| Note: This article by Christian Müller already appeared on March 9, 2019. After first the British and now also the Americans supplied Ukraine with uranium munitions, it is more topical than ever. |
Everybody knows that there are nuclear bombs. But does everyone know that NATO has been using radioactive munitions for many years?
The book should be a sensation. If …
It is about a double scandal:
- The uranium munitions used in the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and again in Syria by the USA and Great Britain have a deadly long-term effect. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people may die in the coming years.
- The Western media do not want to know anything about it. A science journalist of the German daily newspaper DIE ZEIT, Gero von Randow, has decisively helped to silence these “most adventurous conjectures” of the German press – on behalf or at least at the request of the then editor-in-chief Theo Sommer and/or the (still ruling) ZEIT editor and NATO admirer Josef Joffe, as can now be comprehensibly combined. See here and here. On Josef Joffe see also here and here.
However, it is to be feared that also now the media will remain silent about it. It is to be expected that thousands will sue NATO for war crimes and demand financial compensation for the victims and their survivors. And which NATO country could be happy about that?
What is uranium ammunition?
During the production of fuel rods for nuclear power plants and also during the production of atomic bombs, depleted uranium is produced, so to speak as waste – Depleted Uranium, in the common abbreviation therefore DU. It cannot be used industrially for anything, except for military purposes. DU is incredibly heavy – its specific weight is more than twice that of steel – and can thus, when incorporated into suitable ammunition, easily penetrate the steel armor of a heavy tank.
The projectiles, called uranium munitions, are mainly used by the US Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt fighter jets against tanks. The fact that this ammunition is radioactive and highly toxic is tacitly accepted. Since the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. Army has been using uranium-hardened munitions, bombs and grenades – with the apparent acquiescence of NATO allies, including Germany. In Kosovo as well as in Bosnia and Serbia, in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.
A tireless journalist has investigated
It is thanks to the German filmmaker and journalist Frieder Wagner that the topic is finally back on the table. He has put his research and travel reports to the war-damaged areas into a book that has been published by proMedia: “Death Dust – Made in USA.
We have read the book. Two excerpts from it:
“When uranium bullets hit their target, the depleted uranium used burns into tiny particles. This ‘death dust’ can be inhaled and penetrate all organs because it is 100 times smaller than red blood cells and thus crosses the mother-infant barrier. The uranium particles also contaminate the soil, air and water in Iraq and everywhere else where these weapons have been used so far. They cause cancer. Many generations will be damaged for centuries because their genetic code will be altered.”
“Multiple birth defects, many as severe as this, have become common with babies born in the aftermath of US assaults with depleted uranium on the Iraqi city of Fallujah,” Aljazeera reported.
“A 1992 study by the British Atomic Energy Authority states that if 40 tons of these munitions were used in populated areas, up to 500,000 deaths from radioactive contamination could be expected. In the 1991 war (Second Gulf War. Red.), 320 tons of these munitions alone were used. So how terrible might be the consequences of uranium weapons in Bosnia (1995), in Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and in the second Iraq war (2003), where a total of about 2200 tons were used? There is alarming evidence that especially in Afghanistan, from 2001 to the present, and in the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, experiments were also conducted with higher-enriched explosive devices – with the civilian population as guinea pigs.”
The publisher says: “Documentary filmmaker and author Frieder Wagner has seen and recorded images of horror in the children’s hospitals of Iraq. In his films ‘Deadly Dust’ (2007) and ‘The Doctor and the Radiated Children of Basra’ (2003), he reports on the cover-up strategy of the military, industry and governments, but also that of the media and politics. His years of study of the subject led him to the contaminated theaters of war, where, together with the German doctor Siegwart-Horst Günther (1925-2015), he unearthed important facts that are now appearing in book form for the first time.”
About the author Frieder Wagner
Frieder Wagner, born in 1942, is a German journalist and filmmaker. He was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize for his television work. Since 1982 he has been producing his own television documentaries for German state TVs ARD and ZDF in personal union as author, cameraman and director. His documentary ‘Der Arzt und die verstrahlten Kinder von Basra’ (‘The Doctor and the Radiated Children of Basra’), shot for the German WDR TV series ‘Die Story’, about the consequences of the use of uranium munitions, received the European Television Award in 2004. To see his film “Deadly Dust; Uranium Munitions and the Consequences” click here.
In February 2018, the German newspaper Die Welt published a detailed article on the subject of uranium munitions. In it there is an impressive video right at the beginning, click here.
About the book: Frieder Wagner: Deadly Dust – made in USA, uranium munitions contaminate the world. 232 pages, with inserted film DVD “Deadly Dust” – in German language.
Book cover in German language. Here is an English language description of the book by the International Coalition to Ban Plutonium Weapons. And here is an interview in English with the book’s author.
In this documentary (which comes with the book), film director and book author Frieder Wagner accompanies the German tropical physician and epidemiologist, Professor Siegwart-Horst Günther, and his American colleagues during their investigations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq. American troops had used the dangerous uranium munitions in many places. The film shows the hitherto little-known long-term consequences, from which especially the children in the war zones have to suffer. After the end of the Iraq war, the experts discovered contaminated war sites in the vicinity of Basra, whose radioactive contamination exceeds the natural earth radiation by a factor of 20,000. A trailer of this documentary can be watched here.
Further publications on the subject of uranium munitions:
Among the victims of the use of uranium munitions, as mentioned in the text, are thousands of people in the former Yugoslavia. It is therefore not surprising that interest in this topic is much higher there. In Serbia, for example, not only journalists, but also doctors, scientists and lawyers in particular are now concerned with the long-term consequences of the bombing with uranium munitions carried out by NATO.
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This article appeared in Globalbridge and “Infosperber” in German. We thank the author for permission to publish it.