I ran across a new sight about DU.
http://traprockpeace.org/TribTest062803.html
It's from a scientist that worked for the nuclear weapons labs. She provides a declassified memo in the 40's about developing something like DU.
"DECLASSIFIED MEMO TO GENERAL L.R. GROVES, OCTOBER 30, 1943:
BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED URANIUM
A classified memo1 dated October 30, 1943, was sent to General L.R. Groves from Dr. A.H. Compton, Dr. James B. Conant, and Dr. H.C. Urey, three of the most competent physicists working under General Groves on the Manhattan Project. This memo, written nearly two years before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a recommendation that radiological materials be developed for use as a military weapon on the battlefield. It is a blueprint for depleted uranium weaponry.
This memo which is now declassified, was given to me by Major Doug Rokke, a physicist and former head of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Weapons Project. He is a Gulf War I veteran and is now suffering from depleted uranium exposure with severe health effects refered to as Gulf War Syndrome. My work is inspired by the hibakusha around the world who, like Doug, have told me their stories.
In the memo, the scientists recommended dispersing the radioactive materials in very fine particles, 0.1 microns in diameter, from the ground or the air. It would disperse like a radioactive gas, invisible and undetectable to the enemy. They described how increasing the amounts of radiation dispersed would accelerate the lethality and decrease the time until death and increase the numbers of dead."
I wasn't aware of the limitations on weapons:
"LEGALITY TEST FOR WEAPONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Weapons must pass four tests in order to determine that they are legal under international law. The tests are:
TEMPORAL TEST ? Weapons must not continue to act after the battle is over.
ENVIRONMENTAL TEST ? Weapons must not be unduly harmful to the environment.
TERRITORIAL TEST ? Weapons must not act off of the battlefield.
HUMANENESS TEST ? Weapons must not kill or wound inhumanely."
Napalm or MK77 also fits the bill, Agent Orange, and cluster bombs also.
"The military use of DU violates current international humanitarian law, including the principle that there is no unlimited right to choose the means and methods of warfare (Art. 22 Hague Convention VI (HCIV); Art. 35 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva (GP1); the ban on causing unnecessary suffering and suoperfluous injury (Art. 23 ?le HCIV; Art. 35 ?2 GP1), indiscriminate warfare (Art. 51 ?4c and 5b GP1) as well as the use of poison or poisoned weapons.
The deployment and use of DU violate the principles of international environmental and human rights protection. They contradict the right to life established by the Resolution 1996/16 of the UN Subcommittee on Human Rights."
"GULF WAR I
Depleted uranium was used in Gulf War I for the first time on the battlefield in large amounts. The use of over 340 tons of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq in Gulf War I has had devastating results over the past decade and the devastating effects are increasing. The battlefields were far from the cities of southern Iraq but soldiers and downwind populations could not escape exposure to the invisible war, depleted uranium in the wind. Cancer, birth defects and radiation related diseases in both Gulf War veterans and Iraqi civilians has increased to alarming levels.
Children born to Gulf War veterans after the war and children born to civilians living in areas downwind from the battlefields in Iraq expose the impact of this invisible war. In a Veterans Administration study5 of 251 Gulf War I veterans, they determined severe birth defects and diseases in 67% of the children6 born after the war. They were born without eyes, brains, organs, legs, arms, hands, feet, or had blood and other radiation related diseases. The Iraqi children also have birth defects and a high incidence of leukemia. In the decade after the Gulf War, each month the number of babies born with birth defects and mutations has increased.
Dr. Hari Sharma, an independent researcher, has measured the depleted uranium levels in 71 residents of Basra who died after the war was over. He found levels of 150 micrograms of depleted uranium per kilogram of tissue throughout their bodies. That would amount to a very high exposure rate, roughly estimated at 10 alpa particles per second throughout the body. Alpha particles are the most biologically damaging form of radiation. The radioactive decay products of depleted uranium are even more radioactive by millions and billions of times."
"Following the Gulf War, Dr. Doug Rokke was in charge of the team cleaning up the depleted uranium for the U.S. Army. He provided me with documents detailing some of the U.S. Army directives and memorandums regarding depleted uranium. In a document dated March 1, 1991, ?Los Alamos Memorandum7? he said ?I was directed to lie? to cover up the environmental effects of depleted uranium weaponry ?so that the Army can continue to use it?. He told me ?what right do we have to throw thousands of tons of nuclear waste all over any country? [International Humanitarian Lawyer] Karen Parker considers this to be indiscriminate killing??
I'm sickened by what the US is willing to do to win a war, no a slaughter.