The “N-Word” Rears Its Lethal Head, Again
– By Ed Kociela –
If you’ve done your homework, you cannot help but boil at the hypocrisy of senior United States intelligence officials as they warn of the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It is part of the universal condemnation of the use of nukes of any kind on the battlefield.
Monster that he is, Putin would not be the first world leader to unleash radioactive weapons since the end of World War II when the U.S. dropped nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
No, that dishonor would fall upon the good old U.S. of A., which has routinely launched radioactive weapons tipped with depleted, undepleted, or slightly enriched uranium during a battle in the Middle East.
It happened during Desert Storm in 1991 when the military employed guided bombs and missiles with depleted uranium, the waste product from nuclear reactors. Depleted is a bit of a misnomer, you see, because within two years of the use of those weapons horrifying birth defects skyrocketed in areas where they were used, ranging from babies born with two heads, to babies missing eyes, hands, or legs. Some were born with internal organs protruding on the outside of their bodies. Incidents of cancer in the Middle East leaped from 40 cases per 100,000 people in 1991 to more than 1,600 per 100,000 people by 2005. There was a 38-fold increase in leukemia, a 10-fold increase in breast cancer, and infant mortality rates grew to eight times higher than in nearby Kuwait. https://www.newsweek.com/how-us-made-use-radioactive-bombs-routine-443732?amp=1
The U.S. denies this, of course, but independent scientific evidence outweighs the limp denials. The chemical toxicity of depleted uranium is identical to that of natural uranium and about a million times greater among the living than DU’s radiological hazard. In fact, Northrop Grumman, the giant aerospace weapons supplier, has stopped manufacturing weapons loaded with depleted uranium on moral grounds.
None of this, however, gives Putin or anybody else a pass on using small, limited nuclear weapons. There really, according to science, is no such thing as a safe nuclear detonation, something we learned more than 30 years ago.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that everybody born since 1951 has received some exposure to radiation from weapons-related fallout, much of it coming from the Nevada Test Site during the detonations performed there from the end of World War II until 1992. Altogether, there have been more than 2,000 nuclear detonations worldwide since the end of the Second World War, more than half of them at the Nevada site where the blasts created more than 20 times the amount of radiation released at the Chernobyl meltdown. The drift of the fallout hit most of the contiguous United States and seeped into Canada, Mexico, and across the Atlantic Ocean. How much radiation you absorbed depended upon how much milk you drank or how many fresh vegetables or fruits you ate.
It is estimated that at least 145,000 Americans perished as a result of the detonations at the Nevada Test Site. Some suggest the number is much greater.
Former Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, authored the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to compensate victims of the fallout. They are called Downwinders and they are entitled to as much as $50,000 in compensation for the cancers they contracted as a result of the testing. The compensation is limited to a small segment of the country, mostly Utah, Idaho, and Nevada and, thus far, more than $2 billion has been awarded. I once asked Hatch why the compensation was limited to such a small area. His response was that it would bankrupt the United States to pay compensation to everybody who was hit by disease from the fallout.
We knew, of course, long before they opened the Nevada Test Site just how powerful nuclear detonations could be as more than 250,000 people were killed by the blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II.
We also know that the military braintrust at the time was vehemently opposed to dropping those two bombs.
The legendary Admiral Bull Halsey opposed using the weapons, pointing out how Japan had been working through Russian intermediaries to surrender to the Americans. Gens. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Hap Arnold, and Curtis LeMay opposed it, citing how the Japanese were unable to defend the skies above them, allowing American pilots virtually free access to cherry-pick bombing targets unchallenged. Perhaps most vocal in his opposition was Admiral Bill Leahy, the senior-most active-duty U.S. officer during the war, who said the U.S. “adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” Of the eight five-star officers in the U.S. during World War II, seven said the bombings were either unnecessary to end the war, morally indefensible, or both.
Again, this does not mean that Putin should get a pass. By all means, no. As we have seen, the scourge of nuclear weapons of any sort is that they do not discriminate between buildings, tanks, soldiers, or civilians and their effects linger for centuries. There can be no compromise, no justification, no forgiveness for their use regardless of who launches them or for what purported reason. A quarter of a million people died in Japan when those two nukes were dropped with no justification. It is unknown how many more died during the ensuing years as a result of the radiation spread. And, finally, there is no such thing as a safe, limited nuclear exchange. Anybody who says otherwise is lying.
The only thing the world’s nuclear arsenal is good for is the assured ability of mutual destruction. That possibility would surely increase exponentially should the United States unleash its hellish weaponry in retaliation.
That’s why we need the best of the best diplomatically at this time to avert the obliteration of mankind, which is always on the table any time the nuclear arsenals of the world are on the table whether as a bluff or legitimate threat.
Nuclear weapons are Apocalyptic.
They were designed to be Apocalyptic.
They have been used as an Apocalyptic force.
That’s why I pray they get things under control before those four horsemen spur their steeds.
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Can I edit my comment somehow? I have noticed some spelling errors and typos after I copied it and the article to Word for my files Thanks. General Hap Arnold was with President Roosevelt at the Potsdam Conference near Berlin when the order was given to drop the atomic bomb. He most certainly was not vehemently opposed. None of the other generals and admirals had anything to do with the decision and their so-called vehement opposition was after the fact and nowhere near as “vehement” as claimed – a single quote does not constitute vehement opposition.
Roosevelt was dead when Potsdam happened. Truman issued the order. Also, Perhaps most vocal in his opposition was Admiral Bill Leahy, the senior-most active-duty U.S. officer during the war, who said the U.S. “adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” Of the eight five-star officers in the U.S. during World War II, seven said the bombings were either unnecessary to end the war, morally indefensible, or both” seems pretty vehement to me.