REVIEWS: “THE ULTIMATE WAR CRIME” ROBERT ANDERSON, RG AND J ANDERSON BOOKS, TAURANGA, 2006 by Jeremy Agar

Peace Researcher 33 – November 2006

Depleted uranium (DU) is the substance that remains after natural uranium is enriched for weapons or reactor fuel. As a solid it is mildly radioactive. But DU is very heavy, which means it has a military use tipping armour-piercing shells, after which it ends up as vapour and then dust. Officials from the governments which use DU in this way say it is only a mild and temporary risk to health.

Robert Anderson, a retired science teacher living in Tauranga, thinks it is very dangerous indeed. Anderson’s brisk survey deals mainly with Iraq and Afghanistan, where DU weaponry has been used. Anderson argues that conditions in these hot, dusty areas have conspired to render the use of DU “the ultimate war crime”. He discusses symptoms both of soldiers and civilians which are comparable to those inflicted by the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs and, since then, by victims of nuclear testing.

Lawyers have suggested that any weaponry that affects civilians or has effects that linger after the war is over is illegal. If so, and if DU is the cause of the many leukaemias and genetic disorders that have no other easy explanation, then Anderson surely has a case. So far the use of DU has not become a widely discussed topic. That could be because the chaos of post-invasion Iraq commands attention. When the dust (literally) settles, we might expect to hear more.

Officialdom is of course going to deny and deny again. They will always state that there will be no proven link between their deployment of depleted uranium and outbreaks of cancer and birth deformities. We keep going down that road. Smoking is not harmful. There is no such thing as global warming. In this instance, because it is linked to the projection of Bushite America’s power over a highly combustible region, the stonewalling will be more resolute than ever.

They’re not likely to be believed, not in the wake of all the lying to do with the weapons of mass destruction that the other guy was supposed to have acquired. At least one US Congressman has loaned his voice to the protestors. Dennis Kucinich worries that 2,000 tons of DU have been left in Iraq. Add that statistic to the 221,000 US veterans on disability pensions (Anderson puts the number even higher) and you have to think that Anderson is on to something. Who do you believe, the US Army or an old codger from the Bay of Plenty? The smart money would be on the old codger.

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