Cosmic Window to Stop War and Save our Republic

Howdy Friends of Peace:
We have a rare window of opportunity to affect our future in a positive way. Take time to focus a positive alternative thought to war with Iran and the End of America. I send out this alert not to spread fear but rather to offer a probable solution using a critical window of time to make a difference.
I just received John Hogue's January 14th prognosticatings Filipino Monkey Business on a coming war with Iran distilled from his 30 years of studying and writing about Nostradamus. A short clip is quoted below. It was not on his web page www.hogueprophecy.com. Contact him at talktome@hogueprophecy.com.
A Cosmic window for a Great Experiment is from today January 20th through February 12, 2008. Please hold the thought that: “A Diplomatic solution for ending hostilities with Iran is found, now!” And: “Grassroots participation in the formulation of public policy restores our democratic republic!” Say these out loud three times. Send out thanks and gratitude that it is so. Do this as often as the thought or concern comes up. Doing so at noon and/or midnight together can make it stronger and more effective. Alternate the probable solution brush stroke thoughts and trust that how specifically will be filled in.
John Hogue:
“Back in my November 2007 Hogue Prophecy series, "When Calamitous War under Cancer Comes," I predicted the astrological importance of a transit of Mars through Gemini in January and February as the time a decision to go or not to go to war with Iran in 2008 will be made:
"On 31 December, Mars leaves Cancer and continues its backwards retreat into Gemini. Now the plans for war will become most intense and aggressively argued in secret meetings of cabinet members and Pentagon brass with the president and vice president. Look for the most spirited debates for or against going for war happening throughout January 2008. While the rest of the country's collective attention is on the primaries picking Republican and Democratic candidates for the coming presidential elections, “Inside the White House and Pentagon heated debates are occurring to bomb Iran or forget it, jump or scrap the Iranian air strike plan are going on with unprecedented intensity. This is because Mars will retreat backwards over its natal position in the birth chart of the Untied States, which is 21 degrees Gemini, from 20 January to 12 February 2008. This is the period where it is possible our prayers and meditations for peace might sway the hearts of those within halls of power who might put their trust one last time on a last minute diplomatic solution with Iran." When Calamitous War under Cancer Comes, Part 4, (30 November 2007)
It would seem that the last ditch diplomatic effort has already come. Its aim, to prepare US allies for the war. The rhetoric of Bush is as volatile as it was before the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) concluded that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. Since then the president's arguments contradicting the NIE have become verbatim echoes of criticism released for public consumption by Israeli intelligence. I am afraid to say it is more than likely this president went to Israel to listen to agents of Mossad and the Israeli government pitch an Israeli option for a unilateral strike by the Israeli Air Force against Iran's main nuclear reactors and research installations at Busheir, Natanz, Arak and Esfahan. ……….
The chessboard is set. I sense agreements to open airspace over Iraq were discussed. The plan will be ready for final approval in early February. The attack could come as soon as early March or as late as June 2008. Unless a Filipino Monkey wrench can be thrown into the infernal works, Bush's war on Iran is still on.” John Hogue
I think an Art Bell “Great Experiment” could be a “Filipino Monkey wrench”. I’ve sent a request. Each of us can contribute to a positive future by holding a focused positive thought, sharing this call for shinning light on decisions being made about our future behind closed doors. Do what ever your imagination can create. I’m writing the Foreign Intelligence Committee Members of the Congress. When I wrote Donald Trump he took out a full page ad in the New York Times with my message plus his on making peace profitable. I’m composing another letter to him and others who could help with actions we can take to prevent a war, greater repression, lack of freedom and blowback at home. February 12th is here in a blink, take action sooner rather than later.
This alert and my reading Naomi Wolf’s “The End of America” showing how the 10 steps to put into place a fascist America with a dictator has inspired me to request your help in this window of time to turn around a dark vision of the future that it not happen. Let us work together to keep our precious democratic republic, honest elections and unite with a focused mind to stop Bush/Cheney’s march to war.
Speaking Truth to Power, Theresa Marie Gandhi
www.tmgandhi.com www.tmgandhi.blogspot.com tm@tmgandhi.com

America’s Madness to Trust Honest Election

Americans assume that the process of democracy will allow us to “throw the bums out” in the 2008 election. Pause and think about human nature. Do people really change when to do so they could lose unlimited power? It’s like the illusion of a battered wife thinking a pattern of behavior will change, it doesn’t.
It is but common sense to assume that leaders who are willing to:
Abuse signing statements making Congress advisory only, ignoring laws and; With the President making laws for others with himself above the law; Withhold information from Congress and ignoring subpoenas of White House staff; Make secret decisions and classify them above Top Secret; Conspiring to pass the PATRIOT Act late at night by a voice vote of just a few; Keeping major parts of PATRIOT Act I and II classified as Above Top Secret; Lie to the American people again and again and again; Ignore that fifteen of nineteen 9-11 terrorist were Saudi Arabians;
Use fake evidence to justify pre-emptive wars; violating international treaties; Give advance weapons to known Islamic fundamentalist States since the 1980s; Torture prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention; Disappearing American citizens by calling them Terrorists without any proof; Tap people’s phones, open their mail and e-mail with out warrant or notice; Breaks into homes, convicting computers, cash and records with out probable cause; Married the church and state in every Federal department especially the White House; Appointed loyal Republicans against regulatory agencies to be in charge of the agencies; Replaced US attorneys with loyal, dedicated Republicans blind to election fraud; Redacted the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and Habeas Corpus; Put legal infrastructures in place for a “paper coup d’etat” more likely to happen than not; Pushed through Defense Authorization Act of 2007 that gives a dictator legal status by canceling the Posse Comitates Act – National Guard units under Presidential command when Section 333 is invoked to declare martial law, take over Guards, invoking “Decider’s” dictatorial power over all local, state and tribal governments when (not if) “Public order” has been lost, a national epidemic disaster, serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or “other conditions”. Written about in: a New York Times Editorial: “Beyond actual insurrection, the President may now: Use military troops or a private* army as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease out-break, terrorist attach or any “other condition.”” (Italics my input)
I recorded Bush saying in 2002, “it would be easier to be “a dictator with a dictatorship”. Excessive absolute power is certain to corrupt. It always has. It not about partisanship now it’s about power without checks and balances.

Portions of this essay come from magazines; public radio, public television and clearly defined by Naomi Wolf in “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot” as a Citizen’s Call to Action uniting via the American Freedom Campaign to restore the Constitution.
Assembled to tell you there is but a narrow window of opportunity to stop the completed transition to a Fascist State run by a “paper” Dictator with absolute power!

Respectfully submitted,
Theresa M. K. Gandhi: www.tmgandhi.com; www.tmgandhi.blogspot.com tm@tmgandhi.com
A Radioactive Activist Poet, Herstorian and Current Affairs concerned citizen.
Paraphrasing Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt or Emma Goldman: “A small group of focused individuals can bring about change; it is the only thing that ever has.” Get to work!

Truth Rides Tall

In a Western White House without any walls
it’s there in a moment, a new way to see
homeland governance not on TV
by the people, we the who
now the where and here’s what we do.
A kitchen cabinet at a round table
in the light, not behind a veil
no shadows, no secrets in our ship of state
open meetings with no hate
not based on fear or lack of need
but earth stewards in a world
where turtles are first
honored equally are frogs and slime
right through prime time
old and young each a part
of flying the whole, not apart
of being the whole, not apart
no shadows, no secrets, just an open wall
in a western white house, where truth rides tall.
In a western white house without any walls
we’ll gather together and figure a way
how to grow trees without shrub in the way
sustained for millennium
no war or greed, no fear or trepidation
to keep us in line
but righteous actions
as we walk our talk
and know within just where we’re at
on a western shore with an eastern grin
of knowing self with an inner grin.
Meeting in the open to reclaim our land
taken by shadows, by slight of hand
restored in beauty from peace within
lights up a window in each mind within
and so it goes, each one just knows
from knowing self and the inner grin
by honoring each and all living things
we honor our selves and what we bring
each to its own – inside a ring
of inner knowing, it’s a wholistic thing.
© Copyright Theresa Marie Gandhi 12-25-05

Island County Wetlands Regs Codify ESA Salmon Deaths

The following poem was spoken as if the stuffed Chinook salmon I held was speaking to the Island County Commissioners January 7, 2008.

Wetland’s Salmon Mitigated Away

I’m a fish out of a wetland, my children will die
with no stream water to grow my fry.
Salmonid, my babies, can’t live downstream
if wetlands are bulldozed away.
Gone by way of development, stamped okay.
Practical you say, reasonable okay
to kill my kind you pave and slay.
Do you not know the cost to you under the ESA?
$15,000 - $25,000 for each salmonid without habitat
protected today by Federal law, the ESA
is the cost to progress, so the law says.
Progress paved over, the sources that fed
so many streams, that are now dead.
In the past Island County shorelines were fed
as uphill wetlands fed the streams
that are lost to memory – now a Dairy Queen.
So King Salmon, Chinook my kind
are an Endangered Species, because development holds sway
over stewardship of what was our birth ways.
These regulations you would codify
will kill us faster than you do today.
Your planning process has ignored the call
from our Governor to save Marine life for a future day
by saving existing wetlands, no matter the cost
or Puget Sound and all who live in it will die and be gone
no salmon, no herring, no whales, no way
if the source of our lives, your wetlands
are mitigated away.

© Copyright Theresa Marie Gandhi January 7, 2008

County says Wetlands Rules almost Complete

Theresa Marie Gandhi uses a stuffed fish as a prop to raise concerns
Monday about the county’s new wetlands rules. (photo caption)
By Brian Kelly Jan 09 2008
Critics continue to take aim at new regulations
COUPEVILLE — Puffed up by a largely laudatory letter from the state, Island County commissioners said Monday they were nearly ready to adopt new rules covering development on properties with wetlands.
Approval of the new rules could come before the end of the month. Commissioners will hold one last meeting on Jan. 28 for a public hearing on four final amendments to the wetlands regulations.
At the commissioners’ meeting earlier this week, officials acknowledged that the complex rewrite of the regulations has not been universally popular.
“Obviously, this is a complex document,” said Val Hillers, chairwoman of the county’s planning commission.
“There were people who were not happy with various parts of it,” she said, but all agreed with the goal of the new rules: to maintain healthy, functioning ecosystems and protect critical areas.
Hillers estimated that the planning commission spent at least 1,000 hours reviewing the new rules.
Public input was extensive, she said, “and the ordinance, we have read, and reread, and reread and thought about. And made many changes in reflection to the concerns of the public and other people who have given input.”
“This ordinance has many compromises,” Hillers added. “We have really attempted to both protect critical areas and permitted uses of property. There are times when those goals are somewhat conflicting, and we have struggled really hard with that.”
Although a hearing was not held this week on the new rules, some residents used the public comment period during this week’s commissioners’ meeting to lambast the new regulations.
Members of the Whidbey Environmental Action Network and others have said the new rules don’t go far enough and give too much leeway to developers.
Holding a stuffed animal under her left arm, activist poet Theresa Marie Gandhi of Clinton warned of potential damages the county could face if the new rules do not protect salmon as the Endangered Species Act requires.
“I don’t know if you know fish; this is a Chinook. It has something to say to you all today,” she said with he fish’s head aimed at the board of commissioners.
It’s an endangered species, she added, and Island County shoreline is its habitat.
“I’m a fish out of a wetland. My children will die, with no stream water, to grow my fry.”
“To kill my kind, you pave its way,” she added.
“Do you not know the cost to you, under the ESA?”
The county began its rewrite of its rules covering “critical areas” - environmentally sensitive spots such as wetlands, streams and steep slopes - three years ago. Some asked the county to start over.
“I think it needs a major overhaul. There’s too many loopholes. It’s not going to work,” said Angie Homola of Oak Harbor.
County officials, however, said the new rules had been extensively reviewed and will mean greater protection for wetlands in Island County.
“It requires, and no other jurisdiction has done this, it requires that critical areas be avoided if they can be. That the impacts be reduced if they can’t be avoided, that impacts be restored if they can’t be avoided.” explained Keith Dearborn, a Seattle lawyer hired by the county to assist in the rule update. “And it requires mitigation compensation if there is intrusion into a critical area or a critical area buffer.”
Dearborn said the rules were not a one-size-fits-all approach. Properties with different types of wetlands, and different types of proposed land-use activities, will face different sets of regulations — including the size of “no go” areas such as buffers.
“The critical area ordinance is being tailored on a case-by-case basis to match up with the impact being generated by the proposal. That’s a lot more work for staff, but it will be vastly better in terms of protection,” Dearborn added.
Dearborn, who helped write the county’s first set of critical areas regulations in the 1980s, said a scientific review of the existing regulations shows that some are too stringent.
“Buffers established by the existing system are, 80 percent of the time, larger than the buffers that will be established under the new rules. For most property owners — five-acre lot, single-family home development — the buffers will be smaller in the new system,” he said.
“It’s clear the vast damage to wetlands was long before that ordinance was adopted. and in fact, since that ordinance was adopted, very little if any damage has been done to wetlands in Island County,” added County Commissioner Mac McDowell.
“I think the public, in my opinion, owes you a debt of gratitude almost - not almost - if their concern is preserving wetlands,” he told Dearborn.
Commissioner John Dean said county government has had a bad rap for being pro-development. The new rules reflect a balance, he said.
“I felt early on, when I read the ordinance, from a layman’s standpoint, that the county truly was trying to find some middle ground and some balance. I feel they have accomplished that,” Dean said.
“I think we hit some middle ground that is fair to both sides. We will protect the environment, and we will allow people to live here, we will not boot them off their property.”
Dean said some people believe county government is pro-growth. He didn’t agree.
“I don’t see that. People work overtime to reach that balance,” Dean added.
Commissioners also enthusiastically pointed to a Jan. 4 letter from the state that gave glowing praise for the new rules.
Though the letter mentioned one flaw in the rules - one that the county plans to amend after a public hearing later this month - it said the county’s work on the regulations could become a model for other governments to follow. The state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development said the Island County effort was “among the highest quality work prepared so far” in using the standard of “best available science” in the preparation of rules to protect critical areas.
The letter said the regulations would be effective in protecting wetlands from the adverse impacts of development, and praised the county’s monitoring program and rural stewardship program.
County officials eagerly handed out copies of the letter at Monday’s meeting, and one reporter had four copies of the letter before the meeting concluded.
Four final amendments are expected before the rules are adopted on Jan. 28.
Most appear minor. Planning director Jeff Tate said one change would delay the implementation of the new regulations until July 1.
Ordinances typically go into effect 90 days after adoption.
“We’ve gone through the ordinance in great detail to look at all of the different things the ordinance now calls for,” Tate said.
The list is long, from creating forms, to training staff, to conducting a public outreach effort on the rules.
“There are a lot of things we need to mobilize,” Tate said.
According to the implementation plan for the wetlands rules, field testing and staff training will be held this month and continue through May.
In February, the county’s wetlands maps will be updated and a new critical areas planner will be hired.
The new rural stewardship plan will be edited in March, and land-use applications will be updated in April.
The outreach effort to contractors, real estate agents and consultants is also expected to kick off in April and continue through June.

No Nov 2008 Election, Martial Law, Bush as Dictator!

I have known who would be President every 4 years going back past Nixon. In 2000 I knew Gore would be elected and Bush would be President. That twisted my brain until it happened. In 2004 a stomach punching knowing came to me that it was our last election that had any chance of a true vote and maybe our last election period. Kennedy's exposure of the theft of the Ohio vote means both elections of Bush were stolen elections and not legal. As I’ve pondered this and watched Bush and his signing statements and Executive Directives I’m more sure than ever that this crew will not give up power now that they have it locked up to turn this nation into a Fascist State with a Dictator.
Creating another False Flag operation, even to nuking an American city or aircraft carrier with massive loss of life of Americans, to implement Martial Law is not beyond the scope of possibility for this treasonous group of Neo-Cons. They can read the polls and won’t let themselves past into history with so many above top secret sins on their watch.
Japan has already convicted Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld of War Crimes for the nukes dropped on Iraq and Afghanistan. The use of DU weapons and the white phosphorus weapon used in Lebanon that burns through the flesh and bones of living human beings and can not be put out like a regular fire are just two the horrors that have and will come to light. These and many more crimes against humanity will be exposed and seen more clearly as time goes by. The huge cost to the health and lives of those exposed to these weapons and tortures and those of us at home that have to pay for all of this with loss of quality of life and gaining the guilt of what our government has done on our watch are not easy issues to face but we must.

Last January I wrote a warning about nukes on Iran. After reading my most recent posting of William Thomas' "US Vet Confirms Nukes on Iraq and Afghanistan", plus the B-52 with nukes across America on the way to Barksdale Air Force base for deployment to the Middle East without following the rules and regulations, I am more sure of this than before. The 12 Air Force folk who called attention to this and busted Cheney's attempt at sleight of hand were all dead within six weeks of the event. One shot himself in the head two times to commit sucide. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.
Get outraged. Read Naomi Wolf's "The End of America: a letter of warning to a young patriot" about the 10 steps that are already in place to create a corporate fascist state run by a dictator. I have Bush on tape with his hand on the shoulder of Greenspan turning him and going to the mic to say it would be a lot easier to run this country if he was a dictator and this were a dictatorship. Well in seven years Bush, inc. has put everything in place to do just that.
The war crimes - treason, violation of his oath of office to uphold and protect the Constitution, shredding the Bill of Rights, eliminating Habeas Corpus, violating our privacy and pushing through Congress a Thought Crime Act that makes this posting as act of homegrown terrorism have me flummoxed and ready to get serious about getting out the warning to threaten to impeach Congress if they don't act. Go to Wexler's web page and add your name to the petition to impeach. He had over 170,000 as of yesterday and needed 250,000 to force the rest of the Committee to get it out and on the floor of the Congress.
Please do not let this day go without taking some action to stop the theft of our Republic by Bush, inc.

U.S. Veteran: "Nukes Dropped on Iraq and Afghanistan

Normally I'd be focused on Christmas this Eve but an article came to my attention on www.rense.com written by William Thomas, an investigative reporter whom I respect. It is in three parts and quiet lengthy so I have squished it with tab spaces for new paragraphs and edited out the confirming photographs. The original can be found on above mentioned site. T.M.Gandhi

U.S. Veteran Says Nukes Were Dropped
on Iraq and Afghanistan.
by William Thomas willthomasonline.net exclusive
PART I GOING NUCLEAR Sleigh of Nukes – Part 2, Nuking Tora Bora - Part 3.
Despite a just-released U.S. national intelligence consensus that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, apocalyptic fundamentalists George Bush and Dick Cheney remain intent on ordering an all-out attack against one of the world's oldest (and best armed) civilizations. As governments and citizenry protest this folly, an overriding question torments many minds: Will the architects of more than one-million civilian corpses in Iraq choose to go “go nuclear” against Iran?
Many believe they will not dare. If the inhibition against killing is one of the strongest human impulses (just ask a returning veteran), the ethical revulsion and international prohibitions against using nuclear weapons seem strong enough to rule out their first aggressive use since America's atomic attack on Nagasaki.
But what if the post-WWII nuclear Rubicon has already been crossed? According to a U.S. Army veteran with extensive boots-on-the-ground connections, the United States Government has dropped five nuclear weapons on Afghanistan and Iraq.
And gotten away with it.
BUNKER BUSTERS
Shortly after the terror attacks of 9/11, Lt. Colonel Eric Sepp of the USAF Air War College lamented that going after Osama bin Laden's granite redoubts in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan presented “one of the more difficult operational challenges to confront U.S. military forces.”
While precision-guided weapons doom above-ground buildings (and any civilians inside or nearby), deeply buried bunkers can be used as “an effective sanctuary,” declared the USAF Air War College, “to manufacture and store weapons of mass destruction.” As the Air Force Times pointed out, Osama's “difficult to locate” mountain bunkers “are often beyond the reach of most conventional weapons unable to survive passing through tens of meters of rock and concrete.” [Deeply Buried Facilities Implications for Military Operations USAF Center for Strategy and Technology Air War College May 2000; Air Force Times Apr 14/97]

But it wasn't for lack of trying. In 1972, Melvin Cook, a professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah and an author of works on explosives and Creationism, had sought to undo God's handiwork by developing the ultimate chemical bomb. Professor Cook borrowed aluminized slurries used in mining to fracture, heat and pulverize extremely hard rock. [workingforchange.com Nov 8/01; globalsecurity.org]

Extensively field tested during the Vietnam War, where they raised havoc with the peoples and ecology of Vietnam and Cambodia - and later deployed against terrified Iraqi conscripts and cast-off Soviet armor during the 1991 Gulf war - giant 15,000 pound BLU-82 bombs dubbed “Daisy-Cutters” were next dropped in pallets rolled out the back of C-130 transport planes to seal cave entrances in Tora Bora.
London Daily Mail reporter David Williams witnessed one of those "Daisy Cutter" attacks: "The sound split the air. It was like a thunder clap directly overhead at the height of a ferocious storm. I could see the massive oily black cloud of the explosion as it rolled across the hillside, a mixture of thick smoke, chunks of earth and debris." [www.workingforchange.com Nov 8/01; www.commondreams.org]

“The effect of the BLU-82 is astonishing, and rare film shows a detonation, shock wave and subsequent mushroom cloud very similar to a small nuclear weapon,” writes Paul Rogers in The Mother Of All Bombs. “Journalists who visited areas where the bomb had been dropped reported scenes of extraordinary devastation” from a firestorm that sucked all the oxygen from the air, crushed human organs and incinerated an area the size of five football fields in a single mighty blast. [openDemocracy.net Mar 7/03]

By December 13, 2001 the U.S. Air Force had dropped at least four 17-foot-long "Daisy Cutter" bombs on tunnel complexes and Taliban concentrations in Afghanistan. [globalsecurity.org; commondreams.org
Who gave the order to go nuclear?
Under the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1995, using nuclear weapons preemptively against weapons of mass destruction or “to demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD” must first be authorized by the National Command Authority. The NCA is comprised of two individuals: the Secretary of Defense and the President.
Rumsfeld, Cheney and other war planners “were taking a heckuva chance,” Hank charged. If those truckloads of yellow cake were “excited” by a nearby nuclear detonation - or if a rumored “way station” laboratory really was in the Basra area - the resulting blast could be amplified beyond “low-yield”.
“Can you say cook-off?” Hank asked. As a preliminary to the first nuclear attack since the incineration of Nagasaki, at least one 15,000 pound fuel-air bomb was dropped in the Basra district on February 7, 1991. The resulting fireball covered two square miles. Outside the blast zone, oxygen consumed by what was essentially a gigantic gas explosion collapsed the lungs of all living creatures.
One website warned: “Usage of the BLU-82 is the precursor to the next weapon that may be used... the bunker-busting nuclear weapons.” [casi.org.uk]

Around this time, a British Special Air Service (SAS) team on a secret reconnaissance mission sighted a signature mushroom cloud from 110 miles away. The commandos radioed back to headquarters, “Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait.” [indymedia.nl; psywarrior.com]
GOING NUCLEAR
In fact, the blokes had just nuked Iraq. According to U.S. military sources, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon against another country since 1945 took place approximately 11 miles east of Basra, sometime between February 2 and February 5, 1991. By then, Iraq's former capitol had been declared a "free fire zone" - open to carpet-bombing by high-flying formations of eight-engine B-52s. "Basra is a military town in the true sense,” military spokesman General Richard Neal told the press. “The infrastructure, military infrastructure, is closely interwoven within the city of Basra itself."
Though the soon-to-be fired General Neal claimed there were no civilians left in Basra, the city was actually sheltering some 800,000 terrified residents. In direct violation of Article 51 of the Geneva Protocols, which prohibits area bombing, the B-52s commenced saturation grid-bombing of the city. Mixing fuel-air bombs with shrapnel-spraying cluster bombs, the bombers leveled entire city blocks, the Los Angeles Times reported, leaving “bomb craters the size of football fields, and an untold number of casualties." [Washington Post Feb 2/91; Los Angeles Times Feb 5/91] With the city of Basra resounding to gigantic explosions, and engulfed in "a hellish nighttime of fires and smoke so dense that witnesses say the sun hasn't been clearly visible for several days at a time,” a 5-kiloton GB-400 nuclear bomb exploding 11 miles away under the desert attracted no notice. [deoxy.org; Los Angeles Times Feb 5/91]

According to Hank's GI informants, about “400 to 500 meters” of terrain were “cleaned out” of any bystanders and vehicles. The seismic disturbance radiating out a half mile to a mile from ground zero was “pretty devastating,” Hank learned. Besides flipping vehicles over, causing alarms to go off, and knocking people off their feet at that distance, the earth-shaking blast detonated every mine in the area. Regarding Washington's intent to halt the WMD transfers and deter Iran - “It made their point,” he says.

FALLOUT
At the time of the subsurface detonation in hard-packed sand, Iraq's sharkay daytime wind was blowing from northwest to southeast, away from Basra toward Iran. But the shamal shifts 180-degrees during the night, “so everybody gets a taste,” as Hank put it. “We had FOX [NBC 'sniffer'] vehicles sitting on the Kuwaiti side of the border to make sure the thing went the way it was supposed to.” [“Israeli Nuclear Strike On Iran Turned Back By USAF by William Thomas willthomas.net Jan 22/07] The immediate “spike” in airborne radiation would drop quickly, Hank stated. A Desert Storm scheduled to assault Kuwait on February 25, should have left coalition forces on the other side of the border in the clear. But the Union of Concerned Scientists is less certain subsurface low-yield detonations can be contained. The nuclear experts point to atomic detonations at the Nevada Test Site showing that “the minimum burial depth to ensure containment… is roughly 100-meters for a one-kiloton explosion.” [ucsusa.org May/05] Even in sand, bunker busters cannot penetrate anywhere near this depth. As Harper's Phelan discovered, “Even a 1-kiloton bunker buster - a relative firecracker detonated at 50-feet underground - could eject about 1,000,000 cubic meters of radioactive soil. [Harper's Dec 1/04]
The bomb detonated near Basra was five-times more powerful.

GETTING DEAD
Given time, the resulting sandy fallout will “spread out and cover everybody with a low dose - instead of a few somebodies with a high dose,” Hank said.
Just like DU. There is nothing “depleted” about a speck of anything that can kill any organism that ingests or inhales it over the next 4.5 billion years. [Daily Star (Beirut) Sept 14/04; Tribune Media Services June 29/06] “Basically, it's like smoking crack,” says former Lawrence Livermore nuclear lab scientist, Leuren Moret regarding uranium dust. “Only you're inhaling radioactive crack - and it won't get you high. It will get you dead. It goes right in your nose. It crosses the olfactory bulb into your brain. It's a systemic poison. It goes everywhere.”
Borne around the globe on high-level winds, radioactive nanoparticles 100-times smaller than a white blood cell go “straight into the blood stream,” Moret continues. “It's carried all throughout the body into the bones, the bone marrow, the brain. It goes into the fetus. [It] gets picked up in the lipids and probably the cholesterol and go right through the cell membranes of the cell. They screw up the cell processes. They screw up the signaling between the cells because the cells all talk to each other and coordinate what they're doing. It messes up brain function.” [Project Censored Feb 21/05;
iconoclast-texas.com May 9/05]

And because radioactive particles are not soluble, they cannot be excreted from the body. Alpha particles tend to bind with phosphate in human bones and DNA. Just one gram of U-238 lodged in the body from a Depleted Uranium round - or a nuclear detonation - emits 12,000 alpha particles per second. [American Free Press Aug 27/04]

According to Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Hematology at Dundee University, even a cell that seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later to cause cancer and birth defects. Pentagon studies prior to Desert Storm found that aerosol uranium exposure could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects. [San Francisco Chronicle Oct 10/02]

Another Pentagon-funded study concluded: "Fetal exposure to uranium during critical prenatal development may adversely impact the future behavioral and neurological development of offspring." [Vanity Fair Nov/04]
BAD
Another problem, Hank reiterated: “You can get secondary cook-off. You can get stuff on the ground to react in ways it never would.” Around Basra, this radioactive blow-back from the February 1991 nuclear detonation included Depleted Uranium dust from previous American attacks, as well as radon bubbling up from underground pools of petroleum back-pressured toward the surface by the shutdown of one of Iraq's three biggest oilfields.

“If your immune system was brought down by DU, and shutting down the oil [production] made an oil pool under the city and started gassing them with radon - bad!” Hank exclaimed. “The radiation would make them more susceptible to DU, and the DU would make them more susceptible to the radon.” Add the electromagnetic radiation from high-powered American radios, radars and jammers to all the radioactive sand later churned by military trucks and tracked vehicles, Hank continued. “The U.S. gave the Iraqi people a one-two-three punch… The word, 'catastrophic' does not even come close.” But this was only the beginning of an undeclared nuclear disaster that will poison people and wildlife in southern Iraq until the Earth ends. As Hank went on to point out, a bunker buster that explodes anywhere from 20 feet to 160 feet underground “is more than enough to contaminate every water source in the region. The aquifer would be contaminated. And that wouldn't go away in a week.”
In fact, U.S. Army training manuals require anyone coming within 25 yards of DU-contaminated homes, equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection. Otherwise, the manuals warn, "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption." [San Francisco Chronicle Oct 10/02] “Any significant [radioactive] contamination is likely to migrate by air and water to wider and more populated areas,” confirmed a European Union report. [European Parliament Verbatim Report of Proceedings Apr 9/02]
Hank charged that those who gave the order to drop a nuclear bomb on Iraq knew that “ground contamination on the surface will make it to the water supply and make it undrinkable. But they considered it 'low level' radiation - no big deal.” Except for everyone using that water for the rest of their lives. And pregnancies.
“Everything you do, from washing dishes to taking a shower - everything you do…” Hank's voice trailed off as we considered how much water we use every day. “You can't filter this out if you don't know it's there,” he resumed. “And you don't see a lot of people running around over there with a Brita.”
DIRTY WAR
Or Geiger counters. In the heart of Baghdad, Christian Science Monitor reporter Scott Peterson waved a radiation-detecting wand over a small pile of jet-black dirt near a group of playing children - only to jump back in alarm when the instrument registered 1,900 times the normal background radiation. [Christian Science Monitor May 15/03; The Daily Star (Beirut) Sept 14/04; WSWS May 10/05] More than 200 uranium-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from U.S. ships and submarines during the first bombardment on Iraq. Hundreds more would follow. In addition, more than 3,000 bombs were dropped on metropolitan Baghdad - and the homes of six million people. Nearly a quarter-million bombs were dropped by allied forces during Desert Storm. With DU dust blowing everywhere, and and U.S. airstrikes continuing at least weekly for another 16 years, the legacy of permanent low-level radioactivity spread throughout Iraq can only be called genocide. [deoxy.org] Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a Colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, was put in charge of Nuclear Medicine Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center. After finding unusually high radiation levels in American veterans, as well as birth defects in the offspring of their spouses, he had became convinced that not only that was DU slowly killing them, but also that it was causing changes in the human gene pool that would ravage future generations in the USA and Iraq. Asked to stop his research by the U.S. government, he refused.
In 2006, soil samples in Iraq showed radiation levels 17-times higher than any readings that might be remotely acceptable - threatening, in , Dr. Durakovic's words, environmental "catastrophe." This DU doctor believes that radioactive dust contamination from the 1991 war may have exposed the entire Gulf population. [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq Aug/06]

WHAT HAPPENED IN BASRA?
The estimated 300-800 tons of nuclear waste dumped on the people and ecologies of Iraq during Desert Storm were concentrated in the Baghdad region. Far to the south, Iraq's former capitol “is some 200 kilometres away from sites where large numbers of DU shells were fired,” reported David Rose. Yet, nearly every family tested in Basra experienced extreme symptoms from low level radiation exposure. [Tribune Media Services June 29/06; byronchild.com; Vanity Fair Nov/04]

Six years after the 1991 Gulf War, a cancer study found Iraqi soldiers who fought in the Basra area to be stricken with “a statistically significant increase in the rate at which they were stricken with lymphomas, leukaemia, and lung, brain, gastrointestinal, bone and liver cancers, as compared to personnel who had not fought in the south.” [WSWS May 10/05] "Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before,” testified Dr. Jawad Al-Ali before the 2003-2004 Citizen's Tribunal in Japan. “The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with two cancers-one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney-he had three different cancer types.
“The second is the clustering of cancer in families,” the British-educated MD continued. “We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr. Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr. Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer." [Tribune Media Services June 29/06; WSWS May 10/05] While interviewing Dr. Jawad al-Ali, Director of the Talimi Oncology Center at Basra's biggest hospital, concerning his research into the effects of radiation and cancer cases “in Iraq's radioactive governorate of Basra,” Ewa Jasiewicz learned that hospital staff were also dying from radiation poisoning at rates rivaling emergency responders at Chernobyl. “Thirteen doctors and nurses at Talimi have contracted cancer since 1990 - breast, testicular and lymphoma,” this reporter wrote.
With cancer rates “skyrocketing” from a 300% increase in airborne radiation above background levels, Dr. Jawad added that water and food remain the primary contaminated sources. Another big problem is the “re-suspension” of radioactive particles through strong winds, digging, or vehicles driving over radioactive sands. Iraq's second largest city is home to as many as three million people.
“The rate of cancer here has multiplied 15-times since the last Gulf war,” Dr. Jawad stated. “For Dr. Jawad, the constant cancer cases (many of which go unreported, he stresses) are a spiraling emergency,” Ewa Jasiewicz noted. [“Uranium in Your Koolaid” Occupation Watch Jan 26/04] Based on their experience in southern Iraq hospitals, MDs Ahmad, Abdul-Hafidh and al-Khazraji found that anyone exposed to nuclear contamination there can expect… “A considerable increase in infectious diseases caused by most severe immunodeficiencies in a great part of the population; frequent occurrence of massive herpes and zoster afflictions in adults and children; AIDS-like syndrome; a hitherto unknown syndrome caused by renal and hepatic dysfunctions; leukemia, elaptic anemia and malignant neoplasms; congenital deformities caused by genetic defects - also to be found in animals, Down's syndrome, skeletal and chromosomal abnormalities, hair loss, rare skin diseases, severe vertigo accompanied by nausea and loss of balance, distorted vision and loss of sight, severe migraine, sterility among both sexes, and an increase in the incidence of miscarriages and of still, premature and difficult births.” [Further Evidence on Relation between Depleted Uranium, Incidence of Malignancies among Children in Basra, Southern Iraq Dr. Alim Yacoup; Dr. Imad al-Sa' doun; Dr. Genan G. Hassan College of Medicine, Basra University]

Does anyone in America understand the word, karma? With more than half of all cancers in Iraq occurring among children under the age of five, Dr. Jawad al-Ali warned that children are especially susceptible to permanent radioactive fallout. "Children in particular are susceptible to Depleted Uranium poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most. However, cancer of the lymph system, which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common," he said. [Lifeboatnews.com May 27/03; Tribune Media Services June 29/06; americanchronicle.com]

Doctors Ahmad Hardan, Abdul-Hafidh and al-Khazraji were also seeing “escalating numbers” of children wasting away from leukemia, lymphomas and Hodgkin's disease. Child leukemia in southern Iraq has leaped 400% since 1990. [Junge Welt Oct 24/00; Further Evidence on Relation between Depleted Uranium, Incidence of Malignancies among Children in Basra] When the Japanese began studying radiation effects in the southern Iraq during the summer of 2003, their Geiger counter went “off the scale on many occasions. During their vista local hospital was treating upwards of 600 children per day.”
[envirosagainstwar.org; americanchronicle.com Apr 17/06; WSWS May 10/05]

Six-hundred sick children every day?
Breast cancer in young women, age 30 and under is also “many times higher”, and ovarian cancer in women has increased by 1,600%. [Southern Iraq College of Medicine, Basra University] “After the Gulf War, they had maybe one baby a week born with birth defects in the hospitals in Basra. Now they are having 10-12 a day,” laments Leuren Moret. “The levels of uranium are increasing in the population every year. Every day, people are eating and drinking while the whole environment is contaminated. There are more babies born with birth defects, and the birth defects are getting more and more severe.” In Afghanistan and Iraq, women who should be overjoyed by their pregnancies call their condition “jelly belly”. So many babies are being born with stubby limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be-or with a single Cyclopean eye, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads-new mothers no longer ask, “Is it a girl or a boy?”
Instead, they anxiously inquire, “Is it normal, doctor?” In March 2004the Tokyo Citizen's Tribunal found George Bush and his administration “guilty of war crimes” for using illegal weapons against the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview by Dr. Souad al-Azzawi Aug/06 Hiroshima]

SOMETHING ELSE Was that “something else” an undisclosed atomic blast?
Basra's beleaguered doctors were not alone in realizing they faced something extreme. Before her death from sudden-onset cancer, beloved Iraqi artist and Baghdad Diaries author, Nuha al-Radi wrote, “The carnage takes place in apocalyptic proportions… Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia... “ [envirosagainstwar.org] “Before her death in Beirut, Nuha “believed her leukemia could have been caused by DU,” wrote Dr. Souad al-Azzawi. “And if not DU, then something else to which Iraqis were knowingly exposed.” [Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview Aug/06 Hiroshima]

KILLING SPREE
“It's just a slow death sentence,” says Marion Falk. As the retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than two decades at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory goes on to explain, “DNA does not repair itself… Once mutation is caused in DNA, that damage is passed on to future generations of that affected person or animal or plant.” [iconoclast-texas.com May 9/05; Journal of International Issues July 1/04]
The result, Lauren Moret reminds us, is a “Silent Genocide” that permanently contaminates entire regions, “slowly destroying the genetic future of those populations.” [Journal of International Issues July 1/04]
A decade before another 3,000 tons of America's nuclear waste would be explosively directed against the most densely populated centers of a ruined nation, the UK Atomic Energy Authority estimated that the DU contamination left by the first Gulf War could cause "500,000 potential deaths" in Iraq. Posted in a confidential April 30, 1991 memo to the munitions company, Royal Ordnance, the AEA's calculation did not include deaths from fallout and water permanently poisoned by the “nuclear device” detonated east of Basra in early 1991. [globalresearch.ca; envirosagainstwar.org ; WSWS May 10/05]

As Ewa Jasiewicz saw with her own eyes: “War casualties continue to be hospitalized, expire… and pile up in the graveyards of Basra. Some of the alive are slowly dying already, from the first breath of heavily radiated air… Others are set to bring deformed babies into the world, with crownless skulls or fused fingers, while whole families watch listlessly as taut bed-bound members reel from the violence of the poison in their veins, in their flesh. “There are weapons of mass destruction everywhere in Iraq,” she declares. “They were made in America, bombed over here, and lie left vitiating in the dessert, beside highways, in demolished homes, rubble buildings; a fine murder dust on the breeze, upon the water, inside the roasting tissues of a chicken on a spit in the street, inside the bodies of bone-eating cancer bearing children, or inside the wombs of women sick with dizziness - just pregnancy or poisoning? Their birth-days can only tell. But one thing is certain in occupied Iraq… the killing continues. The killing continues.” [Occupation Watch Jan 26/04]

Less than a decade after Washington dropped a nuclear bomb on Iraq, four more would be dropped on Afghanistan.

Part II: Sleigh Of Nukes “Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. The word has been around for decades, and for the longest time, was at the center of American foreign policy and the deepest fears of the American people. Nuclear brinkmanship. Nuclear winter. Nuclear holocaust. Etc. It's a great, big, fat, important, and serious word. Its very existence has changed the face of the planet.” -William Rivers Pitt [truthout.com May 5/06]
DIRTY BOMBS
They also began dropping two-and-a-half-ton GBU-28 "dense metal" penetrators from B-52s and B-1 Stealth bombers. Exploding deep underground, the bomb's explosive energy “coupled” with bedrock under immense pressure from the weight bearing down on it. The resulting seismic shock wave could crush an underground bunker - or the internal organs of anyone caught in the “overpressure” from a blast wave 20-times stronger than the bomb blast itself. [ucsusa.org May/05]

In order to penetrate rock and concrete, each “Great Big Uranium” bomb is shaped like a spear tipped with tons of radioactive Uranium-238 nearly twice as dense as lead. Using nuclear waste left over from making atomic bombs and reactor fuel, the amount of radioactive Depleted Uranium (DU) particles spread by each GBU “dirty bomb” eclipsed any terrorist's fantasy - one-and-a-half metric tons of aerosolized particles capable of causing genetic mutations and death for the next four billion years! [Le Monde March 2002] The similarities of BLU and GBU detonations to nuclear blasts was not lost on U.S. war planners, who realized that the blast effects and resulting radioactive fallout from conventional bunker-busters could mask the detonation of so-called “low-yield” B61-11 tactical nuclear bombs. The Bush administration's first U.S. Nuclear Posture Review had already called for fast-track development of new tactical nuclear weapons, a resumption of nuclear tests, and more "flexible, adaptable strike plans" - including "options for variable and reduced yields.” Submitted to Congress on December 31, 2001, the neocon's follow-up CONPLAN 8022 would reverse the decades-old U.S. policy against “first use” of nuclear weapons by authorizing their rapid deployment to destroy 'time-urgent targets' anywhere in the world. [ People's Weekly World Newspaper Mar 16/02] As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists jumped the minute hand of their Doomsday Clock forward two minutes to seven minutes to midnight, White House fundamentalists eagerly sought ways to test their new “baby nukes” against real-world targets. Proponents insisted, "Many buried targets could be attacked using a weapon with a much lower yield than would be required with a surface burst." [smh.com.au Sept 7/02]

Those buried nuclear targets were specifically located in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki of the Afghan DU & Recovery Fund observed, “The White House and US-DOD spoke frequently about the development and use of fission, low-yield and non-fission, seismic bunker- and cave-busters,” “The US Strategic Military Plan and US Nuclear Posture Review expresses intentions to use new classes of weapons in Afghanistan and other states. This program was known to be accelerating its weapons development and experiments in readiness for a possible Iraqi incursion.” [Afghan DU & Recovery Fund]

ILL WINDS
Soon after commencing aerial bombardment against Afghanistan, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told the press “he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons." [Houston Chronicle Oct 20/01] Still reeling from the relentlessly televised images of September 11, the American public was told that only nuclear blasts could safely vaporize caches of chemical, nuclear or biological weapons not authorized by Washington, which retained its own banned stockpiles of biological weapons, along with more than five-thousand nuclear warheads. [AP June 11/07] As I was told by an extremely well-connected Desert Storm veteran, whom I have to call “Hank” during our 15-year collaboration, pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters across Afghanistan's “wide flat open spaces” is like target shooting. But the “hills that crop out of nowhere” in this desolate region “are craggy and rocky with holes in them that we can't detect. We know they had access to the Russian biologicals. They could have it in the cave. The container could be open…”
For this reason, “in caves 75 to 89 percent of the time, our guys are wearing an NBC (Nuclear, Chemical, Biological) suit as a precaution,” he went on. “You never know what these guys might have in there - Taliban and Al Qaeda. We knew categorically that they had captured a lot of Soviet munitions, so we knew that whatever these guys fielded they captured: last ditch stuff.” But blowing up chemical-biological munitions is a really bad idea - as Hank and other coalition forces posted downwind of Iraq's detonated CBW stockpiles at Khamisiyah learned to their cost following the first Persian Gulf War. As Benjamin Phelan pointed out in Harper's, “A well-designed granite bunker could with-stand four times the shock produced by [a conventional bunker buster]. If the bunker housed weapons of mass destruction, studies have shown that a canister of, say, mustard gas could be insulated from the heat of the blast by a few meters of earth, and thereby escape being vaporized… In the likely event that a canister is ruptured but not destroyed, the chemical agent… would be blasted up into the air, carried away in the fallout cloud.” [Harper's Dec 1/04]

Another risk, Hank cautioned, “If you nuke something that's already [fissionable], you'll get a cook off you didn't expect.” Even doing “a flash bang” over stockpiled yellow cake, or Depleted Uranium debris “could cause those pieces to reciprocate” by absorbing and then reflecting incoming Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and X-rays from a supposedly low-yield detonation. Risks are compounded when countries facing America's willingness to use nuclear weapons against them respond by developing their own 4th generation, low-yield nuclear bombs. "The concern is that countries are starting to see these weapons as useable, whereas during the Cold War they were seen as a deterrent," warns Ian Anthony, a nuclear expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. [AP June 11/07]

Recognizing that "low-yield nuclear weapons blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war,” a 1994 law banned research and development on nuclear weapons of less than 5-kilotons in the United States. But Bush's 2001 Defense Authorization Bill passed by a Republican Congress overturned these earlier restrictions. Just as “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” were rushed to the Pacific Theater in time to be tested on the starving Japanese citizenry before the emperor's surrender pleas leaked to the press, the nuclear version of the bunker-busting GBU-28 was rushed to Afghanistan to conduct remote field tests before the Taliban surrendered.
POINT TOWARD ENEMY
The nuclear version of the GBU-28 bunker buster is the B61-11. When American forces targeted Tora Bora in 2001, there were 150 B61-11s in the U.S. arsenal. Featuring nuclear warheads that could be dialed from 0.3 to 340 kilotons - equivalent of 300 to 340,000 tons of radioactive TNT - these new Earth Penetrating Weapons were, according to atomic scientists, capable of "destroying the deepest and most hardened of underground bunkers, which the conventional warheads are not capable of doing." [Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists May/June 1997; Wired Oct 8/01]

“When a bunker buster burrows in, the blast is directed downward,” Hank explained. “It's a lens and it's focused straight down instead of outward.” Designed to penetrate deep into the earth before detonating, the shaped warhead directs a blast hotter than a thousand suns in a shock-coupled seismic shockwave that shakes several hundred meters of bedrock. “Even a short penetration distance accomplishes this goal of 'coupling' the energy of the explosion to the ground,” notes the Union of Concerned Scientists. ”Penetration of a few meters increases the underground destructive effects by more than a factor of twenty.” [Defense News Mar 2/97; [ucsusa.org May/05] Stripping away the numbers, Hank summarized the effects of dropping an earth-penetrating nuclear bomb with typical GI directness: “Do an overpressure wave in a cave, everything in there is squished.”
With the resulting hard radiation supposedly sequestered underground, the 1,200-pound B61 was enthusiastically hailed by Bush and his backers as a “relatively safe” atomic bomb that would not kill too many innocent bystanders. [Philadelphia Inquirer Oct 16/00] Or freak out the world.

PINGING
Nuclear explosions are also handy for locating buried bunkers. Ground Penetrating Radar can “see” through only about 15 feet of sand. But in a process called “echo-ranging”, oil prospectors hoping to detect underground deposits at depths greater than 300-feet routinely bounce shockwaves from small explosions to reveal underground objects and cavities. Recorded by sensors fitted with precise Global Positioning Satellite locators, reverberating echoes can be computer-plotted to create precise, three-dimensional maps of deeply buried features, similar to a submarine “pinging” a target. [USAF Air War College May 2000] Except in this case, each “ping” is a nuclear detonation. “You get a 3-D map of the area,” Hank confirmed. After a nuclear blast “rings the mountains like a bell, you know where the holes are; where the people are.”
FALLOUT
But the air force was worried. In June 2001, its study on using even the smallest nuclear bombs concluded: “The political repercussions of employing nuclear weapon may be greater than the United States would want to contemplate, and the environmental consequences of potentially spreading a warehouse full of potentially deadly biological or chemical agents would be unacceptable.” [USAF Air War College May 2000]

The political fallout could be as bad as the “large area of lethal fallout" scientists warned would follow " the large amount of radioactive dirt thrown out in the explosion” from a weapon as “small” as 5-kilotons. [Philadelphia Inquirer Oct 16/00] This dust would be deadly. In Yugoslavia, where 30,000 radioactive uranium projectiles fired by NATO warplanes had released thousands of tons of easily inhaled or ingested microscopic particles, medical doctors were already reporting “multiple unrelated cancers” in families with no previous history of cancer, who lived in highly contaminated areas. A previously unknown phenomenon, these “very rare and unusual cancers and birth defects have also been reported to be increasing, not only in war torn countries, but also in neighbouring countries from transboundary contamination,” the European Parliament found. [ Global Research July 8/04; American Free Press Aug 27/04; European Parliament Verbatim Report of Proceedings Apr 9/02; Bundesforschungsanstalt für Landwirtschaft Nov 8/05]

The tonnages of radioactive Uranium-238 and toxic heavy metals detonated in hundreds of cruise missiles fired into neighborhoods in Afghanistan and Iraq was never tabulated. But after conducting extensive research on DU weapons, former Naval officer Daniel Fahey declared, “You're talking about something that should be stored as a radioactive waste, and [instead they're] spreading it around other countries. [Mother Jones June 23/99] Just as veterans of Desert Storm came to call their mysterious maladies “Gulf War Syndrome,” soldiers posted to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s began referring to the “Balkans Syndrome.” By January 2001, more than a quarter of the more than 1,400 Greek troops stationed in Kosovo were demanding to depart due to the increased risk of cancer.

United States law and U.S. Army Regulations AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278 require the army to "Clean and Treat" all persons affected and all areas contaminated by the radioactive uranium munitions. But Lt. Col. Mike Milord confirmed that the Pentagon had zero plans to clean up radioactive contamination in Kosovo - or anywhere else . [Vanity Fair Nov/04; Daily Telegraph Jan 15/01] The ability of Depleted Uranium missiles and shells to burn through the densest concrete and armor made these weapons too useful to give up. DU attacks could also be used to mask the cancers and leukemia incurred downwind of a low-yield nuclear detonation. If the “Depleted Uranium explanation” somehow failed in the Tora Bora region, Hank told me, “we could blame radiation on the terrorists.” Why not? The United States of America had already dropped a nuclear bomb on Iraq.

NUKING TORA BORA Part 3 willthomasonline.net exclusive
On Tuesday evening, November 12, 2001, Babrak Khan, a Jalalabad resident and former guard at a nearby base for Islamic militants, saw the distinctly bearded and emaciated Osama bin Laden standing in front of a guesthouse. The next day, Osama and his al-Qaeda and Taliban followers headed into the nearby Tora Bora mastiffs. American bombing of the region intensified. The 11th day of Ramadan - November 26, 2001 - saw Osama seated deep inside a cave complex with a glass of hot green tea in hand. Mohammed Akram, who occasionally cooked for bin Laden, was fixing dinner in another cave when a huge bomb exploded, blowing him 30-feet backwards. Two of his colleagues were killed, and Mohammed, along with another Saudi and a Kurdish fighter, decided not to hang around.
Osama bin Laden fled Tora Bora around December 1, heading for Pakistan's Parachinar region. Eastern Afghanistan's intelligence chief, Pir Baksh Bardiwal was astounded when the Pentagon failed to use convenient helicopter Landing Zones to insert U.S. forces to block the most obvious exit routes. But the Americans did not know the ailing terror financier had left Tora Bora. When Osama bin Laden phoned back to the enclave on December 10, urging his followers to keep fighting, U.S. intelligence officers picked up his transmission and conclued that Osama bin Laden was still in his caves. [Christian Science Monitor Mar 4/02] Which might also explain why a USAF C-130 had dropped the heaviest bomb in their conventional inventory - a 15,000 pound “Daisy-Cutter” - against Tora Bora the previous day. [London Times Dec 10/01]
THERMOBARBARIANS
Rushed into production after 9/11, at least eight BLU-118Bs were quickly deployed into the Afghan theater. The Global Security website confirms the first field-test of this new weapon: “On or about March 3, 2002 a single 2,000-pound thermobaric bomb was used for the first time in combat against cave complexes in which al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had taken refuge in the Gardez region of Afghanistan.” [globalsecurity.org] Guided by U.S. Special Forces “lasing” cave complexes with invisible laser pointers, the Navy's new polymer-bonded “thermobaric” bomb would be more accurately termed a “thermobarbaric” terror weapon. "It works as a combination of a shock wave and a fuel explosion," explained CENTCOM Commander Matthew Klee. "The first explosion spreads flammable aerosols through the underground complex. Then, the second ignites the fuel” - crushing the internal organs of everyone caught in the blast zone.
“Instead of boom, this bomb goes BOOOOOOOM!” thundered Air Force spokesman Captain Joe Della Vedova. “This thing kills the earthworms.” [Las Vegas Review Jan 21/02] Over the March 1, 2002 weekend, the Pentagon tested two more “experimental” BLU-118B MOABs during Operation Anaconda. Was this “Mother Of All Bombs” also the Mother Of All Deceptions?
“This sort of cover-story makes it easy for, say, reporters, to believe they have witnessed a fuel-air explosion, when in fact it was a very small, low-yield, nuclear weapon,” George Paxinos pointed out at the Information Clearing House. Why else would “the USA suddenly publicly announce in 2001 and 2002 its intention to use this sort of weapon against the Taliban hiding out in caves, when in war, you do not usually go out and broadcast your intentions… to your enemy?” And why, Paxinos pondered, would this “intense propaganda effort” to alert Americans and the world to Washington's new Massive Ordnance Air Burst Weapon emphasize that the resulting blast “produces a fireball and a mushroom-cloud almost indistinguishable from that of a small tactical nuclear weapon?”
And why did CNN, among other networks, parrot Washington's nonsensical assertions that an air-burst bomb originally designed “to be used against large formations of troops and equipment” would now be deployed against “deeply buried targets"? The network helpfully hinted, “Officials suggest perhaps the Iraqis might even mistake a MOAB blast for a nuclear detonation." [CNN Mar 11/03] “This is a cover-story,” Paxinos asserted. We were “being prepared for the pre-emptive use of tactical nuclear weapons.” DU expert Tedd Weyman points to George Bush's revised Nuclear Posture Review. Issued in March 2002, the new NPR pledged to test Nuclear Penetrator Missiles. “That's my hunch,” Weyman believes. “We tested the prototypes there.”
Paxinos and Weyman were right. According to Hank, under the cover of massive DU-tipped bombs that raised dirty mushroom clouds in thunderous explosions that rained radioactive dust over Jalalabad and nearby villages, the first nuclear bombs dropped since Basra in 1991 were detonated by American forces in Afghanistan beginning in March 2002. Before their field tests were concluded, United States forces would explode four 5-kiloton GBU-400 nuclear bombs in Tora Bora and other mountainous regions of Afghanistan.
In order to obtain a seismographic “snapshot” of a mountain's internal structure, at least one of these four nuclear detonations took place alongside a craggy karst in the open air. Hank's buddies, who were on the scene, told him what happened far from scrutinizing media eyes in the remote mountains of northern Afghanistan. As he paraphrased their reports: “Back our guys away from the general area - 'Don't look that way for two or three seconds' - and oops! we blew that up.”
With shockwaves rippling through the mountains, and fallout spreading through mountain passes, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters knew that something momentous had occurred. But killing a few of the enemy in collapsing rock and a nuclear fireball actually proved counterproductive, Hank related. “It drove others deeper into less accessible areas. It backfired.”
JUMPING NEEDLES
Wouldn't seismographic needles jump on distant dials, I asked Hank? They did, he replied. But pinning down the source of such blasts in nearly impossible. “You may hear something, but you would not be able to designate it because there was too much else going on. There's no way you could call it,” Hank explained. A major conventional explosion, such as a huge C-130 or C5 Galaxy transport plane auguring in, “would give you the same seismographical signature.”
Keith Nakanishi and other seismologists at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear bomb labs agree that detecting, locating, and identifying a clandestine nuclear explosion is particularly challenging in the Middle East, where unusual tremors picked up by a few, widely scattered seismic monitoring stations would be drowned out by a large number of earthquakes and mining and oil drilling explosions. Add to this cacophony, waves of cruise missile strikes and massive bombs dropped by American warplanes. Nevertheless, the Livermore seismologists state that among “thousands of seismic signals annually, some [are] quite similar to the signals that would be generated by a small underground nuclear blast.” If major megaton-size nuclear weapons tests cause earthquakes, could a “baby nuke” do the same. The U.S. Geological Survey admits that even “deep mining can cause small to moderate quakes, and nuclear testing has caused small earthquakes in the immediate area surrounding the test site.” [earthquake.usgs.gov] The Livermore scientists also note that a conventional 1,000 pound explosion set off by Israel on the shores of the Dead Sea on November 8, 1999 resulted in a quake of magnitude of 2.6 on the Richter scale. A 2,000-kilogram explosive detonated two days later, caused a 3.5 quake. [llnl.gov]Each of the four nuclear weapons dropped on Afghanistan set off a bedrock-amplified explosive force of 10,000 tons. QUAKES
The blasts in Tora Bora were immediately followed by a severe earthquake that “struck northern Afghanistan and was felt as far away as India,” the People's Weekly World reported. Even in this earthquake-prone region, the long-lasting and powerful tremors were unprecedented, killing 150 people killed and destroying 500 houses. “It is not unlikely that the use of powerful bombs led to the quake,” one geophysicist said. Moscow thought so, too. An ITAR-TASS report speculated that the 7.2 Richter-scale 'quake that struck northern Afghanistan “may have been caused by the powerful fuel-air and bunker-penetrating bombs used in earlier U.S. air strikes in that same region.” [whatmatters.nu] Reviewing the stresses “induced in the earth's crust” by powerful explosions, Kamran Ahmed reported from Karachi, “The severe earthquakes that struck Afghanistan in March can be attributed to these bombings.”

But were the quake-triggering blasts nuclear?
Gary Whiteford, Professor of Geography at the University of New Brunswick in Canada is renowned for his exhaustive research correlating nuclear tests and earthquakes. Looking at “killer earthquakes” that kill at least 1,000 people, Dr. Whiteford found that 63% of those earthquakes occurred within one to three days after a nuclear blast test. [dawn.com] [Note: "A friend in New York told me of this years ago. When two "nuke tests" occur within 48 hours there would be a killer quake somewhere on the planet." tmgandhi]

In 50 years before atomic testing began, 68 earthquakes of more than Richter 5.8 occurred every year. When hundreds of atomic bombs started going off in what can only be described as a large-scale nuclear war against the Earth, the quake rate rose "suddenly and dramatically" - nearly doubling to an average 127 major quakes per year.
The U.S. military attributes the telltale increase to "coincidence." But Whiteford comments, "The geographical patterns in the data, with a clustering of earthquakes in specific regions matched to specific test dates and sites do not support the easy and comforting explanation of `pure coincidence.' It is a dangerous coincidence."

“Abnormal meteorological phenomena, earthquakes and fluctuations of the earth's axis are related in a direct cause-and-effect to testing of nuclear devices,” concurs Shigeyoshi Matsumae, President of Tokai University, and Yoshio Kato, Head of the University's Department of Aerospace Science.

As Matsumae and Kato point out: “On June 19, 1992, the United States conducted an underground nuclear bomb test in Nevada. Another test was conducted only four days afterwards. Three days later, a series of heavy earthquakes as high as 7.6 on the Richter scale rocked the Mojave desert 176 miles to the south. They were the biggest earthquakes to hit California this century. Only 22 hours later, an "unrelated" earthquake of 5.6 struck less than 20 miles from the Nevada test site itself. It was the biggest earthquake ever recorded near the test site and caused one-million dollars of damage to buildings in an area designated for permanent disposal of highly radioactive nuclear wastes only fifteen miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.” [ratical.org]

So far, more than one million people have died in earthquakes that could be related to nuclear tests. [ratical.org]

WATCH THE BIRDIES
Meanwhile, Taliban fighters pounded night and day north of Kabul were dying from no visible injuries - except the blood flowing out of their mouths from internal bleeding. Near the Rish-Khor military base in the Afghan northern capitol, birds sat on tree branches with blood running from their beaks. As one eyewitness later recounted, "'We were amazed to see all these birds sitting quietly on branches. But when we shook the tree the birds fell down and we saw blood coming out of their mouths. Then we climbed the trees to see those that were still stuck on tree branches, all of them had bled from their mouths. Two of the birds appeared to be partly melted into the trees branches'." According to PhD Mohammed Daud Miraki, who collected many first-hand accounts on the after-effects of heavy U.S. bombing, “many dead Taliban soldiers had severe discoloration of the skin, orange, without being burned, while others had their rifles melted in their hands.” A medical doctor named Wazir reported, "Most of the victims have had respiratory problems and internal bleeding for which there is no apparent cause." [khalifa.com Oct 30/01]
Were these symptoms caused by the massive concussive blasts of fuel-air bombs? Very likely. When American jets dropped bunker busters at daybreak on the mud homes of Karam, the village was completely destroyed in massive craters. Many residents were killed from what appeared to be internal concussive injuries. But other victims of American bombing exhibited symptoms of radiation sickness. In describing “another bizarre, yet tragic scene,” Dr, Mohammed continued, “Many Taliban soldiers that survived the bombing in the north have died after returning to their native villages in the south and southeast of the country. They had no physical injury upon their death, however, died from internal bleeding and other bizarre symptoms including uncontrolled vomiting, diarrhea, and blood loss in urine and stool. Their families were shocked with disbelieves.” [Afghan DU & Recovery Fund]

Perplexed by such symptoms, and uniquely “hot” munitions debris, medical teams and technical experts thought they were looking at “enhanced” Non-Depleted Uranium from a new generation of radioactive cannon shells, bomb and missile casings. In fact, they were very likely looking at severe contamination from actual nuclear weapons.

SOMETHING NEW THIS WAY COMES
By May 2002, many more critics of the indiscriminate bombardment of Afghan cities and villages suspected that new weapons were being tested. That month, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, founder and director of Canada's Uranium Medical Research Center, sent a team in-country to interview and examine civilians in heavily bombed Nangarhar. This province, the BBC reported, had become “a strategic target zone for the deployment of a new generation of deep-penetrating 'cave-busting' and seismic shock warheads.” The British broadcasters failed to mention that each of these new weapons was tipped with more than one ton of NDU. Alerted to the “radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads used by the coalition forces," the UMRC team started looking for radiation poisoning. What they found was, in their words, “astonishing” and “astounding”. Identifying “several hundred people suffering from illnesses and conditions similar to those of Gulf veterans,” the team began administering tests. "Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium internal contamination,” UMRC reported. But the readings were off the scale of previous known DU exposures: "The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf veterans tested in 1999.” A control group three uncontaminated Afghans averaged 9.4 nanograms of uranium per litre of urine. The average for 17 randomly selected patients Jalalabad, Kabul, Tora Bora and Mazar-i-Sharif was 315.5 nanograms. A 12-year-old boy living near Kabul displayed 2,031 nanograms.
The maximum permissible level for members of the American public is 12 nanograms per litre. A follow-up UMRC visit to Afghanistan in September 2002 bore out the earlier findings. But conditions were much worse, with "a potentially much broader area and larger population of contamination." Dr. Durakovic told the BBC he was "stunned" by the results. “I'm certainly not saying Afghanistan was a vast experiment with new uranium weapons. But use your common sense."

NDU OR NBF? (NUCLEAR BOMB FALLOUT)
The consequences of ingesting radioactive particles were already reaching out to embrace the residents, troops and aid agency staffs in the world's most impoverished nation - as well as their spouses and subsequent offspring at home.
The baffling problem was, reported Stephanie Hiller, that while hundreds of tested Afghan people presented symptoms resembling those of DU-exposed Gulf War veterans - none of the civilians tested at Nangarhar showed any trace of Depleted Uranium.
The editor of Awakened Woman visited some of the six sites examined by the UMRC team in and around Kabul, where U.S. bunker buster bombs were detonated. With bioassays identifying uranium internal contamination in the Spin Gar (Tora Bora) area, and Kabul up to 2,000% higher than an unexposed population, the UMRC reported: "The isotopic ratios of the uranium contaminant measured in Afghan civilians show that it is not Depleted Uranium (DU). The isotopes of uranium found in the Afghan civilians' urine is Non-Depleted Uranium."
Field surveyors found that the bulk of the radioactive contamination occurred in the Tora Bora, Bagram frontline, as well as frontlines north of Kabul, Shaikoot, Paktia, Paktika, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kunduz - where massive bunker busters and fuel-air bombs were detonated, perhaps in part to mask striking health effects from four nuclear blasts. Other medical survey teams also reported that in bombardments of the Tora Bora, Shaikoot and Bagram frontline, “large number of antiaircraft weapons and rifles had melted… Many Taliban soldiers were seen with blood coming out from their mouths, noses and ears.” Those who returned to their villages “started to vomit blood and had bloody stools. Subsequently, many have died from their conditions.” After the bombardment in Khost, public health workers reported seeing skin lesions. In a manner resembling the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Afghan people who developed skin lesions died after their conditions deteriorated.
In Pachir Wa Agam district near Tora Bora, “women started to suffer from a deadly condition. Several months after the bombing, women of the area would become angry by petty things and that anger turns into rage, which subsequently causes the women to collapse and die. My team also reported that many children are born with no limbs, no eyes, or tumors protruding out from their mouths and their eyes,” its leader related. “Subsequent to the contamination, newborn children have physical deformities, and those that do not have physical deformity are suffering from Mental Retardation. These cases are reported from Paktia, Nangarhar, Bagram, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz,” the UMRC stated.
A man named Assadullah told the team in February 2003 that his wife had given birth to child so badly deformed he hardly resembled an infant. "When I saw my little boy with those monstrous red tumors, I thought to myself, why is it difficult for Americans to understand that they are hated in our country?” Assadullah said. “If I do this to the child of an American family, that family has the right to pull my eyes out of my eye sockets. I like to tell the Americans that they love to live their lives of luxury at the expense of our extermination." [European Parliament Verbatim Report of Proceedings Apr 9/02] Zar Ghoon is the father of another victim of U.S. bombing attacks on Kunduz. In December 2002 he told the medical survey team, "My wife was pregnant and we were happily waiting for the moment to see our second child. When the baby was born, it was hardly a human… When my wife saw the baby, she went into shock and died after five hours."
Speaking with a field volunteers near Tora Bora in April 2003, Sa'yed Gharib lost it. Screaming in grief and rage he shouted, "What else do the Americans want? They killed us, they turned our newborns into horrific deformations, and they turned our farmlands into graveyards and destroyed our homes. On top of all that their planes fly over and spray us with bullets.” "Tell America, we are not fools. Your words and actions are those of evil. We do not have airplanes like you do, however, we have one thing that you do not have: principles and morals. We will never do anything remotely similar to American children what Americans have done to our children and families," declared Nurullah Omar-Khail. [Afghan DU & Recovery Fund]

According to Mohammed Daud Miraki's extensive public health survey, “Most of the people that developed various health problems have died; others suffer from conditions such as kidney disease/failure, confusion, and loss of immunity and painful joints.” Dr. Durakovic told reporters, "If UMRC's Nangarhar findings are corroborated in other communities across Afghanistan, the country faces a severe public health disaster... every subsequent generation is at risk." [BBC May3/03] By October 2002, Afghan doctors citing rapid deaths from internal ailments were accusing the coalition of using chemical and radioactive weapons. The symptoms they reported (hemorrhaging, pulmonary constriction and vomiting) could have resulted from radiation contamination. [LeMonde Diplomatique Mar/02]

But inhalation, ingestion or wound-contamination by Depleted Uranium particles does not lead to such acute radiation poisoning symptoms immediately after exposure. Nor would “surface water, rice fields and catch-basins adjacent to and surrounding the bombsites have high values of uranium, up to 27 Xs normal,” as the UMRC found. Hank believes that Afghanistan's water table contains much more radioacative contamination than can be ascribed to DU and NDU contamination. The effective genetic sterilization of that country's southern region can also be traced to fallout washing down from the mountains where four American nuclear weapons were detonated. “Rain runs downhill,” he says.

ROUTINE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
If not exactly “routine”, Hank says, the undisclosed use of five nuclear weapons against Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in a dangerous shift in U.S. war fighting. As he put it, “Using tactical nukes is now an acceptable doctrine until otherwise notified.” Iran and the rest of the world, beware. In calling America a “Nuclear Rogue,” the New York Times warned, “Nuclear weapons are not just another part of the military arsenal. They are different, and lowering the threshold for their use is reckless folly.” [New York Times Mar 11/02] As Alok O'Brien concludes, “There is no longer time to pretend that everything will be alright, and that all thinking and feeling people need to unite in their hopes and dreams and reclaim the earth and their birthright before it is too late.”
With the countdown continuing on Iran - and any constraints against Washington's use of nuclear weapons already removed by the detonation of five low-yield nuclear bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Note: "These are the lands from which came the Three Wise Men to honor the birth of Jesus Christ. This can not be what Jesus would do. By remaining silent we condone the actions of our government. Just as there is still a stigma on the German people for what Hitler did so shall we and Congress carry the mark of silent complicity. Stop the Thought Crime Act passing the Senate, SH1959 like HR1955 passed the House by a large majority.