January 28, 2004

By Paul Rockwell

War crimes in Iraq

THE INTERNATIONAL DISPATCHES about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq – replete with graphic details about overcrowded hospitals, U.S. cluster-bomb shrapnel buried in the flesh of children, babies deformed by U.S. depleted uranium, farms and markets destroyed by U.S. bombs – do not make for pleasant reading. The mounting evidence from the invasion of Iraq establishes what many Americans may not want to face: the highest leaders of our land violated many international agreements relating to the rules of war.

The United States is bound by customary law and international laws of war: the Hague Conventions of 1889 and 1907, the Geneva Convention of 1949, and the Nuremberg Convention adopted by the United Nations Dec. 11, 1945 – all of which set limits beyond which, by common consent, decent peoples will not go. Under the Constitution, all treaties are part of the supreme law of the land.

Of all the violations of the laws of war by the highest officials of our country, none is more alarming or portentous than the widespread, premeditated use of depleted uranium in Iraq.

Eleven miles north of the Kuwaiti border on the "Highway of Death," disabled tanks, armored personnel carriers, and gutted public vehicles – the mangled metals of Desert Storm – are resting in the desert, radiating nuclear energy. American soldiers who lived for three months in the toxic wasteland now suffer from fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and respiratory ailments – a host of maladies known as the Gulf War syndrome.

Article 23 of Geneva Convention IV is clear and unambiguous: "It is forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons, to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army, to employ arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." The Geneva Protocol of 1925 explicitly prohibits "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gasses, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices."

The radiation produced by depleted uranium in battle is a poison, a carcinogenic material that causes birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities.

Depleted uranium is much denser than lead and enables U.S. weapons to penetrate steel, a great advantage in modern war. But under the Geneva Convention, "the means of injuring the enemy are not unlimited." When D.U. munitions explode, the air is bathed in a fine radioactive dust, which carries on the wind, is easily inhaled, and eventually enters the soil, pollutes ground water, and enters the food chain. Unexploded casings gradually oxidize, releasing more uranium into the environment. Handlers of depleted uranium in the United States are required to wear masks and protective clothing – a requirement that American and Iraqi soldiers, not to mention civilians, are unable to fulfill.

After the Gulf War in 1991, when depleted uranium was widely used, Iraqi hospitals recorded a surge in patients with cancer and birth defects. Hospital statistics from Basra show that in 1988 there were 11 cancer cases per 100,000 people. By 2001, after schools, homes, and entire neighborhoods were leveled, the number increased to 116 per 100,000. Breast and lung cancer and leukemia showed up in all areas contaminated by depleted uranium.

The Christian Science Monitor recently sent reporters to Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. Staff writer Scott Peterson saw children playing on top of a burned-out tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, he pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation. Uranium remains radioactive for two billion years.

The growing outcry against the use of depleted uranium is not a matter of minor legal technicalities. The laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor can weapons be legally deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or cause harm, after the war concludes.

The use of depleted uranium is a crime whose horrific consequences have yet to run their course.