RE: [CPEO-MEF] Digest for cpeo-military@igc.topica.com, issue 676

[dickboyd@aol.com]

This is from the Wall Street Journal regarding depleted uranium. What is
the true story of depleted uranium?


U.S. Debates Dangers
Of Depleted Uranium

By JOHN J. FIALKA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Sometime next year, Lt. Col. William H. Hedges, a 43-year-old Army
training planner, will come to Baltimore for his regular medical
checkup.

Most people would find nothing regular about it at all. A team of
doctors and scientists will examine his kidneys, his blood, his brain,
his urine and his semen for the effects of depleted uranium, a
controversial metal that the military uses for some of its antitank
weapons. As the result of a "friendly fire" incident during the Gulf
War, Mr. Hedges carries at least 15 BB-size pieces of depleted-uranium
shrapnel in his body.

That makes him a walking laboratory in the debate over depleted uranium,
which some Iraqi critics and some U.S. veterans groups have attacked as
an environmental menace created by the American military. At stake in
the controversy are both the battle for international opinion concerning
Iraq, and whether the Pentagon may eventually be forced to abandon the
use of depleted uranium -- its most effective tank penetrator.

For years, soldiers and civilians in several countries have complained
of various medical ailments resulting from the use of "DU" in battles
from the Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo. Now, as the U.S. prepares for a
second war in Iraq, where both U.S. tanks and A-10 aircraft would carry
DU rounds, DU complaints are growing. In October, Iraqi doctors in
southern Iraq showed U.S. congressmen evidence of almost a tenfold
increase in birth defects, which they and Iraqi officials ascribe to the
spread of radiation and poisons in the environment from DU weapons used
11 years ago.

[FOR THE FULL STORY SEE:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1041460835983280953,00.html ]

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