Space Forum / Astronomy / August 2005

Former Head Of Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project Says:

Thousands Of Troops Are Sick And Dying From Illegal DU Use And Military's
Failure To Admit Responsibility

Greg Szymanski - Arctic Beacon August 20, 2005

Army Major Doug Rokke has been shot at, run off the road, threatened,
harassed, black- balled, intimidated, called a liar and treated like a
"hated enemy" not by opposition forces in Iraq, but by 'secret ops' in the
U.S. government, obviously acting on orders from top military brass.

And in May 2000 he was subjected to the biggest scare of his life when
bullets rang through his son's bedroom window while living in Jacksonville,
Alabama, in what he calls "another near miss" by government hit men bound
and determined to remove his presence from the planet.

Maj. Rokke, living in Rantoul, Illinois, and still active in the Army
Reserves, has been a government target ever since going public in a May 1997
article in the Nation Magazine, criticizing the military for failing to
clean-up depleted uranium used in Iraq during the first Gulf War.

Although Maj. Rokke's accusations have been echoed by many others what makes
his statements so electrifying - so damaging to the military - is that he
was one of the Pentagon's 'top boys.' In fact, he was not only one of the
Pentagon's elite, he was "the man" so to speak when it came to determining
the causes and effects of depleted uranium (DU) used in the battle field.

Being so well-respected by the Pentagon brass, Maj. Rokke was the military
expert assigned as director of the 1994 U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project
in response to congressional inquiries and direct Department of Defense
(DOD) orders.

The study was commissioned after it was found the military lacked adequate
preparation to deal with the adverse health and environmental effects
regarding the use of DU in the battle field. This highly efficient 'killing
tool,' which amounts to nothing less than a radioactive nuclear assault, has
been extensively used in U.S. weaponry in the first Gulf War as well as the
present Iraqi conflict, even though it is a direct violation of the Geneva
Convention and United Nation regulations.

In simple terms, Maj. Rokke was asked to evaluate the extent of DU used and
asked to advise the military how to adequately comply with its own existing
regulations of training, clean-up and medical care involving soldiers and
civilians contaminated.

In his final report, Maj. Rokke, however, didn't beat around the bush or
provide a technical escape for evading regulations. He simply laid it on the
table plain and simple, saying if the military intended to keep using DU, it
needed to address the above problems, as regulations mandated, or simply
cease and desist from its use.

And. in hindsight, it was probably the words "cease and desist" or Maj.
Rokke's simple ultimatum of "clean-up or don't use" that initially
ticked-off military brass, since behind the scenes the 'big boys" never
really intended to open up a can of worms caused by Maj. Rokke's report.

But when the implacable army officer went public about the extent of the DU
problems in 1997, letting the cat out of the bag about the military's
outright refusal to comply with existing regulations, the 'big boys' put
their boxing gloves on and are still trying to punch Maj. Rokke into
submission today.

"They have been after me ever since I went public," said Maj. Rokke in a
telephone conversation this week from his country home in the heartland of
Illinois. "I've been shot at, run off the road several times, harassed,
threatened and whatever else they could think of doing to discredit me for
what I was doing.

"They even shot bullets through my son's bedroom window. These guys don't
play around and the first thing I was told when I went public was to keep my
45 loaded at all times."

Even though Maj. Rokke's obviously right and the military wrong, the cold
and hard truth is that the big brass tried to crucify him for simply telling
the truth. The cold hard truth is that even though the military admits using
DU, it never has admitted to the legal causal connection between its use and
its adverse effects on human and environmental health.

And critics contend that such outright contempt for its own regulations and
the military's failure to provide adequate medical care for those exposed to
DU has left hundreds of thousands of military personnel and civilians sick
or dying, including Maj. Rokke.

"It's really very simple," added Maj. Rokke. "I was asked to report on what
they needed to do about the DU problem. Our team of experts then reported
and provided our recommendations, plain and simple.

"But when I realized in 1997 we were being ignored and thousands of people,
including myself, were sick and possibly slowly dying from DU exposure, I
had to go public and blow the whistle."

And Maj. Rokke said his warnings as well as warnings from many other experts
were not only dismissed by the military, but also by every other bigwig on
Capital Hill, including President Clinton, Senator John Kerry and every
other member of Congress, all very much aware of his position since he even
addressed the 2000 Fall Congressional Coalition Leadership at its quarterly
breakfast in Washington D.C.

Adding that the DU problem is even worse today, Maj. Rokke pointed out the
military continues to bombard the Iraq and Afghanistan with "increased
levels' of nuclear weaponry, leaving in its wake even higher levels of
nuclear fallout then were present in Gulf War I.

And like President Clinton, his predecessor, President Bush has failed to
address or even recognize the problem, leaving behind 'hot zones' in the
Middle East while, at the same time, failing to care for radiation illnesses
in returning troops.

"President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair must acknowledge and must
accept responsibility for the willful use of illegal uranium munitions,
their own 'dirty bombs,' resulting in adverse health and environmental
effects," wrote Maj. Rokke in recent open letter, criticizing the two major
leaders of the Iraq occupation.

And being crystal clear about his demands in compliance with existing
military regulations, he added:

"President Bush and Prime Minister Blair need to immediately order medical
care for all DU casualties, order thorough environmental remediation, issue
immediate orders for the cessation and retaliation against all of us who
demand compliance with medical care and ban the further use of depleted
radiation munitions.

"They arrogantly refuse to comply with their own regulations, orders, and
directives that require United States Department of Defense officials to
provide prompt and effective medical care "all" exposed individuals [Medical
Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93,
Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU)
Headquarters.

"U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004), and section 2-5 of AR 70-48. They
also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive contamination as required by
Army Regulation- AR 700-48: "Management of Equipment Contaminated With
Depleted

Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army,

Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin- TB
9-1300-278: "Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And
Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which
Contain Depleted Uranium" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington,
D.C., JULY 1996).

To further bolster Maj. Rokke's accusations, all the following regulations
are being violated, specifically section 2-4 of United States Army
Regulation-AR 700-48 dated Sept.16, 2002, requiring:

(1) "Military personnel "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all
RCE" (radiological contaminated equipment).

(2) "Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented
as soon as possible."

(3) "Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through
burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment" and;

(4) "All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed,
packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin
9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48."

With the military's blatant violations placed in the public eye due to Mj.
Rokke's courage to buck the system, other experts and scientists quickly
came to Maj. Rokke's side, offering startling information and detailed
statistics showing the seriousness of the DU problem and the government's
failure to take responsibility even though it obviously caused the problem.

Radiation experts Leuren Moret and Marion Fulk, along with others like
Dennis Kyne, Bob Jones and Mark Zeller, have provided documentation for an
explosive video just released, written and produced by Joyce Riley and
William Lewis, called "Beyond Treason," providing an in depth look at DU
used in the Gulf Wars and its likelihood of causing numerous civilian and
military illnesses.

"It has been determined that the equivalent of more than 400,000 Nagasaki
bombs has been released in the middle east since 1991," said Moret, citing a
report and subsequent speech at a 2000 depleted uranium conference given by
Professor Yagasaki, a physicist and well-respected nuclear radiation expert.

Moret, who has spent a life time working in the nuclear field, first as a
staff scientist at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in California,
is now a member of The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), a
privately funded group studying the devastating effects of depleted uranium
especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the writers of Beyond Treason added more ammunition to Rokke's
accusations regarding the government's failure to recognize the DU problem
15 years after it was first exposed:

"The ailing Gulf War heroes from all 27 coalition countries slowly die from
of "unknown causes," they wait for answers from their respective
governments, but no satisfying or even credible answers have come forth from
the military establishment. Records that span over a decade point to
negligence and even culpability on the part of the U.S. Department of
Defense and their 'disposable army" mentality.

"The VA has determined that 250,000 troops are now permanently disabled,
15,000 troops are dead and over 425,000 are ill and slowly dying from what
the Department of Defense still calls a mystery disease. How many more will
have to die before action is taken?"

Although Maj. Rokke has been fighting to save the lives of thousands of
afflicted veterans, he is also trying to save his own life as he was
originally exposed to DU in 1990 and 1991 while deployed in Iraq and looking
into the hazards of DU.
"First, I remember experiencing breathing problems, then a rash and then
bleeding sores that never go away," said Rokke, 56, adding DU exposure is
slowly, day by day, turning him into an invalid. "The sad thing is that only
several hundred military personnel have even been tested for DU exposure
since the beginning when there are literally hundreds of thousands
afflicted.

"In fact, it took the military more than two years to even tell me that I
was 'hot,' withholding my urine tests and hiding the truth. One of the
reasons I went public is because so many soldiers are dying from the same
symptoms I have and the military simply still refuses to take medical
responsibility and care for them."

Recently, to keep the DU issue alive, Maj. Rokke published an article in the
Nov. 27, 2004 edition of the popular Vanity Fair magazine, where he updated
his concerns with new information about Gulf War II.

After the article appeared, he said the Pentagon and others in military
circles immediately unleashed another attack on his character, accusing him
of lying and even saying he never headed up the Pentagon's DU program in the
first place.

"I guess if I played their game, I would sitting somewhere with a cushy
$100,000 a year job," said Mj. Rokke. "But I decided to do what's right no
matter what the consequences. But, don't get me wrong, I'm not a peace-nick.
I am a military officer and a warrior. I would not hesitate to use nuclear
weapons only, however, if it was a last. But I also feel the military should
live up to its responsibilities and follow regulations, which is not the
case now and why I am speaking out."

Although declaring himself a warrior, Maj. Rokke tempered that statement,
writing in September, 2002, what he called a "A Commitment To Peace." In
this short open letter, however, much is revealed about the inner-man, his
obvious choice of peace versus war and his ultimate fears about the
ramifications of the Iraqi invasion, which at the time of his writing was
just on the horizon:

"As I sit here tonight unable to sleep, my mind is considering the
ramifications of potential and ongoing military actions and economic
sanctions. As a disabled warrior with combat experience in two wars, Vietnam
and Desert Storm, I can only hope and pray that the outcomes of these
actions do not leave another trail of adverse health and environmental
problems.

"I have concluded that we must unite in a concerted effort to prevent
additional suffering. Throughout the history of the world those who make a
commitment to peace have endured isolation and retaliation when they
challenged the individuals and governments seeking economic and political
advantages. A vision of peace where all nations can live together for the
common good is an ideal dream but may be unrealistic.

"War is the ultimate weapon a nation or leaders can use to control the
allocation and use of food, water, terrain, shelter, and mineral resources.
War occurs when nations or individuals fail to reach a satisfactory
compromise on sharing of these limited resources.

Today we are reaching another crossroads in history where we must decide
which road we follow. We can select peace or go to war. One means life the
other means death! The prevalent modus operandi at this time of those
seeking power and control is to threaten economic sanctions or military
attacks in order to achieve their goals and objectives.

"This is unacceptable. We must act to with a unified and strong voice preven
t nations and leaders from imposing their demands on others. At the same
time we must make sure that those nations and leaders who pose a viable
threat to peace are checkmated. But that does not mean that we result to
military force.

"There are many options but only wise persons are willing to discuss and
mutually select the option most beneficial to all. Today information control
is used to prevent discussion and debate. If a person does not have adequate
and validated information they will be unable to contribute to the
resolution of serious problems. We must ensure the complete dissemination of
information even if that information reveals illegal or disturbing actions
by our own or any other nation.

"These ways to achieve peace will require a commitment of time, financial
resources, knowledge, attitudes, life, liberty, and willingness to endure
and retaliation by any person who wishes to contribute towards the
resolution of local, state, national or international problems. The choice
is ours. We can select a life as a mushroom or we can select to act. I
select action for if peace is to be achieved then I must let peace begin
with me."

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31934.htm

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