DU-Public Meeting : Melbourne Indymedia

Public Meeting On effects of DU will be held at 7pm Tuesday 24 June 2003 Knox Centre (Catholic Offices) Lansdowne St, East Melbourne.

Speaker will be Dr. Douglas Rokke Ex -US Army Major sacked by the Penatgon for telling the truth on Depeleted Uranium

More Info

Phone 613 9659 3582 • info@vicpeace.org

http://www.vicpeace.org

Concern about depleted uranium damage in Iraq

The World Today - Wednesday, 18 June , 2003 12:34:03

Reporter: Edmond Roy

PETER CAVE: As the citizens of Iraq try to rebuild their war-ravaged country, there's another potential problem looming. Depleted uranium from munitions used during the war by Coalition troops is scattered around the nation and the Coalition has no plans to clean it up.

The Pentagon has denied that depleted uranium poses any danger to civilians and has quoted several studies to support its contention, but that's by no means a universal view.

Significantly, one of the biggest critics of the American policy on depleted uranium is a former US Army scientist who was in charge of cleaning up radioactive waste after the first Gulf War.

Doug Rokke served as a physicist with the Third US Army Medical Command, and he spoke to Edmond Roy.

DOUG ROKKE: Well in the whole areas we know that the health effects not only on the US forces that participated in Gulf War I, the US Department of Veteran Affairs, in a report that was issued in last September of 2002, confirmed that over 221,000 of America's sons and daughters that participated in Gulf War I are now suffering serious adverse health effects, to the point where they're on permanent disability and well over 10,000 is dead.

But we're seeing those same proportions in all the Coalition forces, but in the areas where the uranium munitions were used and all the contamination was left, and all the other contamination was left from the total destruction of an infrastructure, we're seeing absolutely devastating health effects on those populations, both the military but more important the non-combatants, the women and children of the region.

EDMOND ROY: So why hasn't this been recognised by the authorities?

DOUG ROKKE: The overall cost for cleanup, it took my team of, it brought 100 individuals, you know, with specialised training in this, to cleanup 24 friendly-fire vehicles during Gulf War I. This is from March of 1991 through June of 1991, to ship those back to the United States for processing, and then it took another three years in a facility at Barnwell South, Carolina, the only facility of its type in the world, a multi-million dollar facility, three years to clean up those 24 vehicles for processing.

So what it is is an astronomical cost. What has happened is the United States and England, and again Australia by connection with this, has deliberately decided to take solid radioactive waste in the uranium munitions, for example each round fired by an Abrams tank is over 4,500 grams of solid uranium. There's no nation on earth that I can see having done all this work that has the right to take solid radioactive waste, even a pound much less hundreds and thousands of tonnes, and throw it in somebody else's backyard and walk away and refuse to clean up the environment and refuse to provide medical care, as they've done.

EDMOND ROY: And this is what's happened in Afghanistan, in the Balkans, in Iraq, and that's what you're claiming?

DOUG ROKKE: Absolutely, it's no doubt about it. We have the medical evidence from Afghanistan, Doctor Asaf Durakovic, US, actually a US Army Colonel, was a US Army expert on this, has measured the uranium content in the urine of the Afghan refugees at five to seven times the permissible level, and there is no uranium in the natural environment, so it came from the weapons that were used.

In Iraq it's the same thing, Okinawa it's the same thing, Vieques, Puerto Rico in the United States was shot up with uranium munitions with absolutely devastating health effects on that population.

EDMOND ROY: What sort of pressures are you under personally? After all, you were part of the military machine at one point and now you've, as they put it, turned?

DOUG ROKKE: Well, that's correct. I don't view it as turning, I view it as completing my job to do what I was assigned, to ensure that everything is taken care of. The pressures have been lost jobs, direct threats, direct assaults and everything else in order to stop this effort.

Again it goes back to the Los Alamos Memorandum that I was given in March 1991. It was very clear: we need to sustain the use of uranium munitions and therefore you lie in your reports about the health and environmental effects. That continued on.

In the December of 1992, United States Senate directed to the United States Army and Environmental Policy Institute to study uranium munitions effects, and in that directive it said very clearly the US Military and the Department of Defence must figure out ways to reduce the toxicity of DU munitions, however at the same time we don't care because we're going to always use them.

Again, the purpose of war is to kill and destroy, and you use the most effective tool and the individuals that lead wars don't care about the health and environmental effects that occur immediately or for posterity.

PETER CAVE: Dr Doug Rokke, an American military physicist in charge of the cleanup or radioactive material in Kuwait after the first or second, depending on your point of view, Gulf War. He was speaking to Edmond Roy.