Radio Free Taiwan

The destruction of the oceans will have to wait. This just in, and it could be just as bad, according to this guy at least. He seems to be waiting for the day the American military goes all out and brings back nuclear warfare proper. And he says the effects are global and worse than “they” have admitted.

Bush’s Nuclear Madness By Stephen M. Osborn

The latest information I have had from the followers of Bush is that he has demanded and received permission to use nuclear “bunker busters” in Iran in a preemptive strike. As a nuclear veteran (Operation Redwing, Bikini, 1956) I can affirm that this is absolute madness. The “bunker buster” is a cute sounding name for a nuclear horror. Air bursts are horrible enough, doing incredible destruction through heat, shock and high initial radiation. The fallout from an air burst is registered around the world. A surface or subsurface burst is even deadlier and more long lasting.

Osborn was a witness to a nuclear test and believes the effects on “downwinders” are clear - birth defects, cancers, etc. But, he says, the radioactive fallout reaches globally and will cause “another” rise in cancer. I gather he is suggesting there was a global rise in cancers during the age of atomic testing. I wonder if he is right.

There are not too many of us left that witnessed the tests, but there are a number of groups that monitor the effects through cancers, birth defects, both physical and mental and monitoring of contamination in the environment. We are still feeling the results of those tests. I have exchanged e-mails with downwinders and with the children of downwinders who have had children with birth defects that had no previous history of such things in their families; who suffer from cancers that are peculiar to nuclear radiation.

The reason I came across this story is, once again, my depleted uranium alert at Google News. Osborn has some words to say about that too.

Now we are facing the specter of Depleted Uranium, which is turning up in atmospheric filters around the world. Depleted Uranium is a nuclear byproduct of the nuclear industry. It is a low level radioactive material of extreme density. The half life of DU is 4.5 billion years. Workers in DU have to wear full protective equipment and respirators. DU ammunition is extremely hard and dense. It penetrates armor like tissue paper, vaporizing and burning, leaving dust and particles as shrapnel to be ingested or breathed. DU is not what the public thinks of as a radioactive material. It only emits alpha and beta radiation. A piece of paper will stop it. However, when it is in the lungs or elsewhere in the body, it is in contact with living tissue, bombarding that tissue with low level radiation for the rest of your life and beyond. That radiation can lead to cancers, genetic damage and eventual death.

Independent laboratories like Johns Hopkins have studied this and made predictions of the harm it can do. The government says, as it did with Agent Orange, “There is nothing to it, it is all in your head.” Meanwhile, people continue to sicken and die and will for generations.

I recommend reading all the article. It’s easy to hear the commitment in his words, and he represents a perspective we could all use a dose of. He is someone who knows.