A Canadian research group found very high levels of uranium in Afghans during tests just after the invasion.
Question: do the Afghan mountains have naturally occurring uranium ore?
"We have premature births and malformations," said one doctor, who wished to remain anonymous, in one of the main maternity and neo-natal hospitals in the country.
"Malformations include neural tube defects and malformation of limbs; for example, the head is smaller than normal, or the head is larger than normal, or there is a big mass on the back of the baby.
"We don't know what is the cause of these malformations."
Then they're fucking retards - it's been known since the mid-19th Century that neural tube defects are associated with poor maternal nutrition. In the 20th Century this "malnutrition" link was refined to be closely associated with a lack of folic acid in the diet. Afghanistan has been suffering poverty and war for how long...?
Neural tube defects are
not linked to DU, but how much more convenient to blame DU than to have to admit the country's infrastructure is fucked up and people aren't eating well.
In 2002 and 2003 the group ran programmes analysing urine from Afghans.
In some, it found levels of uranium hundreds of times greater than in Gulf War veterans.
Again, do the areas these people come from have any naturally occuring uranium deposits? Gulf vets are heavily exposed to DU, yet their urine levels are not so high - unless Afghans are
eating the shit in large quantities something seems fishy.
"symptoms of muscular-skeletal pains, immune system disorders, lung disease, and eventually cancer".
Of course, a bazillion
other things cause these problems - starvation, as I learned last year, can certainly cause "muscular-skeletal pains" and it can certainly fuck up your immune system. Lung problems? Do these people smoke? If yes, that might also explain some cancer, right?
Depleted uranium and natural uranium contain different ratios of two isotopes of the metal.
Yes, and DU is
less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium ore because the more radioactive isotopes have been removed - hence "depleted".
DU is used in armour-piercing shells because its density means it can penetrate further than other metals.
^ That's why it's used.
Dr Durakovic said his research showed that in Afghanistan, coalition forces had also used DU in "bunker buster" bombs, which can penetrate tens of metres into the soil.
That would make sense, although I doubt you'll find concrete confirmation of that anywhere.
"In Afghanistan it has to be... a weapon that destroys not only bunkers or caves, but also penetrates through the soil and through the fragile environment of the mountains."
But, of course, it's OK for the Afghans and Taliban to blow the shit out of that "fragile environment" in the name of God, right?
Another villager, Bakhtawar, said: "There were three or four babies born in our area whose arms and legs and faces were not normal; they were malformed."
3 or 4 out of how many total? 3% birth defects is a
normal rate in areas with excellent medical care and modern pre-natal care. In an area with less medical care available this would be higher. Until you know how large the pool of babies those "3 or 4" are pulled out of this means jackshit.
But Faizullah Kakar, Afghanistan's deputy health minister, countered: "Health defects are common in Afghanistan.
^ lack of medical care, poor nutrition, warfare, etc....
"We want to find out if it is nutritional deficiency or environmental contamination with certain radiation that is doing it."
Nutritional deficiency is much more likely to be the case.
"We don't use depleted uranium in Afghanistan; we don't have a requirement to use that," said Major Chris Belcher, spokesman for the coalition forces.
Again - we need to know if uranium sources occur
naturally in that area of the world.
"The best thing is to relocate the population; people have to be moved from the areas that have been highly contaminated to safe areas to provide medical testing and medical care."
Would be a
fucking shame if you moved people from a supposedly contaminated area to a "pristine' area that had
naturally occurring uranium ores, wouldn't it?
Following the use of DU weapons in Iraq and the Balkans, the World Health Organization (WHO) researched the impact on health and the environment.
It concluded, as did a 2001 European Union enquiry into the Balkans conflict, that DU posed little threat.
And what threat there is, is largely
kidney damage due to the
chemical properties of uranium, NOT radiation.
Or maybe it's because they marry their cousins, generation after generation.
Yet another factor to take into account.
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
