Jim Sensenbrenner and the depleted uranium problem

[dragonlady]

In another thread, DUer Postulator asked for talking points on
depleted uranium for his wife to use when she meets with Rep. Jim
Sensenbrenner next week.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1821432

The following is used with permission of a Wisconsin activist who has
quite a bit of experience in trying to talk to Sensenbrenner about
this problem. The discussion is excellent, and it also shows
what we're up against in Wisconsin's 5th District:


The subject of Depleted Uranium exposure to our troops and the
deaths that have resulted because of that exposure, to not only the
troops, but to the civilians exposed to DU in Iraq, and the spouses
of the exposed troops, and their children as well, has been long
buried by the Pentagon officials who will stop at nothing to protect
their weapons at the expense of innocents and our own citizens.

Last January or February?, my wife and I raised the question of the
illegal use of Depleted Uranium munitions and the lack of protection
for our troops as well as innocent civilians to our Congressman,
James Sensenbrenner, at a town hall meeting. His response was to
immediately try to cut off the questioning and claim that the
question that we should be asking was, not why our troops weren't
being protected from DU, but why Saddam Hussein had DU in the first
place. (First of all, Saddam Hussein never had any Depleted Uranium
munitions, unless it was because it was collected from the munitions
left behind by OUR troops from the first gulf war, because no one
but the United States and Britain have Depleted Uranium munitions.
Secondly, the question was regarding why it was that the United
States and Britain were illegally using Depleted Uranium munitions,
which is not really depleted at all, but just reconstituted nuclear
waste that is so dense that it will defeat any current known
armor.) In addition, the Depleted Uranium is so highly radioactive
that it will kill people that are exposed to even a tiny grain of
dust, 10 or more years after the exposure. The spouses will be
exposed to radioactive contamination from their husbands and wives
who have breathed in radioactive particles and excrete radioactive
waste from their bodies. The DNA of the people exposed to the
radiation is slowly being mutated so that their genetic code is
being altered, and their children and their children's children will
be forever mutated by it.

Sensenbrenner then claimed that he didn't know anything about
Depleted Uranium and we asked him to look into it and research it to
make sure that our troops and their families, and other innocent
civilians would be protected from these radioactive weapons of mass
destruction. He said then that he would. We didn't believe him,
but were willing to accept his word at the time and give him a
chance to follow up on it.

Again in April, at another town hall meeting, we had an opportunity
to meet with Congressman Sensenbrenner again, and ask him if he had
followed up on our question regarding Depleted Uranium munitions
from a month earlier, and he said that he hadn't. I told him that I
would be happy to provide information to him. He then responded
that all of the information on Depleted Uranium munitions was
classified and that he didn't have any access to any of that
information. I then told him that that response was interesting
given that I was able to find a lot of information over the
internet, from people who were closely associated with the nuclear
weapons manufacturing for the United States Government and for the
handling and decontamination of equipment that had been exposed to
Depleted Uranium munitions.

I went on to quote Leuren Moret who worked at two US nuclear weapons
laboratories as a geoscientist, and who in 1991 became a
whistleblower at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, and who has
since contributed to investigations on the illegal use of nuclear
weapons by the United States, by the UN subcommission investigation
depleted uranium. She also testified in 2003 at the International
Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held in Japan, and presented at
the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany,
and at the World Court of Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay,
India in January 2004. She is a Contributing Editor to GLOBAL
OUTLOOK, a City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner, and the Past
President of the Association for Women Geoscientists. Her research
is available at http://www.mindfully.org

I also referenced the work of Major Doug Rokke PhD., who was the
U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project director from 1994 to 1995 and in
1996 to 1997 he directed the development, instruction, and
assessment of radiation safety education and field procedures for
the U.S. Army at the Bradley Radiological Laboratories, Fort
McClellan. Dr. Rokke is one of the authors of the Pentagon's program
for environmental remediation of formerly used defense sites. He
wrote the Army's field manual for responding to chemical and
biological warfare and has trained U.S. soldiers in radiation safety
techniques. His training originally was a 40 hour block of
training, but the military has since shelved that training and
turned it into what Rokke calls "a 20-minute program that's full of
distortions. It doesn't deal with the reality of uranium munitions.

He then claimed that he would "look into it" again. After the town
hall meeting I offered him a copy of the article "Depleted Uranium:
The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" published in August 31, 2004 by
Leuren Moret and available at http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?
id_article=3123

I told him that I had a lot of other information that I would be
happy to send him if he would provide an email address, but he
claimed that he couldn't give me an email address because he already
received too much unsolicited email as it was.

Subsequent to then, I printed out a substantial amount of other
documentation that I gathered from research compiled by Dr. Rokke
which I hand delivered to Congressman Sensenbrenner on May 1st 2005,
in front of a town hall crowd in Mequon, WI.

You might want to remember that it was Congressman Sensenbrenner who
wrote the Patriot Act that took away our civil liberties and gave
Congress and President Bush the right to throw people into jail
without proof of their having done anything wrong. You might also
remember that it was Sensenbrenner who along with many other members
of Congress authorized Bush to go to war with Iraq because Bush
claimed that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction
and claimed that he would use them. Bush also claimed that he had
the right to enforce the UN's order against Saddam Hussein, because
Saddam Hussein wasn't, according to Bush, complying with those
orders. However, it is the United States Government, under the
orders of President Bush who have ACTUALLY USED WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION, which are currently killing not only enemy combatants,
but OUR OWN SOLDIERS, and their spouses and children, and innocent
men, women and children, and will continue to do so for longer than
we can possibly imagine, because the half-life of uranium 238 is 4.5
BILLION years. Bush and the United States Government and the U.S.
Military have ignored UN orders prohibiting the use of Weapons of
Mass Destruction and have used them anyhow, and the world will
suffer the consequences far into the future, for endless generations
of genetic mutations and misery. But I don't suppose that those UN
restrictions will be upheld anytime soon, or used as a reason to
overthrow an illegal government which is ACTUALLY guilty of war
crimes.

In early May, I attended a Sensenbrenner Town Hall Meeting again,
and again, Sensenbrenner claims that he can't get any information on
Depleted Uranium or lack of protection for our troops. I had
provided him a copy of Leuren Moret's article the first time I had
spoken to him and since then have provided him with numerous web
links to articles about Depleted Uranium, along with the comments of
Major Doug Rokke PhD, and a GAO report, entitled "Chemical and
Biological Defense Observations on DOD's Risk Assessment of Defense
Capabilities" released on Tuesday, October 1, 2002, which had been
presented as testimony before the Subcommittee on National Security,
Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, Committee on
Government Reform, House of Representatives, which indicates that
our military was still deficient in providing Chemical, Biological
and Nuclear protective equipment to our Military in the field,
before Bush started bombing Iraq. (The GAO report is available as
an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file called gaonbc1002.pdf from the General
Accounting Office or you should be able to find reference to that
document on the House of Representatives website for testimony on
that day.) To date, Rep. Sensenbrenner has responded to NONE of the
inquiries, other than to say that he'll look into it, and then say
that he can't get any information because it is classified. He has
also not responded to my individual requests in writing or
otherwise. Nothing has been brought up in the House of
Representatives and he continues to stay silent on the issue.

Here are additional resources that you can use to gather information
on Depleted Uranium:

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

The next time somebody says that in order to support the troops you
have to support Bush, have them look at this.

Ask yourself why the news media aren't showing you this
information. Ask yourself why the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz)
and the White House (Bush, Cheney, Rice) are ignoring the warnings
they have received about the use of DU (Depleted Uranium munitions)
and its affects not only on the enemy, but ON OUR OWN SOLDIERS. Ask
yourself why the Pentagon has refused to use the procedures and
provide the warnings to soldiers that are being exposed to these
dangers on a daily basis. Maybe because if they admit they know
about it, they would be vilified by the world community and the
world courts? Maybe because their actions would be considered war
crimes? (Depleted Uranium fulfills ALL of the conditions necessary
to be considered a Weapon of Mass Destruction under the Geneva
Convention.) Wonder why Bush withdrew the USA from the World Court?

See this flash presentation to see what happens to you and your
children when you are exposed to DU contamination. Warning – this
isn't pretty.

http://www.ericblumrich.com/pl_hi.html

Eric Blumrich flash presentation shows how the US under Bush 1 and
Bush 2 have used radioactive "depleted uranium" (not really
depleted - half life of 4.5 BILLION YEARS – just helps them get rid
of nuclear waste that they can't get rid of from nuclear power
plants) in munitions against Iraq. 320 Tonnes in 1991 against Iraq,
10 Tonnes in 1999 in Serbia (under Clinton), 75 Tonnes in 2003 in
the Second Gulf War.
(Recent information indicates that the amount of DU used in 2003 is
closer to 1500 Tonnes instead of the 75 Tonnes used by Blumrich in
his presentation http://traprockpeace.org/depleteduranium.html ) A
2003 report from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA)
wrote a report warning about the potential health and environmental
catastrophe from the use of depleted uranium weapons giving 2200
tons as the amount released in the 2003 Gulf War.

Since the end of the 1st Gulf war, cancer in Iraq has increased by
700-1000% and deformities by 400-600%. Radiation levels have
increase to 1000-1900 times normal in Baghdad in 2003. 67% of
returning Gulf War Veterans have children with deformities and
illnesses related to radiation exposure. In his flash presentation
Eric Blumrich quotes Major Doug Rokke, who has a PhD in Health
Physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist.

More information from an interview with Major Doug Rokke, PhD, by
Sunny Miller, can be found here:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.htm

The War Against Ourselves
An Interview with Major Doug Rokke
Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as
a forensic scientist. When the Gulf War started, he was assigned to
prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical
warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a
passionate voice for peace, traveling the country to speak out. The
following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock
Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES!
editors.

Check out these additional sites:
http://www.traprockpeace.org/gaonbc1002.pdf
http://traprockpeace.org/rokke24March03.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2860759.stm
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html
http://www.stopnato.org.uk/du-watch/index.htm
Here's proof from Los Alamos that DU really wasn't depleted after
all.
http://www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html
http://sftimes.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$61

http://www.downwinders.org/rokke.htm

http://www.ecotecture.com/library_eco/interviews/rokke_du_1a.html

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Autralian_Broadcasting_062703.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2860759.stm

And if that's not enough, Bush has buried $15.5 million in the 2004
Military budget for the development of Nuclear Tactical Weapons!! A
FIVE-Kiloton Warhead on a bunker buster bomb.

http://www.ericblumrich.com/nuke.html

For more information on DU, see the WISE Uranium Project,
www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/; the National Gulf War Resource Center,
www.ngwrc.org; or Veterans for Common Sense,
www.veteransforcommonsense.org. Sunny Miller's interview was
originally broadcast on WMFO (Boston) in November 2002 and is
available for re-broadcast at www.traprockpeace.org.

[me b zola]

1. There are no words

nominated

[postulater]

2. Thanks dragonlady

Sensenbrenner is a stubborn jerk. Everytime I have written him in the past, he always brushes off any idea that doesn't fit his party line. Sounds like he has done the same with the DU disaster.

I was looking at the speech he gave to Congress when introducing the Clinton impeachment:
<http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/01/14/transcripts/sensenbrenner.html> .

Seems like we could just substitute Bush for Clinton in a lot of places and have him re-read it into the record.