The Weapons that Keep Killing Long After the Battlefield Falls Silent

https://theworld.org/segments/2025/03/28/study-high-levels-of-uranium-and-lead-found-in-bones-of-iraqis-linked-to-conflict

As expected PRI's The World didn't go very deep in covering this story but to be honest I was surprised it was mentioned at all. The programme is informative but not exactly adversarial. The story of Depleted Uranium and its connections to cancer occasionally pops up in the media but the Establishment has made every effort to discount and dismiss the question.

Everywhere the US engages in combat and drops its bombs - this is an issue. The Pentagon loves these ultra-dense leftovers from the nuclear energy industry. Shells tipped with Depleted Uranium pierce armour, and the fact that it is a type of low-grade radioactive weapon - or low-grade nuclear war (as some have argued) is immaterial to them. They simply don't care and the fact that decades after these conflicts people are dying of cancer and women are birthing deformed babies - to quote Madeleine Albright regarding the deaths of Iraqi children, "It's worth it."

As the fifty year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War is marked we also think about US crimes with regard to chemical warfare - though the US continues to insist Agent Orange was merely a defoliant. And Agent Orange is but one of the chemicals used. The vast and highly fatal quantities of arsenic associated with Agent Blue still plague Vietnam. Even today and on the other side of the world, the people in Colombia have suffered from US glyphosate spraying in the 1990's and after - resulting in cancers, respiratory illness, and birth defects.

If the US media focuses on these stories it's more likely in terms of US troop exposures and the suffering of veterans. It's odd as the US tries so hard to protect its own troops - and hence so often relies on heavy bombing. US casualties are consistently low and yet at the same time the Pentagon shows little to no concern about these troops in terms of exposures to toxic and other lethal substances that will kill these troops in the years and decades after. Or in the case of 'Gulf War Syndrome' - resulting in birth defects. The Pentagon and media continue to blame Iraq for this tragedy, even while the evidence is in keeping with patterns of US practice. Often I think the role the various Establishment-connected think-tanks, studies, and media play is just to muddy the waters. But as is often the case with cancer and other diseases - direct scientifically established links of causality are difficult if not impossible to establish.

Regardless of the Pentagon's glowing claims of its utility, Depleted Uranium is a particularly dark and evil weapon. The truth is some of these places are more or less uninhabitable. The risks will be there for not just decades but centuries. It's in the soil and thus in the water and in the food grown in these locales. It's a crime of epic proportions and the peoples of Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan will live with it for generations to come.