Copyright (c) 1999

Subject: Depleted Uranium use in Yugoslavia confirmed (again) -- STOP CASSINI #124

Date: May 10th, 1999

Time Frame: There are 45 days left until the flyby of Venus, 7 weeks before the flyby of Earth.

Today's subjects:

• Depleted Uranium use in Yugoslavia: Even ABC News is reporting on part of it
• We don't need no stinkin' nuclear aircraft carriers!
• WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY TO STOP THE EARTH FLYBY
• Subscription information

Depleted Uranium use in Yugoslavia: Even ABC News is reporting on part of it:

ABC News is reporting that Depleted Uranium is, indeed, being used in bullets being fired by A-10 Warthog fighter planes. We continue to be 100% certain that that is not the only use of Depleted Uranium in Yugoslavia (see comments which follow this news item.)

-- FROM: ROGER HERRIED'S RADBULL --

05/09/99 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 7.100

13 ABCNEWS.com : Bullets With Uranium Used in Yugoslavia

CIVILIANS AT RISK?

PENTAGON OFFICIAL: URANIUM BULLETS USED IN YUGOSLAVIA

LOW- AND SLOW-FLYING U.S. A-10 AIRCRAFT SUCH AS THIS ONE ARE FIRING DEPLETED URANIUM ROUNDS AT SERB FORCES, A PENTAGON OFFICIAL SAID. A-10 "WARTHOGS" EARNED A REPUTATION AS TANK KILLERS DURING THE 1991 GULF WAR. (AP Photo/ U.S. Air Force, Senior Airman Jeffrey Allen)

By David Ruppe

ABCNEWS.com

MAY 4; NATO aircraft are attacking Yugoslav targets with special bullets that some veterans groups believe were responsible for the illnesses of thousands of U.S. troops following the 1991 Gulf War.

The controversial rounds, which contain depleted uranium (DU), were used extensively by U.S. A-10 warplanes to destroy the Iraqi tanks and other armored vehicles during the Gulf War. They were also used against Bosnian Serb targets in 1995. Depleted uranium is an extremely dense metal that burns upon striking a target, enabling the bullets to pierce tank armor with relative ease.

Depleted uranium comes from the process of preparing uranium for nuclear reactors and weapons. It has a half- life of 4.5 billion years. Upon impact a target, an airborne radioactive dust is created that can be toxic in humans if inhaled or ingested.

Veterans groups have argued that the rounds may be linked to "Gulf War Illness," the mysterious sicknesses suffered by thousands of U.S. troops who fought in the conflict, and could be hazardous to civilians and the environment. The Pentagon has acknowledged that thousands of U.S. soldiers were unnecessarily exposed to DU, but denies that is the cause of Gulf War Illness.

Quoting an Air Force official, the Christian Science Monitor reported last week that U.S. A-10 aircraft participating in the airstrikes were armed with the bullets, but had not yet used them. Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, who is the Joint Chiefs' vice director for strategic plans and policy, acknowledged Monday that 30mm depleted uranium rounds were in fact being fired by A-10 aircraft against Yugoslav forces.

NOT SEVERE PROBLEM

But Wald played down the health consequences of using the rounds.

I've been thinking about it and I've been around the A-10s for a long time and I know that I've seen the munitions handler put these bullets in the aircraft, holding on to them for 20 years, so they've done a lot of scientific studies on those things and there really doesn't seem to be a severe problem," said Wald.

"So I don't think there' s a problem at all with [the rounds]. There's never been a problem for any of us so it's kind of old news," he said.

Scientists say the greatest risk occurs when the dust is ingested. Pentagon officials maintain the likelihood is low that the heavy depleted uranium dust would be ingested by many people.

A 1990 study commissioned by the Army, however, linked depleted uranium with cancer. It concluded that "no dose is so low that the probability of effect is zero."

A subcommission of the United Nation Human Rights Commission resolved in 1996 that depleted uranium is a weapon of mass destruction that should be banned.

WHAT ARE ACCEPTABLE RISKS?

The Pentagon reportedly has been unable to establish its own safety standards for using depleted uranium.

The Pentagon's current regulations are based on Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards, which require masks and suits when dealing with depleted uranium contamination.

But a 1993 report by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, said Army officials " believe that DU protective means can be ignored during battle."

Pentagon officials told the Monitor the military still needs to decide what are "acceptable risks" for using depleted uranium in combat.

The National Gulf War Resource Center, a coalition of veterans groups based in Washington, estimated in January that as many as 600,000 Gulf War soldiers might have been exposed to some 300 tons of depleted uranium fired by U.S. aircraft at Iraqi troops in the 1991 Gulf War. [I]

-- END OF CLIP FROM "RADBULL" --

(RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE.

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: )

- OUR RESPONSE: --

To David Ruppe, ABC News [Note: We don't know of an email address; we used a form at www.abcnews.com -- rdh]

From: Russell Hoffman, founder and editor, STOP CASSINI newsletter

Date: 5/10/99

Re: D. U. use in Yugoslavia

Dear Sir,

In addition to its use in A-10 Warthog bullets which you wrote about recently, Depleted Uranium is also used in many (if not all) of the guided missiles for the penetrator, for counterbalances, and for the control surfaces, and in the warplanes themselves for the control surfaces and for counterbalances. It's not just the bullets.

I have attached a relevant newsletter on the subject and hope you will do another report on this more extensive use of Depleted Uranium in Yugoslavia.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman

Attachment: STOP CASSINI newsletter #118

-- END OF OUR RESPONSE (+ Attachment) --

It is our hope and belief that the growing worldwide opposition to this war has grown to where the NATO cannot continue much longer in its current actions.

We don't need no stinkin' nuclear aircraft carriers!

Late last year, just after John Glenn returned to space, the editor of this SC newsletter made a presentation at a public forum regarding the United States Navy's use of nuclear aircraft carriers. We have received a transcript of those remarks from the government. They are shown below, with a few minor corrections. The editor was one of hundreds of people and scores of speakers who came to oppose the nuclear navy's assault on San Diego Bay. The initial comments about "the library" refer to a local issue of funding for a downtown (San Diego) public library, which of course we support, and funding for a new downtown ballpark, which we do not support (but which the citizens of San Diego voted in favor of recently.) The editor carried an armful of books with him to the podium and overran his allotted time by several minutes, but kindly was not asked to stop.

-- REMARKS (TRANSCRIBED) --

Hi. My name is Russell Hoffman, and I'm not here to promote the library. Although I think that one librarian job is worth about a hundred popcorn vendors.

I want to start with a quote. "It will do precious little good to protect ourselves from the Soviets or any other potential aggression if in the process we poison our own people." I don't know if the author of that quote was referring to nuclear aircraft carriers or not, but the author was John Glenn, 1987.

I've got a quote from Admiral Rickover, father of the nuclear navy. In 1982 -- I believe by then his son had died of leukemia. He said, "I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war. Unfortunately limits -- attempts to limit war have always failed. The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available." And he also said at the same hearing, "Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it."

My own relationship with the Navy goes back many years. This is a book called "The Last Liberty," and about 12, 13 years before I was born my father went to Germany to fight the Nazis, went to Italy to fight the Nazis on board a Liberty ship, and you guys protected him.

Yesterday I got a call from the Navy. They are modernizing all their educational material. And I wrote a tutorial about pumps. A nuclear aircraft carrier, any ship, is nothing more than pumps, pipes, valves and vessels -- and poison if it is a nuclear aircraft carrier. I wrote a CDROM on pumps, and got a call from the Navy yesterday, and they found my tutorial online; and they wanted to know if they could use my pictures in their future training manual.

So the guy that was here who said the Navy is the most modern in the world, they are behind the times! They haven't moved up. They told me they want to eliminate a million dollars worth of printed documents. I told them go ahead and use my photos because I write interactive educational material, and I'm not really that interested in stills, and they said, oh, we can't pay you for them. I said, that's okay. Go ahead and use them. I don't mind. You save my shores from foreign aggression.

Now, I have a couple of documents here. I see the red light is already on so I'll try to be quick. This one is from 1945 by H. D. Smyth, Chairman of the Department of Physics of Princeton University, consultant to the Manhattan district. That's Manhattan as in the Manhattan Project of the U. S. Corp of Engineers. The document is called the "General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes Under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940 - 1945". And it starts off with the following sentence: "The ultimate responsibility for our nation's policy rests on its citizens, and they can discharge such responsibilities wisely only if they are informed."

Okay. It closes: "The people of the country must be informed if they are to discharge the responsibilities wisely." It also says in the middle of the book here, "Properties of Plutonium." "Although we were embarking on a major enterprise to produce plutonium, we still had less than a milligram to study and still had only limited familiarity with its properties. The study of plutonium therefore remained a major problem for the metallurgical laboratory."

So where did they go? They went to a man named John Gofman. John Gofman worked at Berkeley at the time. He has written this book called "Radiation and Human Health" since then. He is the man who isolated the plutonium for those first bombs. He knows what he is talking about, and I'm absolutely sure he is against the use of nuclear reactors on board ships.

Now, that book was full of lies (holding up H. D. Smyth's book). It concludes with a statement that the health risks were covered. How could they have been covered if they didn't even have enough plutonium to make your bomb? You had to go to Gofman to get it. You guys have forgotten about Gofman.

Now, in this book -- this is from "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons." 1962. And it has a statement here, "The purpose of this book is to present as accurate as possible within the limits of national security a comprehensive summary of this information." And if I can find my other marker here, "comprehensive summary" includes the following statement about leukemia: "It has been suggested that chronic exposure to moderate doses of nuclear radiation is conducive to leukemia." My brother died of leukemia a couple of years ago.

This book is called "Toxics A to Z." It also talks about plutonium: "There is little question about the type of damage caused by exposure to plutonium, both lung, bone, and liver cancer, and leukemia are the most frequently occurring serious results of exposure." It goes on to say that the various estimates of how deadly low level radiation is vary by a factor of a thousand; and that you can't really assume that the middle ground is the right ground. The people that think it's a thousand times more dangerous than what you think, they might be right.

This book is called "Navy Ship Handling," third edition by Captain R. S. Crenshaw, Jr., United States Navy. Do any of you know this book? Any of you seen this book? [Note: Some of the three otherwise-stone-faced Navy representatives did nod that they had heard of this standard Navy training manual. --rdh] It's a great book. I enjoyed it.

This book is called "Fighter Combat Tactics and Maneuvers," and I was hoping "El Duque" [Lt. Cmdr, former Navy pilot, and representative from my district Duke Cunningham. -- rdh] would be here so that I could get his autograph. It says, "Only air power can defeat air power. The actual elimination or even stalemating of an attacking Air Force can be achieved only by a superior Air Force." It also says -- and that was a quote from Major Alexander P. de Seversky, USAAF. I'm sure you know that name. It also says here, "We carry out" -- believe me -- they know that name [looking at audience and gesturing to the Navy reps-- rdh]. "We carried out many trials to try to find the answer to the fast, low level intruder, but there is no adequate defense." That's by Air Vice Marshal J. E. "Johnny" Johnson of the RAF. That's still true today. You guys are in danger of being hit by an Exocet Missile for instance, or some other character. The SHEFFIELD during the Falklands war was hit by an Exocet. That was the equivalent of our Aegis class -- that is the one that was supposed to protect the other ships from such an attack, and it didn't work.

The truth is you have a silent bomb, and you are just not admitting it, and we would like to put it away. We think there are much better methods of protecting our shores. We think that the countries that don't want you anywhere near them are going to cause you problems [this refers to the Navy's plans to "port" the ships in the harbors of "non-nuclear" nations who do not want them. -- rdh]. We think that the people of this city have expressed their desire to not have you here with your nuclear weapons.

As I said, I love the Navy. I think you are important. I think you are doing vital work. And I wish you would do it right.

Thank you very much.

-- END OF TRANSCRIPT ED REMARKS BY SC EDITOR RUSSELL HOFFMAN --

Additional reference information:

The Last Liberty: The Biography of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien is by Walter W. Jaffee, The Glencannon Press, Palo Alto, California, copyright 1993.

Fighter Combat Tactics and Maneuvering is by Robert L. Shaw, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, copyright 1985.

Naval Ship Handling by Captain R. S. Crenshaw is copyright 1955, 1960 and 1965 by the Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, and my edition was reprinted in 1972.

Radiation and Human Health is by John W. Gofman, M. D., Sierra Club, San Francisco, California, copyright 1981.

Toxics A to Z: A Guide to Everyday Pollution Hazards is by John Harte, Cheryl Holdren, Richard Schneider and Christine Shirley, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, copyright 1991.

In August of 1998 the United States General Accounting Office (GAO), (Washington DC, 20548), released a report titled: "NAVY AIRCRAFT CARRIERS: Cost-Effectiveness of Conventionally and Nuclear-Powered Carriers." (GAO/NSIAD-98-1) We discussed that report in newsletter #73. The GAO report found that the nuclear carriers were much more expensive and offered little or no tactical advantage to the military.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY TO STOP THE CASSINI EARTH FLYBY:

SIGN THE PETITION!
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/petition/cass1999.htm

CANCEL CASSINI by JUNE 24th, 1999!!!!

To Cancel Cassini start by asking NASA for the 1995 Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini Mission and all subsequent related documents (on paper, please!). Tell them you need it IMMEDIATELY (members of the world press should do this too). All citizens of the world are ENTITLED to these documents because of the global threat Cassini poses. Here's where to get information:

Cassini Public Information
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
(818) 354-5011

NASA states that they do not have the resources anymore to answer most emails they receive. Liars! They have $13 billion dollars to play with. They can answer the public's questions. At least, ask them one specific question: How many letters did they get opposing Cassini today? (And tell them you oppose it too!) If each reader asks them that...

Here's NASA's email address:

comments@www.hq.nasa.gov

Daniel Goldin is the head of NASA. Here's his email address:

daniel.goldin@hq.nasa.gov
or
dgoldin@mail.hq.nasa.gov

Here's the NASA URL to find additional addresses to submit written questions to:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-002-HQ.html

They imply at the web site that written comments are more likely to get answered -- quicker than emailed comments! Someone should welcome them to the 1990's before it's too late.

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT NASA IS DOING TO YOUR HEALTH.

Be sure to "cc" the president and VP and your senators and congresspeople, too.

president@whitehouse.gov vice-president@whitehouse.gov

Always include your full name and postal address in all correspondence to any Government official of any country.

AND IN CONCLUSION...

Please send any news directly to the editor at the email address given below.

Please post these newsletters EVERYWHERE! You can -- and should -- send them to news media too! Please tell your friends and neighbors and Internet buddies to subscribe! These words can have power, but only if they are passed on to many others!

Thanks for reading! Welcome new subscribers!

Sincerely,
Russell D. Hoffman
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com

Founder & Editor
STOP CASSINI Newsletter -- over 100 issues of mirth, merriment, and mind-numbingly depressing facts about NASA and other horrors

Webmaster
STOP CASSINI Web Site
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/cassini.htm

I don't know how it is in your country, but in our country, at least we have this:

Amendment One... "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble..."

Written in U.S.A.

Next issue (#125)
Previous issue (#123)

CASSINI TABLE OF CONTENTS

************************ *** Subscription information *************************

This newsletter is free and is not distributed for profit.

To subscribe, email the editor at rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com and state: SUBSCRIBE STOP CASSINI NEWSLETTER Please include a personal message of any length and subject matter. Thank you!

To unsubscribe email me and say UNSUBSCRIBE STOP CASSINI NEWSLETTER

Published by Russell D. Hoffman electronically. Please distribute these newsletters EVERYWHERE!!!

********* CANCEL CASSINI BY JUNE 24TH, 1999! *****

CANCEL CASSINI

The Animated Software Company

rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com