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.

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:* Ear­lier, I referred to José María Aznar as the Span­ish _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.)

The news today is dom­i­nated by the events in the Azores, where U.K. Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair, U.S. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and Span­ish Prime MIn­is­ter José María Aznar deliv­ered a dead­line to … the United Nations.
The Axis of War (hey, there are three of them!) told the world body that its mem­bers had “overnight” to think about sup­port­ing the U.S.‘s efforts to march on Bagh­dad.
“There’s a sim­ple choice,” Blair told reporters after the coun­cil of war. “Peo­ple have got to decide whether they are going to allow any sec­ond res­o­lu­tion to have the teeth to make it clear that there is a real ulti­ma­tum, and that’s what we are going to have to find out overnight.“
As Bush declared tomor­row is the “moment of truth” for the world to demand that Iraq dis­arm com­pletely and uncon­di­tion­ally, Iraqi pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein responded by threat­en­ing to unleash war “wher­ever there is sky, land or water.“
This, obvi­ously, is either a warn­ing or call for ter­ror retal­i­a­tion, which many — OK, me — have feared for a while. (Hear­ing the first plane snarl over­head at 8:45 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001 and watch­ing both tow­ers fall from blocks away makes one leery of a mis­guided for­eign pol­icy that has a goal of war with­out end, amen, and a blow­back that invites and encour­ages ter­ror attacks like sui­cide bomb­ings on the sub­ways.) The New York Times reports that anger at the Iraqi cam­paign is boost­ing al Qa’ida recruit­ment on three con­ti­nents, some­thing I men­tioned two weeks ago (scroll down.) In the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries, Islamic fac­tions are call­ing explic­itly for a jihad against the West, and the United States in par­tic­u­lar. In a com­mu­niqué dis­trib­uted to jour­nal­ists dur­ing a march in Gaza City, Hamas Leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin called on the Islamic nation “to strike at West­ern inter­ests every­where if Iraq is con­quered. … The hate-drenched West, headed by Amer­ica, declared today a cru­sade on the [Islamic] nation and on the Mus­lim belief when it gath­ered to strike Iraq.“
Yassin called on the Iraqi peo­ple to join ranks under the ban­ner of jihad, and demanded that Iraq “open its bor­ders to all Mus­lims across the world so that they can play their part in the defen­sive bat­tle of the [Islamic] nation.“
Oddly enough, this hap­pened once before when a super­power invaded a Mus­lim coun­try and set up a pup­pet gov­ern­ment. Thou­sands of rad­i­cal­ized young men poured into the coun­try and began a guerilla cam­paign that even­tu­ally led to the the hum­bling of the super­power and its retreat. The coun­try even­tu­ally fell into chaos, gang­ster­ism, rule by war­lords and ultra­harsh Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism. The coun­try, of course, is Afghanistan and the super­power was the Soviet Union.
And, omi­nously, I received an email today from a Mus­lim man in France who promised to become an “explo­sive martyr” — with no specifics given — in the event of a U.S. inva­sion of Iraq.
“Irak after this war, where childs and par­ents will die, Irak will rec­og­nize this zion­ist project [Israel] as [a] state but the world will cry and scream.
“Yes, I will be an explo­sive mar­tyrs [sic] as you said.“
If all that’s not enough to scare the crap out of you, in upstate New York a 20-lb. carp, just prior to being killed, allegedly began to yell in Hebrew, shout­ing “Tzaruch shemi­rah” and “Hasof bah,” which in essence means account for your­self for the end is near. (Can some Hebrew speak­ers check that trans­la­tion?)
The fish was even­tu­ally butchered and sold, prompt­ing a gefilte fish com­pany to toy with the idea of adopt­ing the slo­gan, “Our Fish Speaks for Itself.“
Jokes aside, the world seems closer to mid­night than ever. “I am liv­ing at the Villa Borgh­ese,” wrote Henry Miller in the open­ing line to _Tropic of Cancer_. “There is not a crumb of dirt any­where, nor a chair mis­placed. We are all alone here and we are dead.“
It’s a beau­ti­ful day today in New York.