Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Issues

  • How Then Can He Mourn?

    I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.

    On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

    But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn.  He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it.  He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and father or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life…. they come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

    How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war’s aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.  He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

    Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing — to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.  A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children.  He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the thirty-five million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of he chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills   — it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel. But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners’ jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.

    And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

    But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.

    The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble. Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking , the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

    E.L. Doctorow is one of America ‘s most accomplished and acclaimed living writers. Winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Humanities Medal, he is the author of nine novels that have explored the drama of American life from the late 19th century to the 21st. This piece first appeared in the September 9th issue of the  Easthampton Star.

  • US War Crimes in Indochina and Our Troubled National Soul

    We live in a time in which truth has become increasingly irrelevant. Reality is indistinguishable from spin, not only from politicians but sports figures, church leaders and business executives. It seems almost pointless to note the latest untruths – who has the time to research the facts amidst the welter of accusations, attacks, ripostes and counter-attacks?

    There are certain lies so monstrous, so odious, so malignant, and so significant, however, that they cry out to heaven for rectification. One of these is the claim of the “Swift Boat Veterans” in their latest ad: that John Kerry lied when he stated that the U.S. had committed widespread war crimes in Indochina as a matter of policy as well as individual wrongdoing.

    This nation has no greater moral failing that our ongoing refusal to take responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Indochinese peasants whom we killed in violation of the laws of war. Those who shape opinion in this country have no higher duty to history or nation than to research the facts of U.S. war crimes in Indochina , and to educate our people and children about them. How can we teach “personal responsibility” to our children, for example, if we refuse to take responsibility or even admit our illegal murder of  innumerable innocent Indochinese? Doesn’t true patriotism call for perfecting our democracy by admitting our crimes and ensuring they never happen again, rather than remaining silent and repeating them?

    We cannot understand the true nature of our nation unless we grapple with the contradiction that we are both the greatest democracy on earth and have committed in Indochina the most protracted and widespread violations of the rules of war of any nation since the end of World War II. Our children cannot understand who they really are unless they grasp the grotesque fact that their parents’ generation not only killed innumerable innocent Indochinese peasants in Indochina , but have tried to deny this reality for more than 30 years now.

    The clearest U.S. violation of the rules of war was the widespread U.S. bombing and use of artillery against villages throughout Indochina, in violation of Article 25 of the U.S.-ratified 1907 Hague Convention which states that “the attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended, is prohibited.” Uncounted Indochinese peasants were burned alive by our napalm, buried alive by our 500 pound bombs, shredded by our anti-personnel bombs, and obliterated by our artillery shells. By simply declaring non-combatants to be either combatants or their “supporters”, the military justified illegal bombardment of populated areas, making millions of Indochinese peasants fair game for U.S. bombing and/or shelling.

    Jonathan Schell described in The Village of Ben Suc , a book which strongly influenced the young John Kerry, how U.S. planes would fly over vast inhabited areas declared “free fire zones” by U.S. officials, and bomb villages and villagers alike. Equally devastating bombardment occurred from the millions more tons of ground artillery fired from army bases and navy ships upon undefended towns, villages, dwellings and buildings.

    I personally interviewed over 2,000 peasants who had escaped from U.S. bombing in Laos . Every single one said that their villages had been leveled by American bombing, and the evidence of this is still apparent to those who visit the Plain of Jars in northern Laos today. Most of this bombing was directed at undefended villages, since Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese guerrillas traveled through jungles so thick that their movements could not be detected from the air.

    In Cambodia , U.S. officials claimed that they would not bomb a village unless the “Bombing Officer” at Nakhorn Phanom airbase in Thailand certified that enemy soldiers were present. This was a baldfaced lie. I tape recorded conversations between pilots and their controllers while bombing was being conducted that showed definitively that the Bombing Officer was not consulted before villages were bombed, as reported by Sidney Schanberg in the New York Times in May 1973. I later interviewed the Bombing Officer at Nakhorn Phanom airbase. He said his only task was to ensure there were no CIA teams in the area where the bombing occurred. Undefended villages throughout vast areas of Cambodia , inhabited by two million people according to the U.S. Embassy, were leveled by U.S. bombing.

    The United States dropped 6,727,084 tons of bombs on 60-70 million people in Indochina, more than triple what it dropped on hundreds of millions of people throughout Europe and the entire Pacific Theater in World War II. It fired an equally massive tonnage of ground artillery. We will never know how many innocent Indochinese peasants died from this massive and unprecedented U.S. firepower, but former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamera has estimated that 3.4 million Indochinese died during the war. Since the vast majority of these were killed by U.S. munitions, estimates of the innocents who died must begin in the hundreds of thousands.

    John Kerry stated on Meet The Press in April 1971 that “I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others in that I shot in free fire zones, fired 50-caliber machine bullets, used harass-and-interdiction fire, joined in search-and-destroy missions, and burned villages. All of these acts are contrary to the laws of the Geneva Convention, and all were ordered as written, established policies from the top down, and the men who ordered this are war criminals.”

    There is no serious doubt that this is a factual description of what occurred in Indochina, and that Kerry showed transcendent moral courage in stating it aloud – just as those who have remained silent about our war crimes, such as Bob Dole, Colin Powell, John McCain, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, have dishonored themselves and their nation. The dozens of soldiers who testified to having committed such war crimes at the Detroit “Winter Soldier” hearings, which so affected Kerry just prior to his Meet the Press appearance, had little reason to implicate themselves other than a desire to tell the truth.

    Swift Boat veterans dishonor themselves as well as these brave young men, who so movingly described their participation in war crimes at considerable emotional cost to themselves, by claiming that they were lying. The Swift Boat veterans are also insincere in claiming that they are personally hurt because John Kerry is maligning their service in Vietnam . Neither Kerry nor anyone else has ever claimed that all, or even most, U.S. soldiers were personally guilty of war crimes. The reason that U.S. war crimes in Indochina were so massive is because they were the result of overall policy which did not adequately distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and the major responsibility for these crimes of war thus lie with superiors who created and implemented these policies, not individual soldiers who carried them out. The responsibility of policy-makers includes not only the policies they created, but their failure to change them even when incontrovertible evidence existed that they were resulting in the widespread murder of civilians.

    The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer in 2003 for reporting that elite Army paratroopers murdered hundreds of civilians in a 7-month rampage in South Vietnam with the encouragement of superiors, and that high U.S. officials including Donald Rumsfeld were informed about their crimes but failed to bring charges against the guilty.

    Official CIA involvement in widespread assassination and torture in Vietnam is also a matter of public record. CIA head William Colby testified to Congress that the CIA’s Phoenix Program routinely assassinated thousands of civilians. At no time has he or any other CIA official presented any evidence that those civilians they murdered were in fact guilty of the crimes of which they were accused. And numerous Operation Phoenix operatives have testified that in fact local assassination teams were given quotas by Colby of the number of people they were to murder weekly, and that there was little evidence that their victims were in fact Viet Cong cadre.

    And the CIA’s notorious “Office of Public Safety” funded and participated in the torture and murder of prisoners in a Kafkaesque South Vietnamese prison system far worse than Abu Ghraib.

    As a result of “victor justice”, no high-ranking U.S. official has ever been punished, or even reprimanded, for the crimes of war that they committed in Indochina . On the contrary. People like Henry Kissinger, who bears a major responsibility for laying waste vast portions of Laos and Cambodia , have been honored by our society. We do not teach our children that our nation is capable of the same kinds of violations of the rules of war as those we despise, or that American officials who commit crimes of war bear any responsibility for their actions.

    This is not only a further outrage against the innocents we killed and to history. It also harms our national self-interest. Had high officials been punished for their war crimes in Indochina it might have made today’s crimes like the prison scandal at Abu Ghraib less likely. This would reduce the growing Muslim hatred of America which has caused – and will continue to cause – so much killing of Americans.

    But there is a far deeper issue at stake here. The success of America ‘s foreign policy – and its ability to remain a healthy society at home – ultimately rests on its moral authority, on remembering that not only we but those foreigners we seek to influence have the same inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as do we. Post-war Germany acknowledged its responsibility for World War II crimes of war not only for the sake of its victims, but for itself. It understood that a nation that does not admit its failings to its children and the world cannot regain its moral center.

    Tring Cong Son, the poet-troubador of Vietnam ‘s Calvary , has written these words: “Corpses float on the water, dry in the field, on the city rooftops, on the winding streets. Corpses lie abandoned under the eaves of the pagoda, on the road to the city churches, on the floors of deserted houses. Oh, springtime, corpses will nourish the plowed soil. Oh, Vietnam , corpses will lend themselves to the soil of tomorrow.”

    The very fact that the issue of U.S. war crimes is at the center of a U.S. presidential race three decades after the end of the war is proof that we have not yet laid these ghosts of Indochina to rest. We can deny our crimes there, pretend that they never occurred. But we cannot erase them from our troubled national soul.

    The basis of healing is the importance of acknowledging our wrongs, and making amends. America will neither regain its moral standing nor ability to improve the world until we teach our children that we created many of these corpses in violation of the rules of war, and that each had a name, a family, dreams and aspirations, and as much of a right to live as do we. If America is to become a nation based on truth again, let it begin with one of the most important verities of all: that we bear responsibility for the civilian deaths we caused in Indochina and need to make amends for them.

    We have not even apologized to the families of our victims, let alone taken even such minimal steps as cleaning up the tons of unexploded ordnance we left behind that still kills dozens of Indochinese peasants yearly. It is to our honor that we have a Holocaust Museum in Washington to remember the innocent victims of World War II. It is a national disgrace that we ignore our own crimes against the innocents of Indochina . America will never be made whole again until we face the awful truth of what we did there.

    Fred Branfman, as Director of Project Air War, exposed U.S. bombing of civilians in Indochina as it was occurring after interviewing thousands of refugees in Laos . He is currently a Santa Barbara-based writer.

  • In the Battlefields of Depleted Uranium

    When we imagine the horrors of nuclear warfare, the twin scepters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki naturally come to mind.  As the only cases of nuclear weapons actually used on a human population, Hiroshima and Nagasaki present, on one hand, the instant and indiscriminating annihilation of all living things and, on the other, the equally malignant long-term effects of fallout.  Yet, however much we may fear and loathe the Bomb, we know what to expect from it. Its destructive power is immense, but predictable. Nuclear warfare is absolute and final; there are no questions about its risks and consequences.  Guided by this knowledge, 50 years of global policy rested on the essential plank that neither side would risk the destruction of itself and the world by launching a first strike.  Contrast this with what many people call “nuclear warfare of a different sort”: the use of depleted uranium (DU) on the battlefield, an issue as thorny as it is enduring.

    DU is the waste product of enriched uranium that is used in nuclear weapons and reactors.  The process of “enriching” uranium involves taking naturally occurring uranium ore and separating the highly radioactive and unstable U-235 isotopes from their much less radioactive cousins, U-238.  This leftover “depleted” uranium is composed of over 99% U-238, and is 60% less radioactive than natural uranium.  However, tests conducted on DU tank armoring and munitions used in Kosovo by NATO troops demonstrated that trace amounts of plutonium and other radioactive elements do sometimes find their way into the mix.  The military is fond of trumpeting the technical truth that DU is less radioactive than that found in nature, but is less candid about its dangers when actually deployed as a weapon.

    The reason for the military’s love affair with DU is that it has proven effective.  DU has several physical properties that make it devastating as a material for both armor and armor-piercing projectiles.  DU is 1.7 times denser than lead and “self-sharpens” as it penetrates metal, allowing it to rip through opponent tanks like “a knife through butter,” in the words of many soldiers who have struggled to explain its awesome power.  DU is also “pyrophonetic,” meaning that it catches fire in the air.  Upon hitting armor, it explodes and releases millions of tiny particles that can be inhaled.  Besides incinerating the occupants of the vehicle, the toxic dust can contaminate the tank and the surrounding area.

    During DU’s debut in Gulf War I, the A-10 Thunderbolt “tank-killer” aircraft and the M1A1 Abrams tank were able to decimate the Iraqi tank forces with almost no US casualties.  The bullets weren’t the only “success.” Stories abound, perhaps apocryphal, that shells Iraqis fired at DU-armored tanks simply bounced off.  In the aftermath of the Gulf War, DU was celebrated as one of the many lethal tools that led to the overwhelming US victory over Iraq .  DU was such a smashing success that it was trotted out again in Kosovo , Bosnia , and Gulf War II.

    If soldiers liked it, then military planners like it even more.  DU provides them with an expedient solution to much of the waste generated by nuclear production.  The Department of Defense (DoD) has a 1.2 billion-pound stockpile of DU, which it happily gives away to weapons manufacturers – “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”  Defense companies take the heretofore-useless waste and manufacture bullets that are 10 times cheaper than the less powerful tungsten alternative.  Then, on the battlefield, planes and tanks can blow up the bad guys while junking the uranium waste for someone else to deal with.  It’s almost too good to be true.

    Except, there’s a hitch.  The debate over whether DU has caused harm to soldiers and civilians has raged for almost 15 years now.  After the first Gulf War, thousands of British and American veterans began exhibiting a host of mystifying symptoms – shortness of breath, diarrhea, muscle pain, tiredness, lack of concentration, and depression – that by 1993 assumed the name, “Gulf War Syndrome.”  Fourteen years and hundreds of studies later, the cause of the veterans’ ailment has been narrowed down to: stress; nerve gas exposure; pesticides; desert diseases; parasites; pollution from burning oil wells; sand; biological agents; DU or some combination thereof.  Naturally, veterans are frustrated with the inconclusiveness of the medical studies and angry with the Pentagon for insufficient medical care and what they see as blatant prevarication.

    In many respects, the military has gone out of its way to avoid taking responsibility for Gulf War Syndrome.  When thousands of vets stepped forward to report their illnesses, the Army Surgeon General’s office insisted that only 35 veterans had been exposed to DU. Despite growing pressure, the Pentagon toed this line until 1998 when they finally admitted, “Combat troops or those carrying out support functions generally did not know that DU-contaminated equipment such as enemy vehicles struck by DU rounds required special handling. The failure to properly disseminate such information to troops at all levels may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures.”  Up to this point, the Department of Veteran Affairs, believing the Pentagon, had only conducted one study of 33 soldiers exposed to “friendly fire.”  The VA trumpeted the findings of the study – that none of the soldiers had “uranium-related adverse outcomes.”  However, advocates for veterans’ health acquired internal memoranda from the Pentagon which showed that one of the study participants has cancer and that the VA knew the sample size was too small for accurate results.

    As recently as 2004, British officials went so far as to accuse their soldiers of “faking” Gulf War Syndrome.  In this vacuum of conclusive evidence, many veterans along with outside medical experts and activists have formulated their own opinions.  DU has become suspect Number One.  An excellent 2003 report entitled “Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium (DU) Exposures,” published by a coalition of veterans, nuclear experts, and activists, summarizes this point-of-view:

      Our investigation leads us to conclude that the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has engaged in a deliberate attempt to avoid responsibility for consciously allowing the widespread exposure of hundreds of thousands of United States and coalition servicemen and women to more than 630,000 pounds of depleted uranium released by US tanks and aircraft during the Persian Gulf War. The Department of Defense’s actions regarding depleted uranium exposures have been characterized by a blatant disregard for existing laws and regulations, human rights, and common sense. The Pentagon’s desire to ensure the future use of depleted uranium ammunition has taken precedence over the need to protect American troops from exposure to depleted uranium and the requirement to provide medical care to servicemen and women who have developed serious health problems due to their exposure to depleted uranium.

    Despite this strong stance, the author of this study, Dan Fahey, is quick to point out in interviews that while the DoD has been negligent in pursuing the possibility of DU as a cause of the illness, some anti-DU activists’ shrill accusations have beggared the debate.  This has allowed military leaders to ignore dissenters and hide behind what they call “inconclusive” medical evidence.  The combination of officialdom’s intransigence and the victims’ (rightful) suspicions has soured relations on all sides and led to a severe politicization of the issue.

    However, one of the preeminent medical experts on Gulf War Syndrome, Robert Haley of the University of Texas ‘s Southwestern medical center in Dallas , believes he has made substantial headway in figuring out the cause or causes of the soldiers’ problems, much to the chagrin of defense officials.  By studying the brain images of deployed troops, he pinpointed damage that resonated with preexisting research on the effects of sarin gas on rats. (Soldiers were exposed to low-level sarin gas during chemical fires in Iraq ).  As Haley’s work gained credibility through more detailed study and corroboration with other scientists, the US government began nixing the funding.  On 4 August 2004 , Haley appealed in person to the British government for help to continue his research.  Haley’s hypothesis does not preclude the possibility that DU did contribute to some of the illnesses associated with Gulf War Syndrome; however, it may foreshadow a permanent sidelining of DU as a dangerous and inhumane weapon.  That would be a shame.

    If the military treats suffering veterans so dismissively, one can rest assured that foreign civilians exposed to toxic battlefields receive even less concern.  In each of the conflicts where the US employed DU weaponry – Gulf War I, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Gulf War II – civilians, the medical community, and the government have complained of elevated rates of cancer, birth defects, and other health problems in the aftermath of the fighting.  Children are especially susceptible.  In a revelatory film about DU shot by a German crew, young Iraqi children are shown handling DU tank shells, playing on contaminated vehicles, and collecting scraps of radioactive junk.  Siegwart-Horst Gunther, a German epidemiologist, interviews Iraqi doctors who tell of cases of cancer increasing ten-fold in the years after the first Gulf War.  The doctors proffer pictures of infants born with horrific defects – grotesquely bloated bellies, external bladders, missing limbs – that they said were never seen before.  In their minds, there is no doubt that DU is to blame.  And that the US is waging a war of genocide.  The Pentagon counters that Saddam was behind these claims, stage-managing a propaganda war against the US .  Yet, many Western medical experts, friends of neither Saddam nor the US government, have conducted both fieldwork in Iraq and research in the lab that convinces them that the links between DU and Iraqi sicknesses are clear.

    In some instances even the military seems to admit that DU is inherently dangerous to human beings and the environment.  In the US , the Army has decided to clean up the DU-contaminated Nevada Test Site.  At an ammunition range in Indiana , the US military may spend up to $6 billion to remove 68,000 kilograms of DU ammunition waste.  The US Navy has opted to use tungsten bullets instead of DU. In Kosovo, British soldiers were issued protective suits to wear when handling DU-contaminated objects.  In 1993, the US Army Surgeon General’s Office found that the “[e]xpected physiological effects from exposure to DU dust include possible increased risk of cancer (lung or bone) and kidney damage.”

    In order to condemn DU, we do not need absolute empirical verification – the likelihood of achieving such a thing is unlikely in this case.  In order to ask the international community to make the use of DU a war crime, we do not need the Pentagon to confess wrongdoing.  In order to call for a full investigation of the Gulf War Syndrome and the possible links between DU and civilian illness, we do not need the blessing of the established medical community or the government.   Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the nuclear age almost 60 years ago, scattering poisonous seeds of which many are just now coming to fruition.  Many of these problems are extremely complicated and the answers not immediately clear. Nonetheless, it is imperative that we approach the issues of DU and Gulf War Syndrome with the same degree of concern and compassion as we do the more spectacular problems of full-blown nuclear warfare.

    *Forrest Wilder is the 2004 Ruth Floyd Summer Intern at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a graduate of the University of Texas.

  • DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care

    Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets

     

    Far from the radioactive battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan , another war is being waged. This war, over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, is being fought between the military top brass and the men who understand the dangers of DU: former military doctors and nuclear scientists.

    This war is for the truth about uranium weapons, and the consequences of their use, and has been waged for more than 13 years-since the U.S. government first used DU weapons against Iraq . Most Americans, however, are unaware of this historic struggle, because the Pentagon has used its power to prevent information about DU from reaching the public.

    John Hanchette, editor of USA Today from 1991 to 2001, in a recent interview with anti-DU activist Leuren Moret, said he had written several news stories about the effects of DU on gulf wars veterans. Every time he was ready to publish a story about the devastating illnesses afflicting soldiers, however, the Pentagon called USA Today and pressured him not to publish the story. Hanchette was eventually replaced as editor and now teaches journalism to college students.

    Dr. Doug Rokke, 37-year Army veteran and former director of the Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, has become an outspoken “warrior for peace” in the war against DU weapons. Rokke is fighting for medical care for all people exposed to DU: active soldiers, veterans and civilians, including Iraqis, and for “remediation” or cleansing of all DU-contaminated land.

    “Anyone who demands medical care and environmental remediation faces ongoing and blatant retaliation,” Rokke told AFP. “Anybody who speaks up-their career ends.”

    During Gulf War I, Rokke was theater health physicist with the 12th Preventive Medicine Command professional staff and served on three special operations teams. Rokke and members of his teams were exposed to large amounts of uranium during recovery of U.S. tanks and armored vehicles mistakenly hit by DU weapons.

    Today, Rokke is fighting to get the Pentagon to abide by its regulations regarding care for individuals exposed to uranium and remediation of contaminated areas.

    The military records of one of Rokke’s comrades, who suffers from the effects of DU exposure, have been completely “gutted” from Army archives, Rokke told AFP.

    “They [defense officials] willfully ignore existing Department of Defense directives that require prompt and effective medical care be provided to ‘all’ exposed individuals,” Rokke says.

    Rokke points to a U.S. Army Medical Command memo dated April 29, 2004, from Lt. Gen. James B. Peake about medical management of Army personnel exposed to DU. The memo, which says “all personnel with actual or potential exposures to DU will be identified, assessed, treated (if needed), and assigned a potential exposure level (I, II, or III),” reiterates the U.S. Army regulations originally written by Rokke in 1991, he said.

    “A radio bioassay has to be done within a few days of exposure,” Rokke said. “This means nasal and pharyngeal swabs being taken and 24-hour urine and fecal analysis.

    “Today,” Rokke writes, “although medical problems continue to develop, medical care is denied or delayed for all uranium-exposed casualties while Defense Department and British Ministry of Defense officials continue to deny any correlation between uranium exposure and adverse health and environmental effects.”

    Rokke said the individuals at the Department of Defense are engaged in a “criminal” conspiracy to deny the toxicity of DU weapons. “The lies by senior Defense Department officials are designed to sustain use of uranium munitions and avoid liability for adverse health and environmental effects,” he said. According to Rokke, a recent Gulf War Review reported that only 262 vets had been treated for DU poisoning through September 2003.

    The military’s strategy of lies and concealment about DU began in March 1991, shortly after the first widespread combat use of DU weapons by the U.S. government in Iraq , Rokke said.

    On March 1, 1991, Lt. Col. Michael V. Ziehmn of Los Alamos National Lab wrote a memo about the effectiveness of DU penetrators. The “future existence” of DU weapons should be ensured by active “proponency” by the Department of Defense, Ziehmn wrote.

    “If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability,” Ziehmn wrote. “I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after-action reports are written.”

    When American Free Press began this series on DU weapons, the U.S. Army alerted the Centers for Disease Control, an Atlanta-based agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.

    “The CDC is going to do a whitewash on DU,” Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore Lab, said. Fulk told AFP he had received this information directly from CDC officials.

    AFP asked Stephanie C. Creel of the CDC about its position on the toxicity of DU. Creel said the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) on-line “fact sheet” would provide the “most in-depth information” on the subject.

    The ATSDR fact sheet: “The radiation damage from exposure to high levels of natural or depleted uranium are [sic] not known to cause cancer.”

    “No apparent public health hazard,” the CDC assessment of Livermore lab, published June 29, said about local exposure levels to tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, Fulk said.

    “It’s nonsense,” Fulk said. “It’s been dumped all around the area. It goes through glass and steel.”

    Depleted uranium is a misnomer, according to Fulk. Depleted uranium, mostly U-238, is uranium that has had the naturally occurring fissile material, U-235, removed. DU is very radioactive, however. While one gram of U-235 emits 81,000 alpha particles per second, U-238 emits 12,000 per second. These high-energy particles coming from DU particles lodged in the body cause the most damage, according to Fulk and others.

    “Depleted uranium dust that is inhaled gets transferred from the lungs to the regional lymph nodes, where they can bombard a small number of cells in their immediate vicinity with intense alpha radiation,” said Dr. Asaf Durakovic, former Pentagon expert on DU.

    Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a defense contractor in San Diego , published an extensive article about the dangers of DU six months before President George H.W. Bush waged war against Iraq in 1991.

    “Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably the ground troops [who] re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armor-piercing (DU) munitions,” SAIC published in its July 1990 magazine.

    “Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer,” SAIC wrote.

    AFP submitted written questions to the U.S. Army Medical Command asking how the Army can claim that DU exposure is harmless when military documents have stressed its lethal toxicity.

    Mark A. Melanson, of the Army’s Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine in Aberdeen , Md. , responded in an email: “The two positions are not opposing. As with all potentially hazardous material, the amount determines the risk.”

    Melanson wrote that the Army was complying with its own regulations regarding medical care for DU exposure, saying: “Soldiers are being screened by completing the post deployment health questionnaire upon demobilization. Troops identified as being at potential risk for DU exposure are directed to provide a urine bioassay for analysis.”

    Rokke said: “That is too late. Hence they find a way out.”

    AFP repeatedly tried to speak to Melanson about the quantity of DU that the Army considered hazardous. He did not return phone calls.

    “An individual could [safely] breathe in up to a gram per year every year for 50 years,” Melanson recently told The New York Daily News.

    “That’s absolutely absurd,” Fulk said. Fulk said the number of alpha particle emissions from a gram of DU lodged in the body over a year would be about the same as one-10th of all the cells in his body.

    The inhaled DU particles have a tendency to bind with phosphate in the human body, found in the bones and the DNA. The alpha particle being emitted to the cells nearby “is doing the dirty work,” Fulk said.

    Painful breathing and respiratory problems are the first and most common symptoms of DU inhalation, Rokke said. Dr. Janette Sherman told AFP she met a 31-year-old female former soldier at a Maryland veteran’s hospital who had recently served in Kuwait . Sherman, a toxicologist, was shocked when the young woman told her that she required a lung transplant.

    Finis

  • Depleted Uranium Blamed for Cancer Clusters Among Iraq War Vets

    A discovery by American Free Press that nearly half of the recently returned soldiers in one unit from Iraq have “malignant growths” is “critical evidence,” according to experts, that depleted uranium weapons are responsible for the huge number of disabled Gulf War vets – and damage to their DNA.

    A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in the Persian Gulf, Iraq , and Afghanistan have become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for causing many of the symptoms.

    “Gulf War vets are coming down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous conflicts,” said Barbara A. Goodno from the Dept. of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate.

    A recent discovery by American Free Press that nearly half the soldiers in one returned unit have malignant growths has provided the scientific community with “critical evidence,” experts say, to help understand exactly how depleted uranium affects humans – and their DNA.

    One of the first published researchers of Gulf War Syndrome, Dr. András Korényi-Both told AFP that 27-28 percent of Gulf War veterans have suffered chronic health problems, more than 5 times the rate of Viet Nam vets, and 4 times the rate of Korean War vets.

    Korényi-Both said his son had recently returned from Iraq , where he had been part of the initial assault from Kuwait to Baghdad . From his unit of 20 men, 8 now have “malignant growths,” Korényi-Both said.

    Dr. Korényi-Both is not an expert on DU, but has written extensively about how the fine desert sand blowing around Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula provides a ideal vehicle for toxins, increasing the range and effect of biological and chemical agents, such as DU, that attach themselves to the particles of sand.

    Korényi-Both described how, during the 1991 Gulf War, he and others had inhaled large quantities of sand dust that could have been laden with chemical or biological agents. The sand “destroyed our immune systems,” he said.

    FULK’S THEORY

    Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore lab, is investigating how DU affects the human body. Fulk said that 8 malignancies out of 20, in 16 months, “is spectacular – and of serious concern.”

    The high rate of malignancies found in this unit appears to have been caused by exposure to DU weapons on the battlefield. If DU were found to be the cause, this case would be “critical evidence” of Fulk’s theory on how the DU particulate affects DNA.

    Such quick malignancies are caused by the particulate effect of DU, according to Fulk:

    When DU (Uranium 238) decays, it transforms into two short-lived and “very hot” isotopes – Thorium 234 and Protactinium 234. As it transforms in the body, the DU particle is firing off faster and faster “bullets” into the DNA, Fulk said, or wherever it is lodged. Because uranium has a natural attraction to phosphorus, however, it is drawn to the phosphate in the DNA.

    As the Uranium 238 decays, it releases alpha and beta particles with millions of electron volts. When a DU particle makes this transformation in the human body it releases “huge amounts of energy in the same location doing lots of damage very quickly,” Fulk said.

    Thorium 234 has a half-life of 24 days and emits a beta particle of .270 million electron volts as it transforms into Protactinium 234, which has a half-life of less than 7 hours. Protactinium then emits a beta particle of 2.19 million electron volts as it transforms into the more stable Uranium 234.

    The chemical binding energy in the molecules of the human cell is less than 10 electron volts. One alpha particle from U-238 is over 4 million electron volts, which is like “nuking a cell.”

    Leuren Moret, a scientist who is opposed to the use of DU, compared it to sitting in front of a fire and putting a red-hot coal in your mouth. “The nuclear establishment wants us to believe that it is like sitting in front of the fire and warming the whole body evenly – and that no harm is done, but that is not the reality,” she said.

    “We can expect to see multiple cancers in one person,” Moret said. “These multiple unrelated cancers in the same individual have been reported in Yugoslavia and Iraq in families that had no history of any cancer. This is unknown in the previous studies of cancer,” she said. “A new phenomenon.”

    The Pentagon’s Goodno questioned Dr. Korényi-Both’s report that 8 of 20 recently returned soldiers from one unit had experienced malignant growths. Goodno and Korényi-Both did agree, however, that Iraqi chemical and biological agents had not played a role in the 2003 invasion.

    This is significant because three factors have generally been blamed for causing Gulf War Syndrome: Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, the cocktail of vaccinations given to coalition soldiers, and depleted uranium. The absence of any detectable chemical or biological agents during the 2003 invasion of Iraq reduces the number of potential factors for the malignancies in the veterans to pre-war vaccinations and DU.

    Statistics published in Encyclopedia Britannica’s 2003 Almanac indicate that 325,000 Gulf War vets were receiving compensation for service-related disabilities in 2000. The almanac lists 580,400 combatants in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, yet only 467 U.S. personnel were actually wounded during the conflict. The 325,000 disabled Gulf War vets are equivalent to 56 percent of the number of military personnel “serving in the theater of operation.”

    Furthermore, in 2000, nine years after the three-week war in Iraq had ended, the number of disabled vets from the Gulf War was increasing yearly by more than 43,000. While the number of disabled vets from previous wars is decreasing by about 35,000 per year, since the “War on Terror” began in 2001, the total number of disabled vets has grown to some 2.5 million.

    MORE DISABLED VETS

    “More than ever before,” Brad Flohr of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs said about the total number of disabled vets. Asked if there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II, Flohr said he believed so.

    Terry Jemison of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs told AFP that current statistics indicate that more than half a million veterans of the 14-year-old “Gulf War era” are now receiving disability compensation. During this period, some 7,035 soldiers are reported having been wounded in Iraq .

    With 518,739 disabled “Gulf-era veterans” currently receiving disability compensation, according to Jemison, the number of veterans disabled after the war is more than 73 times the total number of wounded, in and out of combat, from the entire 14-year conflict with Iraq.

    DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS

    Last December, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company of New York and found that four of the men had absorbed or inhaled depleted uranium (U-238).

    Several of the men had traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, which is only produced in a nuclear reaction process. U-236 is a man-made isotope of uranium.

    “These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield,” Durakovic said.

    “Due to the current proliferation of DU weaponry, the battlefields of the future will be unlike any battlefields in history,” Durakovic, then Chief of Nuclear Medicine for the Veterans Administration said after the first Gulf War, in which he served.

    Since 1991, the U.S. military has used DU in munitions as penetrating rods, which destroy enemy tanks and their occupants, and as armor on U.S. tanks. When DU penetrating rods strike a hard target some of the radioactive and chemically toxic DU is vaporized into ultra-fine particles that are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

    According to a survey of 10,051 Gulf War veterans, conducted between 1991 and 1995 by Vic Sylvester and the Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Association, 82 percent of veterans reported having entered captured Iraqi vehicles. “This would suggest that 123,000 soldiers have been directly exposed to DU,” Durakovic said.

    “Since the effects of contamination by uranium cannot be directed or contained, uranium’s chemical and radiological toxicity will create environments that are hostile not only to the health of enemy forces but of one’s own forces as well,” Durakovic said.

    “Because of the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU, the small number of particles trapped in the lungs, kidneys, and bone greatly increase the risk of cancer and all other illnesses over time,” Durakovic, an expert of internal contamination of radio-isotopes, said.

    According to Durakovic, other symptoms associated with DU poisoning are: emotional and mental deterioration, fatigue, loss of bowel and bladder control, and numerous forms of cancer. Such symptoms are increasing showing up in Iraq ‘s children and among Gulf War veterans and their offspring, he said.

    “Although I personally served in Operation Desert Shield as Unit Commander,” Durakovic said, “my expertise of internal contamination was never used because we were never informed of the intended use of DU prior to or during the war.”

    “The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse,” Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in his March 25 article on DU weapons, “Silent Genocide.”

    “DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code,” Koehler wrote. “The Pentagon’s response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.”

    As AFP reported last week, the smallest particles of DU, when inhaled, are capable of moving throughout the human body, passing through cell walls and affecting the person’s Master Code, according to Fulk, and the “_expression of the DNA.”

    Four years after the Gulf War of 1991, Life magazine published a photo-essay entitled “The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm,” which focused on the numerous cases of severe birth defects that had occurred in families of veterans from that war.

    Life reported, “Of the 400 sick vets who had already answered [Don Riegle’s Senate Banking] committee inquiries, a startling 65 percent reported birth defects or immune-system problems in children conceived after the war.”

    AFP asked the Dept. of Veterans Affairs if they kept records of the birth defects occurring among the families of veterans, and was told they do not.

  • Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer

    Governments lie.
    —     I. F. Stone, Journalist

    At the dawn of the nuclear age, an independent Australian journalist named Wilfred Burchett traveled to Japan to cover the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The only problem was that General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. The world’s media obediently crowded onto the USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the surrender of the Japanese.

    Wilfred Burchett decided to strike out on his own. He was determined to see for himself what this nuclear bomb had done, to understand what this vaunted new weapon was all about. So he boarded a train and traveled for thirty hours to the city of Hiroshima in defiance of General MacArthur’s orders.

    Burchett emerged from the train into a nightmare world. The devastation that confronted him was unlike any he had ever seen during the war. The city of Hiroshima, with a population of 350,000, had been razed. Multistory buildings were reduced to charred posts. He saw people’s shadows seared into walls and sidewalks. He met people with their skin melting off. In the hospital, he saw patients with purple skin hemorrhages, gangrene, fever, and rapid hair loss. Burchett was among the first to witness and describe radiation sickness.

    Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: “In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.”

    He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.”

    Burchett’s article, headlined THE ATOMIC PLAGUE, was published on September 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation. Burchett’s candid reaction to the horror shocked readers. “In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.

    “When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.”

    Burchett’s searing independent reportage was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. General MacArthur had gone to pains to restrict journalists’ access to the bombed cities, and his military censors were sanitizing and even killing dispatches that described the horror. The official narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation. Reporters whose dispatches convicted with this version of events found themselves silenced: George Weller of the Chicago Daily News slipped into Nagasaki and wrote a 25,000-word story on the nightmare that he found there. Then he made a crucial error: He submitted the piece to military censors. His newspaper never even received his story. As Weller later summarized his experience with MacArthur’s censors, “They won.”

    U.S. authorities responded in time-honored fashion to Burchett’s revelations: They attacked the messenger. General MacArthur ordered him expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), and his camera with photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he was in the hospital. U.S. officials accused Burchett of being influenced by Japanese propaganda. They scoffed at the notion of an atomic sickness. The U.S. military issued a press release right after the Hiroshima bombing that downplayed human casualties, instead emphasizing that the bombed area was the site of valuable industrial and military targets.

    Four days after Burchett’s story splashed across front pages around the world, Major General Leslie R. Groves, director of the atomic bomb project, invited a select group of thirty reporters to New Mexico. Foremost among this group was William L. Laurence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The New York Times. Groves took the reporters to the site of the first atomic test. His intent was to demonstrate that no atomic radiation lingered at the site. Groves trusted Laurence to convey the military’s line; the general was not disappointed.

    Laurence’s front-page story, U.S. ATOM BOMB SITE BELIES TOKYO TALES: TESTS ON NEW MEXICO RANGE CONFIRM THAT BLAST, AND NOT RADIATION, TOOK TOLL, ran on September 12, 1945, following a three-day delay to clear military censors. “This historic ground in New Mexico, scene of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to Japanese propaganda that radiations [sic] were responsible for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious maladies due to persistent radioactivity,” the article began.3 Laurence said unapologetically that the Army tour was intended “to give the lie to these claims.”

    Laurence quoted General Groves: “The Japanese claim that people died from radiation. If this is true, the number was very small.”

    Laurence then went on to offer his own remarkable editorial on what happened: “The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms . . . Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described ‘symptoms’ that did not ring true.”

    But Laurence knew better. He had observed the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, and he withheld what he knew about radioactive fallout across the southwestern desert that poisoned local residents and livestock. He kept mum about the spiking Geiger counters all around the test site.

    William L. Laurence went on to write a series of ten articles for the Times that served as a glowing tribute to the ingenuity and technical achievements of the nuclear program. Throughout these and other reports, he downplayed and denied the human impact of the bombing. Laurence won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

    It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

    Laurence eagerly accepted the offer, “his scientific curiosity and patriotic zeal perhaps blinding him to the notion that he was at the same time compromising his journalistic independence,” as essayist Harold Evans wrote in a history of war reporting. Evans recounted: “After the bombing, the brilliant but bullying Groves continually suppressed or distorted the effects of radiation. He dismissed reports of Japanese deaths as ‘hoax or propaganda.’ The Times’ Laurence weighed in, too, after Burchett’s reports, and parroted the government line.” Indeed, numerous press releases issued by the military after the Hiroshima bombing-which in the absence of eyewitness accounts were often reproduced verbatim by U.S. newspapers-were written by none other than Laurence.

    “Mine has been the honor, unique in the history of journalism, of preparing the War Department’s official press release for worldwide distribution,” boasted Laurence in his memoirs, Dawn Over Zero. “No greater honor could have come to any newspaperman, or anyone else for that matter.”

    “Atomic Bill” Laurence revered atomic weapons. He had been crusading for an American nuclear program in articles as far back as 1929. His dual status as government agent and reporter earned him an unprecedented level of access to American military officials-he even flew in the squadron of planes that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. His reports on the atomic bomb and its use had a hagiographic tone, laced with descriptions that conveyed almost religious awe.

    In Laurence’s article about the bombing of Nagasaki (it was withheld by military censors until a month after the bombing), he described the detonation over Nagasaki that incinerated 100,000 people. Laurence waxed: “Awe-struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. . . . It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.”

    Laurence later recounted his impressions of the atomic bomb: “Being close to it and watching it as it was being fashioned into a living thing, so exquisitely shaped that any sculptor would be proud to have created it, one . . . felt oneself in the presence of the supranatural.”

    Laurence was good at keeping his master’s secrets-from suppressing the reports of deadly radioactivity in New Mexico to denying them in Japan. The Times was also good at keeping secrets, only revealing Laurence’s dual status as government spokesman and reporter on August 7, the day after the Hiroshima bombing-and four months after Laurence began working for the Pentagon. As Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell wrote in their excellent book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, “Here was the nation’s leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time.”

    Radiation: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

    A curious twist to this story concerns another New York Times journalist who reported on Hiroshima; his name, believe it or not, was William Lawrence (his byline was W.H. Lawrence). He has long been confused with William L. Laurence. (Even Wilfred Burchett confuses the two men in his memoirs and his 1983 book, Shadows of Hiroshima.) Unlike the War Department’s Pulitzer Prize winner, W.H. Lawrence visited and reported on Hiroshima on the same day as Burchett. (William L. Laurence, after flying in the squadron of planes that bombed Nagasaki, was subsequently called back to the United States by the Times and did not visit the bombed cities.)

    W.H. Lawrence’s original dispatch from Hiroshima was published on September 5, 1945. He reported matter-of-factly about the deadly effects of radiation, and wrote that Japanese doctors worried that “all who had been in Hiroshima that day would die as a result of the bomb’s lingering effects.” He described how “persons who had been only slightly injured on the day of the blast lost 86 percent of their white blood corpuscles, developed temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, their hair began to drop out, they lost their appetites, vomited blood and finally died.”

    Oddly enough, W.H. Lawrence contradicted himself one week later in an article headlined NO RADIOACTIVITY IN HIROSHIMA RUIN. For this article, the Pentagon’s spin machine had swung into high gear in response to Burchett’s horrifying account of “atomic plague.” W.H. Lawrence reported that Brigadier General T. F. Farrell, chief of the War Department’s atomic bomb mission to Hiroshima, “denied categorically that [the bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.” Lawrence’s dispatch quotes only Farrell; the reporter never mentions his eyewitness account of people dying from radiation sickness that he wrote the previous week.

    The conflicting accounts of Wilfred Burchett and William L. Laurence might be ancient history were it not for a modern twist. On October 23, 2003, The New York Times published an article about a controversy over a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1932 to Times reporter Walter Duranty. A former correspondent in the Soviet Union, Duranty had denied the existence of a famine that had killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. The Pulitzer Board had launched two inquiries to consider stripping Duranty of his prize. The Times “regretted the lapses” of its reporter and had published a signed editorial saying that Duranty’s work was “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” Current Times executive editor Bill Keller decried Duranty’s “credulous, uncritical parroting of propaganda.”

    On November 21, 2003, the Pulitzer Board decided against rescinding Duranty’s award, concluding that there was “no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception” in the articles that won the prize.

    As an apologist for Joseph Stalin, Duranty is easy pickings. What about the “deliberate deception” of William L. Laurence in denying the lethal effects of radioactivity? And what of the fact that the Pulitzer Board knowingly awarded the top journalism prize to the Pentagon’s paid publicist, who denied the suffering of millions of Japanese? Do the Pulitzer Board and the Times approve of “uncritical parroting of propaganda”-as long as it is from the United States?

    It is long overdue that the prize for Hiroshima’s apologist be stripped.

    Amy Goodman is host of the national radio and TV show “Democracy Now!.” This is an excerpt from her new national bestselling book The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them , written with her brother journalist David, exposes the reporting of Times correspondent William L. Laurence

    Democracy Now! is a national radio and TV program, broadcast on more than 240 stations.

    Originally published by CommonDreams.org

  • Nagasaki Peace Declaration

    How many people in the world now remember that fateful day? At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, fifty-nine years ago, the city of Nagasaki was instantly transformed into ruins by a single atomic bomb dropped from an American warplane, killing some 74,000 people and wounding 75,000. Today, Nagasaki ‘s verdant cityscape attracts visitors from around the world, and its residents maintain a distinctive set of traditions and culture. Nevertheless, the city’s increasingly elderly atomic bomb survivors continue to suffer from the after-effects of the bombing as well as from health problems induced by the stress of their experience. We the citizens of Nagasaki call upon the world with a renewed sense of urgency, even as we reflect upon the intense suffering of those who have already perished.

    We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago. The International Court of Justice has clearly stated in an advisory opinion that the threat of nuclear weapons or their use is generally contrary to international law. Notwithstanding, the US government continues to possess and maintain approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, and is conducting an ongoing program of subcritical nuclear testing. In addition, the so-called mini nuclear weapons that are the subject of new development efforts are intended to deliver truly horrific levels of force. In terms of the radioactivity that such weapons would release, there would be no difference compared to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki . So long as the world’s leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed. People of America : The path leading to the eventual survival of the human race unequivocally requires the elimination of nuclear arms. The time has come to join hands and embark upon this path.

    We call upon the peoples of the world to recognize how scant is the value repeatedly being placed on human life, evidenced by events such as the war in Iraq and outbreaks of terrorism. Wisdom must prevail, and we must join together in enhancing and reinforcing the functions of the United Nations in order to resolve international conflicts, not by military force, but through concerted diplomatic efforts. Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, coinciding with the 2005 NPT Review Conference to be held at UN headquarters. With the approach of the coming year, let there be a convergence among the citizens of the world, NGOs, and all concerned parties who desire peace, so that the way may be opened for the elimination of those symbols of inhumanity known as nuclear weapons.

    We call upon the government of Japan to safeguard the peaceful underpinnings of its constitution, and, as the only nation ever to have experienced nuclear attack, to enact into law the threefold non-nuclear principle. The combination of the threefold non-nuclear principle with nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula will pave the road towards the creation of a Northeast Asia nuclear-weapon-free zone. At the same time, the specifics of the Pyongyang Declaration must be agreed upon, while Japan itself must also pursue an independent security stance that does not rely on nuclear arms.

    We call upon the world’s youth to study the reality of the atomic bombings and to internalize a sense of respect for life, as our young people are doing in Nagasaki . The enthusiasm and hope manifested by youth who have considered the requirements of peace and are acting accordingly will serve to enlighten an increasingly confused world. Individuals who arise to take action close at hand can and will foster the realization of world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    We in Nagasaki will continue to share our experiences of the atomic bombing of our city, and will work to make Nagasaki a center for peace studies and peace promotion. It is our hope that we will thus be able to form bonds of friendship and solidarity with people throughout the world.

    Today, on the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing, as we pray for the repose of those who died and recall to mind their suffering, we the citizens of Nagasaki pledge our commitment to the realization of true peace in the world, free from nuclear weapons.

  • The Real Dirty Bombs: Depleted Uranium

    Lost in the media circus about the Iraq war, supposedly being fought to prevent a tyrant from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, is the salient fact that the United States and Britain are actively waging chemical and nuclear warfare in Iraq – using depleted uranium munitions.

    The corporate-controlled press has failed to inform the public that, in spite of years of UN inspections and numerous international treaties, tons of banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – used and unused – remain in Iraq. Indeed, both chemical and radioactive WMD have been – and continue to be used against U.S. and coalition soldiers.

    The media silence surrounding these banned WMD, and the horrendous consequences of their use, is due to the simple fact that they are being used by the U.S.-led coalition. They are the new “Silver Bullet” in the U.S. arsenal. They are depleted uranium weapons.

    Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first Gulf War. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.

    While the use of DU weapons and their effect on human health and the environment are subjects of extreme importance the Pentagon is noticeably reluctant to discuss these weapons. Despite numerous calls to specific individuals identified as being the appointed spokesmen on the subject, not one would answer their phone during normal business hours for the purpose of this article.

    Dr. Doug Rokke, on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles hit by friendly fire during the 1991 Gulf War. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.

    Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have “totally disregarded the consequences” of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.

    The first Gulf War was the largest friendly fire incident in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. “The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire,” he told AFP.

    DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.

    Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan . The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been forcibly exported and spread in the environments of Iraq , Afghanistan , the former Yugoslavia , Puerto Rico , and elsewhere.

    THE REAL “DIRTY BOMBS”

    “A flying rod of solid uranium 18-inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter,” is what becomes of a DU tank round after it is fired, Rokke said. Because Uranium-238 is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on contact with air, DU rounds are burning as they fly.

    When the DU penetrator hits an object it breaks up and causes secondary explosions, Rokke said. “It’s way beyond a dirty bomb,” Rokke said, referring to the terror weapon that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.

    Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporizes into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain.

    AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. “That’s exactly what they are,” Falk said. “They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”

    According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.

    “The larger the bang” the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the “micron size” or smaller, he said.

    While the Pentagon officially denies the dangers of DU weapons, since at least 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium dispersed as a gas. A declassified memo written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during the Second World War, and sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, provides the evidence:

    “As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs,” the 1943 memo reads. “In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty.”

    The use of radioactive materials “as a terrain contaminant” to “deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations” is also discussed in the Groves memo of 1943.

    “Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it’s not going to decrease very much over time,” Leonard Dietz, a retired nuclear physicist with 33 years experience told the New York Daily News . “In the long run . veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem.”

    Inhaled particles of radioactive uranium oxide dust will either lodge in the lungs or travel through the body, depending on their size. The smallest particles can be carried through cell walls and “affect the master code – the __expression of the DNA,” Falk told AFP.

    Inhaled DU can “fool around with the keys” and do damage to “practically anything,” Falk said. “It affects the body in so many ways and there are so many different symptoms that they want to give it different names,” Falk said about the wide variety of ailments afflicting Gulf War veterans.

    Today, more than one out of every three veterans from the first Gulf War are permanently disabled. Terry Jemison of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs said that of the 592,561 discharged veterans from the 1991 war in Iraq , 179,310 are receiving disability compensation and another 24,763 cases are pending.

    The “epigenetic damage” done by DU has resulted in many grossly deformed children born in areas such as southern Iraq where tons of DU have contaminated the environment and local population. An untold number of Americans have also been born with severe birth defects as a result of DU contamination.

    The New York Daily News conducted a study on nine recently returned soldiers from the New York National Guard. Four of the nine were found to have “almost certainly” inhaled radioactive dust from exploded DU shells.

    Laboratory tests revealed two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the 9 soldiers. The four soldiers are the first confirmed cases of inhaled DU from the current Iraq war.

    “These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle,” said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the soldiers and performed the testing. “Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more DU exposure,” Duracovic said. Duracovic is a colonel in the Army reserves and served in the 1991 Gulf War.

    The test results showing that four of nine New York guardsmen test positive for DU “suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians,” the Daily News reported.

    “A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq ] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust,” Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium said, “And the health impact is worrisome for the future.”

    HOTTER THAN HELL

    “I’m hotter than hell,” Rokke told AFP. The Dept. of Energy tested Rokke in 1994 and found that he was excreting more than 5,000 times the permissible level of depleted uranium. Rokke, however, was not informed of the results until 1996.

    As director of the Depleted Uranium Project in 1994-95, Rokke said his task was three fold: determine how to provide medical care for DU victims, how to clean it up, and how to educate and train personnel using DU weapons.

    Today, Rokke says that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no medical care. “Once you’re zapped – you’re zapped,” Rokke said. Among the health problems Rokke is suffering as a result of DU contamination is brittle teeth. He said that he just paid out $400 for an operation for teeth that have broken off. “The uranium replaces the calcium in your teeth and bones,” Rokke said.

    “You fight for medical care every day of your life,” he said.

    “There are over 30,000 casualties from this Iraq war,” Rokke said.

    The three tasks set out for the Depleted Uranium Project have all failed, Rokke said. He wants to know why medical care is not being provided for all the victims of DU and why the environment is not being cleaned up.

    “They have to be held accountable,” Rokke said, naming President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and British prime minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons and “totally disregarded the consequences.”

  • International Ju-Jitsu: Using United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 to Advance Nuclear Disarmament

    Introduction: Ju-Jitsu and Resolution 1540

    In the 16th Century Shirobei Akiyama, a Japanese man studying medicine in China, noticed that in a heavy blizzard branches of most strong trees broke while the elastic branches of the willow tree bent and efficiently freed themselves from the snow. He thus developed a martial art called Ju-Jitsu , which aims not to neutralize power with power but rationally absorb an attack and convert that energy to the opponent’s own detriment.

    On April 28, 2004, the United Nations Security Council adopted  Resolution 1540 requiring all States to take measures to prevent non-State actors from acquiring or developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in general.

    Critics of the resolution fear that it provides a mandate for the powerful countries that already possess nuclear weapons, particularly the permanent members of the Security Council (P5), to impose pressure or even use force to prevent other States and non-State actors to acquire such weapons themselves (see United Nations Security Council Unanimously Passes WMD Resolution, The Sunflower, May 2004 ).

    While there are definitely problems with the resolution, peace activists would be well advised to adopt the Ju-Jitsu approach and utilize the political momentum for action required by the UN resolution to move their governments to strengthen the norms and controls not only against the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, but also against those possessed and deployed by the P5.

    Thankfully, last minute changes in the resolution, made at the insistence of non-P5 Security Council members, provide political opportunities to do just this.

    Disarmament obligations in Resolution 1540

    The resolution notes that proliferation means ‘proliferation in all its aspects of all weapons of mass destruction,’ 1 and that action to prevent proliferation includes the implementation of ‘multi-lateral treaties whose aim is to eliminate or prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons,’ 2 and the need for ‘all member States to implement fully the disarmament treaties and agreements to which they are party.’ 3

    The resolution can thus be read to refer to efforts to prevent both horizontal proliferation (spread of weapons and related materials to those who do not yet have them) and vertical proliferation (continued possession, deployment and development of weapons by those already in possession of them). Such a reading is consistent with the disarmament obligations in the key multilateral treaties which aim to prevent proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons – referred to in the UN Security Council resolution – including Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons in the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention.

    Reporting

    Under the resolution, the Security Council established a Committee of the Security Council, consisting of all members of the Council, and called on all States to present a first report to the Committee within six months on steps they have taken or intend to take to implement the resolution.

    The reporting process provides an opportunity for all States to report on steps taken and steps planned to address both the vertical and horizontal proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

    In addition to the pre-ambular language calling for ‘all member States to implement fully the disarmament treaties and agreements to which they are party,’ 4 UNSC Resolution 1540 specifically ‘calls upon all States to promote the universal adoption and full implementation, and where necessary, strengthening of multilateral treaties to which they are parties, whose aim is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.’ 5

    Thus States should report not only on steps taken domestically to implement their own disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, but also on steps taken to promote the regional and international implementation of disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, including encouragement given to the Nuclear Weapon States to achieve complete nuclear disarmament.

    Peaceful resolution of related conflicts

    UNSC Resolution also calls on ‘all Member States to resolve peacefully in accordance with the Charter any problems in that context (i.e. relating to proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction) threatening or disrupting the maintenance of regional and global stability.’ 6 This provides an opportunity for States to highlight peaceful methods for resolving such problems and to report on methods they have used or promoted. This could include:

    • Recourse to the International Court of Justice to solve the dispute of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons (ICJ Advisory Opinion of 1996)
    • Support for United Nations Security Council action to respond to the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes of Iraq , and opposition to the use of force by countries acting outside the United Nations (US and UK use of fo rc e against Iraq )
    • Opposition to the doctrine of the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons to respond to the threat of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (US National Security Strategy)

    Criminal law

    UNSC Resolution 1540 requires all States to adopt and enfo rc e laws which prohibit any non-State actor to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery.7 States in implementing this obligation should extend such laws to include any person, regardless of whether they are a non-State actor or official of a State. This would be consistent with the objectives of the resolution, as outlined in the pre-amble which does not distinguish between State and non-State actors in determining proliferation risks.

    Many countries have already adopted criminal laws relating to both State and non-State actors with respect to chemical weapons as part of their actions to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention. Some countries, e.g. New Zealand , have adopted such laws with respect to nuclear weapons (much to the displeasure of some of the Nuclear Weapon States). States should affirm that a discriminatory approach, i.e. prohibiting acts only if undertaken by non-State actors, would fail the legal principle of universality (the law must apply to all) and would encourage proliferation under the cover of agents of the State. The recent revelations of proliferation organized through the Khan network involving both non-State and State actors, indicates the necessity for responsibility to extend to State actors as well as non-State actors.

    Adopting criminal laws which apply to both State and non-State actors would strengthen the global norm of illegality of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

    Assistance to other States

    UNSC Resolution 1540 invites States to offer assistance to other ‘States lacking the legal and regulatory infrastructure, implementation experience and/or resources’8 to fulfill the provisions of the resolution. Some observers fear that this section was inserted at the wishes of the United States in order to provide legitimacy for them to dictate to other States how they should deal with the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. If such assistance is only left to the USA and other Nuclear Weapon States , countries will no doubt be encouraged to implement only the counter-proliferation and horizontal non-proliferation aspects of the resolution and ignore the disarmament provisions. However, the provision does provide the possibility for States with strong non-discriminatory laws against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, to assist other States to develop similar laws.

    Disarmament Education

    UNSC Resolution 1540 calls upon all States to ‘develop appropriate ways to work with and inform industry and the public regarding their obligations under such laws [arising from multilateral treaties to which they are parties].’ 9

    This provides an opportunity for States to report on actions undertaken to inform and educate industry and public on non-proliferation issues including work done to implement the recommendations of the United Nations Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education.

    Transit through territorial waters

    The first paragraph of UNSC Resolution 1540 affirms ‘that proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as their means of delivery, constitutes a threat to international peace and security.’ As such, activities on the high seas, involving the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons could be considered as inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which reserves the seas for peaceful purposes consistent with ‘the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.’ 10

    Coastal States have authority in their territorial waters to prevent passage which is not innocent, 11 including passage which is ‘prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State,’ 12 or passage which is ‘in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.’ 13

    States could therefore respond to the resolution by prohibiting the passage of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery through their territorial waters.

    Regional and international collaboration

    UNSC Resolution 1540 ‘Calls upon all States to promote dialogue and cooperation on non-proliferation.’ 14 Some States have joined the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which aims to develop cooperation between States to address proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery.

    However, there is a risk that unilateral and coalition actions like PSI could undermine the work of multilateral approaches and mechanisms to address non-proliferation if such actions do not adhere to non-discriminatory norms and principles of international law.

    States participating in PSI should report on such participation to the Committee of the Security Council, and ensure that such actions are consistent with the following principles 15:

    1. Strive for universality, transparency in decision making with proper regard for legitimate comme rc ial and security interests, verifiability, and equity in application.
    2. Ensure strict compliance with existing international law relating to transit, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
    3. Reinforce the verification regimes of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and assist in the creation of strengthened verification methods for the Biological Weapons Convention.
    4. Strengthen mechanisms within the existing regimes to more clearly determine prohibited and permitted activities relating to transport of identified materials, components, and technologies.
    5. Apply constraints and principles in a universal and equitable manner.
    6. Apply restrictions in such a manner as to reinfo rc e the existing arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament commitments and norms contained in treaty regimes.
    7. Assist in establishing objective positive standards by which countries are determined to be in good standing with the existing relevant treaty regimes.
    8. Ensure all measures reinforce the United Nations system and the rule of law.

    Nuclear Energy

    While the NPT affirms the right of States to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, nuclear reactors create a very real proliferation risk with all known cases of nuclear proliferation arising from the diversion of fissile materials from nuclear reactors or from the diversion of uranium supposedly enriched for nuclear reactors. Countries which have foresworn the development of nuclear reactors could report on their capabilities to produce sufficient energy in alternative ways in order to encourage other States to phase out or forgo nuclear energy.

    International steps

    In order to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to States and non-State actors, a vital immediate step would be to achieve an international agreement to prohibit the production of fissile materials and place all existing stocks under international control. Such a measure would curtail the ability of States and non-State actors to acquire fissile material and use it to produce nuclear weapons. Concurrent steps which would curtail the ability of States and non-State actors to acquire nuclear weapons would be to disarm and disable all existing nuclear weapons pending the completion of negotiations on their elimination. The only guarantee against the proliferation of nuclear weapons to States and non-State actors is to eliminate the existing nuclear weapons and the means to produce them. This message should be made to the Committee of the Security Council by as many States as possible, along with other plans, proposals and actions leading to complete nuclear disarmament.

    Conclusion

    UN Security Council Resolution 1540 provides opportunities for significant disarmament steps by States, including opportunities to put pressure on nuclear weapon States to implement their disarmament obligations. The degree to which States act on these opportunities will depend mostly on how much encouragement and support they receive from disarmament advocates globally. So in short, it is up to us to make this happen and turn Resolution 1540 into a positive tool for disarmament.

    * Alyn Ware is a consultant for the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
    Contact: P.O.Box 23 – 257, Cable Car Lane , Wellington , Aotearoa-New Zealand
    Phone (64) 4 385-8192. Fax 385-8193 
    alynw@attglobal.net 
    www.ialana.org

    1.  Pre-ambular paragraph 2
    2. Pre-ambular paragraph 5
    3. Pre-ambular paragraph 13
    4. Pre-ambular paragraph 13
    5. Operative paragraph 8 (a)
    6. Pre-ambular paragraph 3
    7. Operative paragraph 2
    8. Operative paragraph 7
    9. Operative paragraph 8 (d)
    10. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 301
    11. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 25
    12. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 19 (1)
    13. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 19 (2) (a)
    14. Operative paragraph 9
    15. Presented by the Global Security Institute to the Seminar on Weapons of Mass Destruction and the United Nations , New York , Mar 5, 2004 . Convened by the government of New Zealand and the International Peace Academy.

  • Better Spies Won’t Add Up to Better Foreign Policy

    America’s intelligence system failed to see terrorist threats coming from Al Qaeda that should have been evident before 9/11, and then, after 9/11, saw terrorist threats coming from Iraq that didn’t exist. A system that doesn’t warn of real threats and does warn of unreal ones is a broken system.

    A unanimous and bipartisan report of the commission established by Congress to investigate intelligence mistakes leading up to 9/11 is expected to conclude that when its report is released today. Meanwhile, a unanimous and bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee has discredited the CIA’s prewar assessments that Iraq possessed banned chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear arms. Those assessments “either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence,” according to the committee. The senators blamed “a series of failures” of intelligence, such as taking circumstantial evidence as definitive proof, ignoring contrary information and relying on discredited or dubious sources. The failures occurred because of “shoddy work,” faulty management, outmoded procedures, “groupthink” and a “flawed culture.”

    What to do? The White House, Congress and the Kerry campaign are all sorting through several proposals. One would create a Cabinet-level intelligence “czar” with more control over the nation’s sprawling $40-billion system for collecting and analyzing information about security threats. A second would do just the opposite – remove the CIA director from any control over other intelligence agencies and hence install a better system of checks and balances. A third proposal would fix the length of the director’s term at five to seven years, removing that position from the whim of politics. A fourth, and contrary, proposal would make the director more politically accountable to the president and Congress. Almost all the proposals would beef up American intelligence with more resources.

    Some of these ideas have merit, but they don’t respond to the core lesson we should have learned: When American foreign policy is based primarily on what our spy agencies say, we run huge risks of getting it disastrously wrong.

    The lesson isn’t new. American intelligence failed to foresee the split between China and the Soviet Union in 1960 and 1961 and thereafter never fully comprehended it – right up through Vietnam. Had U.S. policy been based on more direct diplomacy and less on covert operations we might have avoided that shameful and costly war.

    The CIA was also notoriously wrong when it told John F. Kennedy that its plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs “could not fail,” and it misread Soviet intentions before the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy managed to avoid a nuclear war only by instigating direct communication with Nikita Khrushchev.

    American intelligence wildly exaggerated Soviet defense capabilities in the 1980s, leading the U.S. to spend billions of dollars for no reason. President Reagan’s military buildup didn’t bring the Soviets to their knees; the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight.

    By all means, let’s have better intelligence. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that better intelligence is a substitute for better policy. This is especially true when the threat comes in the form of terrorism.

    Terrorism is a tactic. It is not itself our enemy. There is no finite number of terrorists in the world. At any given time, their number depends on how many people are driven by anger and hate to join their ranks. Hence, “smoking out,” imprisoning or killing terrorists, based on information supplied by our intelligence agencies, cannot be the prime means of preventing future terrorist attacks against us. It is more important to deal with the anger and hate. This means, among other things, restarting the Middle East peace process rather than, as President Bush has done, run away from it. It requires shoring up the economies of the Middle East, now suffering from dwindling direct investment from abroad because of the violence and uncertainty in the region. And it means strengthening the legitimacy of moderate Muslim leaders, instead of encouraging extremism – as the current administration’s policies have undoubtedly done.

    Equally fatuous is the notion that “preemptive war,” based on what our intelligence agencies say a potential foreign adversary is likely to do to us, will offer us protection. Terrorists aren’t dependent on a few rogue nations. They recruit and train in unstable parts of the world and can move their bases and camps easily, wherever governments are weak.

    The United States cannot control or police the world. Instead, we will have to depend on strong treaties and determined alliances to prevent illegal distribution of thousands of nuclear weapons already in existence in Russia, Pakistan, India and other nuclear powers, and of biological or chemical weapons capable of mass destruction. The administration’s “go-it-alone” diplomacy takes us in precisely the wrong direction. That the United States suffers from a failure of intelligence is indisputable. The calamitous state of our spy agencies is only one part of that failure.

    Robert B. Reich, a professor at Brandeis University , is the author most recently of “Reason” (2004, Alfred A. Knopf). He was secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. This is adapted from his article in the August issue of the American Prospect, of which he is a cofounder and national editor.

    Originally published in the Los Angeles Times.