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There has been significant publicity about the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, its ability to travel very long distances and the consequences to our health. So where does DU come from, why is it used in munitions, what do such weapons look like, and what is their application in today's warfare? Although it was widely believed that DU munitions were used extensively during the Balkans War (1991-2001) it didn't show its true face until the occurrence of an accident at a military camp in Kuwait. in 1991. Events prior to this accident had started intense US military activity in the region as a result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on the 2nd of August 1990. Iraq forces had occupied Kuwait for seven months and in February the following year saw Operation Desert Storm liberate Kuwait. At the request of the Kuwaiti Government the United States sent re enforcements to the region in order to stabilise Kuwait and secure its borders. It was obvious at the time that this build up was showing clear signs of some other hidden agenda in the build up to an attack on Iraq. It was reported in the NY Times on the 19th of May 1991 that Dick Cheney had emphasized that the move was temporary and said: "It is our objective to get them out as quickly as possible. And the president's made it clear we don't want a permanent long - lasting ground presence in the gulf." It is ironic that 18 years later US Forces are still deeply emended in Iraq with clear intentions of permanent bases within Iraq.

There has been significant publicity about the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, its ability to travel very long distances and the consequences to our health. So where does DU come from, why is it used in munitions, what do such weapons look like, and what is their application in today's warfare? Although it was widely believed that DU munitions were used extensively during the Balkans War (1991-2001) it didn't show its true face until the occurrence of an accident at a military camp in Kuwait. in 1991. Events prior to this accident had started intense US military activity in the region as a result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on the 2nd of August 1990. Iraq forces had occupied Kuwait for seven months and in February the following year saw Operation Desert Storm liberate Kuwait. At the request of the Kuwaiti Government the United States sent re enforcements to the region in order to stabilise Kuwait and secure its borders. It was obvious at the time that this build up was showing clear signs of some other hidden agenda in the build up to an attack on Iraq.

KUWAIT: Fourth constituency Municipal Council candidate Anwar Malallah has called on the government to install radioactivity detection equipment, reminding it of Israel's threats to bomb the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran around 300 kilometers away from Kuwait, reported Al-Rai. Malallah urged the government to take all precautionary measures possible to avoid such hazards that would be catastrophic to Kuwait if such a strike took place. He added that he would work on licensing new public and private labs to measure pollution levels using environmental safety measures. He added that the government should also warn the public in case radiation levels exceeded those considered safe. The candidate stressed that chemical pollution levels had spread across Kuwait due to the lack of control on waste emission levels from various factories and refineries and because of the high levels of radiation resulting from depleted uranium all over Kuwaiti deserts. He said that this had led to higher than usual incidences of cancer in the country.

"Kuwait signed here Wednesday a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with the US Government on nuclear safeguards and other nonproliferation topics. The MOC was signed by Secretary General of the Kuwait National Nuclear Energy Committee (KNNEC) Dr. Ahmad Bishara and the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Thomas D'Agostino during a ceremony held at the Department of Energy. The MOC proposes cooperation in nuclear legislation and regulations; human resource planning and modeling; nuclear safeguards and security; radiation protection; environmental, safety and health issues; low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste management; reactor operations, safety and best practices. During the ceremony, D'Agostino said "it is clear that both of our countries recognize the importance of preventing nuclear proliferation, and keeping dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and proliferators."

"SFU researcher finds children in Basrah have four times the rate of leukemia as those in Kuwait A Simon Fraser University researcher will concentrate his search for potential causes of childhood leukemia in southern Iraq, where the rate of the blood cancer in some areas is now four times that of neighbouring Kuwait. Tim Takaro and his associates from the University of Washington, Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and Basrah University say in a newly published study that the rate of leukemia in children under 15 from Basrah rose to 8.5 cases per 100,000 from three per 100,000 over the 15-year study period. The rate in nearby Kuwait is two per 100,000. The intensity and duration of armed conflict in Basrah has presented researchers with a natural laboratory in which to conduct their search for the causes of childhood leukemia, Takaro said."

Over the past two weeks, for the first time, news was shared in Kuwait that sand that has been contaminated since the 1991 U.S. Coalition War in Kuwait has now been shipped to U.S. soil and is currently heading to Idaho. The sand's contamination resulted from U.S. military vehicles and munitions combining in a combustive accident at the end of that war.

During the summer of 1991, the United States military had collected artillery, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, conventional and unconventional munitions, trucks, etc. at Camp Doha in Kuwait. As result of carelessness this weapons depot caught fire with consequent catastrophic explosion resulting in death, injury, illness and extensive environmental contamination from depleted uranium and conventional explosives. Recently the emirate of Kuwait required the United States Department of Defense to remove the contamination.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Nearly 80 rail cars loaded with contaminated sand from Kuwait are headed to a desert dump site in southwestern Idaho. Idaho Department of Environmental Quality Director Brian Monson says the American Ecology Co. is moving about 6,700 tons of sand to a hazardous waste disposal site in the Owyhee desert 70 miles southeast of Boise. The sand is from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army Base in Kuwait. The sand absorbed depleted uranium after ammunition caught fire.

"A researcher from Simon Fraser University is investigating childhood leukemia in southern Iraq, where the rate of the blood cancer in some areas is now four times that of neighbouring Kuwait. Tim Takaro and his associates from the University of Washington, Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and Basrah University said in a newly published study that the rate of leukemia in children under 15 from Basrah rose to 8.5 cases per 100,000 from three per 100,000 over the 15-year study period. The rate in nearby Kuwait is two per 100,000. The intensity and duration of armed conflict in Basrah has presented researchers with a natural laboratory to conduct their search for the causes of childhood leukemia, Takaro said."

A story covered by the Idaho Statesman, New West online magazine and the local Associated Press - but apparently few others - was listed by Time magazine as one of the most underreported news stories of the year. Back in May, about 6,700 tons of radioactive waste was shipped from a U.S. military base in Kuwait to a US Ecology waste storage facility west of Grand View in Owyhee County. The waste had been created by a 1991 fire at U.S. Army Camp Doha, which ignited military vehicles and munitions containing depleted uranium used in armor-piercing shells. The shell fragments were removed and disposed in the United States by the U.S. Army in 2005, and the waste that came to Idaho was what was left of the contaminated soil from which the fragments were removed. New West broke the story before the shipments came.

Recently the emirate of Kuwait required the United States Department of Defense to remove the contamination. Consequently, over 6,700 tons of contaminated soil sand and other residue was collected and has been shipped back to the United States for burial by American Ecology at Boise Idaho.

The UN Day for the Prevention of the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict is Nov. 6 and is the International Day of Action in the campaign to ban depleted uranium (DU) weapons which are anti-tank shells. However, the impact of a fired shell with a tank puts a cloud of radioactive and chemically toxic DU oxide particles in the air that can be inhaled or ingested. As its half-life - DU is radioactive - is over 4 million years - once in the environment, it is here to stay. DU anti-tank shells have been used by the U.S. and the U.K. since 1991. During the First Gulf War in 1991, 320 tons of DU was dumped on Iraq, Kuwait and a little on Saudi Arabia. They have been used in the Balkans Wars of the 1990s and also in Iraq in 2003 where they were used in urban areas. Reports from Iraq indicate increased rates of cancer, especially in children, and increased rates of birth defects that may be due to DU exposure. DU has been found to cause mutations in humans and laboratory animals and cancers including leukemia in laboratory rodents.

The UN Day for the Prevention of the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict is Nov. 6 and is the International Day of Action in the campaign to ban depleted uranium (DU) weapons which are anti-tank shells. However, the impact of a fired shell with a tank puts a cloud of radioactive and chemically toxic DU oxide particles in the air that can be inhaled or ingested. As its half-life - DU is radioactive - is over 4 million years - once in the environment, it is here to stay. DU anti-tank shells have been used by the U.S. and the U.K. since 1991. During the First Gulf War in 1991, 320 tons of DU was dumped on Iraq, Kuwait and a little on Saudi Arabia. They have been used in the Balkans Wars of the 1990s and also in Iraq in 2003 where they were used in urban areas. Reports from Iraq indicate increased rates of cancer, especially in children, and increased rates of birth defects that may be due to DU exposure. DU has been found to cause mutations in humans and laboratory animals and cancers including leukemia in laboratory rodents.

Still dealing with the fallout of being a repository for contaminated sand from Kuwait, Idaho is reportedly slated to be the dumping ground for literal fallout: radioactive remnants from a World War II-era Navy shipyard, according to a San Francisco alternative newsweekly. "Currently, the Navy is proposing to excavate soil from IR-07 and IR-18, including known mercury and methane spots, and ship it to dumps in Idaho and Utah," said the San Francisco Bay Guardian, in a July 16 story.

Longshoremen should finish unloading 6,700 tons of sand contaminated with depleted uranium and lead Tuesday afternoon, said Chad Hyslop, spokesman for the disposal company American Ecology. The BBC Alabama arrived at the port Saturday afternoon with the 306 containers carrying the contaminated sand from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait. The sand was packaged in bags designed to transport hazardous waste.

In 1991, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were allowed back into Iraq - after United Nations forces ejected the Iraqi invaders from Kuwait and Saddam Hussein had agreed to comply with certain UN Security Council resolutions - they quickly discovered that Saddam had been in violation of the Iraqi IAEA Safeguards Agreement. Whereupon the Security Council passed Resolution 687, which among other things, ordered the destruction - under supervision of a specially constituted IAEA Action Team - of all remaining elements of Iraq's nuclear programs, and imposed sanctions on Iraq until such time as the IAEA Action Team could report that such destruction had been accomplished and that Iraq was once again in compliance with its IAEA Safeguards Agreement. The IAEA Action Team made such a report, first in 1998, and updated it in succeeding years.

I am a Middle East Consultant living in the UK and would like all people living in or near areas of conflict to understand the High Tech Weaponry used by many military establishments worldwide, especially the US (the manufacturers) and other NATO forces. The reason for pointing this out to you is as a response to my research on the terrible rise in cancer related deaths. This is not only confined to military personnel in the battle zone but also the indiscriminate contamination of civilians, field crops and water supplies in the immediate area as well as the adjacent areas/countries. Below is my report: Concerns regarding radiation contamination by the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry in the Balkans, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eastern Mediterranean Countries. The majority of high tech weapons today contain Depleted Uranium and or other Heavy Metals. Some are coated in DU and others have both DU and Heavy Metal in their warheads. DU is also used to act as a counterweight.

U.K. utilities risk falling behind with plans to build nuclear power plants because Middle East nations may use higher salaries to lure skilled workers, reactor builder Westinghouse Electric Co. said. "These nations have no legacy program to use as a source for nuclear expertise," said Adrian Bull, U.K. stakeholder relations manager at Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba Corp. "If you have literally nothing to go on, you have to be the Chelsea or Real Madrid and buy in the people from elsewhere." Oil-producing nations including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait plan nuclear plants to meet growing energy demand at home while exporting fuel abroad. The U.A.E. plans to select companies to develop an atomic power program by the end of this year and has a 2017 target date for completing its first reactor, the same year Electricite de France SA plans to start a new British nuclear plant.

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station reactor number 4 exploded at 1:24 a.m. "Tons of radioactive dust was" unleashed "into the air…transported by winds, [and] it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet, settling wherever it rained. The emissions of radioactivity lasted [short-term] for 10 days."(1) On 29 April, "fatal levels of radioactivity were recorded…in Poland, Austria, Romania, Finland, and Sweden."(2) The day after (30 April), it hit Switzerland and Italy. By 2 May, it reached France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Greece. The next day, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey were contaminated. Then, over the next few days, "radioactive substances" were recorded in Japan (3 May), China (4 May), India (5 May), and the US and Canada (6 May). The radioactive spew from this explosion was "200 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima."(3) Not one person was safe from this catastrophic nuclear explosion; and "65-million people were contaminated...more than 400,000 people were forced to evacuate the area [around Chernobyl], losing their homes, possessions and jobs, as well as their economic, social, and family ties."(4) The long-term and hidden costs of radioactive contamination have never been adequately reported by mainstream news. According to the authors (including the distinguished Dr. Rosalie Bertell) of a new book, "Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy" "[i]t will take millennia to recover…[before an area] as large as Italy, will return to normal radioactive levels in about 100,000 years time."(5)

"Professor Gareth Evans of Australia on Monday warned that the risks associated with existing nuclear weapons, including the risk of nuclear terrorism, are "real" and that it is "sheer damn luck" that a nuclear catastrophe did not happen since World War II, according to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA). Evans, co-Chairman of the International Commission on Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (ICNND), presented the December 2009 report "Eliminating Nuclear Threats" during a press conference and warned that "the risks associated with existing nuclear arsenals ..., with new countries joining the list ..., with nuclear terrorism, are real". "It's sheer damn luck that we have succeeded as a world in surviving ... a major nuclear catastrophe since 1945. It was not a function of good policy or anything else rather than luck," he added. "

BAGHDAD: Long after the shooting and bombing stops, Iraqis will still be dying from the war. Destroyed factories have become untended hazardous waste sites, leaking poison into the water and the soil. Forests in the north and palm groves in the south have been obliterated to remove the enemy's hiding places. Rivers are salted, water is contaminated with sewage, and land is strewn with mines, unexploded bombs, chemical waste, rubble and trash. "When we talk about it, people may think we are overreacting. But in fact the environmental catastrophe that we inherited in Iraq is even worse than it sounds," Iraqi Environment Minister Nermeen Othman said in an interview. "War destroys countries' environments, not just their people. War and its effects have led to changes in the social, economic and environmental fabri c," she said. "It will take centuries to restore the natural environment of Iraq.