Raiding The Vault IV -- Read 'Em And Weep

I'm in the midst of a difficult week and can't write much at the moment ... but I can point you toward a few elderly posts which I hope will be ... um ... educational?

A short [!] post from April 24, 2005, is reproduced in full below. It's called "Read 'Em And Weep".

The conditions described here are still in effect -- only worse. We're still reading -- and still weeping.

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This will not be pleasant, but I assure you it's necessary.

Read the following excerpts, and see if you can put two and two together:

Robert Kohler: Silent genocide: Depleted-uranium munitions are contaminating the world

[According to] former Livermore Labs geologist Leuren Moret .... depleted uranium turns into an infinitesimally fine dust after it explodes; individual particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria. And, “It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment.”

And DU dust is everywhere. A minimum of 500 or 600 tons now litter Afghanistan, and several times that amount are spread across Iraq. In terms of global atmospheric pollution, we’ve already released the equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs, Moret said.

The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse. DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code.

Thus, birth defects are way up in Afghanistan since the invasion: children “born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths … deformed genitalia,” according to the tribunal report. This ghastly toll on the unborn — on the future — has led Mohammed Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan DU and Recovery Fund, to coin the term “silent genocide” to describe the effects of this horrific weapon.

Riverbend: Baghdad Burning: The Cruel Month...

The weather is warm now. We often turn on the ceiling fan (or panka) in an attempt to move around the muggy air. April is a month of fresh beginnings all over the world but in Iraq, April is not the best of months. April is a month of muggy warmth and air thick with dust and sand- and now of occupation. We opened the month with a dust storm that left the furniture in our houses sand-colored with an opaque layer of dust. We breathed dust, ate dust and drank dust for a few days. The air is clearer now but everything is looking a little bit diminished and dirty. It suits the mood.

What a mood! Diminished and dirty and extremely deadly. April may be a cruel month, even in "normal times". But these times are definitely not normal. Every month is cruel in Iraq now. How could it be otherwise, when there's depleted uranium everywhere?

We breathed dust, ate dust and drank dust...

And we know what was in that dust...

Even in our time of unrelenting doublespeak, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" must be the most cynical lie of all. The only "freedom" conferred upon Iraq by this operation will be "Freedom from Worrying about the Future".

It's this simple: When you're breathing, eating and drinking dust, and that dust contains depleted uranium, there's no point in worrying about the future. Because there is no future.

Read Bob Kohler. Read Riverbend. Read 'em and weep.

Every American, every Brit, every Australian, every citizen of any country involved in the so-called "coalition", who is not doing his or her utmost to get this horror-show stopped, is silently complicit in this crime. And the crime, unless I am badly mistaken, will end up making Hitler's holocaust look like a picnic in the park.

Read 'em and weep. May God have mercy upon our souls.