KOSOVO AND DEPLETED
URANIUM WEAPONS

INTRODUCTION

Christians have always believed that pestilence and disease would characterize "The End of Days." That's what the Bible says! Most Christians, however, have probably never considered the possibility that many of these diseases might be man-made ones. This appears to be what has happened insofar as Gulf War Syndrome, AIDS, Ebola and countless other "new" diseases are concerned.

Take, for example, "Gulf War Syndrome." The government denies that it exists - and if it does exist, it resulted from the use by the Iraqi military of chemical and biological agents during the Gulf War. But a growing number of scientists throughout the world now believe that not only does "Gulf War Syndrome" exist, but that it hasn't resulted from the use by the Iraqis of chemical and biological weapons, but from the use by the American military of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. It's not the Iraqis who are responsible for "Gulf War Syndrome," but the Americans. The Pentagon has issued a fumbling series of denials, cover-ups and finally partial admissions that Gulf War Syndrome exists. Yet it has omitted any mention of radioactive weapons. This omission is no accident. [Evidence has also surfaced that some cases of Gulf War Syndrome can be traced to anthrax vaccines "boosted" by the unlicensed adjuvant, squaline. This is the thesis advanced by Dr. Pamela Asa. Please see the May, 1999 issue of Vanity Fair, "The Pentagon's Toxic Secret" by Gary Matsumoto, pg. 82.]

Nonetheless, the truth has surfaced - again, no thanks to the American elite media. (Please see our report on the Mass Media.) What put scientific researchers on to this was the mysterious presence of higher than normal readings for U-235 in Kuwait and Iraq after the end of the Gulf War. The question naturally presented itself, what could account for these readings? No atomic warheads had been used during the war. Then in 1993, Eric Hoskins produced a report for a Harvard research group which found that 40 tons of DU had been dispersed in Iraq and Kuwait by American forces using depleted uranium weapons during the war - and it was this that accounted for the above normal reading for the presence of U-235 in Kuwait and Iraq. [Since then scientists have revised their estimates to over three hundred tons.]

DU WEAPONS IN YUGOSLAVIA AND KOSOVO

Now these higher than average readings for the presence of U-235 are showing up in Serbia and Kosovo. It seems that wherever the U.S. military goes, these higher than normal measurements for fissionable material go with it. For example, on April 10th, Greek experts registered an increase in levels of toxic substances in the atmosphere of Greece which included toxins from Allied use of radioactive depleted uranium shells. Antipas Ministries' reporter in Moscow, Boris Denisov, reports that in an interview for the Russian publication Novosti, Dimitri Yablokov , a well-known Russian ecologist and president of the Center for Ecological Policy said that American warplanes using armor-piercing shells with cores made from depleted uranium are responsible. Prof. Christos Zerefos, a member of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and director of the World Center for Ozone Cartography, said that increased readings for these airborne toxins began showing up only one day after the start of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia. They have since spread into Albania, Macedonia, Italy, Austria and Hungary - and it should be noted in connection with the spread of depleted uranium over this area, that DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Yablokov's findings insofar as the American military's use of DU weapons in Yugoslavia parallel the findings of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in his book, The Fire This Time (which describes in detail the American military's use of these weapons during the Gulf War). Clark's report on the use of DU in the Gulf War was echoed by a similar report which appeared in the London Independent in April of 1991 [which was leaked to the paper by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA)]. The report described the potential problems associated with the presence of radioactive dust from DU weapons spreading over the battlefields and getting into the food chain and water supplies. Like Hoskins' Harvard report, the UKAEA report spoke of a residue of 40 tons of fissionable material which had been left behind on the battlefields of Southern Iraq.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE A-10 "WARTHOG"

Meanwhile, back in New York, the "International Action Center," a group that opposes the use of depleted-uranium weapons, called the Pentagon's decision to use A-10 "Warthog" jets against targets in Serbia -

"... a danger to the people and environment of the entire Balkans."

The A-10s were the anti-tank weapon of choice in the 1991 war against Iraq. It carries a GAU-8/A Avenger 30 millimeter seven-barrel cannon capable of firing 4,200 rounds per minute. During the Gulf War it fired 30 mm rounds reinforced with depleted uranium.

Sara Flounders, a contributing author of the 1997 book Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium and the Co-Director of the "International Action Center," writes that -

"Warthogs fired roughly 940,000 rounds of DU shells during the Gulf War. More than 600,000 pounds of radioactive waste was left in the Gulf Region after the war. And DU weapons in smaller number were already used by NATO troops during the bombing of Serbian areas of Bosnia in 1995."

John Catalinotto, a spokesperson for the "Depleted Uranium Education Project" of the "International Action Center," and an editor of Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, said the use of DU weapons in Yugoslavia

"... adds a new dimension to the war NATO is fighting in Yugoslavia and Kosovo."

Kathleen Sullivan, in a front page article for the San Francisco Examiner entitled "Uranium bullets on NATO holsters," echoes Catalinotto's concerns. She writes:

"... the use of depleted uranium in combat is a troubling prospect to some veteran groups, which worry that the Pentagon will fail - once again - to issue warnings about the danger posed by its hazardous dust and debris."

DEPLETED URANIUM - WHAT IS IT?

Depleted uranium is a by-product from the production of enriched fuel for nuclear reactors and atomic warheads. It's used to manufacture shells and bullets that have an extraordinary ability to penetrate armored plate for tanks and other vehicles. Depleted uranium is composed mainly of the uranium isotope U-238; it's called "depleted" because it has a lower than normal content of the isotope U-235, which is the fissionable material. Depleted uranium has one very "excellent" property insofar as weapons of war are concerned: it is extremely dense - and so much so that when compared with iron, steel and alloys common to the making of armor, its analogous to comparing steel with butter - which gives DU its penetrating power.

Unfortunately - as one would expect - it also possesses another property which is not so desirable: depleted uranium spontaneously burns on impact, creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter, small enough to be inhaled. At least seventy percent of the uranium in these weapons is released in this form on impact, and these tiny particles travel as a ceramic aerosol long distances when airborne; they penetrate the human body and accumulate in the liver and kidneys, eventually generating cancer.

And does the government show any concern with regard to this? Evidently not! The "killing power" of depleted uranium weapons is too great for the government to allow "peaceniks" to "outlaw" its use in battle. Piers Wood, a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information and a retired Army lieutenant colonel, dismisses concerns about the health and environmental effects of depleted uranium. Echoing the thinking of the U.S. military, he says that -

"... everything in life is a trade-off."

And that pretty much sums up the concern of the elites insofar as the sons and daughters of the working class who have to fight the elite's wars. Piers goes on to say -

"Depleted uranium is wonderful stuff. It turns tanks into Swiss cheese."

Rosalie Bertell bristles at this kind of reasoning. She says that such thinking is extremely short-sighted. Depleted uranium is highly toxic to humans. Bertell, president of the "International Institute of Concern for Public Health," called the use of DU weapons in Yugoslavia a "war crime" which should be denounced.

HEALTH EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS

Those who come in contact with depleted uranium experience headaches, and amnesia in addition to disturbances in liver and kidney function (which is exactly what Gulf War soldiers who experience "Gulf War Syndrome" complain of - and not only American soldiers, but Iraqi soldiers who have come in contact with the American depleted uranium weapons). In addition, increasing numbers of Iraqi children in Southern Iraq (a major battlefield) are now experiencing such symptoms, and many have fallen ill with leukemia. Finally, it should be noted that depleted uranium causes gene mutations which show up in the offspring of those who come in contact with it. Once in the body, it is impossible to get rid of.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of the "National Gulf War Resource Center," warns:

"In Yugoslavia, it's expected that depleted uranium will be fired in agricultural areas, places where livestock graze and where crops are grown, thereby introducing the specter of possible contamination of the food chain."

Flounders writes:

"I first became aware of the dangerous radioactive impact of depleted-uranium weapons in 1991 when I was researching for Ramsey Clark's book on the Gulf War, The Fire This Time.

"Gulf War veterans and their families are desperate to understand what has happened to their health since they returned from the Gulf. This book (i.e., Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium ) attempts to explain the uses of depleted uranium in weapons and to present what is already known about exposure to low-level radiation and its threat to the environment and to all of humanity.

"Most important, this collection of articles is a resource for those ready to challenge the long history of government cover-ups and denials regarding military toxins and poisons.

"... Knowing the dangers, the military-industrial complex has moved straight ahead designing, testing and manufacturing a new generation of weapons using radioactive waste material. These articles expose the dangers of low-level radiation, they demonstrate that ... 'depleted' uranium weapons are radioactive and highly toxic. They trace a history of government lies and cover-ups regarding the dangers of radioactivity, with policies that have denied compensation to veterans ... hurt most by these dangers. They show the Pentagon's motives for using DU weapons, the military industry's drive to manufacture them, and the passion of both to cover up the truth.

"The chapters by Helen Caldicott, Michio Kaku, Leonard A. Dietz, Rosalie Bertell and Jay M. Gould scientifically delineate the perils of low-level radiation and meticulously document the extensive knowledge the military possessed about DU's long-term consequences long before the Gulf War. Dietz explains with mathematical detail how uranium metal burns rapidly on impact and forms tiny airborne particles that can travel tens of miles to be inhaled or ingested into the body where they lodge in vital organs.

HUMAN GUINEA PIGS

The report from the International Action Center continues:

"Kaku writes,

'Our troops were used as human guinea pigs for the Pentagon. Thousands must have walked through almost invisible clouds of uranium dioxide mist, not realizing that micro-sized particles were entering into their lungs'.

"Gould links increases in cancers and auto-immune diseases to the impact of low-level radiation on the population surrounding nuclear weapons complexes, test sites and nuclear reactors. Bertell lists the major scientific studies that have defined the danger for many years. A look at the experiences of earlier victims of U.S. war preparations helps expose how cover-ups, stonewalling, and fraudulent promises of compensation for unfortunate mistakes are standard operating procedures.

"Pat Broudy's husband was one of the approximately eight hundred thousand GIs purposely exposed to nuclear radiation during atomic tests in the Southwest or in the Pacific. Her article exposes the Defense Department's criminal cover-up ... Despite Congressional hearings, media coverage and special legislation, only 455 Atomic Veterans ... received compensation. And only seventeen families have been compensated of the twenty-three thousand Americans, mainly prisoners, poor people or disabled people, who were directly injected without their knowledge or consent with highly radioactive materials since 1945.

"Glenn Alcalay describes this catastrophe in his article. Every piece of information in this whole criminal history had to be leaked or pried out by independent efforts. The government has never willingly provided any relevant information. It is hidden under "top secret" classifications. How can we expect anything different from government studies of Gulf War Syndrome or DU? Dolores Lymburner exposes a leaked Army Environmental Policy Institute report that acknowledges

'... if DU enters the body it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological'.

"With thorough documentation, Dan Fahey explains how the density, speed and impact of DU weapons greatly increased the kill range of U.S. tanks. He also shows just how well the military planners understood DU's dangers. Former Army Nurse Carol Picou, who volunteered for front-line duty, describes her horror at passing the thousands of burning Iraqi vehicles many destroyed by DU projectiles on the "highway of death." Then she describes the devastating deterioration and ruin of her own health and of the others in her unit from contact with the toxins in the region, as well as the government's stonewalling and denial of responsibility.

THE "BIG LIE"

Flounders continues:

"In the Gulf War, Iraqi casualties were enormous. Over one hundred thousand troops were killed and eighty-five thousand captured. In January 1992 a Greenpeace investigation estimated that ninety thousand of the three hundred thousand injured Iraqi troops had died. In contrast, the U.S. military suffered 147 combat deaths, more than half due to friendly fire. The low casualties were the selling point of these new, high-tech weapons. U.S. troops had become seemingly invincible.

"That is the lie. The ninety thousand chronically ill U.S. soldiers make up the real casualty figures. Tens of thousands of British, French, Saudi, Egyptian, Australian, Canadian and other soldiers who served in the Gulf in early 1991 are also sick. As John Catalinotto explains, 147 combat deaths is a very important figure to the military planners and to the major corporations who profit from military production. Lower casualty figures may mean less domestic resistance to future conflicts."

"Today in discussing the possible causes of the Gulf War Syndrome that affects over 90,000 U.S. veterans, there is an elephant in the room. The entire debate is taking place with everyone pretending the elephant doesn't exist (i.e., that DU weapons aren't the cause of Gulf War Syndrome). This book (i.e., Metal of Dishonor) is about the elephant ... DU weapons make all others so much scrap metal, giving the U.S. military machine and military contractors a huge advantage. It matters little to the Pentagon in its race for unrestrained military dominance in every type of warfare that this new weapon not only kills those it targets, it poisons soldiers who handle it, civilians for hundreds of miles surrounding the battlefields who breathe the air and drink the water, and unborn generations.

"... Gulf War Syndrome's symptoms chronic fatigue, chronic headache and joint pain, gastrointestinal distress, insomnia and memory loss make holding a job, stabilizing a family and obtaining medical help much more difficult. Many thousands of seriously ill and demoralized, disoriented or homeless veterans are not part of the count of those suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. That one third of the homeless in the U.S. today are veterans speaks to the hidden costs of the Gulf and Vietnam wars."

WAR IS AT THE HEART OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

Catalinotto says that what all this does is expose what America's defense contractors and military establishment really think about rank-and-file GIs. In America, war means money - lots of it - and to the corporations which profit from war, our soldiers are nothing more than an expendable item. The Pentagon and the military corporations clearly consider contamination of their own soldiers as an acceptable cost.

Indeed, the largest corporations in the U.S. today - corporations like Lockheed Martin, Boeing (now merged with McDonnell Douglas), General Electric, Raytheon and AT&T - are those corporations whose very existence depends on military contracts - contracts that mean the difference between a healthy U.S. economy and an unhealthy one. These are the corporations - together with the oil industry - around which all our other corporations pivot and feed into, including the computer and high-tech . Take these corporations away (i.e., those corporations that make up the defense industry), and the U.S. economy, the economy that makes the rest of the world "roll and go," will fold.

There are, of course, those who say that such is not the case anymore; that with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. economy has moved to a "peace-time" footing. However, that's not the case at all. The U.S. military machine remains stronger than all of its potential competitors put together.

True, the military budget has been cut, but it's been cut at the expense of military readiness, active U.S. divisions, obsolete military bases, and so forth; however, that portion of the budget that has to do with "hardware procurement" - i.e., military contracts that feed into Lockheed Martin, Boeing, GE, etc. - has not been cut at all. If anything, it's increased We may not have enough troops to deploy, sailors to man our fleets, and airmen to fly our planes, but military procurement has continued on producing weapons of war without missing a beat. The economy depends on it. Indeed, President Clinton has pledged a forty-percent increase in funds for new weapons development, and Congress has even voted more money than the president asked for in addition to extending the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. Weapons are America's most profitable export items.

DEATH IS BIG BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES

America has become a merchant of death. American weapons are flooding the world arms market. Indeed, U.S. defense contractors provide seventy-five percent of all weapons sold worldwide. Needless to say, Desert Storm was a great advertisement for the these weapons. Death is big business in the United States! In his Farewell Address to the nation in 1961, President Eisenhower admitted as much when he alluded to its by then nearly -

"... total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government."

And that was 1961 - almost forty years ago! Today war is even more central to the American economy. There's an old saying in the United States; almost everyone's heard it:

"What America needs from time to time is a good war in order to keep the economy healthy. War is what got the U.S. out of the Depression, and war is what has kept it hopping ever since."

And there's more truth to that old saying than many would care to admit. It's not just a joke. There's a lot of reality to it. As a result, in the United States it is imperative that the defense industry be kept humming; and in order to do so, war must (1) be justified and (2) made palatable to the American public.

(1) Justifying War

Until the fall of Communism and the old Soviet Union, America's war industries were justified as necessary in America's battle with "godless Communism." But with the fall of Communism, new reasons had to be found, and a consensus began to develop around "humanitarian interventions" - i.e., interventions (wars) designed to bring the blessings of the "New World Order" to the countries of the earth at the point of a gun.

But to history buffs, it all sounds strangely familiar - especially to those who are old enough to remember the justifications given by Hitler's Third Reich for its "interventions" in Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc. at the beginning of the Second World War. Jules Lobel and Michael Ratner remember. They write:

"On September 23, 1938 Hitler wrote to Prime Minister Chamberlain that ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia had been 'tortured,' that 120,000 had been 'forced to flee the country,' that the 'security of more than 3,000,000 human beings was at stake,' and that they had been 'prevented from realizing also the right of people to self-determination'. Hitler was laying the basis for humanitarian intervention; a claim to intervene militarily in a sovereign state because of claimed human rights abuses. Although NATO is obviously not Hitler, the example illustrates the mischief caused when countries assert the right to use force on such a basis: it is often a pretext for acting in their own geo-political interests and it sets a dangerous precedent--other governments can do the same.

"Hitler's assertions were not the first time a county has used humanitarian excuses to mask social, political and territorial goals. It is a frequent occurrence: whether it was the Russians in the Balkans in the 19th century, the Japanese intervening in Manchuria or the United States in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama. International law professors Thomas Franck and Nigel Rodely concluded in a 1973 study that '[i]n very few, if any, instances has the right [to humanitarian intervention] been asserted under circumstances that appear more humanitarian than self-centered and power seeking'. They further pointed out that the failure of countries to intervene when real humanitarian atrocities take place--such as those in Nazi Germany, South Africa under apartheid, and Indonesia (and today we could add the Tutsis, the Kurds, the Serbs in the Krajina and others)--should make claims of humanitarian intervention 'highly suspect'. They conclude that countries have no legal right of humanitarian intervention under international law.

"This historical background should make us very skeptical regarding current U.S. and NATO claims that the war against Serbia is to stop 'ethnic cleansing' or even 'genocide'. President Clinton says the bombings were necessary to prevent a 'humanitarian catastrophe,' to end 'instability in the Balkans' and to prevent a wider war'.

"But the evidence is otherwise. The NATO countries, as the historical record predicts, appear to be acting primarily in their own self-interests. To date the bombings have created the very evils President Clinton claims he is trying to prevent: over 500,000 refugees have fled Kosovo. Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and even Bosnia are being destabilized and Russia is threatening a wider war.

"The administration claims that Serbia was planning this ethnic cleansing and it would have occurred even without the NATO attacks. But even if this were the case, it was the NATO attacks that gave Serbia the opportunity to carry out its alleged plans, particularly in a circumstance when all of the unarmed monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were withdrawn. Nor should it be overlooked that the bombing itself probably caused many of the refugee to flee their homes. NATO had to have realized that its massive bombing campaign had the potential to create a serious humanitarian crisis, yet incredibly it had made no preparations for housing, feeding or caring for the refugees. Had humanitarian concerns been at the forefront of NATO policy or even a serious concern, such plans would have been a priority.

"If the U.S. and NATO really believed that Serbia was planning 'ethnic cleansing', then the bombing was the absolute worst strategy; it was almost guaranteed to bring about that result. If the goal was to really prevent expulsions of people from Kosovo there were other peaceful alternatives that should have been undertaken. A sticking point in the negotiations with Yugoslavia was the deployment of 28,000 NATO troops in Kosovo; a compromise could have been worked out by making that force an international force of the United Nations or one that at least included Russian troops. Support for the Kosovo Liberation Army could have ended. Had these and other peaceful means been employed there is a fair chance that the human tragedy unfolding in the Balkans could have been avoided.

"Once again it appears that the claim of humanitarian intervention is a pretext for countries acting in their own self-interest and for their own geo-political reasons. Western countries are insuring that it is they, not Serbia and Russia, who will be the dominant force in the Balkans; NATO is pushing Europe's borders into the edge of Asia. A NATO military base in the region cannot be far behind. Also at play here is the broader underlying interest of the United States to mold the world to its will through a policy of coercive diplomacy. Under this doctrine, when the United States tells another country to do something, it must do so or suffer the consequences. That is what it told Yugoslavia: sign the Rambouillet agreement or get bombed. It is not a way to negotiate and certainly not a way to create a safer world. That is why after World War II, the nations of the world through the Charter of the United Nations mandated that only the Security Council could authorize the non-defensive use of force: unlike the current U.S./NATO bombing, force was to be used in the interest of the international community and not individual states."

No, the war in Serbia and Kosovo is being prosecuted for reasons other than "humanitarian concerns" for the Muslims of Kosovo (for whom the elites in the board rooms of General Electric, Shell Oil, Standard Oil, Boeing, etc. care little or nothing for) not the least of which is to placate the Muslims of the Middle East and the Caspian Sea areas, and to inject additional funds into our war industries - again, the very industries that make the rest of our economy "tick."

That's one way of keeping the stock market rising and the economy healthy. So long as U.S. Treasury Bonds can be sold (by sucking money into the economy from the rest of the world) to "fix" the enormous deficits that our military adventures are in danger of creating, this kind of thing can go on for a very long time. Roosevelt did it during the Great Depression, and we've been doing it ever since using the Cold War as an excuse. War is the way that America has discovered for "evening out" or "flattening" the "economic cycle" - cycles which, before World War II, used to devastate our economy once every ten to twenty years with depressions and recessions that would make the 1990-91 recession look like a cake walk. No more! - thanks to war and our defense industries.

(2) Making War Palatable to
the American Public

The problem with all this, however, is that war has to be made palatable (or at least acceptable) to the American public. After all, it's not the sons and daughters of the elite that are going to do all the fighting, but the sons and daughters of working-class Americans. That's where depleted uranium comes in. It has become impossible for generals, in the interests of corporate profit, to send tens of thousands of youth directly into machine gun fire as they did in earlier wars - and it's here that the utility of depleted uranium comes into play: it keeps casualties down (while at the same time it greatly enhances American firepower - way beyond what it would be in the absence of this substance).

John Catalinotto explains that keeping combat deaths low is critical to military planners and to the major corporations which profit from military production. Lower casualty figures mean less domestic resistance to America's "humanitarian interventions" throughout the world - interventions that are necessary as a justification for America's war industries. Again, it's not so much that those who sit in the board rooms of General Electric, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. care very much for the fate of the sons and daughters of America's working class families as it is high casualty figures would mean opposition to such "interventions." The elites who sit on the boards of these corporations remember very well how close they came to "losing it" during the Vietnam War (as a result of civil unrest), and they don't want a repeat of that.

"High-intensity Conflict" utilizing high-tech weaponry and depleted uranium are Lockheed's and Boeing's answer to keeping casualty figures at an acceptable minimum. The forty-three-day war against Iraq in 1991 more than proved this to be the case. The Gulf War was the highest intensity conflict in military history, fought for control of the richest mineral reserves in the world. The U.S.-led coalition poured unprecedented volumes of firepower, money and technology including seven billion tons of military materiel into the Gulf area. They fought the war with an electronic battlefield of stealth bombers, satellites and cruise missiles, all of which depended in one degree or another on depleted uranium for "killing power" - the kind of "killing power" which can so devastate an enemy that the horror of it all makes him incapable of retaliation. To date, no other nation in the world has the sophistication to produce (on a practical level) DU weapons. Only the United States.

That's why the U.S. is interested in covering up the ill-effects of these weapons - and if that means stonewalling on their ill-effects (and even the existence of these weapons), so be it. The fact is, if the real danger of DU weapons ever became an open topic of debate, if the long-term illnesses, genetic deformities, and environmental damage caused by these weapons ever became issues, opposition to new military adventures would surely grow! - and what would that do to the "bottom line" of America's multinational corporations? No, we can't have that! - the U.S. economy is at stake!

MORE LIES AND INCONSISTENCIES

In the few instances where the U.S. has acknowledged the existence of these weapons, it has maintained that the danger from radiation poisoning is minimal. But inconsistencies in these denials are rampant. For example, Dr. Siegwart Guenther, a critic of DU weapons, attempted to bring a single spent DU bullet that he had collected from the battlefields of the Gulf War into Germany (a NATO ally and a lackey of U.S. / German corporate interests); but he was stopped by German customs and arrested for transporting radioactive material. What? But we have been told that DU weapons are safe; after all, a spent bullet? - what danger is that? It wasn't as if it was live ammunition. All this gives the lie to the Pentagon's assertions as to the "residual safety" of these weapons.

And more than that, it's interesting to note that DU weapons are made from the residue of "spent" uranium rods from nuclear reactors, etc. Now, if these rods are so safe, why is the United States government spending billions and billions of dollars to carve out a cave in the desert of New Mexico to store this material? Why not just dump them in a local land fill? We don't do that because they ARE dangerous - EXTREMELY dangerous. Yet Boeing, GE, Westinghouse, Lockheed, etc. would tell us that they are safe for our soldiers to handle, and that there are no lingering health risks to the inhabitants of those areas where these weapons have been used. Oh, really? The inconsistency here is mind-boggling!

Some scientists have proposed alternatives to depleted uranium weapons, claiming that fast, hard missiles could be made at greater expense by using other, perhaps less toxic "heavy metals," such as tungsten or tungsten alloy. But these weapons would be too expensive to be used on any kind of a widespread basis - and after all, insofar as America and her multinationals are concerned, it's the "bottom line" that counts.

No, the Pentagon is determined to stifle all discussion on these points. DU is the Pentagon's ticket to making war acceptable to the American public by making it appear that war can be "safely waged" - and hang the long-term consequences of these weapons. The Pentagon is expert at "hiding" these consequences - they've been doing it for years with regard to a plethora of other things. It's no "big deal" to them - after all, they have the media at their disposal to ridicule those who attempt to make a "big deal" out of these things; by the time they're finished with them, they'll be made to appear as "buffoons," "idiots" and "jerks" - raving "wackos" of the radical right of the "pinko left."

WHAT AMERICA'S MULTINATIONALS
AND THE PENTAGON REALLY FEAR

Today, the Pentagon fears no military weapon. The fact is, most analysts now agree that there is not one weapon in the arsenals of any of America's potential adversaries that is capable of destroying even one American bomber, one aircraft carrier, or even one U.S. tank.

The Pentagon fears only one thing: an angry, mobilized public. Public protests stopped nuclear testing, stopped the use of Agent Orange, etc. The fact is, on several occasions, especially during the Vietnam War, an aroused public - the "average Joes" of "Main Street America" - almost destroyed Corporate America's ability to "sell war" to the American public. And the catalyst responsible for arousing these "average Joes" - casualties!

The Vietnam War! - the elites don't want a repeat of that; that's when DOW Chemical (the makers of Agent Orange, napalm and other assorted miseries during the Vietnam conflict), Monsanto, DuPont, McDonald-Douglas, Lockheed, etc. became synonymous with EVIL; that's when these corporations came close to having their masks ripped off; that's when they were almost exposed (on a widespread basis) for the monsters they really are. High casualties! - the government and America's multinationals will do almost anything in their power [even kill a president (?)] to continue with the lie that there is such a thing as a "safe war" - a war with only the barest number of casualties.

EISENHOWER'S WARNING AGAINST THE
DANGER OF UNCHECKED ELITE POWER

President Eisenhower warned on several occasions, most notably in his "Farewell Address" of January 17, 1961, that a dangerous elite of power was developing in the United States which was no longer responsive to the cares and desires of ordinary Americans - specifically, that advances in technology combined with the growing defense needs of the country had created an opportunity for elites in the military establish-ment, "Big Business," and politics to exert an undue and improper influence on the formation and conduct of national policy. The warning was especially strik-ing coming from Eisenhower, a product himself of the military and good friend, as it had been assumed, of "Big Business." He described the "complex" as a tri-centered nexus of power which consisted of a corporate center, a po-litical center, and a military center. Each was intertwined with the other, and each fed off the other. He warned:

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment ...

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

"In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded.

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

And what Eisenhower saw in 1961 insofar as the development of an "elite of power" in the United States ["... involving multi-billion dollar contracts, tax write-offs, protec-tions, rebates, grants, loss compensations, subsidies, leases, giveaways and the whole vast process of budgeting, legislating, advising, regulating, protecting and servicing major producer interest - now bending or ignoring the law on behalf of the powerful, now applying it with the full punitive vigor against heretics and 'troublemakers'."] whose main business is DEATH has now progressed to the point where - as Michael Parenti alleges - it can no longer be stopped.

The fact of the matter is, the protestations of those involved in the militia movement and other similar populist movements (of both the right and the left) against elite power is not all that "off the mark." Their effort to identify the elite may not be that accurate (because the new elite is anything but a Jewish cabal); nonetheless, their contention that the mass of the American public has been rendered impotent by an all-powerful elite which has seized command of the country and is now mov-ing to seize control of the world is fairly accurate.

"WE HAS MET THE ENEMY
AND THEY IS US" - POGO

But again, it's not some Jewish cabal that's behind what's going on, but white, Anglo-Saxons, most of whom call themselves Christian - in short, they are what is commonly referred to in academia as "The Establishment." They are the ones in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its pre-rogatives. They direct the military establishment. In short, they are the very people against whom President Eisenhower warned the nation in 1961 (and for which he received the defamation of almost all his former friends and associates); they are, in fact, the very people that Oliver Stone pointed to in his unjustly maligned movie, JFK.

And it is precisely from this elite that the CIA has drawn most of its operatives over the years - Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, Bill Casey, James Jesus Angleton, Edward Hunter, etc.; this is the clique, as we indicated earlier, which more than a decade after the assassination of JFK gathered themselves around David Atlee Phillips when his name surfaced in connection with the JFK assassination during the Senate and House Investigations of that matter in the late 1970s - specifically the CIA’s “Old Boy Network." The same clique whose ties run deep into the corporate boardrooms of most of America's Fortune 500 corporations, the same clique of operatives whose souls were bought long ago by "Big Oil" - SOCAL, Gulf, ARAMCO, the Bechtel Corporation, etc. - AND THESE ARE THE VERY SAME PEOPLE WITH WHOM THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IS GETTING INTO BED.

No! - it's not the Jews; it's not the Illuminati, it's not Texe Marrs' ridiculous and imaginary "Circle of Intrigue" - it's the very people that Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Paige Patterson, D. James Kennedy and all the rest have got us involved with over the past two or three decades.

You might, of course, say, "Why is all this important to me?" Well, there's a very good reason. If you remain with those people and institutions who are now beginning to involve themselves in "taking the country back for Christ and the church," you may very well end up sharing their fate as the "end of days" draw to a close. It's not without reason that the Bible warns us:

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
"For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. "For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. (Rev. 18:2-5)

God bless all of you,

S.R. Shearer