More DU used in Iraq?

In the process of sav­ing Iraq from Sad­dam by thor­oughly bomb­ing large cities, the United States may be upping the depleted ura­nium (DU) used in muni­tions for this war. As the Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Sci­en­tists say:

In mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions, when alloyed, Depleted Ura­nium [DU] is ideal for use in armor pen­e­tra­tors. These solid metal pro­jec­tiles have the speed, mass and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties to per­form excep­tion­ally well against armored tar­gets. DU pro­vides a sub­stan­tial per­for­mance advan­tage, well above other com­pet­ing mate­ri­als. This allows DU pen­e­tra­tors to defeat an armored tar­get at a sig­nif­i­cantly greater dis­tance. Also, DU’s den­sity and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties make it ideal for use as armor plate. DU has been used in weapon sys­tems for many years in both appli­ca­tions. Depleted ura­nium results from the enrich­ing of nat­ural ura­nium for use in nuclear reac­tors. Nat­ural ura­nium is a slightly radioac­tive metal that is present in most rocks and soils as well as in many rivers and sea water. Nat­ural ura­nium con­sists pri­mar­ily of a mix­ture of two iso­topes (forms) of ura­nium, Uranium-235 (U235) and Uranium-238 (U238), in the pro­por­tion of about 0.7 and 99.3 per­cent, respec­tively. Nuclear reac­tors require U235 to pro­duce energy, there­fore, the nat­ural ura­nium has to be enriched to obtain the iso­tope U235 by remov­ing a large part of the U238. Uranium-238 becomes DU, which is 0.7 times as radioac­tive as nat­ural ura­nium. [Other sources list it as 60 – 65 per­cent — Ed.] Since DU has a half-life of 4.5 bil­lion years, there is very lit­tle decay of those DU materials.

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p>In addi­tion to the radioac­tiv­ity, DU is chem­i­cally toxic, pyrophoric — mean­ing it burns fiercely on pen­e­tra­tion — and usu­ally spreads aeroli­sized par­ti­cles over a large area on impact. The par­tic­u­lates can be car­ried on the wind up to 26 miles and enter the human body through inges­tion, inhala­tion or through open­ings in the skin. There has been no link proved between DU muni­tions and Gulf War Syn­drome, which has affected about 100,000 vet­er­ans of that con­flict, or the increased rate of child­hood can­cers in south­ern Iraq. The Pen­ta­gon has denied any dan­ger from DU (well, apart from being used in bombs, of course.) For­mer Defense Sec­re­tary William S. Cohen once com­pared it to lead paint.
“Where it’s unsafe, it’s like leaded paint,” Cohen said. “Leaded paint does not pose a prob­lem to you unless it starts to peel and then chil­dren or oth­ers ingest it.”
I’m a lit­tle slack-jawed at this com­ment. Lead paint was banned in U.S. homes in 1978 due to its extreme tox­i­c­ity.
Over­all, I’m per­son­ally dubi­ous. While the Pen­ta­gon has played down the dan­gers of DU, this is also the agency that furi­ously denied for years that Gulf War Syn­drome existed at all, regard­less of the causes. And while DU in an unex­ploded muni­tion might be rel­a­tively harm­less, burned and aerosolized DU will be spread over a much larger area and could enter the soil and water table of the envi­ron­ment. How many stud­ies have been done? Why are NATO allies ner­vous about expos­ing their troops to Amer­i­can muni­tions?
Per­haps DU really is as harm­less as the DoD con­tends. But in a world in which the U.S. has lost a PR bat­tle with Sad­dam Hus­sein, is it really a wise move to use muni­tions that many believe increases the risk of child­hood can­cers? (Irony alert: The U.S. will open itself up to charges that it used a weapon against an enemy who may have used afla­tox­ins, which can cause liver can­cer in chil­dren, against the Kurds of Hal­abja.) My point is not that there’s a moral equiv­a­lence between Saddam’s regime and the United States gov­ern­ment — there’s not one, and I strongly dis­agree with peo­ple who make that argu­ment — but that the United States shouldn’t be look­ing for more rea­sons to have the world sus­pi­cious of its actions and/or motives.
I know that in any war sol­diers should use the best weapons avail­able to them; these weapons could end the war more quickly. But heavy use of DU weapons in a “shock and awe” cam­paign strikes me as yet one more rea­son to oppose Mr. Bush’s Splen­did Lit­tle War.
Cor­rec­tion:prime min­is­ter but a Span­ish reader has informed me he’s Spain’s pres­i­dent. The CIA World Fact­book 2002 also refers to him as the pres­i­dent. Oops! (In my defense, how­ever, almost every English-languag media I’ve seen refers to him as prime minister.)

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