is NOT like Bosnia, a wooded area, but a desert, in which sandstorms regularly cause everyone in the country to breathe the dust on the ground.

Stop lying to yourselves. This is genocide, and Bush & Co. are TRAITORS to humanity and the Constitution.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 11:20 pm | #

"I use DU at work, to SHIELD me from radiation. It's denser than lead and cheaper than gold."

The DU material you use is NOTHING like the particularlized, crystalline DU that people INHALE.

All the would-be debunkers, constantly talking about how safe it is to wear, to eat...conveniently ignoring the INHALATION RISK, which we know to be GRAVE.

Tetraethyl lead, inhaled, caused a great number of cancers. DU, inhaled, has caused and will cause a great number of cancers, AS WELL as blood diseases like leukemia, ESPECIALLY in infants, ESPECIALLY in people exposed to large amounts of dust (just about everyone in Iraq), ESPECIALLY to soldiers exposed to smoke produced by these munitions.

And it will CERTAINLY accumulate in the food chain and mother's milk, and that isn't some mystical fantasy, it's hard, cold scientific FACT.

--
Paul in LA | 11.30.04 - 11:26 pm | #

i say go with the mercury, because i've seen plenty of non-autistic kids who have gotten vaccinations as well as a few dead kids who didn't, but i'm not going to tie your kid down and give him/her an injection if you don't want it, and n=1 does not a scientific study make.

bsm -

Thing is, when you're doing what you've been taught is the best thing to do for your child, then learn something different, choice is pretty much moot. Given the "choice," I would definitely go back in time and refuse immunization for my child, yes. As for today, I'd probably be much more cautious about going along with the rigorous type of vaccination schedule most generally applied to young children here in the U.S. But saying what happened in the past doesn't matter anymore because you can choose something different is wrong. That's like saying people killed in car crashes before seat belts became standard safety features is no big deal because now we can choose to put them on or not.

I'm sure that, given the opportunity, Iraqi parents would "choose" to refuse participation in this war for the sake of their children's health, but that choice is not being offered to them.

"What's done is done" is just not a very good justification for either case.

As for those of you upset about this=that type equivalencies, I brought up Thalidomide as an example not of a horror to waggle our collective fingers at, but something thought to be safe that in fact wasn't.

It takes years to collect and analyze the sort of data that would indicate whether or not DU does pose a threat to developing fetuses and children, but what evidence is out there right at the moment does indicate that Uranium is a poisonous metal. That a DU shell creates a mist of that metal that can be aspirated should indicate that it's dangerous stuff even without the definitive study to show just exactly what it does. Sure, the general vicinity of a DU-caused explosion is the danger area, but when you have massive bunker-busters going off, what's the radius then? How does "shock and awe" change the zone effected by DU? What about DU particles infiltrating into drinking water?

It just seems to me that it's a no-brainer, really -- that this stuff is dangerous, we don't really know just what long-term effects it may have on a population, and further research is in order before it's deployed on the battlefield.

We've gone ahead and used weaponry that may poison our soldiers, innocent civilians, and our environment as a whole simply because it has better armor-piercing capabilities, and is available to us. What does that say about our ethics? Pretty much the same thing this whole damn war says. We act first, and damn the consequences.

And trolly types -- I love it how when the arguing gets impassioned, you all pull out the "histrionics" and "intolerance" cards. As if nowhere else in the whole wide world do people ever word things strongly, o
Monica_CA | 11.30.04 - 11:29 pm | #

cont.

And trolly types -- I love it how when the arguing gets impassioned, you all pull out the "histrionics" and "intolerance" cards. As if nowhere else in the whole wide world do people ever word things strongly, or hold to an opinion based on emotional reactions... Please. That's what places like this are for. This isn't a research lab, it's an internet comments board. Go ahead and bemoan the lack of rationality in my (and other's) arguments all you like, but I don't really see where cool-headed rationality is helping end this war, or mitigating its horrors. This is an upsetting subject, people are going to get emotional over it, and that's just the way it is.
Monica_CA | 11.30.04 - 11:29 pm | #

Stranger quoted:
The results of the DU used in this war will not be seen for another 4-5 years - the incubation period for cancer'.

This is the stuff that makes me nuts. Funny -- I never knew there was an identified "incubation period" for cancer. Cause there isn't -- and this is what some of the dimwits like zolofter seem to miss -- you sacrifice credibility when you just make shit up!

Hecate wrote:
I just find it interesting how desperately some people want to believe that this just can't be true.

I find it interesting that this seems to be a matter of faith to some. As a member of the reality based community all I would like to say is that the vast majority of the evidence does not support the allegations (of widespread birth defects, cancer, or radiation sickness in particular caused by battlefield use of DU).

It's an unfortunate reactionary tendency to assume the dangers -- of thimerosal, high-voltage wires, cell phone radiation, etc -- are real, and the fact that many substances have in fact been dangerous (leaded gas, CFCs) reinforces the tendency. I'm happy that there is a substantial group of people who are so vigilant with regard to the public safety, but once the evidence stops supporting your opinion you totally discredit yourself (and the movement) when you continue to insist.

lty
Liam Yore, MD | 11.30.04 - 11:32 pm | #

Paul, yes if you inhale the uranium in large amounts, you very well may get sick. Although tetraethyl lead is much more dangerous than Pb(II), and more dangerous than unligated uranium. And according to WHO and the UN study, someone will only get a dangerous dose if they are very near the impact, and the particles will not persist in the air.
matt k | 11.30.04 - 11:32 pm | #

monica, DU shells are not bunker busters, they are anti tank weapons. The individual shells don't weigh fifty pounds. We're talking about 30 mm and 40 mm shells here. Only 400 tons of the stuff have been used in Iraq. Which sounds like a lot, but the average person consumes 0.5 mg of uranium in a given year. That's normal, the way it's been for hundreds of years; uranium is found in nature. If all 400 tons were distributed among Iraq's 170,000 square miles, you would get about 5 lbs per square mile. This is a miniscule amount.
matt k | 11.30.04 - 11:45 pm | #

Liam,

I did not say that - it was a quote from an article I found after about 20 seconds worth of Googling.

And if you go back and look again, I also posted a caveat that much of the information in the article was at odds with what had already been posted here.

Just for the sake of clarity, okay?
stranger | Homepage | 11.30.04 - 11:56 pm | #

It's kind of OT but this thread is long enough that I don't think it matters really, but anyway --

It's reactionary to be wary of thimerisol because high tension wires and their supposed risks are currently considered a crock? I love the way the champions of so-called rationality lump all the their scientific betes noirs into one lump.

There's mounting evidence that disorders such as autism have an immunological aspect, and lab animal studies conducted this year have shown that in rats with genetically compromised immune systems, autistic behaviors do arise in offsping exposed to levels of thimerosol equivalent to that which human infants are/were exposed to.

What happens when science overtakes the rational views of the day?

Who becomes the reactionary then?

Phrenology used to be an accepted science. Eugenics was all the rage less than a hundred years ago. It was perfectly okay and the right thing to do to sterilize criminals and less-than proper young women in the name of genetic hygene -- in this very country.

How can you say you know definitively that the current collected evidence regarding the impact of DU on the Iraqi populace is reliable? I would think that any information collected from a society operating under such a repressive dictatorship as Saddam's Iraq would be suspect, and I seriously doubt much information has been collected since his ousting. There's some properly placed scepticism for you. It's like the Soviets covering up the rampant alcoholism that plagued the USSR...

When we don't even keep civilian casualty counts, how can we possibly come to conclusions as to the relative danger or "safety" of DU residue there?
Monica_CA | 11.30.04 - 11:57 pm | #

All the would-be debunkers, constantly talking about how safe it is to wear, to eat...conveniently ignoring the INHALATION RISK, which we know to be GRAVE.
. . . .
And it will CERTAINLY accumulate in the food chain and mother's milk, and that isn't some mystical fantasy, it's hard, cold scientific FACT.

Nobody's ignored that fact -- it was raised in the first couple of dozen posts (which, in fairness, was a long time ago). However, the inhalation risk does not appear to be "grave" and if you feel otherwise I would be interested in seeing a reference. And specifically I would like that reference to address a non-occupational setting, since I suspect that most research, such as there is, might focus on the occupational hazards which are a completely different matter from environmental post-war exposure (i.e. higher concentration, longer and more intense exposure).

And, a whole bunch of people have made this point so I would hesitate to bring it up if you hadn't ignored it the first six times, I would like to see it compared to the effects of inhaling similarly dispersed lead from conventional ammo.

lty
Liam Yore, MD | 11.30.04 - 11:59 pm | #

you sacrifice credibility when you just make shit up!

Totally. Look how damaged Bush's credibility was in the eyes of the electorate ... oh wait ... they VOTED HIS ASS BACK IN.

Credibility -- unfortunately -- don't mean shit in elections. The APPEARANCE of credibility -- now that's a different thing ...

.
Zolofter | 12.01.04 - 12:02 am | #

matt k --

The thing is, dustings of Uranium are not natural parts of the urban landscape. If our soldiers are told to stay away from it, it's dangerous, and yet we're using it in urban warfare.
Monica_CA | 12.01.04 - 12:03 am | #

nothing useful or intelligent to add here, really, other than this:

those of you who take the occasional heat of this discussion as a sign that we have descended into a state of ideological "cannibalism" or something, should probably get up, take a break, and fix themselves some herbal tea. 'cause the shouting and cursing gets far worse at my mom and dads' house on christmas eve - and we're all kneejerk leftists who agree with each other! imagine if we represented a spectrum of points of view, how bad THAT would be.

what was the name of that Reagan cabinet member who said you could sprinkle plutonium on your breakfast cereal? i miss that guy. he was funny.

okay kids, it's past your bedtime, see y'all tomorrow...
r@d@r | Homepage | 12.01.04 - 12:13 am | #

Those just look like typical kids with some typical deformities. I some anencephaly, some trisomy 13, some meningomyelocele, some hydrops fetalis, and the quite dramtic "harlequin baby" with a form of ichthyosis whose name escapes me. Nothing particularly scary here. Go look up "sirenomelia" and "midline defects" then read some Homer and ask yourself "how long have there been kids like this?" Yep, that is right, as long as there have been humans.
Jim Smith | 12.01.04 - 12:13 am | #

ask yourself "how long have there been kids like this?" Yep, that is right, as long as there have been humans.

Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks that these kind of birth defects pretty much refute so-called "Intelligent Design" theory?

.
Zolofter | 12.01.04 - 12:17 am | #

Zolofter --

You may be right, but the people that ascribe to "theories" like intelligent design will always have a refutation when it comes to this sort of thing. Some would undoubtably tell you it's the sins of the fathers being visited on the sons. I think that's what the Vatican would say...
Monica_CA | 12.01.04 - 12:22 am | #

It's reactionary to be wary of thimerisol because high tension wires and their supposed risks are currently considered a crock? I love the way the champions of so-called rationality lump all the their scientific betes noirs into one lump.

Well, I was trying to appose the discredited topics (thimerosal, high-tension, cell phones) with the validated ones (lead, CFCs). ( I know you disagree about autism, so I won't argue the point with you further -- let's leave it, eh?) My point was that a certain reflexive suspicion is necessary and good, but a lot of people assume the conclusion in absence of the evidence and persist in their opposition once good evidence is developed. This damages us politically.

How can you say you know definitively that the current collected evidence regarding the impact of DU on the Iraqi populace is reliable?

I couldn't say any such thing. In fact, unless I misrecall, I think the "iraqi" evidence was anti-DU and may well have been politically manipulated by Saddam (gasp!), and I would tend to disregard it. But the WHO, The Royal Academy, and the UN have released studies which fit what one would expect from a good understanding of the basic science. I'm not a "true believer" either way, but I suspect that the quality of evidence does not favor a conclusion that DU is dangerous.

Well, not dangerous unless they're shooting it at you.

lty
Liam Yore, MD | 12.01.04 - 12:23 am | #

97% of facts quoted on the internet without supporting links are false.
michael | 12.01.04 - 1:15 am | #

Look, when you see something completely over the top like this, do a little research. I mean, I WANT to be with you on this one. So I googled “Depleted Uranium” and “effects”.

Read the WHO report. Hmmm. FACTS.
And also THIS.

Read it and sigh with relief that those babies are not really DU freaks, and our soldiers are not going to come home glowing.

Zolofter, you and a number of commenters keep going back and forth about the pros and cons of lying. You ask “Who cares if it’s not true as long at it points out all the other problems?”

Well, uh, reasonable people will care. Getting all insanely worked up over something without the actual facts is what gives activism a BAD NAME. Worse yet, spreading it around without any care about it’s veracity is a major CREDIBILITY blunder. A reasonable person looking at the facts is going to just think you look like an IDIOT. Like that guy on the corner with the “World is Ending Tomorrow” sign.

Just ask Dan Rather. Hey, on the one hand he is right that GW skipped out of his commitment. Plain truth. But then all that blatantly false paperwork ripped every shred of his argument to pieces and gutted his whole position. How’d that feel?

And this video is a thousand times as RIDICULOUS. Even the UN, which last time I checked is NOT in bed with GW, says that harmful effects of Depleted Uranium dispersed around a battle location, both toxicologically and radiologically, are negligible.

Pick your battles, people.
Don Sheffler | Homepage | 12.01.04 - 1:21 am | #

Actually, Michael, that bullshit you are quoting is 97% wrong.

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 1:22 am | #

"Read it and sigh with relief that those babies are not really DU freaks, and our soldiers are not going to come home glowing."

What is the permanent disability award rate for the FIRST Gulf War, which had very low casualties reported?

1/3.

250,000 permanent disabilities from 'Gulf War Syndrome.'

If we listen to the spurious bills of good health given to obviously toxic exposures (vaccines, DU, burning plastics, etc.) individually, well then, nothing to worry about.

But 250,000 GIs are living with their disability every day, the one's who haven't subsequently died.

You blow smoke, but our soldiers breathe it. And die from it.

Not guarding the nuclear repositories was criminal negligence, on top of the use of DU. Spreading heavy metals around in an illegal invasion: warcrime, warcrime, warcrime.

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 1:29 am | #

"And also THIS."

Oh, yeah, we want to read the Department of Defense on the issue...that'll get us to the facts in a hurry.

Troll logic.

In the face of that, our GIs had to fight FOR NEARLY A DECADE to get any help with their illnesses.

PROBLEM SOLVED: according to what a recent vet told me, the DoD has changed the rules so that combat injuries have to be reported in TWO YEARS, or the disabled vet gets NO assistance.

This GW's syndrome will fall on the strapped county health system, as The Butchers of Bagdad laugh all the way to the bank.

Screw you who think you are so rational. I guess if people are poor, it's because they are 'lazy.'

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 1:34 am | #

Quite a few responses while I was at work. Let's see; you question the authenticity of a bit of agitprop and that means: that not only do you beleive that there's nothing wrong with DU but you'd like to carve it into cartoon shapes then candy coat it and feed it to children, that you're a fascist, that you're a racist, that you're a "scientific brownshirt fuck".

Sometimes I'm embarassed to be a liberal.
pablo | 12.01.04 - 1:41 am | #

No one in the SCLM wants to touch this story. Unfortunatey DU was used against the Serbs during Clinton's term, in an intervention of which I otherwise approved. Now some fairly significant portion of the Danube watershed is more or less irrevocably poisoned. Personally, I think the obvious, which is that so called 'Gulf War Syndrome' nothing more or less than DU poisoning.

Yes, solid U238 can be handled with relative safety, since it emitsonly alpha particles, which are stopped by a sheet of paper; but when U238 is dispersed and ingested, it is human tissue that must absorb the impact. (BTW, I am a physical biochemist by training, and much of my doctoral thesis was devoted to the introduction of radio-iodine (Iodine 125) into transfer RNA -- so I'm not making this stuff up.)
slim_harpo | 12.01.04 - 2:15 am | #

"Sometimes I'm embarassed to be a liberal."

heh. I know what you mean. I am reminded of when people were running around claiming the Cassini space probe was going to cause the firey end of the Earth. Promoting this sort of junk just makes us look like fools.
Jim Smith | 12.01.04 - 2:20 am | #

Wow, Paul. OK. Don't worry, you don't HAVE to read reasonable scientific studies of the issue, just a suggestion, everybody. You know, in case you want to investigate. Perchance.

What about the WHO report? Same science. Same conclusions. And the U.N.??

Or do you mean this video has more credibility?

And I'm not sure you noticed but both of your responses to my comments had nothing to do with what I said. Disability in 1 of 3? Poor people must be lazy? Benefits are being reduced? You talking to me?

I SAID: Investigate before you go off all half-cocked and look stupid.

Look, I believe the vets are coming back with something, Paul. I hope they find out what. I'm saying there are plenty more real toxins to blame it on without diluting the argument with this hack-job video.

Didn't this video say something like 67% of all gulf war vets now have hideously deformed kids? That stat came from ... where? He's serious?

To be honest, I would almost think this video was a plant from the righties to see how stupid the lefties can make themselves look over the whole thing. Hey, I know. Let's all wave our "The World Is Ending Tomorrow because A Video told us so." signs. That'll show 'em.
Don Sheffler | Homepage | 12.01.04 - 2:35 am | #

Uh, these are experimental drugs that these kids are being forced to take; by major drug manufacturers. Sometimes they cause rapid death or painful side affects.

Kevin de Bruxelles: As opposed to the current standard PI regimen, which I suppose someone as well-informed as you thinks is utterly side effect-free. And as far as the drug the kids were taking causing rapid death goes, where did you see that in this lightly-facted article? In fact, did you see ANYTHING about the specific drug? The protocol? No, just some inflamatory crap from the most anonymous of anonymice--and you fell for it.

The fact that major drug manufacturers produce them means jackshit--who do you think has the wherewithal to make a targeted antiviral? Ma and Pa Kettle?

It’s cool though I guess. All in the name of science. I mean these kids are just going to die anyway, why not make their short little lives useful.

Yeah, that's it. We're all so up to our keisters in effective, low-side-effect pediatric HIV suppressors that the chances that these kids are getting something that might fight their virus better or (more likely) has easier side effects is just about nil. Yup, that's the ticket. Gosh, what insight.

To the rest of you, sorry about the OT-lichkeit, but it seems to be one of those kinds of threads.
Molly, NYC | 12.01.04 - 2:55 am | #

There are far too many people in this world who don't give a rat's ass about real tragedy and instead fixate on things that don't really affect them in the least, like gay marriage or medical marijuana.

Last night the CBC ran a chat show on transmigration between the US and Canada (about 5,000 people each year move from here to there, and an equal number from there to here).

The best question of the evening came when a gay man (accompanied by his husband) asked a critic of gay marriage "will you please tell me how my marriage threatens yours?"

The moderator interrupted and shifted the discussion back to the general topic of leaving one's birth nation to live in another.

I turned the television off at that point.
Jon R. Koppenhoefer | 12.01.04 - 3:38 am | #

(fucking Haloscan)

which is the stated intent to loft a NUCLEAR REACTOR over our heads, and not have one of their ONE IN A HUNDRED mission failures all over our planet.

This to power such great projects as USPNAC's Star War's Laser Weapon, and other Space Warfare projects.

OPPOSE PROMETHEUS.

Tell NASA that Challenger and Columbia have shown America how it isn't safe to fly nuclear materials over their heads, for their Dr. Strangelove projects.

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 3:43 am | #

"heh. I know what you mean. I am reminded of when people were running around claiming the Cassini space probe was going to cause the firey end of the Earth. Promoting this sort of junk just makes us look like fools.
Jim Smith"

Trolls. NASA was forced to supply a EIR on Cassini, which said that if something went wrong, 5 billion people would get their maximum annual dose of radiation.

Now, NASA is going ahead with PROMETHEUS (otherwise known as "The Sword of Christ")(/sarcasm),

which is the stated intent to loft a NUCLEAR REACTOR over our heads, and not have one of their ONE IN A HUNDRED mission failures all over our planet.

This to power such great projects as USPNAC's Star War's Laser Weapon, and other Space Warfare projects.

OPPOSE PROMETHEUS.

Tell NASA that Challenger and Columbia have shown America how it isn't safe to fly nuclear materials over their heads, for their Dr. Strangelove projects.

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 3:45 am | #

"Promoting this sort of junk just makes us look like fools.
Jim Smith"

Dig the 'us.'

Jim Smith, and Tod Martin, the troll agents on duty for this shift.

"WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW IS WHY"
------------->

Bush-backer FirstEnergy of Cleveland Ohio nearly blew up Toledo at their nuke plant, and suffered no consequences, and WHY they didn't suffer consequences for the East America Blackout event, both of which were DUE TO NEGLIGENCE.

How come these two near disasters weren't punished? Because the "SCIENCE" is so hot shit?

No, it's because the Little Turds running/ruining things ARE AS UNRELIABLE AS THE WORSE AND MOST NEGLIGENT GOVERNMENTS IN WORLD HISTORY.

These guys make the Manchu Empress Dowager seem like a government efficiency expert. As corrupt a government as America has ever seen, without doubt.

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 3:58 am | #

Paul in LA: it's so much more convincing when you capitalize every third word. "WAHHAHH! I don't know what I'm talking about WAHHHAAH! But it's COLD HARD SCIENTIFIC FACT! Dr. Strangelove. WAHHHAAH!"

Scary nucular stuff is the gay marriage of the left.
loser | 12.01.04 - 4:00 am | #

You fascist types love the putdown.

That's what makes your trolling such fun.

--
Paul in LA | 12.01.04 - 5:05 am | #

Good morning. 5:00 a.m. EST. Still haven't heard back from Blumrich regarding his sources. I'll try e-mailing him again.
filkertom | Homepage | 12.01.04 - 5:09 am | #

I've handled DU in an engineering lab. It's heavy, as you'd expect. Apart from that, no biggie. Its toxic effects are way less than a lot of other metals -- arsenic or beryllium for example, now they're nasty. Its biological effects are well-known and thoroughly studied since they're the same as regular non-depleted or enhanced uranium. The research was done to determine its effects on people working on nuclear weapons and power station fuel and what precautions they needed to implement to protect them. This research has been going on for decades so the long-term effects are also well-known.

The DU scare is because of its association with the uranium boogie-man, not because it is really dangerous chemically. Nothing DU or regular uranium does to the body produces any effect reported as part of the list of symptoms classed as "Gulf War Syndrome" and post-mortem tests show that GW1 veterans and other vets exposed to DU don't have noticeable traces of uranium in their tissues; note that tests for uranium are very sensitive.
Robert Sneddon | 12.01.04 - 6:29 am | #

Thanks Robert, loser, and others for sane comments on the issue of DU. It's amazing how the radioactive boogeyman can get people so excited, it reminds me of all the fevor created by officials talking about dirty bombs like it was Hiroshima recreated. IDIOTS. "well if you stand there for 30 years there may be some cancerous side effects..."

For those still griping about Agent Orange, yeah, DOD and the VA fucked up with compensation, but the fact is that Viet Cong ambushes and attacks on firebases and in the delta went down 80 percent when there was no vegetation to hide in. The same composition was being used on US household lawns because in minute doses, no one was getting visibly sick or dieing. Yeah that doesn't make it right but the point is, not everything is a deliberate government conspiracy and GWI and DU are not Agent Orange repeats. Be skeptics not wacko conspiracy theorists.
Al | 12.01.04 - 8:12 am | #

"Then provide a more proximate cause behind the increases in cancer, birth deformity, et al., in Iraq shown in Erich Blumrich's Flash animation?"

Diesel fuel exhaust has orders of magnitude more mutagenic effect than DU. When there is a burning hulk of a tank destroyed by DU, guess what is burning. Diesel fuel.
Njorl | 12.01.04 - 9:35 am | #

DU give off alpha radiation. Alpha radiation does not penetrate skin. DU munitions vaporize a large portion of their mass on impact. Now you have DU dust particles in the air. You breathe in a shitload of them, they are in your lungs. They radiate the hell out of you from the inside.

So yeah,unless you inhale a DU plate, it's not going to give you any problems. handling DU munitions shouldn't be an issue either, but if you're in the M1 when it fires, a little bit of the shell vaporizes when it leaves, so you slowly build up DU dust in the cabin. And cleaning up after friendly fire, and hauling away destroyed tanks, you are exposed to a ton of DU dust.

Half life isn't an issue. The type of radiation, it's properties, and it's