Rumsfeld: Military trumps environment

[sabra]

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/base/politics-8/1125335342247610.xml&storylist=washington

Rumsfeld: Military trumps environment

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Monday that procedures designed to protect the environment can sometimes jeopardize U.S. troops and should be balanced against military needs.

"When those concerns are not balanced, the consequence can be unfortunate, such as when troops deployed to Iraq," he said in remarks prepared for delivery at the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation.

When some troops trained for service in Iraq at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., Rumsfeld said, they were taught to roll up the bottom of their tents to stay out of the way of desert tortoises.

"In Iraq, however, light spread out at the base of the tents and made troops more visible and possibly more vulnerable to insurgents," he said.

[randr]

1. Rummy is the most childish arrogant

idiot we have ever given a public stage to.
He has no concept of who it is that he works for.
Look forward to some horrific environmental issue to appear that he is getting ahead of with his turtle analogy.

[sniffa]

2. such as DU buLLets?

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Not that Rummy gives a shit about the troops being put in jeopardy

when they are exposed to Depleted Uranium.

Radioactive Wounds of War




Gerard Matthew thought he was lucky. He returned from his Iraq tour a year and a half ago alive and in one piece. But after the New York State National Guardsman got home, he learned that a bunkmate, Sgt. Ray Ramos, and a group of N.Y. Guard members from another unit had accepted an offer by the New York Daily News and reporter Juan Gonzalez to be tested for depleted uranium (DU) contamination, and had tested positive.

Matthew, 31, decided that since he’d spent much of his time in Iraq lugging around DU-damaged equipment, he’d better get tested too. It turned out he was the most contaminated of them all.

Matthew immediately urged his wife to get an ultrasound check of their unborn baby. They discovered the fetus had a condition common to those with radioactive exposure: atypical syndactyly. The right hand had only two digits.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2298/

Presentation on Depleted Uranium by Thomas Fasy MD PhD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NYC.

Dr. Fasy is an Associate Clinical Professor of Pathology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He has longstanding interests in carcinogenesis and environmental toxicology. In the past two years, he has lectured at conferences and university campuses on the toxic effects of inhaling uranium oxide dusts derived from depleted uranium weapons.

<snip>

By the early 1900s, uranium was well recognized to be a kidney toxin. By the mid-1940s, uranium was known to be a neurotoxin. By the early 1970s, uranium was recognized to be a carcinogen based on mortality studies of uranium workers and on experiments with dogs and monkeys. The first evidence that uranyl ions bind to DNA was reported in 1949 and by the early 1990s, uranium was shown to be a mutagen. Also, in the early 1990s, uranium was shown to be a teratogen, that is, an inducer of birth defects. The toxic effects of uranium on the kidney and on the nervous system typically occur within days of exposure and radiation probably plays little or no role in mediating these effects. In contrast, the carcinogenic effects of uranium have a delayed onset. The teratogenic effects of uranium might be due to exposure of one parent prior to conception as well as to exposure of the mother to uranium early in pregnancy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4124449

It's Time For Answers

by Scott Taylor

For the past 10 years the medical staff at the Basra Pediatric Hospital have compiled a very disturbing photographic record, which catalogues thousands of patients born with "congenital anomalies." Due to its strategic location -- just north of Kuwait -- Basra was one of the most heavily targeted Iraqi cities during the Coalition Forces' aerial bombardments of the Gulf War. (referring to Gulf War 1 /JC)

In the decade since Operation Desert Storm, the lethal legacy of that conflict continues unabated in the form of widespread cancer, an epidemic of renal disease and a tremendous increase in genetic birth defects. The collection of photos which line the walls of the Basra Hospital "memorial gallery" are horrific: grotesque babies born with two heads; tiny infants with internal organs protruding through their chest cavities; numerous limbless children; and an alarming number of newborns who reached full term without developing any skin.

"To find similar congenital anomalies we have had to research the radioactive aftermaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," said Dr. Khalid Al-Abidi, Iraq's Deputy Minister of Health when I interviewed him in August.

<snip>

Two weeks ago, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, the head of the Uranium Metal Project (and a former U.S. army colonel), tabled some preliminary findings at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine. Dr. Durakovic's team of Canadian and American scientists had tested 17 Gulf War veterans and detected disturbing amounts of depleted uranium in more than 70 per cent of their case studies. These statistics run in stark contrast to urine testing which was conducted this past spring by the Canadian military's medical branch.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/091200-02.htm
(Published Tuesday Sep 12, 2000 in the Toronto, Globe and Mail)

[moof]

5. This should be required reading for Troops before they deploy

Nominated although this reply alone should be a sticky thread at the top of every BB forum everywhere on the internet.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. Yup, too bad this stuff isn't required reading for armed forces

personnel, but it is readily apparent why it receives so little publicity. If the "rah, rah, rah, gonna go kill me an evil-doer" cannon fodder were to be made aware of the consequences of depleted uranium contamination to them and their own loved ones, as well as to the "enemy" non-combatants like pregnant women and the children and infants, it would probably increase the present recruiting difficulties by a significant factor.

Dr. Durakovic served as Chief of Professional Clinical Services of the 531 Medical Detachment during the Desert Shield phase of the Gulf War. When he returned to the Veteran's Administration (VA) Nuclear Medicine facility in Wilmington, Delaware, which he headed, he was asked to assess 24 soldiers of the 144th Transportation and Supply Company of New Jersey for evidence of DU in their bodies. He recalls: "They had been based in Saudi Arabia from January to August 1991, working with damaged tanks hit by DU armour-piercing shells from 'friendly fire.'" Durakovic's team performed a whole-body count of uranium 238 on the troops and found that 14 of the 24 had been contaminated. According to Durakovic's June 26, 1997, testimony before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the government 'lost' all records of these examinations. And shortly thereafter, Durakovic 'lost' his job.

Durakovic may have been forced to step down from his VA position at Wilmington, but the army could not strip him of his ethics as a medical doctor. In the interests of his patients he founded the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent non-profit institute which studies the effects of uranium contamination and challenges Pentagon claims that "exposures to depleted uranium have not to date produced any observable adverse health effects attributable to DU's chemical toxicity or low-level radiation." Dr. Durakovic explains that when depleted uranium is blown up at high temperatures, it changes to tiny particles. If inhaled, the uranium particles can get into the bloodstream and can be lodged in the bone, lymph nodes, lungs or kidneys causing damage by emitting low-level radiation in the body over a long period of time. The price can be cancer, necrosis and genetic deformity. Inexplicable, then, the Pentagon's refusal to comply with a 1993 congressional mandate to study the health effects of inhaled and ingested depleted uranium dust.

Or does the answer lie close at hand? According to Dr. Durakovic there are two main reasons for the Pentagon's DU-paranoia - and they both involve money: compensation for those suffering from DU-contamination, and the exorbitant costs of battle theatre clean up. But money seems a petty concern when we are talking about changes to the human gene pool. "Deformities among children born to Gulf War vets are well-documented as is the rising incidence of birth malformations in Iraq," Dr Durakovic points out. "What will happen in future generations? I have seen the effects of radiation worldwide. The consequences of DU are immeasurable."

http://www.nuclear-free.com/english/durakovic.htm

[natrat]

4. can sometimes jeopardize U.S. troops and should be balanced against milita

bogus wars to enrich the few ,imo, are a bit more jeopradizing to troops than ...

[Seabiscuit]

6. WTF is Rummy-Dummy blathering about now?

another bad Rummy hallucination.

[mtnester]

7. Military Trumps Environment, ...Security Trumps Privacy...

we gotta stop it before it is ALL gone.

[Coventina]

8. ENVIRONMENT TRUMPS EVERYTHING RUMMY!!!

What a jackass!!!

His little war in Iraq isn't going to mean shit once the methane from the melting permafrost in Siberia hits the atmosphere.

As Tom Leherer put it, "We will all go together when we go."

[Karenina]

14. "We will all go together when we go."

"We will all go together, we will all go together, we will all go together when we go." :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

What a grotesque dimwit he is. :puke:

[Earth_First]

9. Depleted Uranium has a half-life of 4.5 BILLION YEARS...

4.5 BILLION YEARS, folks.

This makes me sick. All the while, the * Mis-Administration attempts to gut VA benefits, close VA hospitals, and second guess the injuries and post-traumatic-stress-syndrome claims made by soldiers returning from Iraq & Afghanistan...

And how could you forget the innocent civilian life to be affected...

:puke:

[Im_Your_Huckleberry]

10. yeah, screw the turtles! who needs 'em anyway?

[slor]

11. Rumsfeld: "Lies trump Truth" n/t

[Demeter]

12. Rumsfeld Is MisInformed

The environment ALWAYS has the last word. You cnnot kill the environment, because it will kill you first. The military may be able to change the environment for the worse, but they will never achieve a victory that way. To win, one demonstrates the ability to maintain and improve something, not merely destroy it.

[daleo]

13. Military trumps environment

That's why the National Guard is in Iraq instead of New Orleans. I think that is the real message he is intending to convey.

[kodi]

15. the Soviets tried that and left their lands a toxic waste dump

.