It’s called “depleted uranium.” It is wonderful for piercing armor and bunkers. DU is just one of the toxic substances that remain as a poisonous footprint long after our troops have left. Lead and mercury are also contaminants that kill long after the conflict has ended and we have forgotten the name of the place where the bonbing happened.
In Basra, where we dropped 800 tons of bombs, and expended over a million bullets, babies began to be born with enlarged heads and eyes and defective hearts.
In Falluja, doctors reported that out of the 170 born one month, one fourth of them died within a week. Three quarters of the dead babies were deformed. A follow up study reported that the increases birth defects and infant deaths in Falluja were higher than in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In 2010, the University of Ulster reported that increases in congenital birth defects, leukemia and infant mortality in Falluja were higher than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
One scientist said, “a clear footprint of metal in the population” in Falluja and Basra. “There is compelling evidence linking the staggering increases in Iraqi birth defects to neurotoxic metal contamination following the repeated bombardments. There is no other explanation. There has been no volcano eruption, for example.”
The author then concludes: “These studies should be required reading for anyone who still wonders why the Arab and Muslim world remains so angry at America and its allies.”