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- Opposition to Invasion of Iraq Based on Emotion or Facts?
Opposition to Invasion of Iraq Based on Emotion or Facts?
- By Devvy Kidd
- Published 07/7/2008
- Depleted Uranium
- Unrated
"...withdraw from this heinous, unconstitutional war in Iraq (and Afghanistan)." When I read lines like this in your column.. I think many things... sick and demented..a traitor... a fellow traveler...a frustrated woman perhaps sexually repressed and therefore hates men. What ever... I think you ought to go on a long vacation into wherever it is your fantasy exists. I hope your car blows up and fuel for it becomes non-existant. I hope lightning destroys the transmission lines to your part of town and somehow you are blamed for it. The "sick and demented" I guess it the most fitting description." Semper Fidelis. Larry Pate
In order to avoid this kind of juvenile ranting; I simply hit the block box so I will no longer receive email from the sender. Bush's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was and is unconstitutional. ONLY Congress has the power to declare war. In order to change that, you have to amend the U.S. Constitution. Of course, since the U.S. unlawfully entered into this unholy alliance with the communist UN, members of Congress and presidents simply ignore the law of the land.
During Congressional hearings on going to war against Iraq, treasonous Council on Foreign Relations point dog in the House, Rep. Henry Hyde, [R-Il] stated that declaring war is "anachronistic, it isn't done anymore..." A darling of the deaf, dumb and blind socialists [liberals], the late, Tom Lantos, [D-Ca] called the declaration of war "frivolous and mischievous." On January 7, 1999, USA TODAY, former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich said, "...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress."
Really? Who died and made these pompous weasels kings in this country? These quivering cowards in Congress dodged their sworn oaths to allow this unconstitutional invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by falling back on a resolution. Side stepping the U.S. Constitution has become the norm, while the American people "patriotically" send their husbands, wives and children into unnecessary wars to enrich the corrupt.
What is grotesque about the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Let's start with the human element. 4,107 of our soldiers have been killed so far; tens of thousands injured and maimed for life. At a minimum,100,000 innocent men, women and children killed in Iraq by U.S. and other allies. Millions displaced from their lives and homes. This is one of our soldiers who will pay the price for Bush's lies for the rest of his life. "This twenty-year-old young man was trapped for twenty minutes in a fiery ammunition truck in Iraq. He was left with disfiguring burns on his face, head, arms and legs. This is what he looks like after more than two dozen surgeries."
The U.S. military has been using depleted uranium in their ordnance for decades. Email number two came from a Mr. Mann, who was polite in his comments. He said I was operating more on emotion than fact about the invasion of Iraq. Regarding DU, he said:
"Yes, spall (or dust) comes off of the DU round-only when it hits armor or something really hard. It is so depleted though that it is BARELY above the earth's own background radiation levels. I know you won't believe it, but DoD studies before DU was accepted show this. You can probably find it on the internet once you get past the hype. There is a problem when you enter an armor vehicle shot with it-so keep people out of shot up tanks! But, it works. It is war. Bombs pollute. Cluster bombs only have a 60-70% explosion rate and become mines that do hurt innocents."
Depleted Uranium Shells Used by U.S. Military Worse Than Nuclear Weapons
"Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has estimated that 50 tons of DU dust from the first Gulf War could lead to 500,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000. To date, a total of 2,000 tons have been generated in the Middle East...."More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991," said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. "The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive." Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever."
Depleted Uranium (DU) - Silent Genocide
"Before the damage we inflict grows greater, before history's judgment gets worse, before we contaminate the whole world - even before we vote in the next election - we must stop what we're doing. We must stop now. It's time to listen for a moment not to defense analysts, briefing officers, pols or pundits, but to people like Jooma Khan, a grandfather who lives in a village in Laghman Province, in northeastern Afghanistan, who is quoted above.
"Surely he deserves 30 seconds of our undivided attention. "When I saw my deformed grandson," he told an interviewer in March of 2003, "I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good. (This is) different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not escape."
Update on Depleted Uranium and Gulf War Syndrome
"Dr. Sharma's research established the fact that Gulf War Veterans from the 1991 War, were excreting measurable amounts of DU in urine, eight and nine years after their return from the Middle East. The DU particles had also spread to contaminate civilians, and the environment...
"A study of the birth defects in the children of veterans in the U.S, undertaken by Han Kang, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, focused on the first pregnancy which veterans of the first Gulf War had after returning home. Slightly less than 21,000 veterans, from all four branches, active and retired were included in the study (about 70% of those to whom questionnaires were sent). Male veterans were two times as likely, and female veterans were almost three times as likely, to report children with birth defects than their counterparts who did not serve in the Gulf. Likely birth defects included webbed fingers and toes, heart murmurs, chromosomal abnormalities, and brain tumors. The researchers excluded developmental disorders, perinatal complications and pediatric disorders from the study. Male veterans reported miscarriages more often, and the increase, 1.62 times, was statistically significant."









