The levels of birth defects, cancer, and other consequences of the US assault on Iraq are shocking. Whether the cause is DU remains uncertain—same in other areas. There are many sources of toxicity in warfare. The authors of the published studies have suggested that DU might be the cause, but report that they cannot be confident. To my knowledge, serious weapons specialists and nuclear scientists deeply concerned about these issues have reached no definite conclusions.
The people of Vietnam also suffer from an inordinate number of birth defects. In comparing that situation to the use of DU in Iraq, is it possible that the inability to reach definite conclusions about health and environmental issues is intentional?[34] Are there political factors that get in the way of scientific research that has the potential to establish causation?
There is a valuable new study of the effects of Agent Orange on South Vietnamese by Fred Wilcox, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam—a very serious work, beyond anything else I’ve seen. He had an earlier book on its effects on US soldiers: Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange.[35] Since we last spoke there have been some investigations of the impact of US weaponry in the attack on Fallujah. One technical study found unusually high levels of enriched uranium, presumably from DU, along with other dangerous substances.[36] Another study, reported by Patrick Cockburn in the London Independent and in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that “Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.” The study, by Iraqi and British doctors, found “a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.”[37]
That the marine attack on Fallujah in November 2004 (the second major assault) was a major war crime was evident at once even from the (generally supportive) US reporting. These new investigations surely merit widespread attention (they have received almost none) and serious inquiry, in fact war crimes trials, if that were imaginable. It is not: only the weak and defeated are subjected to such indignities.
There can hardly be any serious doubt that political factors interfere with scientific research in all such cases, massively in fact; and there are quite a few. The vicious US-supported Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008–January 2009 is another case that should be investigated. The heroic Norwegian physicians Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse, who worked under horrible conditions at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza right through the worst days, reported effects of unknown lethal munitions that surely would receive extensive inquiry, bitter condemnation, and calls for punishment if the agents were enemy states.[38]
DU munitions in the US are produced by contractor-owned, contractor-operated facilities. Is this a way to deflect potential liability?[39]
In the case of Agent Orange, the US government claimed not to be aware that it contained dioxin, one of the most lethal known carcinogens. Wilcox provides evidence that the corporations providing the materials to the government were well aware of this, and chose not to remove the lethal components to save costs.[40] That Washington was unaware seems hardly credible, most likely an instance of what has sometimes been called “intentional ignorance.” It should be remembered that when he escalated the attack on South Vietnam fifty years ago from support for a murderous client state to outright US aggression, President Kennedy authorized the use of chemical weapons to destroy ground cover and also food crops, a crime in itself, even apart from the dreadful scale and character of the consequences, with deformed fetuses to this day, several generations down the line in Saigon hospitals as a result of persistent genetic mutations.[41] Somehow none of this exercises those who passionately proclaim their devotion to “right to life” even for the fertilized egg.
However, it is unlikely that the issue of liability will arise for the reason already mentioned. The powerful are self-immunized from even inquiry, let alone punishment for their crimes.[42]
The Radiation Protection Center in Baghdad has found a “clear radiation trail” from tanks hit by DU penetrators to their relocation to scrap sites.[43] What obligations to cleanup do the US and the UK have? How likely is it?
Obligations can be legal or moral. The US and UK invasion was a textbook example of the crime of aggression, “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” in the wording of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which sentenced Nazi war criminals to death for committing this crime. We should therefore have the honesty either to concede that the tribunal was judicial murder, hence our crime, or to recognize that George Bush, Tony Blair, and their accomplices should be subjected to the legal principles established at Nuremberg. Cleanup would be one important obligation on legal grounds, but a minor one in context. At the very least, the US and UK are obligated to provide massive reparations for their crimes against Iraq.
Judgment on moral grounds depends on what one’s moral principles are. There is no doubt that cleanup—in fact, far more—would be regarded as a moral obligation if the crimes had been carried out by an enemy. Therefore it is an obligation for us if we are capable of accepting one of the most elementary of moral principles, found in every moral code worth consideration: the principle of universality, holding that we should apply to ourselves the standards we impose on others, if not more stringent ones.
How likely is it? Highly unlikely unless the dominant elites, particularly the educated classes, make an effort to rise to a level of civilization for which there is, unfortunately, no sign. In fact, even raising the issue arouses horror and often hysteria.
Does secrecy in matters of radioactive releases—intentional or unintentional—pose a danger equal to the materials themselves?[44]
Perhaps. But the greatest threat, I think, is the evasion and suppression of what is known, or could easily be known if there were any authentic concern for terrible crimes. Of course there is much anguish when someone else is guilty, but the crucial case, always, is when we ourselves are the perpetrators—clearly the most crucial case for us, on elementary moral grounds. Sometimes there is awareness, though ineffectual. Thomas Jefferson famously said that “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever,” referring to the crime of slavery. John Quincy Adams, the great grand strategist who was the intellectual author of Manifest Destiny, expressed very similar thoughts in reflecting on the “extermination” of the indigenous population with “merciless and perfidious cruelty… among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring [it] to judgement.” Their concerns should resonate painfully to the present day. Those who preach most eloquently about their devotion to their Lord express only contempt for such thoughts; and they have plenty of company, needless to say. The US and its intellectual community are breaking no new ground, of course. They are following the course typical of systems of power, throughout history. We should, I think, take all of this as an indication of the great chasm that lies between the most advanced cultures and minimal standards of elementary decency, honesty, and moral integrity. Not a small problem, quite apart from the matters we are discussing.
34
A joint project between the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and Vietnam to study possible links between Agent Orange and health and environmental degradation never got off the ground. The study “was expected to provide evidence for a class action suit on behalf of millions of Vietnamese plaintiffs against US manufacturers of Agent Orange.” Declan Butler, “US Abandons Health Study on Agent Orange,”
35
Fred A. Wilcox,
36
Samira Alaani, Muhammed Tafash, Christopher Busby, Malak Hamdan, and Eleonore Blaurock-Busch, “Uranium and Other Contaminants in Hair from the Parents of Children with Congenital Anomalies in Fallujah, Iraq,”
37
Patrick Cockburn, “Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah ‘Worse than Hiroshima,’”
39
The DU penetrator was developed by metallurgist and engineer Paul Loewenstein (ca. 1958). He worked as technical director and vice president of Nuclear Metals, Inc. (NMI) from 1946 to 1999. Prior to becoming a privately owned business, NMI operated on the MIT campus in the Hood Building. In 1943 MIT had been designated a Manhattan Engineering District, producing alloys from 235U and beryllium. In 1958 the operation, including machinery, staff, and licenses for uranium and beryllium, changed to private hands and relocated to Concord, MA. Renee Garrelick,
41
Official records claim Pres. Kennedy approved a program “to participate in a selective and carefully controlled joint program of defoliant operations in Viet Nam … proceeding thereafter to food denial only if the most careful basis of resettlement and alternative food supply has been created,” on November 30, 1961. William A. Buckingham Jr.,
42
In 1984 Monsanto and six other manufacturers settled with US veterans in a class-action lawsuit; $180 million was distributed according to a plan partially designed by US District Judge Jack B. Weinstein. In 2005 Weinstein denied claims sought by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange on grounds of specific intent: “The United States did not use herbicides in Vietnam with the specific intent to destroy any group. Nor were those herbicides designed to harm individuals or to starve a whole population into submission or death. The herbicides were primarily applied to plants in order to protect troops against ambush, not to destroy a people.” Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin v. Dow Chemical Co. et al., MDL No. 381, 04-CV-400 (E.D.N.Y. March 25, 2005). See also Dominic Rushe, “Monsanto Settles ‘Agent Orange’ Case with US Victims,”
43
Martin Chulov, “Iraq Littered with High Levels of Nuclear and Dioxin Contamination, Study Finds,”
44
In 1994 Pres. Clinton established the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) to investigate US government-funded research conducted between 1944 and 1974. A host of documents were sought, assembled, and declassified, establishing nearly four thousand radiation experiments involving plutonium and other atomic bomb materials; nontherapeutic research on children; total body irradiation; research on prisoners; intentional radioisotope distribution and atmospheric releases; and observational research involving uranium miners and residents of the Marshall Islands. In 1995 documents from the original ACHRE site were obtained by the National Security Archive (an independent nongovernmental research institute and library) located at George Washington University in Washington, DC.