Good Ol’ Time Spam

I got this spam email today from one of my GOP loving pals. It was kind of nostalgic in how it shilled the 2004 GOP talking points as if the last few years had never happened. I don’t believe that anyone actually still agrees with this laundry list of assertions, but I felt like putting them all into 2008 perspective. Sort of a “let’s look at where we are now” kind of thing.

The Lies that Matter

It’s been a hell of a couple weeks for lies and the liars that tell those lies. With all the veiled and not-so-veiled lies about Barack Obama’s fitness for the presidency, to the man’s choice of gods to focus his devotion to, to who approved what for whose surrogate to toss out into the sewer of public discourse, to ex-NY Governor Eliot Spitzer and his lies to the woman he married, one might begin to get the impression that the Democratic Party couldn’t get its moral compass to center on true north if the future of mankind depended on it.

Which it just might.

I’ve even gotten sucked up into the vortex of it all, as it’s swirled and spun around me. The pull is strong, and I’m as much a sucker for controversy as anyone. In fact, I tend to get even more emotionally involved in it all that some. I don’t know. Maybe I need yet another hobby in my life?

Today, however, I woke up and had a quiet moment

“What the hell are you thinking?”

Okay, so I’ll admit that I don’t always see things the way that most people see them.In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I often don’t see things the way that most people see them.It might even be suggested that I have a way of seeing things that lies just on the other side of “What the hell is he thinking?” from just about everyone that I know.And yet, I have a high enough rate of successfully nailing the truth behind complicated issues and convoluted scenarios to allow me to feel

NIMBY and The Case for Depleted Uranium

– from Fred J. Snyder

What would you say to a proposition, offered by the members of your state legislature, where, in exchange for protection against the threat of violent crime in your community, you’d have to agree to the storage of nuclear waste – in an ongoing agreement to accept an ever increasing amount of this “somewhat toxic” material – for the duration of the agreement, and (of course) over the 4.5 billion year life span of the material itself?

Oh, and did I mention that the nuclear waste would be sprinkled all over the entire state. As in on the ground, in the water, on the roads, over the buildings, and wherever else powdered nuclear waste could settle, until kicked up again by the wind, or rinsed away to by the rain, or stirred up by your kids as they play in the places that they play, getting their little selves all dirty and stuff, as kids have a tendency to while playing.

Now, before you answer, keep in mind that the government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has agreed to provide hired experts to assure you that there is a low likelihood that any of this spent nuclear waste material is actually harmful to human beings and that, while there are reports of long term health implications – including chromosome damage, bizarre birth defects, and eventual increases in certain cancers associated with exposure to this material – these reports have yet to be officially embraced by the NRC, and associated health assessment authorities recognized by the federal government.

In fact, the “mountain of evidence” that alleges a connection between your children’s exposure to this nuclear waste material and unpleasant medical anomalies like increased leukemia rates, and birth defects in your grandchildren (such as missing eyes, mouths, brains, and other exotic deformities) is only offered by the reckless and hysterical opponents of this plan to allow your town to host the “storage’ of this nuclear waste as just another aspect of the natural environment of your state.

Also, keep in mind that the upside is no more concerns about violent crime. That’s the compensation that the NRC is offering you for the inconvenience of have this material sprinkled around.

To the tune of thousands of tons of it.

Ready to sign?

I used to have this business idea, back some 25 years ago or so, and it involved bumper stickers. Well, not whole bumper stickers, and not a variety of these partial bumper stickers either – like a range of clever or poignant quips – available to my market. No, this was a lot more of a niche offering idea. All I wanted to offer was a sticker that featured a circle with a picture of a screw in the middle of it. The idea was for placing this sticker over the picture of the heart on those bumper stickers that so many people had on their cars proclaiming their love for whatever it is that they were in love with.

“I <3 My Labrador Retriever”

Its not hard to see the potential application for such a wonderfully wicked little product, offered in a range of sizes and colors to match your neighbors’ and co-workers’ bumper sticker perfectly.

Since 2003, whenever I’ve seen any variation of the bumper stickers “I <3 Our Troops”, it’s reminded of that clever business idea that I had back then. It hasn’t felt the same way – the idea of slapping one of these screws over the heart – as when I first imagined doing it to some lady and her beloved horse (I still laugh at the idea of that). Now, it just reminds me of what we’ve done, and are doing to the troops that we claim to love.

Y’know that insane little proposal that I started this piece off with? The one about allowing the NRC to dump tons of nuclear waste dust all over your state, in exchange for protection against violent crime? And all you had to do was trust the experts that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hired to assure you that your kids would be safe playing in the dirt that holds it, breathing in the air that stirs it, and swimming in the water that suspends it in solution? For the next 4.5 billion years?

Well, advance the age of your children a handful of years, and then tell me if you still think it’s a deal you’d like to make.

Maybe you don’t want to hear this, and I’ll understand if it ends up making you really angry to have someone confront you with it, but that deal has already been made for you, and if you have a son or daughter in Iraq, your kid is living in that toxic wasteland at this very moment. And has been for months, and even years in some cases. Right now, your son, daughter, husband, wife, or the one you love more than anyone else in the world is breathing in nuclear waste on a daily basis, and has been since stepping off the plane at that airport that we liberated from the tyrannical madman we unseated nearly 5 years ago.

Thousands of tons of it. Spread everywhere by the winds that seem to move that entire country around from here to there, lifting metric tons of sand and dust every day and depositing it on every surface before lifting it again and bringing it to the next available surface. Endlessly.

In 4.5 billion years, nuclear waste can cover a lot of territory. Especially fine powdered nuclear waste. Especially in a place like Iraq.

So, what am I suggesting here? Is the NRC spiriting spent fuel rods – ground into fine powder – over to Iraq to dispose of it in the most vile dumping scheme of all time?

Well, it’s not for me to say what the intention is. I only know what the facts are.

Here is one fact, as fairly presented by one of my favorite web resources Wkipedia.com

“Natural uranium may be processed, or enriched, which separates the U-235 from the U-238. The waste material left over from this enrichment process is composed primarily of uranium-238 and is called depleted uranium or DU.”

Depleted Uranium: Health considerations

Now, what is depleted uranium and why are our kids in Iraq playing with the stuff?

Please take the time to read the contents of the Wikipedia page I’ve linked above, but to bullet the issue properly for American consumption, what is at issue here is that the arms manufacturers that supply our military make of their shells, bombs and missiles out of depleted uranium, and every time they use one of these pieces or ordinance, the DU material is transformed from the super-hard, super-heavy alloy (“One formulation has a composition of 99.25 percent by weight of depleted uranium and 0.75 percent by weight of titanium”. – see above Wikipedia.com link) into dust through the pyrophoric nature of the DU material when launched from the barrel of the tank, Bradley, helicopter, handheld launcher, or aircraft involved in the target strike.

See Wikipedia for a complete description of what pyrophoric means, but in essence, it means the ordinance ignites as soon as it’s fired, and becomes a flaming bomb that burns it’s way into whatever it’s being fired at, piercing hardened walls, shields and whatever else has been constructed to keep bombs out. Good kill technology, but it comes with a price tag for those troops using the stuff. The DU becomes powder after the shell is fired, and that powder doesn’t go away. Not for the next 4.5 billion years.

Kind of like getting a little back from every bit that we give. At the moment, the trade-off seems fair, but then, there are those other moments that gather together as a person carries on with a life after war.

So, how much of this poisonous stuff is actually floating around Iraq, and the surrounding Middle East region? According to some sources, it’s in the neighborhood of 3,000 tons, added onto the 300 or so tons we dumped in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Don’t forget, that stuff is still around too. It hasn’t been 4.5 billion years since the last time with did the “Shock and Awe” routine on these savages. It’s been waiting for us to come back since we dumped it there under the first Bush Administration.

According to Scott Peterson (no, a different Scott Peterson) from the Christian Science Monitor, on May 15, 2003, he took Geiger counter readings at several sites in Baghdad.

“Near the Republican Palace where U.S. troops stood guard and over 1,000 employees walked in and out of the building, his radiation readings were the “hottest” in Iraq, at nearly 1,900 times background radiation levels.” Another War Crime? Iraqi Cities “Hot” With Depleted Uranium

Just in case you think either the International Action Center or I am making up this reporter, here is another report that I found by Googling his name after sifting through 15 pages of references to that other Scott Peterson.

Waiting for the Rapture in Iran

Yes, he’s no Cato Institute conservative think tank pundit, but he does exist, he does write for the CSM, and his beat is Iraq. His readings were done in May of 2003. It’s gotten worse since then. Don’t forget about that whole 4.5 billion years thing. The stuff just builds up as more shells are fired at the enemy. It doesn’t dissipate. Not for 4.5 billion years.

Here are a couple stories I found this morning about our troops who are dealing with this stuff.

Sickened Iraq Vets Cite Depleted Uranium

Depleted Uranium to Blame for Iraq’s Cancer Problem?

Apparently, they are looking at DU poisoning as the leading suspect in that whole Gulf War Syndrome thing that’s ruined the lives of so many Gulf War I vets since 1991. The international community has it’s own opinions about the use of depleted uranium in our weaponry.

“In 1996 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave an advisory opinion on the “legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons”.[21] This made it clear, in paragraphs 54, 55 and 56, that international law on poisonous weapons, – the Second Hague Declaration of 29 July 1899, Hague Convention IV of 18 October 1907 and the Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925 – did not cover nuclear weapons, because their prime or exclusive use was not to poison or asphyxiate. This ICJ opinion was about nuclear weapons, but the sentence “The terms have been understood, in the practice of States, in their ordinary sense as covering weapons whose prime, or even exclusive, effect is to poison or asphyxiate.” also removes depleted uranium weaponry from coverage by the same treaties as their primary use is not to poison or asphyxiate, but to destroy material and kill soldiers through kinetic energy.” — Depleted Uranium: Legal Staus in Weapons

In essence, they don’t know what to legally do about it, even though it does sort of violate that whole “gift that keeps on giving” aspect of the WMD ban, while not specifically trying to. Then again, a drunk driver isn’t “trying” to kill anyone out on the open road either, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be kept off the road.

So, given the debate between the health and safety of our troops and the need for them to be able to send a bomb through every possible shield ever constructed, where do we decide to line up and be held accountable for our decision? Is there any alternative to forcing our kids to play in a nuclear waste laced sandbox?

Well, “according to recent research,[19] at least some of the most promising tungsten alloys which have been considered as replacement for depleted uranium in penetrator ammunitions” Depleted Uranium: Ammunition

Then again, if you read on, it becomes clear that some of these alloys are even more toxic that DU, which given that DU is spent nuclear fuel rods, is really saying something about these alloys.

But, you see, the real attraction that the defense industry has for depleted uranium has nothing to do with whether it’s the lesser of two evils, or whether there are alternatives to employing a carcinogenic material in a way that turns it into an inhalant for the next 4.5 million millenniums. What really draw the CEOs, CFOs and COOs of these multinational arms producers to this malignancy is that nuclear waste is not the kind of stuff that anyone else is bidding against them for. In fact, with everyone trying to get rid of it, I’m pretty sure it’s got a very reasonable cost window attached to it. I would imagine that delivery is included at no extra charge.

Now, how often do you think any industry runs across a raw material like this? One that no one else wants. It must’ve been quite the celebration when the R&D folks presented this breakthrough to the senior staff. Of course, there was the issue of selling the idea to the Pentagon brass, what with that whole “poisoning the troops” wrinkle in the whole wonderful proposition. I wonder how any of them sleep at night, to be honest. Then again, I was never very good in business.

The term “NIMBY” means Not In My Back Yard. It’s the bane of the NRC, and all the waste that they have to figure out what to do with. If the makers of bombs and missiles had decided that they didn’t want to make their bombs and missiles out of depleted uranium anymore, or if the Pentagon had decided that they didn’t want to risk the health of their troops by using this stuff, the NRC would now have a hell of a lot more nuclear waste to worry about where they are going to store it for the next 4.5 billion years. You folks who sit at home, cheering the troops on in Iraq with yellow ribbons and bumper stickers, created the term NIMBY, and it means that none of you wants that stuff in your neighborhood. Not even in your state. Not even shipped by rail through your state.

You don’t seem to have the same problem with letting our troops breathe the stuff in every day, bathe in it, sprinkle it on their food or let it swim around in their coffee in morning.

When I did my searches for links to recent articles on DU and the Iraq War, I had the hardest time finding anything newer than the summer of 2003. In fact, the only stories I could find had to do with the sickness reports of our Iraq War vets, and none of them in any archives of the larger mainstream media sites. It almost looked as though the whole problem just went away. Then again, I had to keep in mind that we haven’t been in Iraq for 4.5 billion years. It hasn’t even been 5 years yet. I’m pretty sure the depleted uranium problem is still there.

That wikipedia.com page makes a very even case for the use of depleted uranium and that’s why I referenced it so heavily in this article. I didn’t want to get all hysterical with the kind of accusations featured in reports like these:

Killing our own with depleted uranium and High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians which raises the specter of an even worse munitions material – non-depleted uranium NDU, a completely man-made variant that is akin to using a “dirty-bomb” – as featured in this article United States Is Actively Engaged In War Crime and Polluting With Nuclear Materials along with the results of a little known war crimes tribunal held in Japan over our use of DU and NDU in battle.

In fact, this Wikipedia statement is fairly generous, given the evidence available concerning the long term affects of thousands of tons of this stuff covering the world our troops live in.

“Depleted uranium munitions are controversial because of numerous unanswered questions about the long-term health effects. DU is less toxic than other heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury, and is only very weakly radioactive because of its long half life.[2] While any radiation exposure has risks, no conclusive epidemiological data have correlated DU exposure to specific human health effects such as cancer.[3] However, the UK government has attributed birth defect claims from a 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to DU poisoning,[4][5] and studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure. Until such issues are resolved with further research, the use of DU by the military will continue to be controversial.[6]”

Almost seems to make the case FOR the use of DU weaponry if you ignore that bit about the UK government officially blaming DU exposure to the birth defect claim by one of their soldiers from the 1991 war. Then again, that Wiki entry dates back to 2003, when folks actually worried about the impact of depleted uranium exposure on our troops. It’s been a while, and a lot of water has passed under that bridge since the. Maybe it’s too late to make a stink about it after all this time and all that exposure. What’s done is done, I guess. Well, except for the kids that have yet to go over there and get their doses.

It’s up to all of us to make up our minds on this but as you mull it over, think about that whole NIMBY thing and nuclear waste material. If it’s good enough for our troops, for your kids in Iraq, then why isn’t it good enough for you? Why are you making such a stink about letting the NRC dump that stuff in your part of the country? It’s not like they’re grinding it up into a fine powder and spreading it around your neighborhood – like they are in Iraq. It’s not like you’d actually be exposed to any of it – like our kids are being exposed to it daily in Iraq. If depleted uranium is safe for our kids in Iraq, then what’s the problem with storing it in barrels over behind the soccer field? You’re not scared of a little harmless depleted uranium…are you?

Y’know, maybe I will have some of those “screw” bumper sticker add-ons made up. Maybe sticking a few of them on some SUVs here and there will make me feel less angry about all of this? Probably not, though, and all I’d be doing is upsetting people that our troops love.

Besides, it’s not like we don’t care about our kids in Iraq. I mean, sure, we <3 our troops, but just so long as they do what we tell them to do, and not be crybaby pains-in-the-ass about having to tuff it out over there to keep us safe. And we won’t stop loving them either, just so long as they keep all that stuff – the terrorists and that nasty nuclear waste powder over there – and out of our back yards.

They say “You always hurt the one you love”. We must <3 our troops like nothing else in the world.