Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs
by Bob Nichols
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 27, 2004

As a writer I do not have a set of words to describe what 142 Degrees in the shade is like. I’ve seen 120 D. in Phoenix and 110 D in the spa’s sauna I use. One hundred forty-two degrees leaves me speechless. Try to imagine 142 D temperature while wearing a helmet, long sleeve shirt, long pants, a bullet proof vest, boots, and carrying a 70 pound pack.

By contrast the Inuit of Alaska and Canada have thirty-seven words to precisely talk about different kinds of snow.

So, since the temperature is heating up in Iraq it seemed like a good time to float this story to different Internet sites and news publications. There was one story in 2003 of one 19 year old British soldier whose military job was to work in a British tank. In Iraq. In the summer. Word is, from London, that he forgot to drink enough water and he literally cooked in his tank.

But, this story is not about the temperature in Iraq. You can bet, though, the weather will be really important for those Americans unfortunate enough to still be in Iraq this summer.

This story is about American weapons built with Uranium components for the business end of things. Just about all American bullets, 120 mm tank shells, missiles, dumb bombs, smart bombs, 500 and 2,000 pound bombs, cruise missiles, and anything else engineered to help our side in the war of us against them has Uranium in it. Lots of Uranium.

Dear friends of Voices,

We are asking everyone in the United States to call their elected representatives at the Capitol switchboard, 202-225-3121 and President Bush at 202-456-1111 or 456-1112, and everyone living outside of the US to ask the US embassy in their home country to enact an immediate ceasefire of the US military’s operations in Falluja. According to eyewitness reports there is a terrible massacre taking place in Falluja, and Iraqi civilians are caught in the desert with no place to go while the hospitals of Falluja have filled up with the dead and the dying. The Guardian newspaper reported today that the estimated death toll of Iraqis from this violence in Falluja is over 450 and the number of injured over 1,000.

The following is part of an urgent appeal from Ewa Jasiewicz, who worked with Voices in the Wilderness and Occupation Watch in Iraq, lived there for 8 months (Basra and Baghdad) and in Palestine, mainly Jenin camp for 6 months, speaks Arabic, and who got back from Iraq 2 months ago. She is in regular contact with her friends in Basra and Baghdad. In the chaos of war it is difficult sometimes to tell exactly what is happening, so please be understanding of the unconfirmed nature of some parts of this report. In response to such an urgent situation we feel that calling on the US goverment immediately for a real ceasefire is the best possible short-term response.

Bush’s War and the Lapdog Press Corps

By ROBERT FISK

Just shut up. That’s the new foreign policy line of our masters. When Senator Edward Kennedy dubbed Iraq “George Bush’s Vietnam”, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told him to be “a little more restrained and careful” in his comments. I recall that when the US commenced its bombing of Afghanistan, the White House spokesman claimed that some journalists were “asking questions that the American people wouldn’t want asked”. Back in the early 1980s, when I reported on the Iranian soldiers on a troop train to Tehran who were coughing Saddam’s mustard gas out of their lungs in blood and mucus, a Foreign Office official told my then editor on The Times that my dispatch was “not helpful”. In other words, stop criticising our ally, Saddam.

So maybe the policy has been around for quite a while. When the occupation authorities deliberately concealed the attacks against US troops after the start of the Iraq occupation last year, journalists who investigated this violence were told that they weren’t covering the big picture, that only small areas of Iraq were restive. And there was a lot of clucking of tongues when a few of us decided to take a close look at US proconsul Paul Bremer’s press laws last year. A whole team of “Coalition Provisional Authority” lawyers was set up to see how they could legalise the closure and censorship of Iraqi newspapers that “incited violence”. And whenever we raised questions about it, the CPA spokesman–and its current attendant lord, Dan Senor, used the same phrase last week–would announce that “we will not tolerate incitement to violence”.