From: PICT

No country on earth is guiltier of using chemicals as weapons of war than the United States—even against its own people.

The National Cancer Institute disclosed in 1997 that 90 (of 235) U.S. nuclear bomb tests spewed 150 million curies of iodine-131 mainly between 1952 and 1957. The NCI found that all 160 million people in the U.S. at the time were contaminated with the radio-iodine. The study said that between 25,000 and 75,000 thyroid cancers would result in the U.S. and that 10 percent of them would be fatal. The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research cautioned that the upper estimate of “75,000 is more plausible, since the lower estimate assumes that internal radiation doses from iodine-131 are ‘as little as one-fifth as hazardous’ as the same dose of external radiation. This assumption is very dubious, not based on human data, and not protective of public health.”

In Vietnam, from 1962 to 1969, the U.S. sprayed more than 100 million pounds of toxins like Agent Orange over four million acres. Our chemical warfare destroyed over 460,000 acres of crops and today the Vietnamese Red Cross counts 150,000 children whose birth abnormalities were caused by their parents’ exposure to Agent Orange alone. Reportedly about 388,000 tons of our chemically gelled gasoline—napalm—was dropped on SE Asia between 1963 and 1973, compared to 32,357 tons used on Korea over three years, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945.

In 1991, more than 400 tons of “depleted” uranium (DU) munitions were fired into Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that 940,000 Air Force 30-mm DU shells and 4,000 Army 120-mm DU anti-tank shells were fired. The “tank busters” alone contained 25 tons of uranium. Another 170 tons were used in the 2003 bombing and occupation of Iraq.

In 1994 and 1995, the Pentagon admits it fired about 10,800 DU rounds into Bosnia—close to three tons. More than 31,000 rounds, about 10 tons, were shot into Kosovo by the U.S. and NATO in 1999. DU has also contaminated large parts of Okinawa, Panama, Puerto Rico, Vieques, South Korea, New Mexico, and other U.S. bases and firing ranges where target practice is conducted.

The memory of the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed or poisoned by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Yemen should give pause to today’s gung-ho warriors. But it seems they’re only interested in selling weapons.

– John Laforge