[CPEO-MEF] Depleted uranium: a killer disaster? by TRAVIS DUNN

[Shanti Renfrew <autodelete66@yahoo.com>]

>  http://www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=1687
>
>  Depleted uranium: a killer disaster?
>
>  TRAVIS DUNN  BALTIMORE (December 28, 2002)
>
>  Dr. Doug Rokke has a disturbing habit of laughing when he should
>>probably be crying.    He laughs when he talks about battlefields
>>contaminated with radioactive waste.
> >He can't stop laughing when he talks about what he claims is a
> >massive government cover-up. And he keeps laughing when he talks
about
> >his health problems, which he attributes to deliberate Army
negligence,
> >and which will likely kill him.
>
>  Talking to Rokke on the telephone is disturbing enough without him
> >laughing about such horrors. A strange echo accompanies every
> utterance.
> >When this bizarre sound is pointed out to him, Rokke says he isn't
> >surprised: he claims his phone has been tapped for years.
>
>  It may be tempting to dismiss Rokke as a crank or a conspiracy
> theorist,
> >but Rokke is 35-year-veteran of the U.S. Army, and he isn't just a
> >disgruntled grunt. Rokke ran the U.S. Army's depleted uranium project

> in
> >the mid-90s, and he was in charge of the Army's effort to clean up
> >depleted uranium after the Persian Gulf War. And he directed the
>  Edwin R. Bradley Radiological Laboratories at Fort McClellan, Ala.
>
>  Yet if you type Rokke's name into a search engine on any
>  military website, you will draw a blank, as if he doesn't exist.
>
>  If you read through hundreds of pages of government documents and
> >transcriptions of countless government hearings regarding the
military
> >use of depleted uranium, not once will you come across his name.
>
>  That is more than a little unusual, since Rokke and his team were at
> the
> >forefront of trying to understand the potential health and
> environmental
> >hazards posed by the use of depleted uranium, or DU, on the
> battlefield.
>
>  "We were the best they ever had," Rokke claims. He's not bragging.
He's
> >laughing again.  The use of DU in combat is a fairly new innovation.
It
> >was used for the first time in the Persian Gulf War as the crucial
> >component of armor-piercing, tank-busting munitions.
>
>   These munitions are tipped with DU darts that ignite after being
> fired.
> >The shells are so heavy and hot that they easily rip through steel.
>
>  "It's like taking a pencil and pushing it through paper," Rokke said.

>   This uranium "pencil" then explodes inside its target, creating a
> >deadly "firestorm."
>
>  As an anti-tank weapon, "these things are great," Rokke said. They
> enable
> >U.S. troops to quickly take out enemy tanks at long-range.
>
>  According to the Web site of the Deployment Health Support
Directorate,
> >DU is "a by-product of the process by which uranium is enriched to
> >produce reactor fuel and nuclear weapons components."
>
>  In other words, DU is low-level nuclear waste. According to the same
> Web
> >site, DU can also contain trace amounts of
>  "neptunium, plutonium, americium, technitium-99 and uranium- 236."
>
>  A total of 320 tons of DU munitions were fired during the Gulf War.
> >Rokke's job was to figure out how to clean up
> >U.S. tanks, the unfortunate victims of "friendly fire," which had
>  been blown apart by DU rounds.
>
>  After years of this kind of this work in Kuwait and Saudi he reached
a
>  conclusion in 1996.  He told the Army brass that DU was so dangerous
> that
> >it had to be banned from combat immediately.
>
>  That conclusion, Rokke said, cost him his career.

[THIS ARTICLE CAN BE VIEWED AT:
http://www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=1687 ]

>         Where and how much depleted uranium has been fired?
>
> >>>>>http://www.laka.org/teksten/Vu/where-how-much-01/main.html

>
________________________________________________________________________

>

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~