[ RadSafe ] International Herald Tribune, Paris - False Statement by Reporter about NATO use of Depleted Uranium

[Roger Helbig]

I encountered the following when trying to use the International Herald
Tribune's comment back to the editors feature - if any of you have contacts
with that media organization (I am not sure that they still are a
newspaper), please do pass this on to them at the earliest opportunity.  I
am also going to seek out a Whois contact point because I intend to get my
point across.  Thank you.

 

Roger Helbig

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access
/parisherald/wp-content/themes/newsweek/formtoemailpro.php on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an
ErrorDocument to handle the request.


Rage
<http://www.heralddeparis.com/rage-and-violence-anti-nato-march-in-strasbour
g-started-peacefully/29960>  and violence: Anti-NATO march in Strasbourg
started peacefully 


By Angela Corrias on April 7, 2009 

Angela Corrias's article is fatally flawed with regards to her comments
about NATO use of depleted uranium and the International Court of Justice.
My comment follows - I do expect that a retraction of her statement be
prominently published at the earliest opportunity.  You have a long time
reputation for reporting news, not propaganda and not fiction.  This
reporter did not uphold that standard.  Thank you.

 

Roger W Helbig

 

The following statement by this "reporter" is flat out untrue.  The reporter
is acting like an activist blogger instead of factually reporting the news.

 

"In its many military actions and foreign occupations, NATO has repeatedly
used depleted uranium, that has similar effects of the nuclear weapons,
disregarding the resolution of the International Court of Justice that the
employment of such weapons is in conflict with the International
Humanitarian Law."

 

NATO used depleted uranium, fired by the A-10 Warthog tank killer aircraft
in the form of 30mm kinetic energy penetrator rounds in the Balkans against
Serbian tank concentrations to prevent those tanks from slaughtering
innocent refugees.  The UN Environment Programme has since made three
extensive field scientific surveys with sampling and thorough laboratory
analysis.  The three reports all found that DU had not harmed anything in
the environment but recommended that the situation be monitored in the
future.  Meantime, a large number of the DU penetrators have been collected
and removed and even hundreds of them were found intact (as shown on page 32
of the report on Bosnia-Herzegovina) within their aluminum shroud.   These
completely intact DU penetrators never had any DU enter the environment at
all.  Here are links to each of the three field/laboratory reports - these
are the most in depth study of DU having been used in combat that exist and
anyone with an interest in DU should first read them (I recommend that of
Bosnia-Herzegovina because it is the most complete and also represents a
study done seven years after the attack) - 

 

Depleted Uranium in Bosnia and Herzegovina - Postconflict Assessment,March
2003  http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/BiH_DU_report.pdf 

 

UNEP Final Report: Depleted Uranium in Serbia and Montenegro - Post-Conflict
Environmental Assessment in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 2002
http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/duserbiamont.pdf

 

UNEP Final Report: Depleted Uranium in Kosovo - Post-Conflict Environmental
Assessment, 2001. http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/uranium.pdf

.

NATO has not used DU anywhere else.  The US/UK have used DU kinetic energy
penetrators against the sizeable armored forces of Saddam Hussein's Army in
the Gulf War and in 2003 on the drive to Baghdad.  Neither of these were
NATO actions.

 

Activists such as Karen Parker of San Francisco convinced a UN subcommittee
to find DU a violation of some sort, but there was no international ban on
the use of DU and the ban by the European Union's Parliament (influenced by
the same lies that took in this reporter) has no international effect beyond
the EU's borders and did not exist when the DU 30mm tank killing penetrator
rounds were used in the Balkans.

 

I expect that the paper will assign a competent reporter to look into these
matters and find that they made a major error in this reporter's statements
about depleted uranium.  The internet is daily carpet bombed with lies that
began with Saddam Hussein who was not particularly happy about the way his
once formidable Army was destroyed in 1991 and wanted out from under the UN
Sanctions that ended the Gulf War as well.  Unfortunately, this propaganda
campaign's lies have continued to flood the internet ever since.  It is time
that the truth came out.  It is not on protest signs; those people work on
slogans, not facts.

 

Write me, I have much more about the pseudoscientists and con artists who
lead the anti-depleted uranium crusade.  The link to my name will take you
to a link to many scientific reports including the referenced UNEP ones.

 

DUStory-owner at yahoogroups.com