Long-term Consequences

The Veterans Affairs Secretary has resigned, and depleted uranium may be the cause. Look at these statistics from Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law:

"Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!" The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

We've all heard the horror stories about Agent Orange, and the long-term suffering of Vietnam vets from its effects, as well as PTSD. If that was only a 10% disability rate, how is a 56% disability rate going to effect us? And remember that DU is still being used in the current Iraq war; we can expect similar rates of long-term disability in the future, or possibly even higher due to the DU that is still in the Iraqi environment from a decade ago.

And, of course, the people who are suffering most from DU are the Iraqi people themselves, who are exposed to it on an ongoing basis. Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years.

Can you say "war crimes"? Because I sure can.