Source: JON RAPPOPORT http://www.nomorefakenews.com http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/archivelist.php ~~~~~~~~ WHY ISN'T EVERYBODY DYING RIGHT NOW? April 8, 2003. A standard reply to Dr. Doug Rokke's analysis of the uranium situation in Iraq is, why aren't we hearing about hundreds of thousands of deaths right now? One of the operative words in that question is HEARING. Let's see. As I wrote the other day, 260,000 US soldiers have gone on disability in the years since Gulf War 1. Has that been a major story in the press? Has that set off alarm bells from LA to NYC? Has Congress screamed? I mean, any sane person would wonder what caused all that disability. Uranium does not necessarily knock people over like an axe would. The cancers build up over time. The toxicity seeps through the body. You get other effects. The kidneys and liver become overburdened. A slow poison can bring about all sorts of weird debilitating effects, including immune suppression, which in turn leads to bizarre infections. As far as the Iraqi population is concerned, and what has happened to all those people since Gulf 1, we have various estimates. Some say a hundred thousand or more children have died. There have been birth defects. Of course, with a lack of food and with contaminated water supplies, the picture becomes more murky. At one point, it was thought that 500,000 Iraqi children would die over the long term. Which may be true. And that didn't take into account what is now happening in the Gulf. Finally, if your ambition is to cover up the effects of depleted uranium, you are not going to sanction thorough and comprehensive medical investigations. You are, in fact, going to do everything you can to attribute illness and death to factors other than uranium. That is a very easy thing to do. One strategy is funding studies that take depleted uranium off the hook. This has been done. Once the official findings were announced, the press went elsewhere for its daily red meat. Doug Rokke told me the other day that thousands of medical files of Gulf 1 soldiers were sent back to the US after the war. He claimed that the files, including his own personal folder, subsequently went missing. Now, one might say this kind of cover-up couldn't have happened. Okay. So let's give Rokke a chance to go public and debate his opponents. Let's bring this out into the open. After all, Rokke was the head of the Pentagon investigation into depleted uranium in the Gulf. He did make a report. That report was completely discounted by the DOD. Do I expect NBC to put on Rokke and give him time to make his case? Not unless public pressure and alternative coverage build up to an unavoidable pitch. So let's get busy. Because, as anyone knows, "supporting our troops" surely includes protecting them from death, fast or slow death. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com v=WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WAR WHAT HAVE THEY WROUGHT? ---an open letter to Christopher Hitchens, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, the VFW, Ted Turner, David Hackworth, Madonna, Michael Moore, Robert Byrd, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Rather, Richard Perle, Ariel Sharon, the Pope, David Rockefeller, Amnesty International, and the King of Siam--- April 7, 2003. Yesterday, in an attempt to find out more about the death of NBC reporter, David Bloom, I spoke with the former head of the Pentagon Depleted Uranium Investigation Team, Dr. Doug Rokke. Rokke was the man who went to Iraq a decade ago on a mission to report on depleted uranium (DU). What he found was so horrifying the Pentagon scuttled his work and tried to make him an invisible man. Rokke suffered uranium poisoning himself. But his medical records, and those of who knows how many thousands of other soldiers, do not reflect that. History has been suppressed, has been re-written. Our conversation began with me asking Rokke if he thought that the announced cause of David Bloom's death, pulmonary embolism, could have resulted from DU. But Rokke stopped me short. He said, "This was the diagnosis they immediately gave out? I don't see how. You can't diagnose that from the battlefield. You really need an autopsy to discover whether that's the cause..." Which opened up new questions. Rokke began to talk about conditions in the Gulf now. He said that the PR about the US limiting civilian casualties is absurd, because, for example, the Pentagon admits to losing 700 cruise missiles that have been fired at Baghdad in the current campaign. In other words, those missiles strayed off course and no one really knows where they landed and exploded. "700 missiles, each one loaded with DU, is 700,000 pounds of explosives," he said. 700,000 pounds of explosives going off, spreading cancer-causing uranium in all directions. Rokke then informed me that, since 1990, and up to the beginning of Gulf War 2, some 260,000 US soldiers have been granted disability. 10,000 have died. I'm relaying these facts to you in a sober way, but of course I was staggered as Rokke talked. He painted a picture of the Iraqi landscape as a toxic soup. DU, yes. But also many other toxins, because as he explained, when bombs and missiles rip up ANY material that is composite or synthetic, like plastics, you get all sorts of poisonous byproducts. And that, for example, is what happened at the WTC on 9/11. Rokke said, "I trained a lot of those first health responders. They're dead now." Rokke, over the years, together with colleagues, has issued report after report describing what, in essence, are the inevitable consequences of modern warfare as it is carried out. A lingering toxic landscape that kills over time. When Rokke was in the Gulf a decade ago, one of his fears was confirmed: the masks worn to protect against DU don't work. They can't filter out the smallest and deadliest particles of uranium. "We could taste the stuff [uranium]," he said. Rokke states that the Pentagon is completely aware of the dangers to US solders and combatants, and just doesn't care. I asked him why DU is used in projectile shells and missiles. He told me it was because uranium is so dense the weight of impact on a target causes a lot more damage. And, he said, these shells are not merely coated or tipped with uranium, as some Pentagon people have stated. They are packed with it. Rokke likened the situation to having uranium rods in your backyard. He went on to explain that the PB pills US soldiers have been taking, as protection against nerve gas, are themselves nerve agents. If taken immediately before a nerve-gas attack---and then followed up with two other medicines---the soldier might get protection from nerve gas. But the PB pills are being swallowed long in advance of any possible contact with nerve gas. In essence, soldiers are getting "nerve gas" attacks FROM THE POISON PILLS. Rokke mentioned a number of sites around the world---Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, and places in the US---where DU is a major problem right now. By this point in our conversation, Rokke was piecing together an emerging picture of modern war as both murder and suicide. He predicted the consequences of the Iraq war are going to be worse than Gulf War 1. Worse, in terms of damage and death to US troops and the Iraqi people. I hung up the phone stunned. I can only ask that you get this information out to as many people as possible. To give the widest possible benefit of the doubt to mainstream news reporters, THEY JUST DON'T KNOW. They have no idea what they are supporting when they allow the picture of this war to be painted as a careful and controlled campaign. All those maps and arrows and targets---they need to be enveloped in a cloud of MULTIPLE POISONS. Then we would have some concept of what is really going on---and what is going to happen when it's over. Rokke mentioned that, between Gulf War 1 and the start of Gulf 2, the Iraqis tried to build new water treatment facilities in Basra. To clean up their horrible, illness-causing contaminated water. Each time they tried, he said, those emerging facilities were destroyed... What is happening in the Gulf is not merely the result of ignorance. It is not only depraved indifference. It is a plan to depopulate and destroy. US soldiers will be sacrificed, in huge numbers, to forward the larger goal. The depopulation and debilitation of Iraq. Yet, the news networks still display that graphic: OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. And DOD spokesmen keep saying the protection of the Iraqi oil fields is being done to preserve "the future wealth of the Iraqi people." That sick joke takes on a new and very ominous meaning. If 260,000 US vets now on disability from Gulf 1 can be hidden from the stupefied American people, what else can be hidden, here and in Iraq, in the coming months and years? How many cases of cancer? How many birth defects? How many kidney and liver failures? How many immune-system destructions? How many American families who support their children now doing time in the Gulf will later watch those sons and daughters waste away, while the Pentagon claims it's all post-traumatic stress? How far do all the toxic clouds drift? How many cases of illness are being misdiagnosed as the result of germs? We are in a time of madness. I can't fault prayer or the distractions of television or even the desperate accoutrements of so-called patriotism. But somehow we have to live beyond cliches and summon up the outrage equal to the destruction. Equal to the moment. The wretched hairless generals are striding through the Pentagon thinking they are on a course of victory, thinking whatever they have to think to avoid the truth that is chasing them like a snake. Let the cardboard floors of lies give way and collapse. Let the voices of the intelligent pro-war advocates incorporate this news. Let them, finally, arrive at a further shore of conscience that compels them to take a stand. They are viewing old images, they are seeing a fantasy of war, they are imagining situations that no longer exist. War is now different. It is a sword you always fall on. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com GULF WAR ILLNESS II IS A CERTAINTY April 4, 2003. I have just read the transcript of a very disturbing speech delivered by Dr. Doug Rokke to the Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition. The date was November 10, 2000. The place was the US Senate Caucus Room. You can find it by punching in "Rokke" on Google and looking for the SF Times, which published it. Rokke was the head of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project. He was assigned to go to Iraq and survey the scene and report back. What he found was so damning that his work was scuttled by the DOD. Rokke found, among other things, uranium from US shells. All over the place. In truth, there is nothing depleted about it. It still causes cancer and birth defects and many other devastating illnesses. Rokke himself suffered health consequences. He eventually secured his own medical records and discovered that the reasons for his health problems had been deleted. As was the case with many other Gulf War vets. For those who think that you can't suppress people with major government jobs, this is proof that you can. Rokke was the main guy studying the subject of depleted uranium. There was no one in a higher position to contradict him on the science. And yet his voice has been excluded from the US press. If people like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity---and comedian Dennis Miller, after his warhawk rant on Jay Leno last night---really consider themselves patriots who care for the troops, they will do something to secure Rokke times and places to make his report. Rokke, after all these years, still considers himself a soldier with an assigned mission, and he wants to carry it out. He will not come in from the cold and change his tune. He will not bend to the Pentagon. There is going to be a Gulf War Illness II. Whether you'll ever hear about it or not---that's another question. Soldiers and reporters and civilians are going to feel the blow. The warhawks in the press want their war. They want to present themselves as supporters of Our Boys. They are, in fact, dancing on the soldiers' graves. Right now. I find it completely disgusting and foul and sick and criminal. These press scum say, "Oh, we heard all about that depleted uranium thing. That was refuted. There is no story there. Don't try to impede the war effort." Then they wave their little flags with blood and tumors hanging from the fringes. Of COURSE it was refuted, you slobbering ghouls. It was refuted by taking out the voice of the man who did the investigation and burying it in the sand along with the uranium. If you don't want to be as angry as I am, don't go to Rokke's speech or other speeches you can find, where he excoriates the vaccines and toxic drugs given to the soldiers. Just avoid it. Forget it. The birds are singing, the burgers are cooking at McDonalds, and all is right with the world. Rokke is just another elephant standing in the middle of the room. It's easy to walk around him. There are tranquilizers available. There is television. The testosterone of the young has to be channeled somewhere. Why not into a war? The boys live a little awhile, they feel the rush, and then they get sick. The old vampires with dust in their veins live on in that white house that provides the backdrop for daily news stand-ups. The hairless ex-generals appear on CNN and FOX and are fawned over by the anchors. One of these days, an old Pentagon lizard is going to feel his pants being taken down by some distinguished evening news person right there on the set. And you mothers and fathers who have sons in the Gulf, don't fret. It's good to die young. Isn't that right? Why should you know the truth? It might hurt. The best way to show our support is to grin and play along with the Pentagon charade. Your sons have learned to plug their lives into ideals as transparent as Disney. I mean, why investigate the Pentagon? They're running the show. How can we turn on them? They're still watching John Wayne movies in the basement where the lights are red and there is an erotic haze shrouding the steel walls. They know what sacred need drives the human pulse. George C Scott as the crazed fiend in Dr. Strangelove is gone. Every sixty days, Bruce Willis makes another massive battle fraud. The New Jersey kid has finally found his niche. He's a DOD icon. And the uranium dust keeps swirling on the desert. They're only sacrificing more cannon fodder. They're only bleeding out the young in the ongoing generation-to-generation ritual. It's no big deal. A letter from home. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com GULF WAR SYNDROME 2 March 31, 2003. It's quite disgusting that finally, now, major media outlets are contacting Joyce Riley, the most important single driving force behind the revelations about Gulf War Syndrome. They are saying, with straight faces, "Why didn't we know about GWS before? I mean, this is amazing. And it could happen again? Wow." So a kind of skeletal bandwagon is developing in the press. Today, MSNBC is running a "compelling piece" by one Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the Center for Bioethics at the U of Pennsylvania. Caplan points out that various drugs and vaccines that are being given to US soldiers, to prevent death and damage from bio/chem weapons, are themselves untested. Well, not quite untested. These medical drugs and vaccines have been given to animals. But, states Caplan, correctly, those data are not transferable to humans. So, although the medicines MAY be safe for rats or dogs, no one knows whether they are toxic to humans. In fact, we do know that one of these meds, the anthrax vaccine, has been toxic to humans. And the smallpox vaccine has just been denounced as unsafe by the California Nurses Association. (See my earlier story today on this.) Caplan then asserts that we need to bite the bullet and give these highly questionable meds (which already have been thrust upon soldiers) to some human subjects, in standard clinical trials. All in the name of good science. All in the name of doing right by the troops. So I issue this suggestion to Dr. Caplan in his high perch at the U of Pennsylvania: "Why don't you stand at the head of line? Why don't you volunteer to set the tone? Or were you just talking about all those other people, the great unwashed? Open your mouth, roll up your sleeve and take the risk you want the public to undergo." Let's see if you develop some dire symptoms. "ME? Are you CRAZY? I was merely speaking theoretically about an ethical dilemma." And while we're at it, Doctor, I have some genetically engineered corn and soy I want to stock in your house for the next year of dining pleasure. And some irradiated beef, and some pesticide-laden fruit from nations where they spray on chemicals banned in the US, pesticides that were shipped to them out of US ports. Also some milk loaded with rBGH, the Monsanto growth hormone that causes excessive pus formations in cattle, then treated with massive amounts of antibiotics. Let's make you the kind of guinea pig that already exists, by the millions, on US soil and in the Gulf. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com DUD March 31, 2003. Look for that word to come up soon. Maybe during the war, if the censors can't stop it. Or after the war. It means DEPLETED URANIUM DUST. The tons of it that were left there during the first US invasion, in 1991. The tons that are being deposited there now, surely, by the forces of the second invasion. It's a killer. It causes cancer and liver and kidney failure and severe immune suppression and birth defects and chronic infections. There was a row about it several years ago, and then the mainstream press, assured by experts that it was a non-issue made out of rumor, moved on to other stories. Several researchers are pointing out that inhaling---that is, breathing---in the middle of sand storms is a good way of bringing DUD into the body. This is another issue on which the Pentagon and the US National Institutes of Health and the CDC are silent. If three people on the same street die within a two-week period in Tucson, the CDC has 20 doctors on the scene measuring every human parameter, to "find the new virus." But are there CDC drones out in the deserts of Iraq, where shells were and are leaving DUD, figuring out what is going to happen to all those troops in the next little while? No, of course not. The CDC picks their little glamour spots, and leaves the real work behind. Support our soldiers? Tell you what, Mr. and Mrs. America. This is no football game. This isn't NASCAR. Unless those drivers are moving through uranium clouds on the track striving to find out who will live the longest and sire the fewest deformed children. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com