Pentagon Fails Soldiers Exposed to Depleted Uranium, Expert Charges

Pentagon Fails Soldiers Exposed to Depleted Uranium, Expert Charges

(July 23, 2003) Speaking to a packed room at the VFW Post this evening Maj. Doug Rokke said that the entire country of Iraq has been contaminated with depleted uranuim (DU) since Gulf War I and as many as 300,000 U.S. soldiers disabled from DU exposure are being ignored by the Pentagon.

Rokke, who has served in the military since the Vietnam War, is currently a Physics professor and leading expert on DU contamination and cleanup. He was chosen by Central Command to evaluate DU left by the U.S. in the Saudi desert after GWI, but the procedures he recommended were ignored.

Rokke explained that heavy uranuim dust is dangerous to inhale. Exposure leads to respiratory problems and rashes. However, U.S. soldiers were not provided proper information, training, protective equipment or medical resources to manage DU exposure. Military doctors told some veterans that they had “asthma.” To date the Pentagon has not assumed responsibility for DU exposure from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Balkans. “They don’t care,” Rokke concluded. “Once you’re sick they just abandon you.”

Dr. Mary Guzman with the Uranium Medical Research Center in Toronto joined Rokke for Q and A. Her organization has been testing urine samples of Canadian and British soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. She found that if DU contamination could be detected early it could be treated with Chelation Therapy. This remedy, available over the counter, removes toxic metals from the body.

Dr. Guzman, who has been working for five years on behalf of DU-exposed veterans, noted several cases of interference intended to curtail her work. She added that with advanced cases of DU contamination there was brain damage, chromosonal aberrations, birth defects and suicides. “We need an independent treatment center, not connected with the government or the Veterans Administration.”

Asked if DU was recognized as a weapon of mass destruction Rokke replied that it was classified as a WMD by the United Nations. The first deployment of DU was by Israel against the Palestinians.

This lecture was organized by Metro Justice in cooperation with the Western New York Peace Center.
On the up side, a certain Wolfowitz recently traveled to Iraq to congratulate himself, and breathed. Likewise his holiness Franklin Graham has been over there since before the war stalking for converts, and breathing. And those lucky people who work for Halliburton and Bechtel, “bring ‘em on!” And finally our SUV drivers may look forward to cheap Iraqi petroleum enhanced with depleted uranium.

Incidentally, if justification to invade Iraq was brutality, it was the U.S. taxpayers who paid to train the Iraqi soldiers in torture methods at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, GA.