Depleted uranium is a rather benign sounding name for 
uranium-238, the trace elements left behind when the fissionable 
material is extracted from uranium-235 for use in nuclear reactors 
and weapons. For decades, this waste was a radioactive nuisance, 
piling up at plutonium processing plants across the country. By the 
late 1980s there was nearly a billion tons of the material.
Then weapons designers at the Pentagon came up with a use for the 
tailings: they could be molded into bullets and bombs. The material 
was free and there was plenty at hand. Also uranium is a heavy metal, 
denser than lead. This makes it perfect for use in armor-penetrating 
weapons, designed to destroy tanks, armored-personnel carriers and 
bunkers.
When the tank-busting bombs explode, the depleted uranium 
oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air like 
carcinogenic dust, carried on the desert winds for decades. The lethal 
dust is inhaled, sticks to the fibers of the lungs, and eventually begins 
to wreck havoc on the body: tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune 
systems, leukemias.

The British estimate assumed that the only radioactive ingredient 
in the bombs dropped on Iraq was depleted uranium. It wasn’t. 
A new study of the materials inside these weapons describes them as 
a “nuclear cocktail,” containing a mix of radioactive elements, 
including plutonium and the highly radioactive isotope uranium-236. 
These elements are 100,000 times more dangerous than depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately 
the age of the Earth. Thousand of acres of land in the Balkans, Kuwait
and southern Iraq have been contaminated forever. 
If George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Bill Clinton are still 
casting about for a legacy, there’s a grim one that will stay around 
for an eternity.

jeffrey st. clair,
counterpunch



poppy bush dropped tons of depleted uranium bombs in '91. they're still dropping 
them today, along with armor piercing bullets and bunker busters.
poppy and his chort are so proud of this, the great efficiency of their genocide.
the gift of democratization, american style.