conspiracy

‘I only discovered indirectly in September 1991 that depleted uranium had been used on the battlefield. I was horrified. When scientists conduct experiments using this material, we dress like astronauts. Our soldiers had no protection. And this attack could have potentially exposed the entire population of the Gulf region. Soil samples from Iraq show radiation levels more than 17 times the acceptable level.’ [Asaf Durakovic, Clinical Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington]

Dr Durakovic began to campaign on behalf of his patients but soon ran into a brick wall. No-one wanted to listen to his story. The records and lab samples of his patients were repeatedly lost. The two doctors who did the tests were fired. His car was sabotaged on two occasions and he began to receive anonymous threats.

Bristow and Purcell Lee arrived home ‘to find we had been called traitors by a senior Cabinet Minister [for going to an international conference on depleted uranium in Baghdad]’ and that their homes had been raided by Ministry of Defence Police. All computers, discs and files had been removed in search of a document which showed that the Medical Director of MAP was liaising with Porton Down Chemical Weapons Establishment over concern that DU was a contributory cause of the veterans’ plight. For eight years MAP refused to countenance such a scenario and were still denying it to the veterans themselves. In June this year, when the plight of Australian Gulf veterans was commanding extensive media coverage, all computer discs and files relating to Gulf War illnesses were stolen from the home of campaigner Philip Steele. Nothing else was missing.

Professor Asaf Durakovic... is one of the world’s leading experts on radiation, and sees a familiar pattern. ‘Any doctor who becomes involved in this [depleted uranium] is pressurized, fired; records and samples go missing...’

Ray Bristow, of the British Gulf Veterans and Families’ Association, echoes Durakovic: ‘Dosimeters (which read radiation levels) issued to troops were at first denied as being issued at all, then we were told the records were lost, then that the readings were all normal – but no-one was allowed to see them. Medical records of Gulf War vets regularly go missing.’

"After everything I've seen, everything I've done, it became very clear to me that you just can't take radioactive wastes from one nation and just throw it into another nation. It's wrong. It's simply wrong."

Depleted uranium is so cheap and effective - 350 tonnes was used in weapons in the first Gulf War and possibly 500 tonnes in this year's Iraq conflict - that Rokke says the US is reluctant to do proper studies of veterans or Iraqi civilians. "It's the arrogance. Once they acknowledge that there are actual health effects of depleted uranium munitions, then they can't use them any more; the house of cards falls apart."

The problem you have with uranium munitions is that it contaminates air, water, and soil. It causes immediate health effects, within 72 hours. And there's no question about it, because it happened to me and my staff, and my team, and the friendly-fire casualties. And they refused to provide medical care for the U.S. casualties. And they're not doing it now [in the current War in Iraq].

On April 14th, last week, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy Secretary of Defence, in charge of deployment medicine for the United States Department of Defence, deliberately and wilfully stated to the world that they will not clean up uranium contamination in the Gulf, caused by Gulf War II, and they will not provide medical care.