NucNews - November 20, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Veteran recounts dumping of radioactive waste off U.S. shore BY JOHN M.R. BULL Newport News (Va.) Daily Press Sun, Nov. 20, 2005 http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/nation/13219865.htm NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - The Army might not know what kind of radioactive waste it dumped with chemical weapons off Virginia in 1960, but Ellis R. Cole is sure it wasn't harmless. The Geiger counter readings were proof of that. Cole said he helped winch hundreds of 55-gallon barrels labeled "radioactive" out of a ship and into the ocean. He was, he said, aboard a small Fort Eustis, Va.-based ship sent that summer to pick up a load of radioactive waste from an Army chemical-weapon development and test base in Maryland and dump it into the Atlantic Ocean. "It was common knowledge on the ship that we were dealing with something that was very dangerous," said Cole, now 64 and living in Lakeport, Fla. "I've been uneasy about it for a number of years. No one seemed to care at the time, but I felt in my heart we did something absolutely wrong." Army records show that a shipment of 317 tons of radioactive waste and 3 tons of Lewisite - a blister agent related to mustard gas - was dumped June 14 and 15, 1960, about 90 miles off the Virginia-Maryland line. Cole said it might have been dumped much closer to shore than Army records showed. Cole came forward after reading a Daily Press investigation revealing that the Army secretly dumped at least 64 million pounds of chemical weapons and 500 tons of unidentified radioactive waste off 11 states from 1945 to 1970, when the practice was halted. He provided a detailed, credible description of one of many Army dumping operations and offered the Daily Press access to his military record for verification. He also agreed to speak to Army chemical-weapons experts. Cole said two holds of the ship were filled with barrels of radioactive waste. He said the ends of the barrels were encased in concrete, which had gaps to hook chains connected to a winch that hoisted the barrels out of the hold and over the side. He said he was 18 at the time and was chosen to be one of the men who went into the holds to hook the barrels onto the winch. The captain issued a "very unusual" order that prohibited anyone from being in the holds for more than two hours at a time, thus limiting radiation exposure, Cole said. On leaving the holds, the workers were examined with a Geiger counter to determine the degree of radiation on them. "It would beep incessantly," Cole said. He was then ordered to shower, a common practice for decades to reduce the effects of radiation exposure. The Geiger counter still went wild. He took eight to 10 showers each time that he left the ship's holds before the Geiger counter didn't detect a dangerous level of radiation, he said. "The more showers I took, the less it beeped until it eventually stopped beeping," Cole said. He said he didn't remember whether he was required to wear a protective suit when in the holds. And he wonders whether the colon cancer diagnosed last year was caused by radiation exposure decades ago. Cole described a method of dumping not previously disclosed. Army records don't indicate that the ends of dumped barrels filled with chemical-warfare agents or radioactive waste were encased in concrete. But it's a plausible method to remove barrels from a ship's hold. Army photographs from the 1940s to the 1960s show forklifts pushing the steel containers and chemical-filled ordnance over the sides of ships. In later years, the Army's preferred disposal method was to scuttle ships packed with chemical weapons. Records also show that radioactive material in those years frequently was mixed with concrete before being dumped into the ocean. Army dumping records don't reveal the origin of the radioactive waste jettisoned. But National Archives records show that large quantities of unidentified radioactive material were transported in the 1950s by the Army's chemical-weapons escort service from a nuclear lab at Oak Ridge, Tenn., to Army bases with chemical weapons slated for ocean disposal. At the time, the thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb was being developed at that lab. Army transportation of potentially highly radioactive waste from the lab is known to have continued until 1960. The Army wasn't the only entity to dump radioactive waste off the Virginia-Maryland line in 1960. A 1961 report in the defunct Armed Forces Chemical Journal shows that private industry also dumped at least 8 tons of radioactive waste - some of it highly dangerous nuclear material - in the same location as the Army operation that Cole said he was on. The journal said what was then the Atomic Energy Commission approved the location. (The AEC was superseded in 1975 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.) Cole told the Daily Press that he was aboard a ship named the Pvt. Carl V. Sheridan, which he described as a 176-foot-long freighter. The Fort Eustis-based ship was ordered to the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to pick up its load of radioactive material. The name of the ship couldn't be verified. But an archivist at the Army Transportation Museum said ships of that description, designated freight supply vessels, were based at Eustis in the 1960s. Cole said his ship headed into the Atlantic and north to the Virginia-Maryland line. But the seas were too rough to set up the booms used to lift the heavy barrels from the ship's holds, so the vessel spent the night at Wilmington, Del. The ship headed south the next day, found the seas still too choppy to dump its cargo, and tied up at a dock at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va. The captain hung a placard - "radioactive" - on the side of the ship, which Cole said he understood to be standard operating procedure at the time. The post commander apparently considered the ship too dangerous to have around and ordered it away from the dock. "They threw us out of port," Cole said. "They made us go out into the (Chesapeake) bay for the night. It was too dangerous for the Army brass at Fort Monroe." The next morning, the ship headed into the Atlantic and steamed north for what the crew estimated to be 60 to 70 miles before dumping its load, Cole said. Army records show that the radioactive waste was dumped about 110 miles north of the fort and 90 miles from shore. If so, either Cole's memory is inaccurate or the Army's records are mistaken and the dumping was much closer to shore than recorded. One thing Cole is clear on: The material that his ship was carrying was dangerously radioactive. "That's something that's bothered me for the last 45 years," he said. "They told me to do it, and I did it. I always felt we were doing something wrong." -------- africa Zimbabwe to Process Newly Found Uranium By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS November 20, 2005 Filed at 11:15 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Zimbabwe-Uranium.html?pagewanted=print HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- President Robert Mugabe said Zimbabwe will turn to nuclear power by processing recently discovered uranium deposits to resolve its chronic electricity shortage, state radio said Sunday. Mugabe, who has close ties with two countries with controversial nuclear programs -- Iran and North Korea, spoke of his intention Saturday, the radio station reported. It was not clear how Mugabe intended to use any uranium deposits since the country does not have a nuclear power plant. The president announced plans in the 1990s to acquire a reactor from Argentina, but nothing else was ever heard about the proposal. ''Zimbabwe will develop power by processing uranium, which has recently been found in the country,'' Mugabe said, according to the radio. ''The discovery of uranium will go a long way in further enhancing the government rural electrification program.'' Zimbabwe was not previously known to have any workable deposits of uranium. South Africa has the region's only nuclear power station at Koeberg. Zimbabwe has been plagued by a chronic shortage of foreign exchange since Mugabe's seizure of 5,000 white-owned farms and the collapse of an export-oriented agricultural industry. It currently falls short of generating the 2,100 megawatts it needs daily by 400 to 450 megawatts. Zimbabwe has had great difficulty meeting bills from Mozambique, South Africa and Congo for imports from the regional electric power grid. -------- depleted uranium BATTLEFIELD RADIATION DU vet: 'My days are numbered' By ERIC PRIDEAUX Staff writer The Japan Times: Nov. 20, 2005 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20051120x1.htm Gerard Matthew has broad shoulders and beefy hands. He's built like a bear. Yet as sturdy as this 31-year-old may look, he is a very sick man. Iraqi armor in a Baghdad dump in June 2003. Some of the vehicles may have been hit by the depleted-uranium munitions Gerard Matthew blames for his and his daughter's affliction. Matthew suffers, for example, from facial swelling, double and triple vision, muscle weakness, bouts of extreme anger that sometimes cause him to lash out at his wife, erectile dysfunction and, most serious of all, a tumor in the pituitary gland at the base of his brain. "And these are just the big ones," he told the audience at the Foreign Correspondents' Club Japan in Tokyo earlier this month. At home in New York, he said, he's got "a pharmacy" of medication -- and he worries both for himself and his family that his "days are numbered." Gerard Matthew hugs his daughter, Victoria. All the more reason to speak at this media venue now, before things get worse. Matthew was a specialist in the U.S. Army National Guard's 719th Transport Unit, and his job, from April-September 2003, was to drive trucks collecting war debris from around southern Iraq. He thinks that Samawah, the city where Japan has some 550 SDF members participating in the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing," was among the many locations he passed through. Matthew believes the dust from spent depleted-uranium (DU) ammunition in his cargo accumulated in his lungs, irradiating his body and causing most of the ailments that trouble him today. Urine tests taken as part of a New York Daily News story investigation in 2004 showed that DU levels in his sample were up to eight times higher than in control samples from Daily News journalists. Matthew showed reporters a letter from the Department of the Army that rejected this claim. Most pertinent to his audience at the FCCJ: Matthew worries that radiological contamination may be afflicting Japanese troops posted to Iraq -- not to mention local Iraqis. "I came all the way to Japan to convey the message," said Matthew, who, with his wife Janise was the guest of Tokyo-based activist group Campaign for Abolition of Depleted Uranium Japan. In other words, he believes that Japanese troops should be warned: "They may be susceptible to it." With Janise, also 31, seated beside him on the dais, the couple together held up glossy photographs of their 1-year-old daughter Victoria, who was born without a right hand. It is a birth defect they both blame on DU. "Yes, the military has paid for my education," said Matthew. "But I would give all of that up to have my daughter with five fingers on her hand." The Matthew family is caught up in a raging worldwide debate over DU that extends into areas both scientific and geo-political. Depleted uranium, an enormously dense and hard biproduct of converting naturally occurring uranium into fuel for nuclear reactors, is used by the U.S. military both in supertough armor plating for fighting vehicles and in "penetrators" -- ammunition fired against armored vehicles and concrete emplacements that, instead of mushrooming on impact as regular bullets do, grows sharper as it bores forward and through. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 290.3 metric tons of DU projectiles were fired by U.S. forces during the 1990-91 Gulf War. By press time, the department had not responded to repeated requests for comment on Matthew's case and current use of DU by the U.S. military. Whatever the strategic benefits of DU ammunition, critics -- including many in the scientific community -- claim that particles of it released upon impact are easily inhaled by humans, either then or much later, and remain in the body for years, possibly causing cancers and many other health problems. With local Iraqis in mind in particular, Matthew said: "We're hurting innocent civilians, and we don't need to do that." The United Nations would seem to agree. A 2002 working paper by the UN Commission on Human Rights itemized a long list of diseases and birth defects among Gulf War veterans, Iraqis and the offspring of both -- linking them strongly to the use of DU. The same UN working paper concluded that use of DU in warfare contravenes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the Charter of the United Nations itself; and, "in certain situations of armed conflict," the Genocide Convention. The working paper, if read closely, also suggests violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The Pentagon, for its part, says on its Web site that radiation is not a "primary hazard" with DU "under most battlefield exposure scenarios." Citing its own and several high-profile international studies, it concludes that DU is "40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium," and is "not considered a serious external radiation hazard." That stance is, in large part, supported by the World Health Organization which, in its 2003 fact sheet No. 257, title "Depleted Uranium," said that "for the general population, neither civilian nor military use of DU is likely to produce exposures to DU significantly above normal background levels of uranium." Consequently, some tough questions were to be expected at the Matthews' news conference. "How can you scientifically establish that the syndrome you claim has been caused by depleted uranium was caused by depleted uranium?" asked Naoaki Usui, a freelance reporter who described himself as a proponent of nuclear energy. Matthew fixed his eyes squarely on his questioner. "Look at my daughter, and that should answer your question about the exposure," he said. "My daughter is the evidence." Matthew said that his and Janise's other children from earlier relationships were born without deformity, while genetic screening at a New York hospital turned up no predisposition to birth defects on either side of the family. That being the case, Matthew said that he and eight other soldiers with similar symptoms -- all of whom, except Matthew, were stationed at Samawah -- have each sued the Department of Defense for $5 million. His daughter Victoria, who to date has been denied disability benefits by the Social Security Administration, is also a coplaintiff with her father -- claiming an additional $5 million. The cases are pending. The plaintiffs are not alone in their battle. For years, U.S. and British veterans of the first Gulf War have demanded that their governments grapple more aggressively with the mysterious illnesses collectively known as Gulf War Syndrome -- symptoms of which Matthew says match his own. Movement on this front is afoot: BBC News reported earlier this month that the Pensions Appeal Tribunal in Britain had ruled that Daniel Martin, an ex-soldier and Gulf War veteran, could use Gulf War Syndrome as an umbrella term to cover the diverse health problems afflicting him. As a result, other British veterans hope this will improve their access to disablement pensions. At his FCCJ talk, Matthew said he expected news from his lawyer upon his return home to the Bronx. While he was still here, though, there was something else Matthew wanted to tell the Japanese. Describing his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial some days earlier, he said: "I felt like I made a connection . . . because I was exposed to radiation just like they were. My own government did it to them. "My government probably would not say sorry," he added. "But I say sorry." -------- iran Majlis obliges gov't to suspend all voluntary steps in case of UNSC referral Tehran, IRNA Nov 20, 2005 http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-22/0511204993181336.htm Iran-Majlis-Nuclear Program Majlis on Sunday obliged the government to suspend all the voluntary steps Iran has taken in the past three years for confidence-building if International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors opted to refer Iran's case to UN Security Council on November 24. Iran suspended uranium enrichment in Natanz in 2002 and signed Additional Protocol to Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003 to give 'objective guarantee' to UN nuclear watchdog that Iranian nuclear program will not be diverted from civilian purpose. The Additional Protocol to NPT grants the IAEA short-notice inspection to all Iranian nuclear sites. Out of 197 MPs present in the parliament, 183 MPs voted for, 10 MPs voted against the bill and three MPs abstained. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in his address to the World Summit in New York last September that Iranian nuclear program is transparent and open to IAEA inspection. "Cameras of the UN nuclear watchdog have been installed on all Iranian nuclear sites to monitor them. Iranian nuclear program is civilian and in line with Safeguards of the IAEA," he said. Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi on Sunday rejected the US media speculation that Iran disclosed a document to the agency about how to build bomb. "It's a sheer lie being fabricated a few days ahead of meeting of Board of Governors by US and Israel." Islam has prohibited weapons of mass destruction and Iran never considers to manufacture nuclear arms, he said adding that Iranian nuclear program is merely for generating electricity. -------- israel New German Subs Could Give Israel 2nd Strike Capability Sunday, November 20, 2005 / 18 Cheshvan 5766 Arutz Sheva20Nov2005 - IsraelNationalNews.com http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=93316 According to German reports, Israel is acquiring another two German Dolphin class submarines. The subs may provide Israel with second strike capability, essential for deterring nuclear conflict. Two German weeklies, Der Spiegel and Focus, have reported that Israel will be purchasing two Dolphin class submarines from Germany. The purchase will cost $1.17 billion, with one-third of the cost to be covered by the German government. Germany provided Israel with three Dolphin class submarines after the first Gulf War. Two of the subs were supplied free of charge after it was revealed that German companies helped Saddam Hussein develop his weapons program. The third submarine was purchased at a cost of $350 million. During that war in 1991, the Iraqi leader fired 39 Scud missiles onto Israeli territory. According to media speculation, the new submarines will provide Israel with second strike capability, in the event that Iran, or any other state, attacks Israel with nuclear weapons. Some reports suggest that the torpedo hatches on the Dolphin submarines acquired by Israel have been widened to accommodate nuclear missiles. Second strike capability is essential for deterring nuclear attack. The underwater subs, which are very difficult to detect, would ensure that Israel could strike back and devastate any country that launched a first strike against it. The fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed significant second strike capability is largely credited for preventing nuclear war between those two states. -------- korea The North Korea Riddle 2005-11-20 By SF Strategtic - Analyst: Syndicate Features http://www.asiantribune.com/show_article.php?id=2861 Has North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear weapons programme? This looks like a 64- million dollar question. At the end of the last round of six-nation negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in Beijing on September 19 it was announced that Pyongyang has ‘agreed’ to renounce its nuclear weapons programme. But a day later, North Korea said that it was not abandoning its nuclear programme until the US provided it an atomic energy reactor. Under the terms agreed to in Beijing, North Korea will rejoin the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and (as part of obligation under the treaty) allow nuclear inspectors into the country. In exchange, it will get security, economic and energy benefits. Part of the ‘bargain’ was promise of an undertaking from the United States that it will not attack North Korea if the latter adhered to the disarmament accord, thus ending the major purported reason for North Korea to start a nuclear weapons programme. During the six-nation talks, North Korea had demanded that it be given a light-water reactor—less easily diverted for weapons use—in exchange for abandoning its nuclear weapons programme. It was agreed China, Japan, US, Russia and the two Koreas—will discuss the reactor issue ‘at an appropriate time.’ It will appear that Pyongyang was being unreasonable and was living entirely up to its reputation as a rogue nation by going back on its words within 24 hours. It is not just the US that worries about a nuclear-armed Pyongyang but all of East Asia, including China, which is otherwise about the only important friend of North Korea. Much as we would denounce North Korea for its irresponsibility—and India has a special reason to be wary of North Korea which has armed Pakistan with missiles in exchange for nuclear know-how from Pakistan through the AQ Khan network-- it will be better to look at some other factors that might have weighed on the minds of the North Korea dictator, Kim Jong-Il. No sooner had the first word about the North Korean nuclear accord been spoken the American reacted in their typically arrogant manner and said that they believe that the proof of the pudding lies in its eating: In other words what they were saying was, “Wait till we actually see North Korea abide by its part of the bargain”. The Americans did not seem to believe—despite participating in the talks that led to the accord—that North Korea will actually dismantle its weapons programme or allow international nuclear weapons inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities. If there was to be so much of mistrust of Pyongyang how was the ‘accord’ reached in the first place, especially when a high-level American team was part of the negotiations in Beijing? Who should be accused of reneging? Was it a fact that after signing the so-called agreement, word reached the North Korean dictator that the Americans would be in no hurry to meet their part of the bargain? That riddle may not be solved easily because of the constant war of words between the US and North Korea. In the meanwhile, the hope generated in India by the ‘accord’ on North Korea may also prove to be short-lived. It was said that the success of the North Korean ‘accord’ would take the heat off the Indo-US nuclear deal which has been subjected to a relentless attack by influential sections within the US. Pakistan is among the countries that have also been working overtime to denounce that deal, protesting that the nuclear (civilian) cooperation between India and the US amounted to apartheid as the benefits to be given to India will not come to the other de facto nuclear nations. But the Indo-US nuclear deal faces uncertainty not because of what North Korea does or does not but because the US administration is trying to use it to blackmail India into jettisoning its ties with Iran. The US sees Tehran as part of ‘the axis of evil’ and expects India to see Iran in the same light. It does not matter to the Americans that India has no reasons to share that view. What the Americans want is a total shift of India into its camp as a result of which all the ‘bad guys’ in the world (as viewed in the US) become India’s foes. India will not be able to choose its own friends nor will it be able to complain about its foes whether they are next door neighbours or live in another planet. The US wants India to put all its eggs in its (US) basket. Even if the way the North Koreans have troubled the Americans cannot be considered admirable the fact remains that with all their weaknesses—poor shape of economy and almost total isolation in the world-- the North Koreans forced the American to concede some ground in the end. The US did offer a number of economic and security concessions to Pyongyang at the time of the last round of in Beijing. Relations between North Korea and the US have been far more worse than was ever the case between India and the US. Despite all the posturing of using its military might against Kim Jong-Il, the US found that it was not possible to open a war front against North Korea. Nobody would like India to act and behave the way North Korea has or does, but India needs to examine how is it that nations much weaker than us manage to stand up to American bullying and bluffing and in the process manage to extract some concessions from the sole super power in the world. North Korea may still announce that it is after all giving up its nuclear weapons programme and get a whole lot of goodies from the Americans. It is often said that Pyongyang might be exaggerating its nuclear potential. But that could not have influenced US policy. Because, Washington decides on its own which country has weapons of mass destruction, which country is rogue or forms part of ‘the axis of evil’ and which country is a ‘frontline’ state in the so-called war on terror even if that country remains a half-hearted partner in that ‘holy’ war. Why, the US rushes with its bags full of dollar to the ‘frontline’ state each time it issues a blackmailing threat! ---- Bush demands NKorea honor agreement to scrap nuclear weapons 11.20.2005, 03:41 AM (AFX) http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2005/11/20/afx2346992.html BEIJING - The US demands that North Korea honor its commitment to end its nuclear weapons program, US President George W Bush said during a visit to China, North Korea's closest ally. 'The fourth round of six-party talks in September ended with a joint statement in which North Korea committed to abandon all nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs,' Bush said Sundya, following a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao. 'The US expects it to honor its commitment.' He was speaking to reporters after a meeting with Hu during which both discussed ways to make progress in the six-party talks, which are aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear ambitions. China is also North Korea's biggest provider of aid and Washington needs Beijing's help to resolve the nuclear issue. Bush said the US and China both want 'a Korean peninsula that is stable, peaceful and free of nuclear weapons.' He expressed appreciation to China for playing a leading role in the talks, which Beijing hosts. China also played a key role in convincing North Korea to participate in the multilateral talks. 'Thank you for taking the lead in the six-party talks,' Bush said. Hu pledged to continue to work with the US to 'move forward' the six-party talks and 'peacefully resolve' the nuclear issue at an early date. After more than two years of six-party negotiations, North Korea agreed in principle at the fourth round in September to scrap its nuclear weapons drive in return for economic and diplomatic benefits. The six nations involved in the talks are the US, North Korea, South Korea China, Russia and Japan. -------- POLITICS -------- us politics Rep. Cynthia McKinney: The Republicans Have Done a Heinous Thing By Rep. Cynthia McKinney 11-20-05,11:18am http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/2237/1/131/ [The following is the text of Rep. McKinney's floor remarks on the November 18 debate over the "Murtha" withdrawal resolution.] The Republicans in this House have done a heinous thing: they have insulted one of the deans of this House in an unthinkable and unconscionable way. They took his words and contorted them; they took his heartfelt sentiments and spun them. They took his resolution and deformed it: in a cheap effort to silence dissent in the House of Representatives. The Republicans should be roundly criticized for this reprehensible act. They have perpetrated a fraud on the House of Representatives just as they have defrauded the American people. By twisting the issue around, the Republicans are trying to set a trap for the Democrats. A "no" vote for this Resolution will obscure the fact that there is strong support for withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. I am voting "yes" on this Resolution for an orderly withdrawal of US forces from Iraq despite the convoluted motives behind the Republican Resolution. I am voting to support our troops by bringing them home now in an orderly withdrawal. Sadly, if we call for an end to the occupation, some say that we have no love for the Iraqi people, that we would abandon them to tyrants and thugs. Let us consider some history. The Republicans make great hay about Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds. But when that attack was made in 1988, it was Democrats who moved a resolution to condemn those attacks, and the Reagan White House quashed the bill in the Senate, because at that time the Republicans considered Saddam one of our own. So in 1988, who abandoned the Iraqi people to tyrants and a thugs? In voting for this bill, let me be perfectly clear that I am not saying the United States should exit Iraq without a plan. I agree with Mr. Murtha that security and stability in Iraq should be pursued through diplomacy. I simply want to vote yes to an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. And let me explain why. Prior to its invasion, Iraq had not one (not one!) instance of suicide attacks in its history. Research shows a 100% correlation between suicide attacks and the presence of foreign combat troops in a host country. And experience also shows that suicide attacks abate when foreign occupation troops are withdrawn. The US invasion and occupation has destabilized Iraq and Iraq will only return to stability once this occupation ends. We must be willing to face the fact that the presence of US combat troops is itself a major inspiration to the forces attacking our troops. Moreover, we must be willing to acknowledge that the forces attacking our troops are able to recruit suicide attackers because suicide attacks are largely motivated by revenge for the loss of loved ones. And Iraqis have lost so many loved ones as a result of America's two wars against Iraq. In 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on CBS that the lives of 500,000 children dead from sanctions were "worth the price" of containing Saddam Hussein. When pressed to defend this reprehensible position she went on to explain that she did not want US Troops to have to fight the Gulf War again. Nor did I. But what happened? We fought a second gulf war. And now over 2,000 American soldiers lie dead. And I expect the voices of concern for Iraqi civilian casualties, whose deaths the Pentagon likes to brush aside as "collateral damage" are too few, indeed. A report from Johns Hopkins suggests that over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, most of them violent deaths and most as "collateral damage" from US forces. The accuracy of the 100,000 can and should be debated. Yet our media, while quick to cover attacks on civilians by insurgent forces in Iraq, have given us a blackout on Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of US combat forces. Yet let us remember that the United States and its allies imposed a severe policy of sanctions on the people of Iraq from 1990 to 2003. UNICEF and World Health Organization studies based on infant mortality studies showed a 500,000 increase in mortality of Iraqi children under 5 over trends that existed before sanctions. From this, it was widely assumed that over 1 million Iraqi deaths for all age groups could be attributed to sanctions between 1990 and 1998. And not only were there 5 more years of sanctions before the invasion, but the war since the invasion caused most aid groups to leave Iraq. So for areas not touched by reconstruction efforts, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated further. How many more Iraqi lives have been lost through hunger and deprivation since the occupation? And what kind of an occupier have we been? We have all seen the photos of victims of US torture in Abu Ghraib prison. That's where Saddam used to send his political enemies to be tortured, and now many Iraqis quietly, cautiously ask: "So what has changed?" A recent video documentary confirms that US forces used white phosphorous against civilian neighborhoods in the US attack on Fallujah. Civilians and insurgents were burned alive by these weapons. We also now know that US forces have used MK77, a napalm-like incendiary weapon, even though napalm has been outlawed by the United Nations. With the images of tortured detainees, and the images of Iraqi civilians burned alive by US incendiary weapons now circulating the globe, our reputation on the world stage has been severely damaged. If America wants to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, we as a people must be willing to face the pain and death and suffering we have brought to the Iraqi people with bombs, sanctions and occupation, even if we believe our actions were driven by the most altruistic of reasons. We must acknowledge our role in enforcing the policy of sanctions for 12 years after the extensive 1991 bombing in which we bombed infrastructure targets in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. We must also be ready to face the fact that the United States once provided support for the tyrant we deposed in the name of liberating the Iraqi people. These are events that our soldiers are too young to remember. I believe our young men and women in uniform are very sincere in their belief that their sacrifice is made in the name of helping the Iraqi people. But it is not they who set the policy. They take orders from the Commander-in-Chief and the Congress. It is we who bear the responsibility of weighing our decisions in a historical context, and it is we who must consider the gravest decision of whether or not to go to war based upon the history, the facts, and the truth. Sadly, however, our country is at war in Iraq based on a lie told to the American people. The entire war was based premised on a sales pitch-that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction menacing the United States-that turned out to be a lie. I have too many dead soldiers in my district; too many from my home state. Too many homeless veterans on our streets and in our neighborhoods. America has sacrificed too many young soldiers' lives, too many young soldiers' mangled bodies, to the Bush war machine. I will not vote to give one more soldier to the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney war machine. I will not give one more dollar for a war riddled with conspicuous profiteering. Tonight I speak as one who has at times been the only Member of this Body at antiwar demonstrations calling for withdrawal. And I won't stop calling for withdrawal. I was opposed to this war before there was a war; I was opposed to the war during the war; and I am opposed to this war now--even though it's supposed to be over. A vote on war is the single most important vote we can make in this House. I understand the feelings of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who might be severely conflicted by the decision we have to make here tonight. But the facts of US occupation of Iraq are also very clear. The occupation is headed down a dead end because so long as US combat forces patrol Iraq, there will be an Iraqi insurgency against it I urge that we pursue an orderly withdrawal from Iraq and pursue, along with our allies, a diplomatic solution to the situation in Iraq, supporting the aspirations of the Iraqi people through support for democratic processes. -------- OTHER -------- environment The Big Thaw: Global Disaster Will Follow If the Ice Cap on Greenland Melts Now scientists say it is vanishing far faster than even they expected. by Geoffrey Lean Published on Sunday, November 20, 2005 by the lndependent/UK http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article328217.ece http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1120-03.htm Greenland's glaciers have begun to race towards the ocean, leading scientists to predict that the vast island's ice cap is approaching irreversible meltdown, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Research to be published in a few days' time shows how glaciers that have been stable for centuries have started to shrink dramatically as temperatures in the Arctic have soared with global warming. On top of this, record amounts of the ice cap's surface turned to water this summer. The two developments - the most alarming manifestations of climate change to date - suggest that the ice cap is melting far more rapidly than scientists had thought, with immense consequences for civilisation and the planet. Its complete disappearance would raise the levels of the world's seas by 20 feet, spelling inundation for London and other coastal cities around the globe, along with much of low-lying countries such as Bangladesh. More immediately, the vast amount of fresh water discharged into the ocean as the ice melts threatens to shut down the Gulf Stream, which protects Britain and the rest of northern Europe from a freezing climate like that of Labrador. The revelations, which follow the announcement that the melting of sea ice in the Arctic also reached record levels this summer, come as the world's governments are about to embark on new negotiations about how to combat global warming. This week they will meet in Montreal for the first formal talks on whether there should be a new international treaty on cutting the pollution that causes climate change after the Kyoto protocol expires in seven years' time. Writing in The Independent yesterday, Tony Blair called the meeting "crucial", adding that it "must start to shape an inclusive global solution". But little progress is expected, largely because of continued obstruction from President George Bush. The new evidence from Greenland, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shows a sudden decline in the giant Helheim glacier, a river of ice that grinds down from the inland ice cap to the sea through a narrow rift in the mountain range on the island's east coast. Professor Slawek Tulaczyk, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told the IoS that the glacier had dropped 100 feet this summer. Over the past four years, the research adds, the front of the glacier - which has remained in the same place since records began - has retreated four and a half miles. As it has retreated and thinned, the effects have spread inland "very fast indeed", says Professor Tulaczyk. As the centre of the Greenland ice cap is only 150 miles away, the researchers fear that it, too, will soon be affected. The research echoes disturbing studies on the opposite side of Greenland: the giant Jakobshavn glacier - at four miles wide and 1,000 feet thick the biggest on the landmass - is now moving towards the sea at a rate of 113 feet a year; the normal annual speed of a glacier is just one foot. The studies have found that water from melted ice on the surface is percolating down through holes on the glacier until it forms a layer between it and the rock below, slightly lifting it and moving it toward the sea as if on a conveyor belt. This one glacier alone is reckoned now to be responsible for 3 per cent of the annual rise of sea levels worldwide. "We may be very close to the threshold where the Greenland ice cap will melt irreversibly," says Tavi Murray, professor of glaciology at the University of Wales. Professor Tulaczyk adds: "The observations that we are seeing now point in that direction." Until now, scientists believed the ice cap would take 1,000 years to melt entirely, but Ian Howat, who is working with Professor Tulaczyk, says the new developments could "easily" cut this time "in half". There is also a more immediate danger as the melting ice threatens to disrupt the Gulf Stream, responsible for Britain's mild climate. The current, which brings us as much heat in winter as we get from the sun, is driven by very salty water sinking off Greenland. This drives a deep current of cold ocean southwards, in turn forcing the warm water north. Research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts has shown, that even before the glaciers started accelerating, the water in the North Atlantic was getting fresher in what it describes as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments". Even before these discoveries, scientists had shortened to evens the odds on the Gulf Stream failing this century. When it failed before, 12,700 years ago, Britain was covered in permafrost for 1,300 years.