Guess what kids, there's a war on! Depleted Uranium anyone?

[cantdog]

Uranium's half-life is indisputably four-and-a-half million years, colleen. Any source gives you that. We already have returned servicemen with radiation sickness. We already have multiple times the birth defect rates, both in the former yugoslavia and also in Iraq. So that, we will continue to see this for at least another few hundred thousand years.

What part of this don't you get?

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I was going to quote you shang, but this thread is becoming so full I'll just wing it

The claim is exceptional. If you are making the claim in a vacum, it may not be that hard to accept with limited proofs. As I noted, I can easily see the parallel between this claim and asbestosis, which is an understood process. The claim is not, however being made in a vacum, it's being made with the express intention of causing a backlash that will end in the banning of DU munitions. That too, is a reasonable idea, should the claims prove to be true. The burden of proof, however, still remains with the person making the claim if the claim is contrary to the acepted norm. It was true for Galileo, Copurnicus, and it's still true here. When you are advocating governmental action on something, action that is contrary to current policy, it is incumbant upon you to prove such action is justified.

I'm not demanding ironclad proofs. They are rare even in cases where the facts aren't in dispute. But the UN report has experts, credible experts who say what you and I see as reasonable isn't fact. The UN is actually less emphatic than the NATO report on DU or the one I read prepared by a U.S. Army Colonel whose specialty is toxicity of Army ordenance. A case can bemade that neither the Army report nor the Nato report is without biase. A good one. But the same can be said of reports sponsored by groups who oppose the war in Iraq or war in general or anything Nuclear. What I would like to see is proof of a scientific nature, that is at least mostly free of biase.

Shang, Iraqi doctors noting a rise in birth defects isn't reliable. Nothing against the doctors, but without the backing of case studies or at least detailed records, you just can't accept that as face value. Not only because there is no backing to the claims, but because the people who talked to the doctors quite often, if not most often have an agenda. If I don't know what questions were asked, or what the sample size was or what data exist to support the claim, I'm not bound to accept it by any stretch of the imagination.

If, you remove DU from the arsenal, then you are putting tank crews at risk. Some are going to die. This isn't as pathos generated as you may think. As of right now, the U.S. Airforce operates only one plane whose primary mission is ground support. The fairchild A-10. That plane is designed around 2 weapon systems, the hellfire missile and the 30mm vulcan cannon. The missiles provide punch at range, the cannon provides a weapon system that can be employed close in, that produces devestating results without the kind of explosions missiles produce. In short, the kind or weapon system that allows pilots to conduct close air support missions. The A-10 slings around the lion's share of DU munitions on a batlefield. If you remove DU, you remove the most potent close in system we have. You can replace it with less effective munitions, but in doing so, you are weakening the results men on the ground can expect when they call in air support. Your average A-10 strike will kill an enemy tank. Baring weapon malfunction, lack of ammo or pilot error. That is not a given with lesser munitions. It only takes one 125mm tank gun to ruin a squad of soldier's day.

I tend to take apragmatic approach. If we drop Du from the arsenal, men are going to die. Men who might not have died, had Du been employed against their foes. If there is compelling evidence that Du is a danager in the long term, then you have to act with the long term in view and accept the losses in the short term. So really, it comes down to what constitutes compelling evidence. It would seem, you feel compelling evidence has been brought forward. I don't. I suspect, our disagreement has less to do with the quality of the evidence and more to do with our respective assessement of where the threat lies in action or inaction.

 

[cantdog]

Why in hell do you think the international community decided that nukes were not to be used? The immediate effects, death and damage in a wide radius, are exactly what the doctor ordered, once you decide that it is legitimate, in war, to destroy civilian population centers, which we already have decided.

The decision was made, dear, not on the basis of the immediate effects of nukes, but on the longterm effects of the fallout and whatnot. Windborne poisons, genetic damage, radiation sickness, cancers.

This is no different. The reason there is 'no treaty that you know of' is the Pentagon, which will not stop using it. No sense everyone signing a treaty which bans something, when the only users of it won't sign.

The failure here is one of will. Our will to kill our own servicepeople and to poison our current enemy's countryside in order to keep using DU.

The risks are established already. This is not, as you know, the only time an article about the horrific effects of DU dust has come out. You don't like the Mirror. Fine. There have been hundreds of such articles, both in scientific and ordinary press.

I repeat the part about our own servicepeople. The hospital facilities were slow to begin testing, but some congressional pressure made them begin. The radiation sickness the returnees have is DU. Men die or men, women, children, and everyone dies-- these are the choices. The servicemen are only exposed for months or weeks provided we continue to have our every battlefield be elsewhere. If we are not that lucky, eh, it'll be a hundred thousand years like in Bosnia and Iraq.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Uranium's half-life is indisputably four-and-a-half million years, colleen. Any source gives you that. We already have returned servicemen with radiation sickness. We already have multiple times the birth defect rates, both in the former yugoslavia and also in Iraq. So that, we will continue to see this for at least another few hundred thousand years.

What part of this don't you get?

I do believe the good doctor disputed the half life, not I. In fact, I know I didn't as the half life of radioactive isotopes is far outside my normal study.

O.K. Cant, again, what service men? Was their radiation sickness directly linked to handling DU? Were they in vehicle recovery units, where we have established even the army admits extra precautions must be taken? Have all other possible sources of exposure been discounted?

You calim multiple times the amount of birth defects in Yugoslavia. I note that the WHO made no such claim. Exactly where do you get your sources for that claim cant? Is the source sceintific? Did they conduct their research in a way that bears up to scrutiny? Did they provide documentation?

As for Iraq, I ask the same questions. What's the source? Are they legitimate? How did they arrive at their numbers. Is their documentary support of their claims?

Telling me, oh, there are more birth defects or oh, the cancer rate is so much higher isn't teling me anything if you leave it at that. The guy down at the end of the street occasionally tells me the world is going to end. He dosen't support his claims in any meaningful way and thus far, no one has supported any of the claims made in a way more meaningful than his.

I'm not being obtuse. I'm not arguing for the sake of argument. I am a skeptic. I've tained myself to be one. I prefer it to being guillible. I'm not accusing anyone here of being gullible, but I am saying I'm not. Naked asertions impress me not one whit. Ditto for statistics and reports that I can not scrutinize. I don't think I am out of bounds acking for proof of the asertions made, either in this article or by posters here. Without question, I am not out of bounds asserting the U.S. Military isn't going to ban it's most potent anti tank round on those assertions.

 

[cantdog]

Nationalists make me sick, man. If it's an American dying, why that's a completely different thing from someone else dying, isn't it?

Fuck a lotta that, man.

 

[thebullet]

Hey Cantdog. Facts don't count when we are dealing with politics. I've posted nothing but facts on this thread and mostly they've been laughed at, even those facts from respected sources such as Lancet.

Since it is in the American military's best interest NOT to allow desimination of information about the long term effects of DU on populations, we will probably never have complete studies from the US Government until it is way too late to matter. Until then the people with the "all the facts aren't in yet" attitude will hang on to the belief that DU is good for us.

It's kind of like the conservative argument against global warming. Since only 99.9% of the scientists on earth agree with it, we need to wait until the final .1% of scientists acknowledge global warming until we'll agree that global warming is real.

And shit, if it is, it's probably good for us anyway.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Why in hell do you think the international community decided that nukes were not to be used? The immediate effects, death and damage in a wide radius, are exactly what the doctor ordered, once you decide that it is legitimate, in war, to destroy civilian population centers, which we already have decided.

The decision was made, dear, not on the basis of the immediate effects of nukes, but on the longterm effects of the fallout and whatnot. Windborne poisons, genetic damage, radiation sickness, cancers.

This is no different. The reason there is 'no treaty that you know of' is the Pentagon, which will not stop using it. No sense everyone signing a treaty which bans something, when the only users of it won't sign.

The failure here is one of will. Our will to kill our own servicepeople and to poison our current enemy's countryside in order to keep using DU.

The risks are established already. This is not, as you know, the only time an article about the horrific effects of DU dust has come out. You don't like the Mirror. Fine. There have been hundreds of such articles, both in scientific and ordinary press.

I repeat the part about our own servicepeople. The hospital facilities were slow to begin testing, but some congressional pressure made them begin. The radiation sickness the returnees have is DU. Men die or men, women, children, and everyone dies-- these are the choices. The servicemen are only exposed for months or weeks provided we continue to have our every battlefield be elsewhere. If we are not that lucky, eh, it'll be a hundred thousand years like in Bosnia and Iraq.

I suppose I just have stupid tatooed on my head. I should just quit questioning things and take it as fact because there are articles on the matter. No one ever cooked the facts to it their preconcieved notions.

I really get tired of being crucified here because I ask questions and don't follow the prevailing winds like a sheep. I sometimes wonder why I even bother to say anything.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Earl, while you are all criticising me for my manner of debate it is clear that you do not read my posts too carefully - except to take offense.

That is, unfortunately, the effect of killing one's own ethos via unsupported claims and personal attacks on other debaters. People stop listening to you.

We all have a right to free speech. We do not, however, have the right to listeners. We must win them through our logic, our support, and yes - our behavior. Civility, as I hope you might be noticing, is not merely something one does out of respect for others. Alas, the time has passed when one might imagine that that alone would be enough to encourage its practice. It is also the means by which one allows one's own opinions to be heard.

If one makes oneself sufficiently unpleasant, one can actually become inaudible.

Shanglan

 

[Dar~]

so, there's a war?

 

[Guest]

Well, there be a battle of wits going on right here.

(I'm staying out of it, but I do like to read these threads. Very educational. Seriously.)

 

[cantdog]

Good then. As far as i know, none of us here will be asked to set our government's policy about DU. We'd have to act as citizens. Not fuckin likely. No one can be civil enough when talking about the heartless poisoning of populations.

The returning servicemen who called their congressional representatives to break the reluctance to test were just camping out. That's all they did, bivouac at a particular place. Italians had been there in that place, theu were rotated home. Their members were ill, and were tested. Our guys were there, they were ill, they did not get tested until a congressman stepped in. Then one man was tested. Then several others, showing symptoms, were tested. The troops who were taking the place of those men did not camp there, but moved elsewhere out of simple prudence. There had been some shelling there. The articles and so forth on this came out over a year ago. The best ones were the local papers in the state where the congressman lived. I'll try to find them for you, if you like. But I believe in my heart that the Bosnian women giving birth to abominations and the Iraqi ones doing the same are of greater concern than some guys who camped out for six weeks.

 

[thebullet]

Let me restate some facts from the first Gulf War.

Only 167 American dead fighting the war, but 181,000 soldiers currently receiving war-related disability pensions. That is 1/3rd of the Gulf War veterans who are still alive.

It doesn't take a scientific study to acknowledge that something funny is going on here. Are we going to have the same proportion of Gulf War Syndrome victims after this war?

We are arguing about the validity of this study or that study while people are dying.

I have every reason to support our soldiers in Iraq, and I do. My wife's cousin is in Iraq right now. Yesterday during a phone call home the call was cut off. My wife's aunt learned afterwards that his position had come under a morter attack. Fortunately the kid was alright.

We all should be supporting our soldiers. But these senseless policies are driving me crazy. Our government seems to think our soldiers are expendable abroad and worthless at home.

Chew on those facts.

 

[cantdog]

I avoided the thread for days, man. I should have left it alone. What the fuck.

 

[rgraham666]

Cant. I'm very disappointed in you.

I don't especially agree with some people on this matter, but I at least tried to be polite.

 

[Dar~]

so, you're telling me there's a war?

 

[BlackShanglan]

I was going to quote you shang, but this thread is becoming so full I'll just wing it

An excellent policy, but alas - my memory is too poor to do otherwise. Do forgive me.

The claim is exceptional. If you are making the claim in a vacum, it may not be that hard to accept with limited proofs. As I noted, I can easily see the parallel between this claim and asbestosis, which is an understood process. The claim is not, however being made in a vacum, it's being made with the express intention of causing a backlash that will end in the banning of DU munitions. That too, is a reasonable idea, should the claims prove to be true. The burden of proof, however, still remains with the person making the claim if the claim is contrary to the acepted norm. It was true for Galileo, Copurnicus, and it's still true here. When you are advocating governmental action on something, action that is contrary to current policy, it is incumbant upon you to prove such action is justified.

Still can't agree with you, but I'm willing to seperate this into two claims: (1) That DU rounds cause specific effects and (2) that the US government should follow a specific course of action in relationship to those rounds. The latter seems to be the real trouble-maker. I'm seperating the issues not because I'm trying to be difficult, but I see this as a really important and unalterable rule of all reasoning: the likelihood that something is true cannot be altered by the undesirability of its being true. Whether we wish to accept it may alter, but the basic reasonability of the claim is not altered. It is we who must become more reasonable, not the claim.

I think the core of what I am saying here is that the problem you identify is not, properly, an issue of evidence. It's a socialization problem. That is, it's not about whether the evidence is good or whether there's reason to believe the idea. It's about whether we want to and whether we can convince people to sacrifice their goals or emotional investments in order to believe. I absolutely grant that that sort of situation does take a great deal more evidence; my point is that it is not for especially scientific or rational reasons. It just takes a lot of leverage to dislodge an idea that is convenient, popular, or financially advantageous. That someone has difficulty doing that often - as in Galileo's case - has absolutely nothing to do with whether the claim itself is logically reasonable. It's about whether those opposing it are prepared to see reason.

I'm not demanding ironclad proofs. They are rare even in cases where the facts aren't in dispute. But the UN report has experts, credible experts who say what you and I see as reasonable isn't fact. The UN is actually less emphatic than the NATO report on DU or the one I read prepared by a U.S. Army Colonel whose specialty is toxicity of Army ordenance. A case can bemade that neither the Army report nor the Nato report is without biase. A good one. But the same can be said of reports sponsored by groups who oppose the war in Iraq or war in general or anything Nuclear. What I would like to see is proof of a scientific nature, that is at least mostly free of biase.

Agreed. I'm not arguing that DU rounds are definitely an immense danger and should never be used again. However, I think that there is enough there to warrant caution and a careful analysis, and it looks like you believe this as well. I also think that we agree that both sides have strong reasons to bias their studies and that a thorough and unbiased scientific study - although one strains to conceive by whom that might be conducted - would be greatly perferable to what we have now. I think where we differ is in what we think we ought to do while that careful analysis takes place. My concern is this: if the claims against DU are accurate, then by the time the studies are complete, we will - should we continue using DU technology at the current rate - have condemend many thousands of innocent people to anguish, suffering, and death, and possibly have contaminated large areas in ways that will be extremely difficult to correct. One only has to look at the genetic aftermath of Agent Orange to see a very unsettling picture of where we could be headed if we are equally generous in our application of a technology that we do not thoroughly understand.

Shang, Iraqi doctors noting a rise in birth defects isn't reliable. Nothing against the doctors, but without the backing of case studies or at least detailed records, you just can't accept that as face value. Not only because there is no backing to the claims, but because the people who talked to the doctors quite often, if not most often have an agenda. If I don't know what questions were asked, or what the sample size was or what data exist to support the claim, I'm not bound to accept it by any stretch of the imagination.

I feel that here one might give more heed to the difference between "not scientifically proven" and "totally unsupported." I'm not suggesting that anecdotal field reports are conclusive evidence. However, I think it's dangerous and rather unfair to assume that they mean nothing. Anecdotal observations, while a poor place to end a scientific inquiry, are very often where such an inquiry starts. No doubt the first few reports of deformities in children born to mothers using Thalidomide did not, themselves, consitute anything like a reasonable sample size or a conclusive proving. They did, however, immediately suggest that we should pay very close attention to the situation - and not use that drug unless absolutely necessary until we'd proved that it was safe. While one is not "bound to accept" the final validity of anecdotal evidence, I think it unreasonable to discard it out of hand when it suggests a possible need for further study.

My point in suggesting that your comments on the soliders' deaths were pathos driven was not to imply that they would not suffer from the loss of DU weaponry. I agree, and it is this fact that makes this situation so very grave, and this decision both difficult and extremely vital. The sooner we have hard data, the better. My point was that rather than addressing a central issue: "Does DU entail possible long-term serious and lethal health affects on the civilian population?", you asked me to feel more sorry for people whose danger I already understood to be a serious problem. What I think needs to be addressed is whether other people, possibly more of them, will also suffer greivously if we don't reconsider the use of DU weapons. However badly I feel for the loss of American soldiers, that won't change the answer to the question "Do DU weapons entail a long-term severe health risk to civilians living in ex-combat zones?" So long as some evidence suggests that they might, I think it's only reasonable to proceed with caution while we seek more conclusive answers.

So really, it comes down to what constitutes compelling evidence. It would seem, you feel compelling evidence has been brought forward. I don't. I suspect, our disagreement has less to do with the quality of the evidence and more to do with our respective assessement of where the threat lies in action or inaction.

Quite possibly some of the difference is there. I think that when very large, wide-scale suffering may be the result of an action, it's wise to investigate very thoroughly before taking that step. Of course, it's immensely more complex when suffering will occur no matter what step you take, and you're left weighing the numbers and probabilities- as one is here. In fact, in many ways we're saying the same thing: before we inflict losses and suffering, we need really good evidence. I think I just see the potential number of lives lost and affected as considerably larger if the claims are true and we keep using DU in combat. For that reason, I'm actually going more with a numbers / level of effect approach. More people stand to suffer if we gamble that DU is safe and we are wrong - especially if the worst case scenarios are correct and this turns into a multi-generation contamination problem.

My position does not, however, derive from a belief that the evidence on DU is conclusive. I think you're quite right that it's not conclusive. Rather, my position is based on a perception of what one ought to do when one has partial, ambiguous, or conflicting evidence. There are cases when I say carry on - for example, regarding theories about MMR shots being linked to autism. It's probabilities that rule me again here, and relative reasonableness of the evidence. The claims being made didn't have a particularly coherent sense of causal mechanism, which led me to be less persuaded by them. In addition, I knew that infants were likely to die of preventable diseases if the shots were not given, and that even if the vaccines did have a link to autism, the link was small enough, even by the anecdotal evidence presented by opponents of the shots, that the numbers of children affected appeared to be less than the number who would suffer from not getting the shots. Hence, I felt we should carry on vaccinating while those concerns were investigated. I was sincerely saddened and depressed by my cousin's decision not to vaccinate her children.

In this case, however, I few the balance of evidence as a bit different. Those arguing against the use of DU weapons have presented not merely a list of symptoms and possible anecdotal connections, but a clear causal mechanism by which the cause might have intiated the effect and some medical testimony backing their claims. It's not conclusive in the way that a lengthy and meticulous scientific study would be conclusive, but I think it represents substantial cause for concern. When one adds to this both the potential severity of the problem - death, drastically shortened life, or severe deformity - with the length of the potential effect - half-life or until massive cleanup efforts are completed, with some individual potentially permanently genetically damaged - then I come to a different conclusion about how to deal with this partial evidence. It's enough evidence and enough effect for me to want to see two things: (1) immediate, thorough, unbiased scientific investigation in as many locations as possible and (2) a plan for substantially curtailing use of DU weapons while that investigation takes place. Not because I think it's undisputable that the weapons will have the alleged effects, but because I've been given reasonable ground to be concerned that they might have that effect, and because the long-term results if these claims are true is very severe.

Shanglan

 

[Op_Cit]

All sides are making silly statements here.

Radiation in the body is not a problem, in fact everyone is radioactive to some degree. For example, a few bananas in a bunch will set off alarms at the entrance to a nuclear reactor facility, because potassium is active. Table salt will make a Geiger counter tick.

There is a growing suspicion that some higher than natural doses of radiation may be healthy. As someone mentioned earlier, the issue with uranium is more chemical than radiological, just like lead. Except it's like lead on steroids.

Colly (and some others) seems to want to ignore the long history of governments and their armies using people as guinea pigs...covering things up as long as possible until it can't possibly be kept a secret... finally admitting. "well, that was then but we don't do that any more." Remember Agent Orange? But what about Agent Blue? Tuskegee?...

They did a cost benefit analysis: this shit works great on piercing armor, and we'll deal with any problems later.

Lead is not as deadly, yet there are many indoor shooting ranges that require you to use fully jacketed (copper coated) bullets because of the potential health risks of airborn particles (mostly just litigation risks).

As mentioned before, "dirty nuke bombs" are not very dangerous at all because the material is not as fine, and is confined to an area that can be easily and quickly cleaned up. DU was and is being sprayed in mist form all over the place in cities and towns. (DU is not just in tank rounds.) The lead in bullets on a battle field (or in a shooting range) stays mostly in one large, relatively harmless piece because it's not moving as fast and most military rounds are jacketed.

Now if Colly was saying, "So what? Fuck 'em. War is the hellish process of inflicting enough pain on civilians to make them submit, and it's the enemy civilian's problem for resisting. Every american who voted is defacto in support of the war (because that's the way our system works), and those american soldiers are volunteers so fuck them too--what did they think they were signing when they enlisted? suckers..."

Well, then I couldn't argue against her.

 

[TheEarl]

This is no different. The reason there is 'no treaty that you know of' is the Pentagon, which will not stop using it. No sense everyone signing a treaty which bans something, when the only users of it won't sign.

The failure here is one of will. Our will to kill our own servicepeople and to poison our current enemy's countryside in order to keep using DU.

Cant: Unfortunately, I have to say it is part of my country's arsenal as well. It's not just the USA on this one.

I don't agree with Colly, but I can see her point in that no medical study has managed to produce anything like conclusive evidence that DU debris causes increased cancers and miscarriages. I personally believe it does and there is substantial circumstantial evidence to suggest that it does. But the cleanest war (in terms of deaths) is where one side wins convincingly and she's saying that it will cause more short-term deaths to remove DU from the arsenal for the sake of a long-term fear that may not actually exist.

I don't agree with her, but there's her POV.

The Earl

 

[BlackShanglan]

I don't agree with Colly, but I can see her point in that no medical study has managed to produce anything like conclusive evidence that DU debris causes increased cancers and miscarriages. I personally believe it does and there is substantial circumstantial evidence to suggest that it does. But the cleanest war (in terms of deaths) is where one side wins convincingly and she's saying that it will cause more short-term deaths to remove DU from the arsenal for the sake of a long-term fear that may not actually exist.

Thanks for reminding me of a point of Colly's that I didn't give enough attention and credit. It's a good one. If a weapon allows you to swiftly end a war that would otherwise destroy large numbers of civilians, then it's got its upside. It's something like the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagaski. It was a horror to see, a horror to live through, and a horror to die in. There's no doubt of that. However, it's also impossible to avoid the fact that by even the least favorable estimates of what it would have cost to take Japan, the bombs didn't just save American lives. They also saved Japanese lives, in the tens and possibly hundreds of the thousands, that would have been lost fighting an invasion using conventional weaponry. There's really no black-and-white moral ground there.

My concern in Iraq is that DU may indeed be ending the war more quickly, but possibly not quickly enough to avoid wide-spread contamination and large numbers of casualities and sufferers from lingering effects. We've been there quite some time now, and there appears to have been qutie a lot of DU dispersed. I personally lean toward the position that if proven the claims suggest that the cost is too high for this much use, and that given the evidence that we do have, it would be the most ethical choice to suspend or drastically curtail use until we are more sure of what it does and what it would take to clean the stuff up. But it's a fair point that extending the timetable for a war doesn't just affect our soldiers or the enemy soldiers. Wars affect everyone in the area, and the longer they go on, the more the civilians suffer - not just from bombs and bullets, but from basic things like having safe drinking water, adequate food, and accessible health care. It does all need to be weighed up when asking these sorts of questions.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Let me restate some facts from the first Gulf War.

Only 167 American dead fighting the war, but 181,000 soldiers currently receiving war-related disability pensions. That is 1/3rd of the Gulf War veterans who are still alive.

It doesn't take a scientific study to acknowledge that something funny is going on here. Are we going to have the same proportion of Gulf War Syndrome victims after this war?

We are arguing about the validity of this study or that study while people are dying.

I think what's under dispute here is not whether all these GI's are sick, but whether they're sick due to the effects of depleted uranium, which I seriously doubt.

If they were radiologically poisoned, then we should expect a certain constellation of symptoms to appear. The effects of acute radiation poisoning are well known, and include hair loss and bleeding gums, things like that. Long-term effects include cancer and leukemia.

The effects of heavy metal poisoning are also well known, and exposure to heavy metals can be easily tested for. I would think that some of the victims of Gulf War syndrome would have been tested for heavy metals, because finding uranium in their bodies would be a pretty strong indictment of the givernment and would be news.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's any epidemiological evidence that supports the contention that these guys were poisoned by DU.

The first gulf war took place in an environmental hell hole with burning oil wells spewing all sorts of toxins into the air. There were plenty of opportunities for all sorts of physical damage unrelated to depleted uranium.

And I've got to reiterate that yes indeed, the half life of uranium 238 is 4.5 million years. But that's the same for the uranium that's sitting there in the ground in the first place. There's no difference, and there's nothing sinister about it. And the long half-life is indicative a very mild source of radioactivity. The bad ones--the hot ones--have very short half-lives.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I was just going to walk away for this, but after some consideration, I'm not.

Cant. I've been here a long while and I've been debating controversial topics. I think I have shown I have an open mind. I have also shown I am willing to look at evidence supporting an opposing view and, unlike you, I have shown the ability to change my opinion when the circumstance warrants it.

Klan memners yell and scream thier opinions. They, like you, don't provide support and seem to think volume and reinteration will make their points for them. You haven't done anything here, but convince me you can't support your position and so are getting nasty and showing your passion is all you have. I would have thought I had earned better from you than this sort of treatment. And I'm hurt that your opinion of me is so low you would treat me like this.


Op Crit: You couldn't debate with me if your life depended on it. Don't flatter yourself. Any moron can jump in, make assertions, refuse to back them up and run when challenged, and apparently he has. Grow some balls or kindly STFU.

Sun: you I can deal with. You're just a prick. I don't need to know anymore about you. Kindly quit fostering your evil extremist positions on me. I don't hold them, haven't held them, haven't supported or advocated them. If to you, a moderate and skeptical approach is so hateful, I expect that says all about you I, or anyone else needs to know.


Earl, Shang, Doc M: thanks for treating me like a human being, even if we don't see eye to eye on the issue.


Now I can walk. I'll leave this thread to the mutual admiration society. I would say you can argue amongst yourselves, but obviously your position is so weak it can brook no argument. Luckily, you all share the same position so you should get along just ducky.

 

[matriarch]

*applauding*

Now THAT's how to make an exit.

Wow !!

And don't go shooting me down, guys, just an observation on debating styles, nothing to do with the thread.

 

[cantdog]

I was just going to walk away for this, but after some consideration, I'm not.

I tried all afternoon to rake up a series of links, and I had two pages of them. Then my computer shut itself down with some kind of stack overflow, so I started again. This time, the list went together much faster, of course, but when I closed the adobe reader, the browser closed too. I don't think I have the heart to do it a third time.

So I'll leave you without the links.

In the end, the inoculations which many of the people going in to gulf War II were required to take, against anthrax, have turned out to be more serious to our own troops than any radiational exposure. Neural deficits, mental confusion, and intermittent paralysis and depression are in that syndrome, and persist, so far, for at least years. But it is unrelated to DU, seemingly.

In no place could I find a reference without a clear bias to any more than a small unit of Italians, some Aussie vets, and a group of maybe 33 Brit veterans who seemed to have had an unfortunate radiational exposure in the theater. The American group which has an elevated U count in the body numbers 124 or 130 total, and there is no agreement as to the cause of their elevated U levels or the seriousness of it. Their debilitation is being ascribed to other causes by most authorities and that may be the true case. People without the proper sorts of debilitation are not being screened or tested. This seems quite reasonable. But they continue to say that their policy is to screen everyone, even though they are certainly not doing so. Still, that's not what we're really talking about.

The Brits were in a place in Kuwait where DU rounds were being tested. They were "downwinders" as the literature puts it. There were several articles coming out of british veteran organizations about those fellows. Not related to what you are discussing.

The Aussies were down-widers, too, at a test site.

The Italians seem to believe they were DU exposed. But i could find nothing in English but a few small CNN blurbs and some references to them in the rabid leftie press as though this proved something. If they weren't foreigners, we might have more talk about it, but they are. No data.

Many NATO countries-- Italy Belgium, and so on-- have begun more aggressive testing and investigation. The focus is on the vets of the Kosovo thing, not the Iraq thing. But there doesn't seem to be any results to speak of yet from that. Lovely that they are doing it, suggestive perhaps, but no results, so we will skip it.

I found my story of the bivouacking men, but it was a biased source. It was taken up by other biased sources. Skip it.

There were many, many stories in the veteran's groups of US, UK, and other places. But those guys mostly want someone to take their concerns seriously. They are worried, they are being ignored, but they are not authoritative. They have no evidence, only stories of debilitation unexplained and undiagnosed. Skip them, too.

Cant. I've been here a long while and I've been debating controversial topics. I think I have shown I have an open mind. I have also shown I am willing to look at evidence supporting an opposing view and, unlike you, I have shown the ability to change my opinion when the circumstance warrants it.

Klan memners yell and scream thier opinions. They, like you, don't provide support and seem to think volume and reinteration will make their points for them. You haven't done anything here, but convince me you can't support your position and so are getting nasty and showing your passion is all you have. I would have thought I had earned better from you than this sort of treatment. And I'm hurt that your opinion of me is so low you would treat me like this.

I am very conflicted about this issue, colleen. I cannot get a real discussion about it. It's always about something else. Nukes, or tank kills, or exposures among troops.

Alpha emitters are weaker and less penetrant than other kinds of radioactives. That's why they have longer half-lives. But alpha particles are big and do more damage than the other kinds. That's why you hear people say you have to take them internally to receive significant damage.

Does the child in the area inhale or ingest it? Certainly. How could she not do so? And it is more deadly for children. The dust is heavy metal dust, and it is consequently unlikely to dissipate very well. People will be exposed to it for a very long time, and it is very very toxic. That cannot be good, but it may be negligible. We are all exposed to toxins in this industrialized world of ours. Most of the time, the effects are small. Measurable, but small. Sometimes, the effects are very nasty, but nothing gets done for decades just the same.

Many of the pollution hazards, looking back, were crystal clear cases. Mercury poisoning. Lead paint. Now, we think we need to cut back on that stuff. Lead paint is hard to find. Creosote is not being manufactured. Asbestos meal is not on the hardware shelf. But people got diseases from these things for decades and decades before anything was done to change it. What about DU?

We would need reports of effects to determine to what extent this exposure is serious. The reports in the biased sources, and I include the Guardian and the Mirror in that list, indicate that among children and the unborn it has not been negligible. They used reports from Kosovo and Iraq, from physicians and hospitals. But no unbiased source reports it. So we will skip it. Negligible or not, it is certainly being neglected. No one is going to conduct too much science in a war zone, anyhow. Some is being begun in Kosovo, but again, nothing about results in the unbiased press.

Finding all this out took hours. I'm sorry you couldn't wait that long. I didn't wake up this morning armed with evidence for an investigation of DU.

Now that I feel armed for one, I find that everything you said was close enough to right as to make no difference. If you want to rule out the Lancet, the Mirror, the Guardian, and every source in Iraq, there is no one reporting any difficulties whatsoever. There are lots of people with concerns, including two names which come up over and over, Haley, Rokke. But no answers.

Many governments are beginning to test. But that could be as much about the concerns themselves as any real problem.

There you have it. You win. I do hope that the reports in the biased sources of ten- and twelve-fold birth defect and leukemia rates turn out to be smoke. I cannot confidently call them smoke, as you seem to be able to do.

I deeply detest the fact that the debate is always and forever about the troops. The troops on Our Side, too, I might add. It makes me crazy. The reports in the biased press come with pictures.

If you can forgive my tardiness in response to you with all the facts you want, and my initial craziness to see the issue move into the nationalist form it always takes, I beg that you do so. If you can't, I'll live, but I would like to feel shriven. Your call.

Op Crit: You couldn't debate with me if your life depended on it. Don't flatter yourself. Any moron can jump in, make assertions, refuse to back them up and run when challenged, and apparently he has.<snip>

 

[thebullet]

I apologize that this thread seemed to degenerate into another shouting match. I merely posted a story I had read about depleted uranium thinking it was a subject worth discussing.

I recognize that over the course of the last year things have become extremely polarized around here. I admit that I myself am part of the problem. Again, I apologize.

My new plan is to avoid confrontation. But I will continue to post information that I think is worth posting. People can take it or leave it, as they have this article. But I'm trying to use reputable and non-alligned sources rather than politically slanted ones.

For example, in a global warming thread recently I pointed people to a scientific website that merely gave accurate information about weather studies being done without resorting to conclusions.

Hopefully people will look at the raw numbers and be able to make up their own minds.

My biggest concern is the lack of information available through the mainstream media. It is my opinion that in an effort to avoid offending anyone important, they have become cheerleaders rather than news sources.

 

[cantdog]

Cant. I'm very disappointed in you.

I don't especially agree with some people on this matter, but I at least tried to be polite.

I'm disappointed in me too. I'm disappointed in a lot of people, but I'm still one of them.