U.S. Soldiers Are Sick of It (depleted uranium poisoning)

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2006/08/71585


It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.

Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.

-snip-

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.

"We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. "The doctors said, 'It's all in your head.' "

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.

But the medic knew something the others didn't. Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.

"We got on the Internet," Reed said, "and we started researching depleted uranium."

Then they contacted The New York Daily News, which paid for sophisticated urine tests available only overseas.

Then they hired a lawyer.

-snip-

He has mentioned depleted uranium to his VA doctors, who say he suffers from a series of "non-related conditions." He knows he was exposed to DU. "A lot of guys went trophy-hunting, grabbing bayonets, helmets, stuff that was in the vehicles that were destroyed by depleted uranium. My guys were rooting around in it. I was trying to get them out of the vehicles."

No one in the military talked to him about depleted uranium, he said. His knowledge, like Reed's, is self-taught from the internet. Unlike Reed, he has not gone to war over it. He doesn't feel up to the fight. There is no known cure for what ails him, and so no possible victory in battle.

He'd really just like to feel normal again. And he knows of others who feel the same.

"I was an artillery scout, these are folks who are in pretty good shape. Your Rangers, your Special Forces guys, they're in as good as shape as a professional athlete.

"Then we come back and we're all sick."

They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time, with no hope for relief from a multitude of miseries that has no name.
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depleted uranium poisoning is one of the worst crimes the bushmilhousegang neo cons have committed

may all of them die miserable deaths

There is no way to get rid of all the radiation it gives off.

Its only real emission is alpha particles, which are short range and cannot penetrate human skin. The primary danger of it is from its properties as a heavy metal. You could get sick from radiation if you had enough of the stuff in your body, but by the time you accumulated enough of a dose to be noticible, you'd probably be dead from heavy metal poisoning. Like most heavy metals, depleted uranium has teratogenic, carcinogenic, and neurotoxic properties completely apart from radiative output.

Oh, and if it's true that the Dutch found noticible radiation in the abandoned train station, there's probably something else in there besides depleted uranium. Alpha particles can only travel up to a few centimeters from their emitter, and won't even register on many simpler radiation detectors.

and still losing Iraq

:dem: :kick:

When depleted uranium was introduced as both an ordinance and part of armament defense, the US Army commissioned an Army Medical Official to study the use and the 'clean up and removal' of depleted uranium from the battlefield environment.

What the official found was that there was no way to 'clean it up' and the danger of using it was 'unavoidable.' Of course his report was classified and deep-sixed, and he was discharged from the military.

Iraq is totally irradiated by spent Depleted Uranium ordinance and destroyed vehicles and armament. It will continue to kill those exposed to it for decades to come.

And this is the government which 'supports the troops.' Heartbreaking.

after battle, etc., etc. which the neo con military totally ignored and didn't do at all.

DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

if that's possible and it is possible

A hell of a lot worse!!! :mad:

:kick:

will have to be cared for for the rest of their lives . . .

they are also created a whole generation of children who lost a father or a mother in a "war of choice" who will likely be pretty pissed as they grow older and learn the truth -- that their parents died for oil and corporate profit . . .

... upon their return to the US to avoid the massive medical care costs that would have been incurred if they remained in the military.

The George H.W. Bush Administration was warned about the Depleted Uranium effects on deployed soldiers, and NOTHING was done to help the returning soldiers except to get them out of the service pronto.

an astonishing large amount and the rest of them are sick