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NUCLEAR
HOW IT WAS - HOW IT WILL BE
World Bank pledges to reduce danger of radioactive waste
Soldier's death was linked to Gulf War, coroner rules
Constellation Energy to Buy Nuclear Plant
Sorrows of Empire
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan
U.S. Acquiesces to Allies on New Iran Nuclear Resolution
U.S., Allies Agree on Iran Move
Iran May Have More Nuclear Skeletons, Experts Say
Theft of Cobalt in Iraq Prompts Security Inquiry
Report: Japan Aims to Make Missile Shield
U.S. Plan on N.Korea Involves 5 Nuke States - Kyodo
Constellation to Buy NY Nuclear Plant
Constellation Energy to Buy Nuclear Plant
Nuclear Fuel Produces Poorly Understood Minerals
Spending Discipline Proves Unfashionable This Year
MILITARY
Death of five soldiers in helicopter crash
GE Austrian unit Steyr acquires 29 pct of Slovenian arms factory
Boeing Dismisses 2 in Hiring of Official Who Left Pentagon
Boeing Fires 2 Top Officials In Hiring Probe
Boeing Continues on Downward Path
Rumsfeld Orders Review of Boeing Deal
Pentagon denies mutilation reports
'Antiterrorfront' to take over some security tasks
Some Members Propose Keeping Iraqi Council After Transition
Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties
Video Shows Iraqi Firing at Cargo Plane
U.S. Presses Israel to Stop Work on New Settlements and Barrier
Turkish Court Charges 9 in Bombings Inquiry
Iraqis Ask U.N. for Resolution
Iraqi Council Asks U.N. To Back Transition Plan
Video shows U.S. chopper
Technological Dub Erases a Bush Flub for a Republican Ad
Iraqi Council Halts Arab TV Network's News Broadcasts
Rumsfeld: Arab TV Worked With Insurgents
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Lawyer Asks Bush to Free Chaplain
ENERGY AND OTHER
North Korea exporting excess electricity to China
Plan Gives Farmers a Role in Fighting Global Warming
Hill Negotiators Agree to Bar Patents for Human Organisms
World AIDS Deaths, Infections at New Highs
Hunger Rising Again in Developing Nations
ACTIVISTS
Protesters 'invaded airbase on bikes'
-------- NUCLEAR
HOW IT WAS - HOW IT WILL BE
THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR BLOWS IN THE WIND AS RUMSFELD CALLS FOR MINI-NUKES
by Gordon Thomas,
November 25, 2003
GLOBE-INTEL <feedback@globe-intel.net>
There is no description like it:
"In the first milli-second, a pinprick of purplish-red light expanded to a growing fireball hundreds of feet wide. The temperature at its core was 50,000,000 degrees centigrade. The flash heat started fires a mile away and burned skin two miles distant. Stone columns were rammed straight down into the ground. People were vaporised. Sixty-two thousand other buildings, out of a total of 90,000, were destroyed. All utilities and transportation services were wrecked. One hundred and eighty of the city's 200 doctors and 1,564 of its 1,780 nurses were dead or dying. Eighty thousand other people were killed instantly.
"Almost all this happened in the time it took me to blink behind the goggles. Below, on the ground, granite was melting and the shockwave had created fireballs and screaming hailstorms. A seething mass of red and purple began to rise into the sky. The column was sucking into its base super-heated air which set fire to everything combustible. Beside me, my co-pilot, Bob Lewis, was saying 'my God what have we done'."
The words are those of Colonel Pat Tibbets, the pilot of the aircraft Enola Gay which dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945.
This week, they are a stark warning as Donald Rumsfeld pushed for mini-nukes to be added to America's arsenal of nuclear weapons to fight terrorists and "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran.
But Pentagon strategists say it might only take a faulty computer chip to register a missile launch by North Korea and the consequences would be all-out nuclear war.
"The country has still some way to go to perfect its nuclear capability," said Donald Rumsfeld in Japan this week.
The one mechanism that, until now, prevented a nuclear holocaust was the "hot-line" set up in 1963 between the White House and the Kremlin. It is now in cold storage.
A risk not initially anticipated by the US and Soviet commanders had been that of a false alarm - an early warning system detecting a missile launch that has not occurred.
When it happened several times, and before it was established to be untrue, each side had nervously watched the other's nuclear readiness and mobilised their forces.
In the early days of the nuclear arms race, a quickly accelerating situation often led Washington or Moscow to considering a pre-emptive strike as the only way to deal with the threat it believed it faced.
In 1961, a mechanical breakdown at a relay station in Colorado that handled communications between NORAD, the American Air Defence Command and SAC HQ, Strategic Air Command, generated panic. Military analysts suddenly found themselves cut off from important US early warning systems. Their judgment was the communications breakdown had been the result of an enemy attack.
All SAC bases and B52 crews with nuclear bombs on board were put on combat standby. Missiles and planes were readied for take-off when a B52 on normal airborne alert duty reported that no Soviet attack had taken place. The following year, 1962, a nuclear exchange between the superpowers became a real possibility when two operators at an early warning site in the US mistook a satellite in orbit for two Soviet missiles over Georgia. Only when no explosions occurred had the threat been downgraded to the status of "low credence".
A widespread power failure led to a further false alarm in 1965 when devices at nuclear command sites went red, indicating that there had been nuclear blasts.
A full alert was issued by the Office of Emergency Planning HQ. Luckily, the US military did not follow suit. On that occasion, a crisis occurred because of technical malfunction.
In 1968, the crash of a B52 bomber with a nuclear payload later led experts to conclude that had its weapon exploded, the blast would have convinced SAC HQ that the Soviets had launched a pre-emptive strike.
Fortunately, the B52 crashed on an ice flow off the American coastline and only its fuel tanks exploded.
During peacetime, the US nuclear arsenal is in a mode known as defence readiness condition - DEFCON 5. When a threat is perceived, its seriousness determines the level of alert which can quickly move to the ultimate posture of DEFCON 1 - maximum war readiness.
On November 9, 1978, a full-scale nuclear missile attack on the US was detected by operators watching display monitors at four major defence sites, including the Pentagon Command Centre.
It was 8.50 am and the state of readiness quickly moved from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1.
Planes carrying nuclear weapons were launched as well as the President's jumbo jet housing his nuclear command centre. No one had used the "hot-line" between Washington and Moscow - and the President was not aboard his plane. Rumours later circulated from within the Pentagon were not only had the President been kept out of the loop, but could not be located. During a period lasting no longer than six minutes, the world was only the push of a button away from a global disaster. It was averted when NORAD contacted an early warning station PAVE PAWS and learned that there had been no missiles launched by the Soviets.
When the alert began, no one had noticed that a nuclear exercise tape - designed to prepare analysts and radar operators for a real attack - had almost led to Armageddon.
On a normal day in SAC, NORAD and other command centres, computer screens display "000 detected" - no enemy intercontinental and surface launched missiles on their way to the US.
But at 2.25 am on June 3, 1980, the zeros lined against ICBMs and SLBMs suddenly registered "0002", then "0003".
Preparations were immediately made for retaliatory strike against pre-selected targets in the Soviet Union.
While the US nuclear missile arsenal was made ready - Minutemen missiles primed in their silos and the US Pacific Command with nuclear crews in their planes - no one seemed to understand that a real Soviet attack would not be in the form of two or three missiles.
When someone finally recognised the absurdity of the situation, a technician found that a faulty computer chip had inserted the numbers 2 and 3 into the line of zeros.
More bizarrely, a similar incident occurred three days later at the same command centre. Again, until the technical glitch was ironed out, US nuclear forces went to DEFCON 3.
Whatever lessons may have been learned during the Cold War - most of the alerts and mishaps were never made public - the problems did not end when the Soviet Union collapsed.
In 1995, Russian early warning radar operators alerted the Kremlin of a missile launch from Spitzbergen in Norway. They estimated that the missile would reach the Russian capital within five minutes.
Russian nuclear forces moved to their version of DEFCON 3 until, someone pointed out that the missile had been part of a scientific experiment.
A general in Moscow - one of 35 countries informed about the launch nine days earlier by the Norwegian government - had forgotten to pass on the relevant information to Russian nuclear early warning sites.
North Korea is new to the "nuclear club" and does have the experience of the mishaps that characterised the Cold War and which may have continued on a similar scale ever since.
And while India and Pakistan have been playing "nuclear turkey", the rest of the world was told that the agreement of Presidents Bush and Putin to reduce their nuclear arsenal minimised the potential for global conflagration.
This week, R V Ramsana, an Indian nuclear physicist, has also reminded us of a doomsday scenario if Pakistan was to release a 12 kiloton warhead - the same power as the one Tibbets released over Hiroshima - and explode it over Bombay. Ransana postulates:
"Up to 860,000 will die from a single missile strike. They would mostly be vaporised in one flash. Depending on wind direction and the location of the blast, millions more could be exposed to fatal radiation. Apart from the human casualties, the environmental consequences would be of the utmost gravity. Radiation would rise into the stratosphere to 30,000 feet. It could be carried for 2,000 miles. The impact on the world economy would be far, far greater than in the aftermath of September 11."
"There's a lot of potential for this idea of Rumsfeld's spiralling out of control," warned David Alberton, a leading nuclear expert, "enough mini-nukes could create the same catastrophe".
He is not alone in believing that. A nuclear conflagration would, according to M V Ransana's 57-page study of the likely effects of his envisioned nuclear attack, could cost 12 million lives.
Mr Rumsfeld should read the report. And ponder. It's high time he did.
ends
Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence - his many books include : Gideon's Spies_The Secret History of Mossad Robert Maxwell - Israel's Superspy Seeds of Fire - China and the Story Behind the Attack on America
GLOBE-INTEL is a free subscription service provided by http://www.globe-intel.net
-------- asia
World Bank pledges to reduce danger of radioactive waste in Kyrgyzstan
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-11-25/s_10747.asp
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - The World Bank pledged Monday to reduce the danger of uranium waste sites to residents of the densely populated Fergana Valley, which is shared by three countries in formerly Soviet Central Asia.
Kyrgyzstan inherited several radioactive dumps from the Soviet nuclear industry. Officials say waste sites in the southern town of Mayluu-Suu threaten to contaminate the water resources in the Fergana valley.
Through the World Bank, the Japanese government has provided a two-year, US$5 million for ecological projects in Kyrgyzstan. Part of that grant should be used to reduce the risk to the population in Mayluu-Suu, said Joop Stoutjesdijk, who oversees environmental projects at the World Bank.
The Kyrgyz Ecology Ministry has previously said it would cost US$30 million to $40 million to clean up the sites.
The World Bank invited foreign and local experts this month to assess environmental issues in the country and prioritize them. Stoutjesdijk said that radioactive waste sites in southern Kyrgyzstan would be a top priority due to their potential risk.
In October, the Kyrgyz government urged the country's creditors to write off part of the country's foreign debt to allow it to address environmental problems. The impoverished nation of 5 million people is saddled with a foreign debt of more than US$1.5 billion, equal to about 98 percent of its annual gross domestic product, according to the Finance Ministry. Creditors have pledged to write off part of the debt if Kyrgyzstan's market reforms are successful.
-------- britain
Soldier's death was linked to Gulf War, coroner rules
By Kim Sengupta
25 November 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=467016
A coroner came close to acknowledging the existence of Gulf War syndrome yesterday when he ruled that service in the 1991 conflict played a part in the death of an Army officer.
The ruling could pave the way for thousands of veterans to claim compensation from the Ministry of Defence, which has denied the existence of the syndrome.
The inquest examined the death of Major Ian Hill, who died two years ago after more than a decade of illnesses, which he believed were caused by the syndrome.
Yesterday, Nicholas Rheinberg, sitting at Warrington coroner's court, said that Major Hill's military service had been a factor in his death.
He said: "It is not for me to make sweeping conclusions based on a day's hearing on the existence of Gulf War syndrome." But he added: "I do not believe it would do justice to Ian Hill to describe his death as natural causes. I am going to describe his death as natural causes to which his military service in the 1991 Gulf War campaign was a contributing factor."
Speaking after the hearing, Mark McGhee, solicitor for the Hill family, said the verdict was the first time a British court had recognised the connection between Gulf War illnesses and a veteran's death.
Carole Avison, Major Hill's widow, said: "While he was alive, Ian fought hard for his illness to be recognised as coming from his time in the Gulf. Now, finally, that has happened."
The court was told how Major Hill, 54, who served in the Army for 20 years, flew to the Middle East in January 1991 to help to set up operating theatres while serving with the Royal Medical Army Corps. Within four days of arriving, Major Hill became seriously ill with flu-like symptoms including severe coughing, fatigue and neck and muscle stiffness, according to a statement he made before his death.
He was diagnosed with bronchopneumonia and was sent home a month later. But he failed to recover fully and attributed the deterioration in his health over the following decade to nerve agent pre-treatment sets (Naps) tablets given before the war in 1991.
"My psychological profile changed," wrote Major Hill, who went on to become a founder member of the pressure group the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA).
"I could not sleep, I was irritable, I had mood swings and short-term memory loss. It was completely out of character."
Ms Avison, 56, from Knutsford in Cheshire, with whom he had four children, described the impact of his illness on the family. "We lost our home, our business, our future and our life together," she told the hearing.
During the course of her husband's illnesses, Ms Avison met many veterans who claimed to have suffered from Gulf War syndrome.
"I have seen this group of people and I have listened to them, and I don't believe in fairy tales," she said. "These are genuine people, they have something wrong with them, and wanted to know what was wrong with them. They were ill people. On the outside they looked OK, but there was something wrong with them on the inside. Someone had given them a death sentence."
The court also heard from Michael Burrows, from Hull, who was given inoculations for anthrax and botulism.
He said: "When I lay down it was like a red mist would come over me. I started to have panic attacks, which continued when I returned from the Gulf."
Air Commodore William Coker, a consultant physician who examined Major Hill in 1994 as part of a study into Gulf War syndrome, said he believed his symptoms were caused by Q fever a disease with flu-like symptoms that spreads from animals to humans contracted in the Gulf. But he said a man in good physical condition should normally recover from such an illness.
The doctor examined about a thousand Gulf War veterans in an attempt to establish whether a syndrome existed. "My conclusion was that there was no distinct syndrome because the pattern of disease was so variable," he said.
Speaking after the verdict, Shaun Rusling, chairman of the NGVFA, said: "It's a very significant finding. It will affect many widows' pensions, because there are a lot more people out there like Ian.
"No compensation has been paid out and the veterans have been treated appallingly by the Ministry of Defence."
-------- business
Constellation Energy to Buy Nuclear Plant
Nov 25, 2003
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_PLANT_SALE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Constellation Energy Group is buying the nation's longest-serving nuclear plant for $401 million.
Constellation, which already owns one nuclear plant and part of another one along the Lake Ontario shore, said Tuesday it is acquiring the 495-megawatt Robert E. Ginna pressurized-water atomic reactor from Rochester Gas & Electric, a division of Albany-based Energy East Corp.
The Ginna plant has churned out electricity for 33 years from its perch overlooking the lake in the rural town of Ontario, 16 miles northeast of Rochester.
Under the deal, which is expected to close next summer, Baltimore-based Constellation will sell 90 percent of the plant's energy to Rochester Gas & Electric for an average price of $44 a megawatt hour for 10 years. Constellation also will pay the utility $21.6 million for nuclear fuel.
The acquisition, expected to close next June 30, needs to be approved by various federal and state nuclear regulatory agencies. The sale is contingent on the plant's operating license, which expires in 2009, being extended next year for another 20 years. The Ginna plant supplies half of Rochester Gas & Electric's electrical demand. It began operating commercially in July 1970, making it the most durable of America's 103 nuclear plants but not the oldest. It employs 440 people.
The Ginna plant was refitted with steam generators in 1996. Heated by the uranium reactor, the circulating water turns into steam, which drives turbines that power the generators.
In midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Constellation Energy shares rose 15 cents to $36.27 while Energy East shares rose 57 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $23.07.
-------- depleted uranium
Sorrows of Empire
Chalmers Johnson,
November 25, 2003
Guerrilla News Network
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc3463.html
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=44492
"Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people." - Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
With the fall of Baghdad, America's dutiful Anglophone allies--the British and Australians--are due for their just rewards: luncheons for Blair and Howard with the Boy Emperor at his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas. The Americans fielded an army of 255,000 in Iraq, the British 45,000, and the Australians 2,000. It was not much of a war--merely confirming the antiwar forces' contention that an unchallenged slaughter of Iraqis and a Mongol-like sacking of an ancient city were not necessary to deal with the menace of Saddam Hussein. But the war did leave the United States and its two Sepoy nations much weaker than they had been before the war--the Western democratic alliance was seemingly irretrievably fractured; a potentiality for British leadership of the European Union went up in smoke; Pentagon plans to make Iraq over into a client state sundered on Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish realities; and "international law," including the Charter of the United Nations, was grievously weakened. Why the British and Australians went along with this fiasco when they could so easily have stood for something other than might makes right remains a mystery.
The United States has been inching toward imperialism and militarism for many years. Disguising the direction they were taking, American leaders cloaked their foreign policy in euphemisms such as "lone superpower," "indispensable nation," "reluctant sheriff," "humanitarian intervention," and "globalization." However, with the advent of the George Bush administration in 2001, these pretenses gave way to assertions of the Second Coming of the Roman Empire. "American imperialism used to be a fiction of the far-left imagination," writes the English journalist Madeleine Bunting, "now it is an uncomfortable fact of life."1
On March 19, 2003, the Bush administration took the imperial step of invading Iraq, a sovereign nation one-twelfth the size of the U.S. in terms of population and virtually undefended in the face of the awesome array of weapons employed against it. The U.S. undertook its second war with Iraq with no legal justification and worldwide protests against its actions and motives, thereby bringing to an end the system of international order that existed throughout the cold war and that traces its roots back to seventeenth century doctrines of sovereignty, non-intervention in the affairs of other states, and the illegitimacy of aggressive war.
From the moment the United States assumed the permanent military domination of the world, it was on its own--feared, hated, corrupt and corrupting, maintaining "order" through state terrorism and bribery, and given to megalomaniacal rhetoric and sophistries while virtually inviting the rest of the world to combine against it. The U.S. had mounted the Napoleonic tiger and could not get off. During the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, the president's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, once reproved White House counsel, John Dean, for speaking too frankly to Congress about the felonies President Nixon had ordered. "John," he said, "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in." This homely metaphor by a former advertising executive who was to spend 18 months in prison for his own role in Watergate fairly accurately describes the situation of the United States.
The sorrows of empire are the inescapable consequences of the national policies American elites chose after September 11, 2001. Militarism and imperialism always bring with them sorrows. The ubiquitous symbol of the Christian religion, the cross, is perhaps the world's most famous reminder of the sorrows that accompanied the Roman Empire--it represents the most atrocious death the Roman proconsuls could devise in order to keep subordinate peoples in line. From Cato to Cicero, the slogan of Roman leaders was "Let them hate us so long as they fear us."
Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal "executive branch" of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. All I have space for here is to touch briefly on three of these: endless war, the loss of Constitutional liberties, and financial ruin.
Allegedly in response to the attacks of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the United States would dominate the world through absolute military superiority and wage preventive war against any possible competitor. He began to enunciate this doctrine in his June 1, 2002, speech to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and spelled it out in his "National Security Strategy of the United States" of September 20, 2002.
At West Point, the president said that the United States had a unilateral right to overthrow any government in the world that it deemed a threat to American security. He argued that the United States must be prepared to wage the "war on terror" against as many as sixty countries if weapons of mass destruction are to be kept out of terrorists' hands. "We must take that battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Americans must be "ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives ... . In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act." Although Bush did not name every single one, his hit-list of sixty possible target countries was an escalation over Vice President Dick Cheney, who in November 2001, said that there were only "forty or fifty" countries that United States wanted to attack after eliminating the al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan.2
At West Point, the president justified his proposed massive military effort in terms of alleged universal values: "We will defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. And we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent." He added an assertion that is demonstrably untrue but that in the mouth of the president of the United States on an official occasion amounted to the announcement of a crusade: "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, in every place."
In his National Security Strategy, he expanded on these goals to include "America must stand firmly for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity; the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property." In the preamble to the strategy, he (or Condoleezza Rice, the probable actual author) wrote that there is "a single sustainable model for national success"--America's--that is "right and true for every person in every society. ... The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere."
The paradoxical effect of this grand strategy is that it may prove more radically disruptive of world order than anything the terrorists of September 11, 2001, could have hoped to achieve on their own. Through its actions, the United States seems determined to bring about precisely the threats that it says it is trying to prevent. Its apparent acceptance of a "clash of civilizations"--wars to establish a moral truth that is the same in every culture--sounds remarkably like a jihad, even to its basis in Christian fundamentalism. Bush seems to equate himself with Jesus Christ in his repeated statements (notably on September 20, 2001) that those who are not with us are against us, which duplicates Matthew chapter 12, verse 30, "He that is not with me is against me."
Implementation of the National Security Strategy will be considerably more problematic than its promulgation and contains numerous unintended consequences. By mid-2003, the United States armed forces were already seriously overstretched, and the U.S. government was going deeply into debt to finance its war machine. The American budget dedicated to international affairs allocates 93% to the military and only 7% to the State Department, and does not have much flexibility left for further military adventures.3 The Pentagon has deployed a quarter of a million troops against Iraq, several thousand soldiers are engaged in daily skirmishes in Afghanistan, countless Navy and Air Force crews are manning strategic weapons in the waters off North Korea, a few thousand Marines have been dispatched to the southern Philippines to fight a century-old Islamic separatist movement, several hundred "advisers" are participating in the early stages of a Vietnam-like insurgency in Colombia and elsewhere in the Andean nations, and the U.S. currently maintains a military presence in 140 of the 189 member countries of the United Nations, including significant deployments in twenty-five. The U.S. has military treaties or binding security arrangements with at least thirty-six countries.4
Aside from the financial cost, there is another constraint. The American people are totally unwilling to accept large numbers of American casualties. In order to produce the "no-contact" or "painless dentistry" approach to warfare, the Pentagon has committed itself to a massive and very expensive effort to computerize battle.5 It has spent lavishly on smart bombs, battlefield sensors, computer-guided munitions, and extremely high performance aircraft and ships. The main reason for all this gadgetry is to keep troops out of the line of fire.
Unfortunately, as the conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, ground troops follow in the wake of massive aerial bombing and missile attacks. The first Iraq War produced four classes of casualties--killed in action, wounded in action, killed in accidents (including "friendly fire"), and injuries and illnesses that appeared only after the end of hostilities. During 1990 and 1991, some 696,778 individuals served in the Persian Gulf as elements of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Of these 148 were killed in battle, 467 were wounded in action, and 145 were killed in accidents, producing a total of 760 casualties, quite a low number given the scale of the operations.
However, as of May 2002, the Veterans Administration (VA) reported that an additional 8,306 soldiers had died and 159,705 were injured or ill as a result of service-connected "exposures" suffered during the war. Even more alarmingly, the VA revealed that 206,861 veterans, almost a third of General Schwarzkopf's entire army, had filed claims for medical care, compensation, and pension benefits based on injuries and illnesses caused by combat in 1991. After reviewing the cases, the agency has classified 168,011 applicants as "disabled veterans." In light of these deaths and disabilities, the casualty rate for the first Gulf War is actually a staggering 29.3%.
A significant probable factor in these deaths and disabilities is depleted uranium (or DU) ammunition, although this is a hotly contested proposition. Some researchers, often paid for by the Pentagon, argue that depleted uranium could not possibly be the cause of these war-related maladies and that a more likely explanation is dust and debris from the blowing up of Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons factories in 1991, or perhaps a "cocktail" of particles from DU ammunition, the destruction of nerve gas bunkers, and polluted air from burning oil fields. But the evidence--including abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and birth defects in Iraq and also in the areas of Kosovo where the U.S. used depleted-uranium weapons in the 1999 air war--points primarily toward DU. Moreover, simply by insisting on employing such weaponry, the American military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction.
DU, or Uranium-238, is a waste product of power-generating nuclear-reactors. It is used in projectiles like tank shells and cruise missiles because it is 1.7 times denser than lead, burns as it flies, and penetrates armor easily, but it breaks up and vaporizes on impact--which makes it potentially very deadly. Each shell fired by an American tank includes between three and ten pounds of DU. Such warheads are essentially "dirty bombs," not very radioactive individually but nonetheless suspected of being capable in quantity of causing serious illnesses and birth defects.6
In 1991, U.S. forces fired a staggering 944,000 DU rounds in Kuwait and Iraq. The Pentagon admits that it left behind at a bare minimum 320 metric tons of DU on the battlefield. One study of Gulf War veterans showed that their children had a higher possibility of being born with severe deformities, including missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems, and fused fingers.
Aside from the damage done to our own troops and civilians by depleted uranium, the United States military remains committed to the most devastating forms of terror bombing, often without even a pretense of precision targeting of militarily significant installations. This aspect of current American military thinking can be found in the writing of Harlan Ullman, a high-ranking Pentagon official and protégé of General Colin Powell, who advocates that the United States attack its enemies in the same way it defeated Japan in World War II. He writes, "Super tools and weapons--information age equivalents of the atomic bomb--have to be invented. As the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally convinced the Japanese Emperor and High Command that even suicidal resistance was futile, these tools must be directed toward a similar outcome." Ullman is the author of the idea is that the U.S. should "deter and overpower an adversary through the adversary's perception and fear of his vulnerability and our own invincibility." He calls this "rapid dominance" or "shock and awe." He once suggested that it might be a good idea to use electromagnetic waves to attack peoples' neurological systems and scare them to death.7
The United States government has other ways to implement its new world strategy without getting its hands dirty, including what it and its Israeli allies call "targeted killings." During February, 2003, the Bush administration sought the Israeli government's counsel on how to create a legal justification for the assassination of terrorism suspects. In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush said that terrorism suspects who were not caught and brought to trial have been "otherwise dealt with" and observed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."8
High-tech warfare invites the kind of creative judo the terrorists of al Qaeda utilized on September 11. Employing domestic American airliners as their weapons of mass destruction, they took a deadly toll of innocent American bystanders. The U.S. worries that they might acquire or be given fissionable material by a "rogue state," but the much more likely source is via theft from the huge nuclear stockpiles of the United States and Russia. The weapons-grade anthrax used in the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States almost certainly came from the Pentagon's own biological stockpile, not from some poverty stricken Third World country. The U.S. government has probably solved the case but is too embarrassed by it actually to apprehend those responsible and bring them publicly before a court of justice.9 Meanwhile, the emphasis on using a professional military with its array of "people-zappers" will only strengthen the identification between the United States and tyranny.
If the likelihood of perpetual war hangs over the world, the situation domestically in the United States is no better. Militarism and imperialism threaten democratic government at home just as seriously as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries. Whether George Bush and his zealots can ever bring about a "regime change" in Iraq or any other country is an open question, but there is no doubt that they already have done so within the United States. In keeping with the Roman pretensions of his administration, Bush often speaks as if he were a modern Caligula (the Roman emperor who reigned from 37 to 41 AD and who wanted to appoint his horse to the Senate). In the second presidential debate on October 11, 2000, Bush said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." A little more than a year later, he replied to a question by the Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, "I'm the commander--see, I don't need to explain--I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."10
Bush and his administration have worked zealously to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of the other branches of government. Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution says explicitly that "The Congress shall have the power to declare war." It prohibits the president from making that decision. The most influential author of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote in 1793, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man."11 Yet, after September 11, 2001, President Bush unilaterally declared that the nation was "at war" against terrorism, and a White House spokesman later noted that the president "considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason."
During October 3 to 10, 2002, Congress's "week of shame," both houses voted to give the president open-ended authority to wage war against Iraq. It permitted the president to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq as soon and as long as he--and he alone--determined it to be "appropriate." The vote was 296 to 33 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate. There was no debate; the members were too politically cowed to address the issue directly. Thus, for example, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) spoke on the hundredth anniversary of the 4-H Club; Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) talked about the Future Farmers of America in his state; and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) gave Congress a brief history of the city of Mountain View, California.12
Equally serious, the Bush administration arrogated to itself the power unilaterally to judge whether an American citizen or a foreigner is part of a terrorist organization and can therefore be stripped of all Constitutional rights or rights under international law. President Bush's government has imprisoned 664 individuals from forty-two countries, including teenage children, at a concentration camp in Guantánmo, Cuba, where they are beyond the reach of the Constitution. It has also designated them "illegal combatants," a concept unknown in international law, to place them beyond the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. None of them has been charged with anything: they are merely captives.
The key cases here concern two native-born American citizens--Yasir Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla. Hamdi, age 22, was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but raised in Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon claimed he was captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, although in a more detailed submission it acknowledged that he surrendered to the Northern Alliance forces, the warlords whom the U.S. had paid to fight on its side, before he engaged in any form of combat. Padilla is a Brooklyn-born American of Puerto Rican ancestry. He was arrested by federal agents on May 8, 2002, at O'Hare Airport, Chicago, after he arrived on a flight from Pakistan. He was held for a month without any charges being filed or contact with an attorney or the outside world. On the eve of his appearance in federal court in New York, he was hastily transferred to a military prison in Charleston, South Carolina; and President Bush designated him "a bad guy" and an "enemy combatant." No charges were brought against him, and attempts to force the government to make its case via writs of habeas corpus were routinely turned down on grounds that the courts have no jurisdiction over a military prisoner.
A year and a half after September 11, 2001, at least two articles of the Bill of Rights were dead letters--the fourth prohibiting unwarranted searches and seizures and the sixth guaranteeing a jury of peers, the assistance of an attorney in offering a defense, the right to confront one's accusers, protection against self-incrimination, and, most critically, the requirement that the government spell out its charges and make them public. The second half of Thomas Jefferson's old warning--"When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny"--clearly applies.13
The final sorrow of empire is financial ruin. It is different from the other three in that bankruptcy may not be as fatal to the American Constitution as endless war, loss of liberty, and habitual official lying; but it is the only sorrow that will certainly lead to a crisis. The U.S. proved to be ready militarily for an Iraq war, maybe even a North Korea war, and perhaps an Iran war, but it is unprepared economically for even one of them, much less all three in short succession.
The permanent military domination of the world is an expensive business. During fiscal year 2003, the U.S.'s military appropriations bill, signed on October 23, 2002, came to $354.8 billion. For fiscal year 2004, the Department of Defense asked Congress for a 4.2% increase, to $380 billion. When the budget was presented, sycophantic Congressmen spent most of their time asking the defense secretary if he was sure he did not need even more money and suggesting big weapons projects that could be built in their districts. They seemed to say that no matter how much the U.S. spends on "defense," it will not be enough. The next largest military spender is Russia, but its military budget is only 14% of the U.S.'s total. To equal current U.S. expenditures, the military budgets of the next twenty-seven highest spenders would have to be added together. The American amounts do not include the intelligence budgets, most of which are controlled by the Pentagon, nor do they include expenditures for the Iraq war or the Pentagon's request for a special $10 billion account to combat terrorism.
Estimates of the likely cost of the war vary widely. In 2002, President Bush's first chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, guessed that attacking Iraq--an economy somewhat smaller than that of Louisiana's--would require around $140 billion, but this figure already looks too small. In March 2003, the Bush administration said it would need an additional amount somewhere between $60 billion and $95 billion just to cover the build-up of troops in and around Iraq, the ships and planes carrying them, their munitions and other supplies, and the fuel they will consume. These figures did not include the costs of the postwar occupation and reconstruction of the country. A high-level Council on Foreign Relations study concluded that President Bush has failed "to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs" of Iraq.14
The first Gulf war cost about $61 billion. However, American allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Japan, and South Korea chipped in some $54.1 billion, about 80% of the total, leaving the U.S.'s financial contribution a minuscule $7 billion. Japan alone contributed $13 billion. Nothing like that will happen again. Virtually the entire world is agreed that if the lone superpower wants to go off in personal pursuit of a preventive war, it can pick up its own tab. The problem is that the U.S. is becoming quite short on cash. The budget for 2003 forecasts a $304 billion federal deficit, excluding the costs of the Iraq war and shortfalls in the budgets of programs that are guaranteed, backed, or sponsored by the U.S. government. Virtually all of the U.S. states face severe fiscal shortages and are pleading with the federal government for bailouts, particularly to pay for congressionally mandated anti-terrorism and civil defense programs. The Congressional Budget Office projects federal deficits over the next five years of over $1 trillion, on top of an already existing government debt in February 2003 of $6.4 trillion.
In my judgment, American imperialism and militarism are so far advanced and obstacles to its further growth have been so completely neutralized that the decline of the U.S. has already begun. The country is following the path already taken by its erstwhile adversary in the cold war, the former Soviet Union. The U.S.'s refusal to dismantle its own empire of military bases when the menace of the Soviet Union disappeared, combined with its inappropriate response to the blowback of September 11, 2001, makes this decline virtually inevitable.
There is only one development that could conceivably stop this cancerous process, and that is for the people to retake control of Congress, reform it and the election laws to make it a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency. That was, after all, the way the Vietnam War was finally brought to a halt.
John le Carré, the novelist most famous for his books on the role of intelligence services in the cold war, writes, "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."15 His view is somewhat more optimistic than mine. If it is just a period of madness, like musth in elephants, we might get over it. The U.S. still has a strong civil society that could, at least in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. I fear, however, that the U.S. has indeed crossed the Rubicon and that there is no way to restore Constitutional government short of a revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy. Without root and branch reform, Nemesis awaits. She is the goddess of revenge, the punisher of pride and arrogance, and the United States is on course for a rendezvous with her.
Chalmers Johnson is the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute in California and author of "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire." This essay is an excerpt from his forthcoming book "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Repbublic" (New York: Metropolitan Books; and London: Verso).
This article is reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus' Project Against the Present Danger.
NOTES
1. Madeleine Bunting, "Beginning of the End: The U.S. Is Ignoring an Important Lesson from History--that an Empire Cannot Survive on Brute Force Alone," The Guardian, February 3, 2003.
2. Ewen MacAskill, "Up to 50 States Are on Blacklist, Says Cheney," The Guardian, November 17, 2001; James Doran, "Terror War Must Target 60 Nations, says Bush," The Times, London, June 3, 2002.
3. Tom Barry, "The U.S. Power Complex: What's New?" Foreign Policy in Focus, Special Report, November 2002, n. 11.
4. Madhavee Inamdar, "Global Vigilance in a Global Village: U.S. Expands Its Military Bases," The Progressive Response, vol. 6, no. 41 (December 31, 2002).
5. William M. Arkin, "The Best Defense," Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2002; "War Designed to Test New Weapons: Interview with Vladimir Slipchenko," Rossiyskaya Gazeta, February 22, 2003, online at .
6. Doug Rokke, "Gulf War Casualties," September 30, 2002, online at http://www.rense.com/general29/gulf.htm; Susanna Hecht, "Uranium Warheads May Leave Both Sides a Legacy of Death for Decades," Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2003; Neil Mackay, "U.S. Forces' Use of Depleted Uranium Is 'Illegal,'" Glasgow Sunday Herald, March 30, 2003; Steven Rosenfeld, "Gulf War Syndrome, The Sequel," TomPaine.com, April 8, 2003; "UK to Aid DU Removal," BBC News, April 23, 2003; Frances Williams, "Clean-up of Pollution Urged to Reduce Health Risks" and Vanessa Houlder, "Allied Troops 'Risk Uranium Exposure,'" Financial Times, April 25, 2003; Jonathan Duffy, "Iraq's Cancer Children Overlooked in War," BBC News, April 29, 2003.
7. See Ira Chernus, "Shock & Awe: Is Baghdad the Next Hiroshima?" CommonDreams.org, January 27, 2003. On the proposed Anglo-American use of such weapons as lasers that can blind and stun and microwave beams that can heat the water in human skin to the boiling point, see Antony Barnett, "Army's Secret 'People Zapper' Plans," The Observer, November 3, 2002. The United States is also sponsoring research on chemical and biological weapons that violates the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and other international treaties. One of the projects is to produce antibiotic-resistant anthrax. Julian Borger, "U.S. Weapons Secrets Exposed," The Guardian, October 29, 2002; and Thomas Fuller, "Microwave Weapons: The Dangers of First Use," International Herald Tribune, March 17, 2003.
8. "Complete Text of President Bush's State of the Union Address," Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2003. Also see Ian Urbina, "On the Road with Murder, Inc.," Asia Times, January 24, 2003; Ori Nir, "Bush Seeks Israeli Advice on 'Targeted Killings,'" Forward, February 7, 2003.
9. See Marilyn W. Thompson, The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed (New York: HarperCollins, 2003); and Chuck Murphy, "Not Iraq, But Anniston, Ala.," St. Petersburg Times, March 16, 2003. According to Murphy, the U.S. Army is currently storing in the United States, 873,020 pounds of sarin, 1,657,480 pounds of VX nerve agent, and 1,976,760 pounds of mustard agent.
10. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 145-46.
11. James Madison, as quoted by Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia), October 3, 2002, speaking in opposition to a resolution granting the president open-ended authority to go to war whenever he chooses to do so. See John C. Bonifaz, "War Powers: The White House Continues to Defy the Constitution," TomPaine.com, February 4, 2003.
12. Winslow T. Wheeler, "The Week of Shame: Congress Wilts as the President Demands an Unclogged Road to War" (Washington: Center for Defense Information, January 2003), p. 17.
13. William Norman Grigg, "Suspending Habeas Corpus," The New American, vol. 18, no. 14 (July 15, 2002). Also see "Detaining Americans," Washington Post, June 13, 2002; Nat Hentoff, "George W. Bush's Constitution," Village Voice, January 3, 2003; Benjamin Weiser, "U.S. to Appeal Order Giving Lawyers Access to Detainee," New York Times, March 26, 2003; Dick Meyer, "John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear," CBSNews.com, June 12, 2002; Edward Alden and Caroline Daniel, "Battle Lines Blurred as U.S. Searches for Enemies in the War on Terrorism," Financial Times, January 2, 2003.
14. Leslie Wayne, "Rumsfeld Warns He Will Ask Congress for More Billions," New York Times, February 6, 2003; Thom Shanker and Richard W. Stevenson, "Pentagon Wants $10 Billion a Year for Antiterror Fund," New York Times, November 27, 2002; Jason Nissé, "The $800 Billion Conflict and a World Left Licking Its Wounds," The Independent, March 9, 2003; Patrick E. Tyler, "Panel Faults Bush on War Costs and Risks," New York Times, March 12, 2003; David R. Sands, "Allies Unlikely to Help Pay for Second Iraq Invasion," Washington Times, March 10, 2003.
15. Edmund L. Andrews, "Federal Debt Near Ceiling; Second Time in 9 Months," New York Times, February 20, 2003.
16, John le Carré, "The United States of America Has Gone Mad," The Times (London), January 15, 2003, online at .
----
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan
QUESTION 11. WHAT DOES THE U.S. GOVT. KNOW ABOUT DU?
November 25, 2003
By Leuren Moret <leurenmoret@yahoo.com>
11. The US government flatly denies risk of DU officially. World Health Organization published a similar report recently. Please tell us what you think the US government really knows.
1943 - MANHATTAN PROJECT:
Memo to General Leslie R. Groves
October 30, 1943
Blueprint for Depleted Uranium weapons
Recommendation from Manhattan Project physicists (Compton, Urey, Connant) to develop radioactive battlefield weapons "which would behave like a radioactive gas" using nuclear trash from the atomic bomb program in order to beat the Germans who might do it first. Depleted uranium was specifically mentioned in other communications.
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Groves-Memo-Manhattan30oct43.htm
Source of document:
Major Doug Rokke,
U.S. Army Head of Depleted Uranium Project to clean up Iraq and Kuwait after 1991 Gulf War.
1946 - OPEN LITERATURE
ACTIONS OF RADIATIONS ON LIVING CELLS
by D.E. Lea,
Cambridge University Press (1946)
(includes early research beginning in 1927 by H.J. Muller on genetic mutations in Drosophila from ionizing radiation); through collaboration with the Radiological Society of North America, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and the Royal Society.
1950 - U.S. ARMY Pamphlet:
THE EFFECTS OF ATOMIC WEAPONS
9.40 "...The uranium and plutonium which may have escaped fission in the nuclear weapon represent a further possible source of residual nuclear radiation...."
9.41 "The alpha particles from uranium and plutonium... are completely absorbed in an inch or two of air.... indicates that uranium and plutonium deposited on the earth do not represent a serous external hazard."
9.42 "Although there is negligible danger from uranium and plutonium outside the body, it is possible for dangerous amounts of these elements to enter the body through the lungs, the digestive system, or breaks in the skin. Plutonium, for example, tends to concentrate in bone and lungs, where the prolonged action of the alpha particles can cause serious harm."
THE EFFECTS OF ATOMIC WEAPONS (1950), U.S. Army
republished 1957, 1962, 1964 as THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS,
Dept. of the Army
Pamphlet No. 50-3,
Headquarters, Dept. of the Army (March 1977).
1974-99 - U.S. MILITARY:
Research Report Summaries on Depleted Uranium
Major research on military use of depleted uranium, 1974-1999, Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses - "GulfLINK"
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm
These summaries represent extensive research to test and characterize depleted uranium as a military weapon. The summaries confirm everything that was known in 1943 in the Groves Memo.
1976 - U.S. AIR FORCE:
"INTERNATIONAL LAW - - THE CONDUCT OF ARMED CONFLICT AND AIR OPERATIONS" - November 19, 1976
Judge Advocate General Activities
Air Force Pamphlet AFP 110-31
The U.S. Department of the Air Force manual, "International Law: The conduct of Armed Conflict and Air Operations," AFP 110-31, November 19, 1976 (hereinafter "USAF manual"), governs the actions of all U.S. Air Force pilots including operators of the A-10 Thunderbolts. This Air Force manual acknowledges that the Department of the Air Force must adhere to international and U.S. military law regarding bombardment and air operations.
"It is especially important that treaties, having the force of law equal to laws enacted by the Congress of the United States, be scrupulously adhered to by the United States armed forces." This is the legal policy of the U.S. Department of Defense. (USAF manual, p. 1-7)
Article VI of the Constitution of the United States says: "...all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or the laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
"The following are relevant examples of treaties to which the U.S. is a party: Hague Conventions IV of October 18, 1907 (USAF manual, p. 1-7); Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare of 1925 [the Geneva Gas Protocol, June 17, 1925] (USAF manual, p. 1-7); Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War, August 12, 1949." (USAF manual, p. 1-8)
Even without a formal declaration of war, the United States Department of Defense is legally obligated under the U.S. Constitution to obey the laws of war. "The law of armed conflict applies to an international armed conflict regardless of whether a declared 'war' exists." (USAF manual, p. 1-10) "The Armed Forces of the United States will comply with the law of war in the conduct of military operations and related activities in armed conflict however such conflicts are characterized." (USAF manual, p. 1-8)
Although uranium weapons are not banned by name in an existent treaty, they are illegal under binding Air Force law and international conventions. "Any weapon may be put to an unlawful use." (USAF manual, p. 6-1) "A weapon may be illegal per se if either international custom or treaty has forbidden its use under all circumstances. An example is poison to kill or injure a person." (USAF manual, p. 6-1) The International Court of Justice recognizes this rule in its Advisory Opinion, "Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons" (International Court of Justice Reports, 1996). In paragraph 87 of that Opinion, the Court found that the principles and rules of humanitarian law apply to all weapons, including nuclear ones. In other parts of the Opinion the Court stresses the duty to evaluate legality or illegality prior to use in military operations.
The Geneva Gas Protocol prohibits, "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices." (USAF manual, p.6-3, 6-4) The Geneva Conventions now include the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, their Protocol Additional I, and Protocol Additional II. [The two protocols strongly set out prohibitions of military operations that would unleash hazardous forces (such as an attack on a nuclear power facility or a dam) or would damage the natural environment or water supply. ]
The 1907 Hague Convention IV, at Section II, Article 23, absolutely forbids any use of poison. It states: "In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden
Poison is defined in the Air Force manual in a way that clearly describes uranium munitions: "Poisons are biological or chemical substances causing death or disability with permanent effects when, in even small quantities, they are ingested, enter the lungs or bloodstream, or through the skin. The longstanding customary prohibition against poison is based on their uncontrolled character and the inevitability of death or permanent disability as well as on a traditional belief that it is treacherous to use poison." (USAF manual, p. 6-5) U.S. Air Force Pamphlet [Manual] AFP 110-31
"U.S. Air Force and International Law Forbid the Use of Uranium Weapons"
by Karen Parker, J.D., Diplome (Strasbourg) and Piotr Bein, PhD.
Source: John LaForge,
Nukewatch http://www.nukewatch.com/
1978 - 95th CONGRESS AND U.S. PRESIDENT -
Speech by Senator Bob Dole
Making Bullets Out of Depleted Uranium - Mr. Dole: "Mr. President, an article appeared in the Washington Star on March 14 [1978], reporting that the Pentagon is about to start using depleted-uranium to produce bullets. They seem to have chosen this material for bullets because uranium metal is dense, and because depleted uranium is cheap. Needless to say, I find this proposal shocking. On the one hand this shows a complete lack of sensitivity to the general fear of using radioactive materials. On the other hand, only a strange set of policy decisions could have made this material so cheap that anybody would consider using it for bullets."
Opening paragraph of 140-line long statement by Senator Bob Dole at the 95th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 124 (part 29) March 17, 1978, page 7416.
1979 - U.S. ARMY:
Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command
The U.S. Army Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command,
March 7, 1979, states:
"Not only the people in the immediate vicinity (emergency and fire fighting personnel) but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to air borne uranium dust."
1984 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY -
Testing Problems from DU Contamination
"Prototype Firing Range Air Cleaning System"
by J.A. Glissmeyer, J. Mishima and J.A. Bamberger, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Richland, Washington, Proceedings of the 18th DOE Nuclear Airborne Waste Management and Air Cleaning Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, August 12-16, 1984. Published March 1985, Editor M.W. First, U.S. Dept. of Energy and The Harvard Air Cleaning Laboratory; CONF-840806 Vol. 2.
"The Ballistics Research Laboratory, a component of the U.S. Army Research and Development Command, contracted with Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) to provide a prototype air cleaning system for a new large caliber firing range where depleted uranium munitions are testfired. ...too costly to operate... rapid particle loading results in short filter life necessitating frequent replacement and disposal as low-level radioactive waste. The rapid particle loading also results in decreased airflow causing an excessive waiting period before personnel can reenter the target area."
"The U.S. Army Material Test Directorate (MTD) and the Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL) both operate two firing ranges (Ranges A, B, and C, D respectively) for the testing of large caliber depleted uranium (DU) penetrators. The targets are housed in enclosures which contain DU aerosols and fragments produced by the test firings. One of the drawbacks of using a target enclosure is that the airborne DU must be removed by ventilation and air cleaning before personnel can enter the enclosure without respiratory protection."
1984 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (DOT):
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION (FAA)
FAA Advisory Circular 20-123,
"Avoiding or Minimizing Encounters With Aircraft Equipped With Depleted Uranium Balance Weights During Accident Investigations"
dated 12/20/84,
signed by M.C. Beard, Director of Airworthiness.
This memo circulated to all FAA crash site investigators, which is still valid and in effect (1/11/01- FAA spokesman Les Dorr to M. Ruppert), describes the health hazard of depleted uranium aircraft balance weights at crash sites. The U.S. Government has always treated depleted uranium as a hazardous material. This memo reveals that it has been used as a component of aircraft manufacturing for years with full knowledge by the U.S. Govt.:
"While the depleted uranium normally poses no danger, it is to be handled with caution. The main hazard associated with depleted uranium is the harmful effect the material could have if it enters the body. If particles are inhaled or digested, they can be chemically toxic and cause a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue."
"- Personnel handling the balance weight should wear gloves.
- Industial eye protection should be worn.
- Respirator mask should be worn to ensure no radioactive dust particle ingestion.
- ...any articles used in the handling of damaged balance weights... discarded... and labeled as radioactive waste..."
Aircraft manufacturers such as McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing have routinely advised health advisory and safety precautions in their aircraft manuals.
From The Wilderness:
FTW SUBSCRIBER BULLETIN 01-01
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/du.html
[At the Pentagon crash site on Sept. 11, 2001, Leuren Moret reported that EPA official Bill Bellinger of the agency's Region III Environmental Radiation Monitoring Office, confirmed that crash rubble, was radioactive and "probably depleted uranium. He was convinced that depleted uranium is not radiologically toxic, but commented that it is more of a hazard when aerosolized."
"Depleted uranium: devastation at home and abroad" San Francisco Bay View, November 7, 2001
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DU-Devastation-Moret7nov01.htm
This was also reported in NATUR magazine January 10, 2002, "Todliches Uran-Recycling" p.10-12.]
1989 - U.S. NAVY - Changes from Depleted Uranium to Tungsten Alloys
" The interesting aspect in the history of this application is that after deciding in 1978 to use a uranium alloy, the U.S. Navy decided in 1989 to change to tungsten alloys, 'based on live fire tests showing that tungsten met their performance requirements while offering reduced probabilities of radiation exposure and environmental impact'."
B.Rostker,
Development of DU Munitions, in Environmental Exposure Report, Depleted Uranium in the Gulf (II), (2000).
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabe.htm
1990 - Office of the ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, A. H. Passarella, Dir. Freedom of Information and Security Review, February 11, 1990 letter to Mr. Dan Fahey
"Depleted uranium (DU) material can constitute a heavy metal poisoning and radiation poisoning hazard in the pulverized (powder) state only if it is either ingested or inhaled."
Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium (DU) Exposures, 2nd Edition, July 2, 1998, National Gulf War Resource Center, pp. 197-198.
1990 - SAIC: Government Contractor
"Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer."
"Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects."
From the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) report, included as Appendix D of AMMCOM's Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategic Study, Danesi, July 1990. This report was completed six months before Desert Storm.
1990 - U.S. ARMY - Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command [AMCCOM]
"...reported in July 1990, that depleted uranium is a "low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage." (AMCCOM's radiological task group has said that "long term effects of low doses [of DU] have been implicated in cancer...there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero."
Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium (DU) Exposures, 2nd Edition, July 2, 1998, National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc., p. i)
1991 - LOS ALAMOS MEMO - Los Alamos Nuclear Weapns Laboratory
SUBJECT: The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators March 1, 1991
From: Lt. Col. M.V. Ziehm
To: Major Larson "Studies and Analysis Branch" (WR 13)
"There is a relatively small amount of lethality data for uranium penetrators, either the tank fired long version or the GAU-8 round fired from the A-10 close air support aircraft. The recent war has likely multiplied the number of du rounds fired at targets by orders of magnitude. It is believed that du penetrators were very effective against Iraqi armor; however, assessments of such will have to be made.
There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of du on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of du on the battlefield, du rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal. If du penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities, then we should assure their future existence (until something better is developed) through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency is garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability.
I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after action reports are written." Los Alamos National Laboratory Memorandum March 1, 1991 Source of this document: Major Doug Rokke, Head of Depleted Uranium Cleanup Project for Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War 1991.
1992 - UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND log - following a major fire at a depleted uranium ammunition storage facility in Doha
"EOD POC (point of contact) states that burning depleted uranium puts off alpha radiation. Uranium particles when breathed can be hazardous. 11ACR has been notified to treat the area as though it were a chemical hazard area; i.e. stay upwind and wear protective mask in the vicinity."
United States Central Command log, "11ACR Fire in Doha: Updates from CENTCOM Forward," July 12, 1991, entry 10.
1993 - U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE (GAO)
"Inhaled insoluble oxides stay in the lungs longer and pose a potential cancer risk due to radiation. Ingested DU dust can also pose both a radioactive and a toxicity risk."
Operation Desert Storm: Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal With Depleted Uranium Contamination, United States General Accounting Office (GAO/NSIAD-93-90), January 1993, pp. 17-18.
1993 - U.S. ARMY ARMAMENT, MUNITIONS, AND CHEMICAL COMMAND(AMCCOM)
"When a DU penetrator impacts a target surface, a large portion of the kinetic energy is dissipated as heat. The heat of the impact causes the DU to oxidize or burn momentarily. This results in smoke which contains high concentration of DU particles. These uranium particles can be ingested or inhaled and are toxic."
U.S. ARMY ARMAMENT, MUNITIONS, AND CHEMICAL COMMAND(AMCCOM)
"Depleted Uranium Facts," photocopy in Bukowski, et. al, Uranium Battlefields Home and Abroad, March 1993, p. 97.
1993 - U.S. ARMY: Colonel Robert G. Claypool, Medical Corps Director, Professional Services of the Department of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General, August 16, 1993 letter to U.S. Army Chemical School
"When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk. The magnitude of that increase can be quantified (in terms of projected days of life lost) if the DU intake is known (or can be estimated). Expected physiological effects from exposure to DU dust include possible increased risk of cancer (lung or bone) and kidney damage."
Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium (DU) Exposures, 2nd Edition, July 2, 1998, National Gulf War Resource Center, pp. 263-264).
1993 - U.S. ARMY: Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff For Operations and Plans, Washington D.C. August 19, 1993: Memorandum Thru Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans - Director Army Staff - for Assistant Secretary of the Army (Installation Logistics & Environment)
Subject: Review of Draft Report to Congress - Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the U.S. Army - ACTION MEMORANDUM
[This was a response to a GAO report to Congress on DU issues]
c. "In response to the GAO report, the Deputy Secretary of Defense (DEPSECDEF) issued a tasking memorandum on 8 June 1993. The memorandum directs the Secretary of the Army to:
(1) Provide adequate training for personnel who may come in contact with DU contaminated equipment.
(2) Complete medical testing of personnel exposed to DU contamination during the Persian Gulf War.
(3) Develop a plan for DU contaminated equipment recovery during future operations."
Signed - Brigadier General Eric K. Shinseki [The rest of the memorandum is in regard to implementation of this order.]
[General Shinseki served four years as the Army Chief of Staff and retired in June 2003 after two years of tension between him and Donald Rumsfeld over resources needed for the Iraq war.]
Source of document: Major Doug Rokke, U.S. Army Head of Depleted Uranium Project to clean up Iraq and Kuwait after1991 Gulf War.
1993 - U.S. ARMY: Operations Support Directorate - UNCLASSIFIED SECTION Subject: Medical Management Of Unusual Depleted Uranium Exposures October 2, 1993
4. "Unusual exposures to DU are also expected to cause no medical problems. But in the interest of documenting the expected minimal exposures, the exposures should be documented and specimens taken. Unusual exposures include situations which could result in ingestion/inhalation of DU dust; or the contamination of wounds by DU dust or fragments. These unusual exposures could result from:
A. Being in the midst of the smoke from DU fires resulting from the burning of vehicles uploaded with DU munitions or depots in which DU munitions are being stored.
B. Working within environments containing DU dust or residues from DU fires.
C. Being within a structure or vehicle while it is struck by a DU munition.
5. Safety guidance on appropriate soldier response to accidents involving DU is contained within reference A. and guidance on appropriate management of potentially DU-contaminated equipment is contained within reference B.
6. In cases such as those in described in Paragraph 4, the following steps should be taken:
A. A MED-16 report (RCS MED-15(R4)) should be submitted in accordance with Paragraph 5-10 of Reference B.
B. Specimens should be collected and forwarded for analysis in conformance with the information provided in subsequent paragraphs and paragraph 9-6 of Reference A.
(1) Nasal swipes could be collected... Nasal swipes can be useful if confirming exposure to DU dust environments...
(2) Any filters used for respiratory protection (Protective mask canister, dust masks, field-expedient cloths placed over the nose etc.) should be sealed in plastic bags or other protective containers...
(3) Twenty-four hour urine specimens should be collected..." Source of document: Major Doug Rokke, U.S. Army Head of Depleted Uranium Project to clean up Iraq and Kuwait after1991 Gulf War.
1995 - U.S. ARMY - Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) Report to Congress
"If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate 'significant medical consequences'. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological. "
"The radiation dose to critical organs depends upon the amount of time that depleted uranium resides in the organs. When this value is known or estimated, cancer and hereditary risk estimates can be determined"
"Personnel inside or near vehicles struck by DU penetrators could receive significant internal exposures."
"Very few remediation technologies have actually been used to clean up DU-contaminated sites."
"No available technology can significantly change the inherent chemical and radiological toxicity of DU. These are intrinsic properties of uranium."
"The Army should determine the full life-cycle cost of DU weapon sytems. This analysis must take into account not only production costs, but also demilitarization, disposal and recycling costs; facility decontamination costs; test range remediation costs; and long-term health and environmental costs."
"The only systematic DU contamination of Army land occurs during the research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) cycle for DU ammunition."
"The Army needs to review particle data from Army studies and elsewhere to determine data gaps and conduct experiments to generate the requisite data to fill these gaps."
"The Army needs to develop a better understanding of DU particles generated from impacts or burning."
"The Army should be prepared to provide guidance to other governments on the health and safety risks associated with DU for affected battlefields. This guidance may include information on environmental measurement, monitoring, migration and remediation techniques." From the Army Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI), Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium Use in the U.S. Army, June 1995
1997 - ARMED FORCES RADIOBIOLOGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE (AFRRI)
Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) in Bethesda, Maryland has discovered in animal studies that embedded DU, unlike most metals, dissolves and spreads through the body depositing in organs like the spleen and the brain, and that a pregnant female rat will pass DU along to a developing fetus.
The Nation magazine, May 26, 1997, p. 17-18.
1997 - STATE OF NEVADA - DENIES U.S. AIR FORCE RESUMPTION OF USE OF DU ROUNDS AT NELLIS AIR FORCE RANGE TARGET 63-10
State of Nevada Review Comments to Colonel M.F. Fukey, September 15, 1997
RE: SAI # E1997-160: Draft Environmental Assessment of Resumption of Use of Depleted Uranium Rounds at Nellis Air Force Range Target 63-10
"Our review of the Draft EA and accompanying materials suggest that the environmental effects that could be anticipated from the resumption of air-to-ground firing of depleted uranium (DU) munitions have not been adequately assessed. ....neither the Draft EA nor its predecessor, the Limited Site Assessment, reflect awareness of the scant scientific and technical information on the use of DU and the large uncertainties that characterizes the issue of using DU munitions in the environment. ... the Draft EA cites the study involving the Yuma Proving Grounds (YPG), LA-13156-MS, September 1996, but fails to capture the large degree of uncertainty about the impact of DU in the environment."
"...attempted to construct an environmental transport mechanism for DU as a means of evaluating the risks that environmental DU poses to ecosystems and to humans. ... impossible because of insufficient data and an incomplete understanding of DU in the environment. ... conclusions from the YPG study were based on unsubstantiated conjecture."
"...study found DU residues in all components of the environment, that environmental concentrations varied widely, that corroded DU residues are soluble and mobile in water, that wind dispersal during testing is the prevalent means of dispersal of DU particles, and that an unknown degree of risk was posed to human health by DU in the environment. Moreover, there appears to be no insight into the issue of long-term (100 to 1,000 years and longer) environmental threats posed by DU residues."
"...lack of attention by the Air Force to implementing a comprehensive monitoring program to assess DU airborne emissions and/or transport of DU particulates in surface and groundwater at Target 63-10.... the potential for short and long-term effects on humans and ecosystems from transport and corrosion of DU in the environment... wind dispersal of dust containing DU generated from air-to-ground firing..."
"...the proposed Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the Draft EA says that airborne emissions of DU particulates "would settle quickly resulting in minimal air migration." Yet the Draft EA provides no factual evidence, through either on-site monitoring or modeling, to substantiate that dispersal of DU would in fact be minimal and contained to the vicinity of the target area. The document simply states that "air migration of DU particulates is not likely to occur at any great distance due to the extreme density of these particulates and the oxides."
"...the document fails to mention that a major state institution, the Southern Desert Corrections Center, (with an inmate population of over 1,400 ), is located in the same general vicinity and is likely to be closer to the target [less than 12 miles] than the community of Indian Springs."
"....significant issue given the Air Force's failure to provide specific information on the physical forms and probable locations of the estimated 27,000 kilograms (30 tons) of DU that has already been deposited in the target area and on target vehicles. ... this volume of contamination would be expanded by an estimated 2,370 kilograms, or 2.6 tons of DU per year."
"... by not assessing the "cradle to grave" management of existing and expected to be generated DU materials and soil contamination, the EA is deficient in scope, in terms of compliance with Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations for defining the "range of actions, alternatives and impacts to be considered" (CFR Parts 1508.25)."
"...if Target 63-10 is to be used for DU test and training activities, then a detailed Environmental Radiological Monitoring (ERM) program (i.e., risk assessment/DU transport model) should be developed, peer reviewed, and implemented for actual site conditions..."
http://www.rimbaud.freeserve.co.uk/dustate.htm
[Contamination of military test ranges has occurred all over the United States. The State demanded that the Air Force pick up the DU ordinance on the Nellis Test Range and it was buried in ammunition boxes as radioactive waste at the Nevada Test Site.]
1998 - UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (NRC)
According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission guidelines for occupational exposure, the 186,000,000 grams of depleted uranium released during the Gulf War combat operations is enough to poison every American man, woman, and child 100 times.
Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium (DU) Exposures, 2nd Edition, July 2, 1998, National Gulf War Resource Center, p. 3.
1998 - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR/OSHA Health Hazards Data, the Materials Safety Data Sheet from the U.S. Department of Labor/OSHA, says this about depleted uranium: "Increased risk of lung carcinoma and chemical toxicity to kidney. Hazardous decomposition products..."
Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium (DU) Exposures, 2nd Edition, July 2, 1998, National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc.
2000 - UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE)
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has said, "One may normally expect that depleted uranium contains a trace amount of plutonium." In a January 20, 2000 letter, DOE Assistant Secretary David Michaels formally admits that, "As background, I would note that our historical information shows that recycled uranium, which came straight from one of our production sites, e.g., Hanford, would routinely contain transuranics [americium, neptunium, plutonium] at a very low level. ... We have initiated a project to characterize the level of transuranics [americium, neptunium, plutonium] in the various depleted uranium inventories."
David Michaels, PhD, MPH, Assistant Secretary Environment, Safety and Health, U.S. Department of Energy, letter, Jan. 20, 2000.)
2001 - DU: THE BLACKLIST - 283 entities are holders of 539 (U238 U235) Patents The patent holders include universities (Univ. Texas 4, Univ. Duke 3, M.I.T. 2, Univ. Ohio 2, Univ. New Mexico 1); nuclear energy companies; branches of the U.S. military (U.S. Army 17, U.S. Navy 3, U.S. Air Force 2); Military industrial complex corporations; United Kingdom Government 1; and individuals. The patents are held but not limited to entities in the U.S., Japan, Germany, U.K, France, Canada, and Korea.
The weekly Christian newspaper "Famiglia Cristiana" (Italy), 1 million copies, published the DU-BLACKLIST: http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/du-blacklist-txt.html
2003 - MEDIA: PENTAGON CONTROLLING THE NEWS - John Hanchette Former Editor U.S.A. TODAY (National Daily Newspaper)
During a speaking tour in the Eastern United States in January 2003 with Gulf War Veteran Major Doug Rokke, I was introduced to John Hanchette who in Doug's words is "one of the good guys on the depleted uranium issue". Mr. Hanchette told me that from 1991 to 2001, as Editor of U.S.A. TODAY, he published news breaking stories on the effects of depleted uranium on Gulf War Veterans. Each time he was ready to publish a story about devastating illnesses in Gulf War soldiers, he got a phone call from the Pentagon pressuring him not to print the story. He has been replaced as Editor at U.S.A. TODAY and is now teaching journalism to college students.
Interview with former U.S.A. TODAY Editor John Hanchetter by Leuren Moret, Olean, New York, January 29, 2003.
2003 - PENTAGON - U.S. Army Colonel
Journalist: "What about the health risks that are associated with D.U.? Or do you deny there are any?"
U.S. Army Colonel: "You are determined to get me to make a statement about the health risks aren't you?"
Journalist: "If you will, I want to see what the behind the scenes view of D.U. is in the Pentagon."
U.S. Army Colonel: "Well.......(long pause, followed by heavy profanity).... Okay, I'll give you some dirt if that's what you're looking for. The Pentagon knows there are huge health risks associated with D.U. They know from years of monitoring our own test ranges and manufacturing facilities. There were parts of Iraq designated as high contamination areas before we ever placed any troops on the ground. The areas around Basra, Jalibah, Talil, most of the southern desert, and various other hot spots were all identified as contaminated before the war. Some of the areas in the southern desert region along the Kuwaiti border are especially radioactive on scans and tests. One of our test ranges in Saudi Arabia shows over 1000 times the normal background level for radiation. We have test ranges in the U.S. that are extremely contaminated, hell they have been since the 80's and nothing is ever said publicly. Don't ask don't tell is not only applied to gays, it is applied to this matter heavily. I know that at one time the theory was developed that any soldier exposed to D.U. shells should have to wear full MOP gear (the chemical protective suit). But they realized that it just wouldn't be practical and it was never openly discussed again."
Journalist: "So the stories that they know D.U. is harmful are true?"
U.S. Army Colonel: "Yes, there is no doubt that most high level commanders who were around during the 80's know about it."
Interview by Jay Shaft, Editor Coalition for Free Thought in Media, "U.S. Colonel Admits That 500 Tons of D.U. Were Just Used in Iraq" May 5, 2003.
2003 - SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES -U.S. Govt. Nuclear Weapons Lab Research funding provided by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research, and Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development.
"Sandia nanolaser may help extend life-spans by rapidly analyzing possible neuroprotectant drugs" by Neal Singer
"Helping Gulf War victims" - Sandia has been doing research on the role of mitochondria malfunctions identified as the most immediate cause of Parkinson's, Huntington's, and Alzheimer's. Loss of brain function is caused by neurons killed by malfunctions in the mitochondria. "Malfunctioning mitochondria have also been linked to battlefield aftereffects caused by radiation or by nerve agents like sarin." Gulf War victims frequently develop Lou Gehrig's disease or "ALS (the neuron disease amytrophic lateral sclerosis) which is a neurodegenerative disorder that kills motor neurons causing paralysis and death in three years." It affects both Gulf War veterans and civilians. Funding is now being requested from the U.S. Congress for research "to help Gulf War victims".
SandiaLabNews Vol. 55, No. 19, September 19, 2003
http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN09-19-03/key09-19-03_stories.html#nano
[AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT U.S. GOVT. ADMISSION THAT CANCER AND BIRTH DEFECTS ARE NOT THE ONLY DISEASES CAUSED BY RADIATION EXPOSURE.]
2003 - MEDIA: WHITE HOUSE/PENTAGON CONTROLLING THE NEWS TBRNews.com
During the middle of March, 2003, tbrnews received an email from a man who claimed to be a mid-level executive with a major American television network. He stated in this, and subsequent, emails that he was in possession of "thousands" of pages of in-house memos sent from his corporate headquarters in New York City to the head of the network's television news department. He went on to say that these memos set forth directives about what material was, and was not, to be aired on the various outlets of the network.
This individual claimed he was developing serious doubts about the strict control of media events and decided that he would pass this material along to someone who might make use of it... All are on corporate stationary, signed or initialed by the senders and again, signed or initialed by the recipients in the news division...
If these memos were true, they showed with a terrible clarity that at least one part of the American mass media was strictly controlled and that the news was so doctored and spun that it might as well be official news releases from the White House and Pentagon:
(Sept 28) There is to be nothing said about the high levels of radiation in Iraq. Depleted uranium is the culprit but if it becomes too widespread, it is to be blamed on Saddam's "hidden A-bomb arsenal"! Our man in the Pentagon was moaning that when GIs start losing their hair and fingers in a few years, there will be more lawsuits. As they say in the military, "not on my watch, Charlie!"
(Nov 17) the Supreme Court is busting Bush's balls now. They are going to take cases about the Gitmo [Guantanamo] gulag and the White House is shrieking with rage. I guess the Court doesn't realize that Bush thinks he is the one to decide what is constitutional and not the Court. He has a rude surprise coming very soon as I understand...
To read more than 1400 memos since February 2003 with daily updates go to http://www.tbrnews.org/index.htm.
-------- iran
U.S. Acquiesces to Allies on New Iran Nuclear Resolution
November 25, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/25/international/middleeast/25IRAN.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 - The United States, bowing to the wishes of its allies, agreed Monday to let the International Atomic Energy Agency adopt a resolution deploring Iran's nuclear program without referring the issue to the United Nations for possible sanctions, administration officials said.
A senior administration official said the resolution, which could be adopted Wednesday in Vienna, would say that the atomic energy agency "strongly deplores" Iran's 18 years of secretly developing a nuclear arms program and hints that further actions might be possible if such activity continued.
Yielding to the insistence of France, Britain and Germany, the administration backed off its demand that Iran be condemned and that allegations of its misconduct be referred to the United Nations Security Council. The three European countries have joined in an unusual coalition to press Iran to cooperate.
Administration officials said that in the end, the United States had little choice but to go along not only with the wishes of its European allies, but also with the urging of the atomic energy agency's leadership, most notably its general director, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei.
The Europeans and Dr. ElBaradei argued that Iran's recent steps, including its announced suspension of its program to enrich uranium, warranted a conciliatory approach. Moreover, they said, confronting Iran would backfire, causing it to cut off any discussion.
"Getting Iran to acknowledge that it has cheated in the past and that it will cooperate in the future may not be everything the United States wants," a European diplomat said. "But to walk away from talking to Iran will block any chance of progress in the future."
On a visit to Washington last week, Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, also argued strenuously for keeping the dialogue with Iran open, telling reporters that it was better to reach out to the government in Tehran than to cut off the possibility of reducing tensions.
As part of the deal negotiated in Vienna, the United States got a clearer indication in the proposed resolution that "all bets are off" if Iran continues to flout the wishes of the world and presses ahead with making nuclear weapons, administration officials said.
"We're pleased that we were able to reach agreement on a text of a resolution," a senior administration official said. "It makes clear that if there are further failures by Iran, all options will be open. This takes care of our requirement to take full account of all of Iran's past breaches."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell negotiated the language over the weekend with senior envoys from Europe and with Dr. ElBaradei.
European diplomats said the negotiations had an unusual sense of familiarity, given the fact that in the months leading up to the war with Iraq, Dr. ElBaradei joined with France and Germany in demanding that Iraq be given more time to come clean on its illicit weapons programs.
Britain and the United States, working together, opposed them, in the end giving up on getting United Nations Security Council authorization for military action against Iraq.
Diplomats said the three European countries had sent a powerful message as Mr. Fischer joined with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, in arguing for talking with Iran.
At a time when American inspectors have still been unable to find evidence of the illicit arms programs in Iraq cited as a principal reason for going to war, the United States was dealing with the issue of Iran from a position of weakness, many diplomats involved in the matter said.
In Vienna last week, it was clear that after strenuous lobbying, Mr. Powell was unable to persuade more than 3 of the I.A.E.A.'s 35 board members - Canada, Australia and Japan - to go along with a formal censure of Iran that would refer the matter to the Security Council.
While traveling with Mr. Bush last week in Britain, Mr. Powell declared that the wording desired by others on the agency board was "deficient." Dr. ElBaradei argued, however, that a resolution that would keep talks with Iran going would be "a resolution that strengthens my hand."
It was no secret in the nuclear discussions that the Bush administration has itself been divided on the issue. Administration hard-liners contend that continuing discussions with Iran are a kind of trap that would allow Iran to play for time while pressing forward with its nuclear program in secrecy.
A similar argument within the Bush administration has raged over whether the United States should reopen its direct diplomatic contacts with Iran, shut down since May after bombings in Saudi Arabia were linked by some intelligence officials to groups operating in Iran.
It was unclear to what extent any action by the I.A.E.A. would lead to progress on curbing Iran's nuclear program. Even many officials who favor negotiating with Iran say they are pessimistic that Iran will ever give up its nuclear ambitions.
--------
U.S., Allies Agree on Iran Move
Nuclear Steps Deplored; U.N. Could Get Involved
By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11537-2003Nov24.html
The Bush administration reached agreement with key European allies yesterday on a resolution that "strongly deplores Iran's past failures and breaches" in disclosing its nuclear program and establishes a fast-track procedure to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council if any additional violations are discovered, senior administration officials said.
The deal breaks an impasse between the United States and France, Germany and Britain over how to balance support for Iran's recent willingness to reveal 18 years of clandestine nuclear activities with the threat of sanctions for what the United States describes as a nuclear weapons program. The Europeans, who had persuaded the Iranians to submit to stricter inspections, sought a milder resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. agency. But the United States pushed for immediate consideration by the Security Council.
Referring the issue to the Security Council would subject Iran to possible sanctions, which the Europeans feared would embolden hard-liners in Iran to end its nascent cooperation. But U.S. officials were insistent that Iran must not be lulled into thinking it had escaped possible penalties.
The agreement, for the moment, defuses a diplomatic hotspot while the administration struggles to steady Iraq and to restrain North Korea's nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials were particularly pleased about the agreement, saying it acknowledges the possibility that Iran has turned a new leaf while leaving little doubt that future transgressions would receive immediate action.
"We endorsed the efforts of the [European] three to get the Iranians to cooperate," a senior U.S. official said. "But there had to be something to make it clear the Iranians have pushed us too far here."
A French envoy, however, described the agreement as "very near to the European logic." The envoy said that the United States dropped its insistence that the Security Council consider the matter, and that the resolution is focused on Iran's "implementing the agreements it reached with us a few weeks ago."
The resolution urges Iran to "adhere strictly to its obligations" to the nuclear agency "in both the letter and spirit" of nuclear nonproliferation rules. The resolution also calls on Iran "to undertake and complete the taking of all necessary corrective measures on an urgent basis."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spoke repeatedly to his European counterparts by telephone over the weekend in an effort to find a solution. A meeting of the IAEA's governing board in Vienna had ended in acrimony Friday after the U.S. representative harshly criticized the agency for saying in a report that there was "no evidence" Iran had a nuclear weapons program.
Officials said they expected the resolution to be approved tomorrow without a vote, signifying a consensus among the 35-nation board. "The secretary invested a lot of time and political capital in getting this right," the official said.
In a confidential report earlier this month, the IAEA concluded that Iran had repeatedly breached its nuclear safeguard agreements under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory. The report said Iran manufactured small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium as part of a secret 18-year nuclear program, and it harshly criticized Iran for hiding evidence of its nuclear program from international inspectors and for numerous "breaches" in its nuclear treaty obligations.
While the amount of plutonium produced was probably minuscule -- far less than needed for a nuclear weapon -- Iran previously denied conducting any such experiments. Plutonium production is generally associated only with nuclear weapons programs.
Iran has agreed to snap inspections and unfettered access to its nuclear facilities under an enhanced safeguards agreement called the "Additional Protocol." The Iranians also pledged to suspend uranium enrichment for an unspecified period.
But U.S. officials are highly skeptical that Iran has disclosed all of its activities or will completely cooperate, and they have pushed hard for a "trigger" if future violations are uncovered. Under the agreement, "any future serious Iranian violations" would spark an immediate meeting of the IAEA board to consider "all options at its disposal."
One U.S. official said this meant that a vote to send the matter to the Security Council could be called without an additional investigation or reports by the IAEA, but merely on the disclosure of new information that Iran had failed to provide to the agency. He gave as an example any credible report from the Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which in the past year has produced a stream of reports on Iran's nuclear program that have been confirmed by IAEA investigations.
Ironically, the Bush administration this summer shut down the group's Washington office on the grounds that it is part of a foreign terrorist organization.
One U.S. official said Iran's behavior during the discussions in Vienna helped swing the debate in the United States' favor. The Iranian delegate, he said, annoyed other nations when he indicated that Iran would not sign the additional protocol unless the IAEA resolution met Iran's approval. "It was eye-opening to a lot of fence-sitting nations," he said.
"We had to work three European friends from a text that was too loose, too forgiving, into a text that does the job by making clear that this is about correcting the past, not just about going into the future," said another U.S. official.
-------
Iran May Have More Nuclear Skeletons, Experts Say
November 25, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran will escape being reported to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday for violating its non-proliferation obligations, but arms experts suspect Iran has more nuclear skeletons in its closet that will come to light.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors meets to adopt an IAEA resolution that ``strongly deplores'' Iran's 18-year cover-up of a secret nuclear program that included uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.
But the resolution, which was put to the board after a week of haggling between France, Germany and Britain and Washington, also ``welcomes Iran's offer of active cooperation and openness.''
The United States had originally hoped to send Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions for violating its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But the European trio opposed this from the start and Washington eventually acquiesced.
Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S.-based think-tank, said the disagreement between the European Union's three biggest states and America might resurface in the future.
``It's very likely that Iran has more skeletons in its closet, and if they come to light, there will probably be another split between the United States and Europe on what's the best approach to take,'' Wolfsthal told Reuters.
``My concern is that there is no agreement either within Europe or between the key players on what to do when the shoe drops,'' he said, adding that he was unsure if the Europeans were prepared to take Iran all the way to the Security Council.
The resolution contains a so-called trigger clause -- if further breaches by Iran are uncovered, the IAEA board will meet immediately to consider ``all options,'' one of which is the Security Council.
IRAN'S TWO-DECADE COVER-UP
The IAEA resolution is a response to an IAEA report that details Iran's cover-up of sensitive atomic research for nearly two decades. It said there was ``no evidence'' of a covert arms program but the jury was still out as to whether one existed.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States was very pleased with the resolution, especially the part which immediately refers any future Iranian violation of international agreements to the IAEA board.
``That's...an element that we wanted to see in the resolution, which points out that action will be forthcoming -- appropriately so -- if there is any indication in the future that Iran is not meeting its obligations,'' he told reporters.
Gary Milhollin, head of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a U.S.-based think-tank, told Reuters the resolution had ``locked Iran into the declaration'' it gave to the IAEA in October that Tehran insists was complete and accurate.
But if Iran has any more secrets, the trust that the Europeans have given them will be betrayed and the IAEA board will be under intense pressure to report Iran to the Council.
``If the present declaration turns out to be false, then all bets are off and this deal unravels,'' Milhollin said. He added he would not be surprised if some of Iran's ``skeletons'' were further undeclared imports of nuclear material.
Wolfsthal said the administration of President Bush clearly supported the IAEA inspection process, though some in Washington saw the resolution as a kind of a trap -- a chance to let the Iranians hang themselves.
-------- iraq / inspections
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Theft of Cobalt in Iraq Prompts Security Inquiry
November 25, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/25/international/middleeast/25NUKE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
AMIRIYA, Iraq - A seeming lapse in surveillance by American forces has led to the looting of dangerously radioactive capsules from Saddam Hussein's main battlefield testing site in the desert outside Baghdad and the identification of at least one 30-year-old Iraqi villager, and possibly a village boy, as suffering from radiation sickness.
The two capsules, taken from a site once used by Mr. Hussein's government to test the effects of radiation on animals and perhaps humans, have since been recovered after an American sweep through the area.
But American officers fear that more cases of the sickness may follow, and that they will be powerless to help unless people in the villages of Amiriya and Shamiya break their silence and identify men who looted the desert site in early September.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the American commander in Iraq, has ordered an investigation to discover why an arc of eight 75-foot radioactive testing poles at the site was not more closely guarded after American nuclear experts filed a report to the Pentagon identifying them as dangerous after a visit to the site on May 9, American officers said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has also taken a personal interest in the case.
Under investigation is how American surveillance of the area, now under the control of the 82nd Airborne Division, failed to spot villagers entering the testing site with heavy vehicles to dismantle three of the poles, or towers, for scrap, leaving heavy tire tracks in the desert.
One of the cobalt capsules was found by American troops on Oct. 6 lying in the yard of a villager's house in Amiriya, less than 15 feet from the outdoor clay oven the family used to bake bread.
The second capsule was found partly buried about 75 feet from a house in Shamiya, just east of Amiriya and about 10 miles north of the nuclear testing site, in a position where it, too, would have been approached by family members and neighbors. Along with the capsules, parts of the giant testing poles were found, dismantled for scrap metal.
"We've made every effort to unscramble this thing," said Lt. Col. George Krivo, a spokesman for the American command in Baghdad.
Looting of military depots has been a persistent problem since the fall of Mr. Hussein, prompting suggestions that the 130,000 American troops in Iraq may be too stretched.
The radioactive capsules, less than five inches high and shaped like stainless steel miniatures of the Apollo spacecraft's command module, contained thumbnail amounts of cobalt-60, a radiation source commonly used in X-ray machines and in other medical and industrial applications. The capsules were situated in concrete crypts at the base of the towers, and raised on cables into the towers to create an irradiated environment on the simulated battlefield.
American experts say they have not been able to verify whether the radioactive poles were used under Mr. Hussein for live tests on humans and animals that simulated battlefield conditions under nuclear attack, as reports from Iraqi exiles in the years before the American occupation suggested.
But documents recording tests on humans, including dust-covered strips of film showing the naked upper bodies and heads of men who appeared to have been alive when the films were made, were found by The New York Times at the site during two visits there in mid-November.
American officers who oversaw the complex operation to recover the two unshielded capsules of cobalt-60 have hinted that the failure to identify the looting in September until two weeks later may have resulted from a work overload among experts who gather data from spy satellites.
In a somber reflection of the hostility toward Americans in this area at the southern end of the so-called Sunni triangle, Colonel Krivo said, "If for any reason there are people in those villages who cannot or will not come forward to be tested, that would be very much to their detriment." He added, "The attitude out there is `Why should we trust the Americans?' "
The two houses where the cobalt-60 capsules were found were identified after United States Army Black Hawk helicopters fitted with powerful radiation detectors flew wide patterns across the desert near the testing site, the officers said.
American experts say cobalt could be used in the making of "dirty bombs" - cheap, improvised nuclear devices. But American commanders here are convinced that the looters wanted the metal only for scrap.
American experts, and others from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which had the towers under surveillance for much of the 1990's and just before the American invasion of Iraq, say the cobalt capsules were strong enough when Mr. Hussein's scientists first used them in the early 1980's to emit potentially lethal gamma rays. Recent American tests have shown that the radioactivity of the capsules has decayed to about 10 percent of its original potency. But the fact that the capsules were unshielded, American experts say, still posed a danger to anyone exposed to them for a protracted period.
At both villages, local people have steadfastly refused to identify the men who dismantled the towers and moved them to the villages, along with the two capsules, or to tell American and Iraqi investigators where the men are now.
The officers said they believed that after the lapses in spotting the looting, the American command - particularly a Pentagon unit called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, working in Iraq to dispose of materials found at former chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites - deserved credit for moving quickly into the villages and taking the capsules back to the testing site.
The testing site was then made safe by moving the capsules from all eight towers to an undisclosed but "safe" place.
In a measure of how concerned the Americans were when they reached the two villages to recover the capsules, the officers described how an American soldier in Amiriya wearing no protective equipment had approached the capsule, mounted atop a 60-pound steel counterweight, had run with it, and had "heaved it over the fence, 100 feet from the house."
So far, about 70 villagers have been tested by teams from the Iraqi Ministry of Health and assisted by Americans, who took blood samples and conducted other tests.
Of those villagers, American officers say, four showed "abnormal results," and two, the 30-year-old man and the 4-year-old boy, were found to have symptoms consistent with radiation sickness. The man, who has the more serious of the two cases, had muscle pains, fatigue and multiple ulcerations in his mouth, the officers say, all classic symptoms of radiation sickness.
The officers did not identify the two victims or give their current state of health, but said they remained under observation.
In the case of the house in Amiriya, only women and children remain there, a situation almost unknown in the male-dominated life of Iraqi villages. American officers did not say in which village the two suspected radiation victims lived, or whether they believed that the 30-year-old man was among the looters.
The officers quoted the Iraqis living at the Amiriya house as saying that all the men in the family had been killed in the American invasion of Iraq, and that they knew nothing about how the radioactive capsule and the two 38-foot lengths of heavy steel lying just beyond a fence marking their yard had gotten there.
In Shamiya, the officers said, the family offered an even less credible explanation, given that American experts inspected all eight towers in May and found the capsules intact.
"They said, `An Iraqi soldier came to the house in April and told us to bury the object here, and to stay away from it,' " the officers said.
The American investigation set in motion by General Sanchez appears to be a rigorous one. "He's investigating this in great detail, and he's personally engaged," Colonel Krivo said of the general. "We will get to the bottom of this."
For years, Western human rights groups reported claims by Iraqi defectors that prisoners were being taken from Mr. Hussein's overcrowded prisons, including his main fortress at Abu Ghraib, about 30 miles north of the testing site, to be used as human guinea pigs.
But initial translations of the Arabic documents found at the site have not yet shown whether the tests recorded in the films involved biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, or who the men in the filmstrips were.
The looting of the capsules seems likely to become a parable for much of the nature of the American occupation of Iraq.
Some defense officials who discussed the incident on the basis of anonymity said events at the desert site showed the Bush administration's error in sending too few troops to Iraq, a decision that high-ranking American officers in Baghdad shortly after its capture said had curbed their powers to crack down on the looting that ransacked the city.
So far, experts working for the Iraq Survey Group, mostly Americans and Britons with long knowledge of Iraq's secret weapons programs, have failed to discover, or at least to announce the discovery of, materials indicating that Mr. Hussein was developing illicit weapons in the final years of his rule.
The site looted was known to the West. In the Persian Gulf war in 1991, it was heavily bombed. Although the site carried several names, the most common of them, the Saddam State Company, left little doubt of the direct link to Mr. Hussein.
After the site came under close inspection by United Nations weapons inspectors who arrived in the wake of the 1991 war, it lost much of its importance as top-secret programs were transferred.
Now, it is a desolate, windswept wasteland, evocative of the billions of dollars Mr. Hussein spent on weapons programs at a time when Iraq was being steadily impoverished by the wars he started and by the United Nations economic sanctions that followed.
But the site's size, about 20 square miles, its history and its strategic positioning in an area that was Mr. Hussein's main political stronghold, made it an inevitable place for American experts to visit shortly after Baghdad fell on April 9.
In the first half of May, a member of a United States Army unit searching for secret weapons said the team had found the eight radioactive testing towers and the concrete crypts beneath them, and had discovered a large radiation source in each crypt.
As reported by The New York Times on May 12, the team recommended that the area be secured by American forces until the radiation sources could be removed.
But the unit's recommendation was evidently ignored. American officers fear that because the villagers may have been continuously exposed to the gamma radiation for as long as a month before they were taken away by American troops on Oct.8, the risks of sickness among the missing villagers could be high.
Judith Miller contributed reporting for this article from New York.
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Report: Japan Aims to Make Missile Shield
By Associated Press
November 24, 2003,
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-japan-us-missile-defense,0,2344762.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
TOKYO -- Japan's military wants to help produce components of a next-generation missile shield it is studying with the United States, a move that could force a rethinking of this pacifist nation's long-standing ban on weapons exports, a newspaper reported Monday.
Japan has been conducting research into ballistic missile defense in conjunction with the United States since 1999, prompted by mounting concern about the threat posed by increasingly sophisticated North Korean warheads.
The two allies are working on a missile that could replace the Standard Missile-3, a ship-launched interceptor that is one of the key weapons systems in the U.S. ballistic missile shield commissioned a year ago by President Bush.
Japan's Defense Agency expects development of the new missile to be completed in several years and wants Japanese companies to help manufacture it to keep this nation on the cutting edge of defense technology, the nationally circulated Asahi newspaper reported, citing unnamed agency sources.
Having Japanese factories produce some parts of the missile would require a review of a 3-decade-old policy under which Japan banned weapons exports to all countries, the newspaper said. The 1976 ban was in line with this country's pacifist constitution, which renounces the use of force to resolve international disputes.
The government agreed in 1983 allow the transfer of weapons-related "technology" to the United States, its main ally. But Japanese officials are reportedly concerned that the exception cannot be interpreted as legitimizing exports of parts of weapons systems.
Defense chief Shigeru Ishida recently told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the export ban constituted an "obstacle" to helping with the mass production of the next-generation missile interceptors, the newspaper said.
While conducting research into a next-generation missile shield, Japan's military has already decided to acquire two U.S.-designed weapons systems that are part of the U.S. ballistic missile shield scheduled to be operational by 2005.
The Defense Ministry said in August it was seeking more than a billion dollars in next year's budget to buy the SM-3 interceptor and the ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3. Deployment is reportedly slated for 2007.
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U.S. Plan on N.Korea Involves 5 Nuke States - Kyodo
November 25, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-plan.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - The United States is devising a plan for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arms program that would involve the five declared nuclear states -- the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain -- Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday.
U.S. officials and diplomats close to multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program were quoted as saying that fundamental aspects of the plan could be presented to North Korea during a fresh round of talks, likely to take place around December 17-19.
They said the expertise of all the declared nuclear powers was believed needed to verify the complete scrapping of the North Korean nuclear program.
Under the process, North Korea would first be required to make a declaration of all its nuclear activities.
This would be followed by Pyongyang rejoining the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, from which it withdrew in January, and allowing inspections of its nuclear facilities by the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
Experts from the five nuclear powers would then monitor North Korea's efforts at dismantling its nuclear program, Kyodo said.
According to the officials, North Korea's compliance with the plan would be a pre-requisite for providing Pyongyang with the security assurances it wants.
``When they take concrete steps toward scrapping their nuclear program, the security assurance would become effective,'' a senior U.S. official was quoted as saying.
The first round of six-country talks in August, which were attended by the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, failed to make much headway toward resolving the crisis on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
In an attempt to defuse the crisis, Washington said last month it was willing to give Pyongyang unspecified security assurances in exchange for a verifiable and irreversible end to the North's suspected weapons program.
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-------- new york
Constellation to Buy NY Nuclear Plant
November 25, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-utilities-constellation.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Baltimore-based Constellation Energy Group (CEG.N) on Tuesday said it has agreed to buy a Rochester, New York nuclear plant for $401 million, building up its presence in the New York power production market.
Constellation will acquire the 495 megawatt R.E. Ginna plant from Rochester Gas & Electric Corp, (RG&E), a unit of Albany, New York-based Energy East Corp. (EAS.N). It will also pay RG&E $21.6 million for nuclear fuel.
Planned upgrades to the plant eventually will increase its total output to 580 megawatts.
Under the terms of the deal, Constellation will sell 90 percent of the plant's output and capacity to RG&E over 10 years at an average price of $44 per megawatt hour.
The acquisition ``provides a steady stream of earnings and cash flow because you've got the power purchase agreement for 90 percent of the power,'' said Mike Worms, an analyst with Harris Nesbitt Gerard.
``And the incremental power that's not sold to Rochester plus the upgrade gives them that much more flexibility and opportunity in the future to either enter into other contracts or sell that power into the market at whatever the prevailing market price is.''
Worms has a ``neutral'' rating on Constellation and does not own any of its shares.
Upon closing the deal, Constellation -- which owns the Baltimore Gas & Electric utility -- will own and operate three nuclear power stations with five units total, putting it on a par with three other power companies for the No. 6 spot nationally.
The acquisition will expand the company's presence in New York, where it owns one unit and part of another at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station in the city of Scriba, about 50 miles from the Ginna plant.
It also owns the Calvert Cliffs nuclear station on the Chesapeake Bay about 40 miles south of Annapolis, Maryland.
Completing the sale is contingent on a 20-year extension of the plant's license, which currently expires in 2009, from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). RG&E said in a statement that the process to extend the license to 2029 is ``well under way'' and a decision is expected by June 2004.
The acquisition of Ginna will mildly boost earnings between the deal's closing and 2006 and substantially bolster them beyond 2006, Constellation said.
As part of the deal, RG&E will transfer about $202 million in decommissioning funds to Constellation. The money will be used to eventually decommission, or dismantle, and secure the plant's site.
Constellation expects the acquisition to close on June 30, 2004, after receiving required approvals from the NRC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the New York Public Service Commission and other bodies.
Shares of Constellation closed Monday trade on the New York Stock Exchange at $36.12, while shares of Energy East closed at $22.50.
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Constellation Energy to Buy Nuclear Plant
November 25, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Sale.html
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Constellation Energy Group is buying the nation's longest-serving nuclear plant for $401 million.
Constellation, which already owns one nuclear plant and part of another one along the Lake Ontario shore, said Tuesday it is acquiring the 495-megawatt Robert E. Ginna pressurized-water atomic reactor from Rochester Gas & Electric, a division of Albany-based Energy East Corp.
The Ginna plant has churned out electricity for 33 years from its perch overlooking the lake in the rural town of Ontario, 16