Depleted Uranium Is A War Crime

April 19, 2006

The Pentagon has been using radiooactive weapons for at least a decade and a half with full complicity of at least three White House administrations and Republican and Democratic congressional legislators.

Conservatively, at least 300 tons and 1,700 tons of depleted uranium were used in the Gulf War and the current Iraq War, resectively.

Depleted uranium is really a misnomer, because the potentially harmful effects are by no means depleted. Research reports have found that when depleted uranium is ingested or inhaled, it can cause cancers and birth defects.

Iraqi and visiting doctors, and a number of news reports, have reported that birth defects and cancers in Iraqi children have increased five- to 10-fold since the 1991 Gulf War and continue to increase sharply, to over 30-fold in some areas in southern Iraq.

Currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent.