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Nuclear Bunker Buster Bombs against Iran: This Way
Lies Madness
By Stephen M. Osborn
03/16/06 "
GlobalResearch" -- -- The latest information I
have had from the followers of Bush is that he has demanded and
received permission to use nuclear “bunker busters” in Iran in a
preemptive strike. As a nuclear veteran (Operation Redwing, Bikini,
1956) I can affirm that this is absolute madness. The “bunker
buster” is a cute sounding name for a nuclear horror. Air bursts are
horrible enough, doing incredible destruction through heat, shock
and high initial radiation. The fallout from an air burst is
registered around the world. A surface or subsurface burst is even
deadlier and more long lasting.
The Castle-Bravo blast at Bikini in 1954 was a fifteen megaton
surface blast. It blew a hole over a mile wide and four hundred feet
deep in the atoll, completely obliterating the island and vaporizing
over thirteen billion cubic feet of coral, rock and water, sending
it in a radioactive cloud extending into the stratosphere. The
fallout over the atolls downwind was devastating to the people and
ecology there. All of that material is rendered extremely
radioactive and as it cools it condenses to fall as rain or
radioactive “snow” which contaminates everything it touches. The
effects are felt worldwide.
Firing der Bush’s bunker busters in Iran, or anywhere else for that
matter, will vaporize hundreds of thousands of tons of earth, water
and rock and send this radioactive soup downwind to kill and sicken
whole populations. Those immediately downwind will die quickly, in
hours or days. Those further downwind will take longer. The global
incidences of cancers and disease will again rise markedly. The land
downwind will remain contaminated and unusable for generations. If
there were deep shelters, it has been postulated by the designers
that the bunker busters would not penetrate deeply enough to affect
them. I imagine that would initiate the attack theory of sending one
nuke after another into the same hole. Picture the intensity of the
radioactive disaster that would perpetrate on the area.
There are not too many of us left that witnessed the tests, but
there are a number of groups that monitor the effects through
cancers, birth defects, both physical and mental and monitoring of
contamination in the environment. We are still feeling the results
of those tests. I have exchanged e-mails with downwinders and with
the children of downwinders who have had children with birth defects
that had no previous history of such things in their families; who
suffer from cancers that are peculiar to nuclear radiation.
Now we are facing the specter of Depleted Uranium, which is turning
up in atmospheric filters around the world. Depleted Uranium is a
nuclear byproduct of the nuclear industry. It is a low level
radioactive material of extreme density. The half life of DU is 4.5
billion years. Workers in DU have to wear full protective equipment
and respirators. DU ammunition is extremely hard and dense. It
penetrates armor like tissue paper, vaporizing and burning, leaving
dust and particles as shrapnel to be ingested or breathed. DU is not
what the public thinks of as a radioactive material. It only emits
alpha and beta radiation. A piece of paper will stop it. However,
when it is in the lungs or elsewhere in the body, it is in contact
with living tissue, bombarding that tissue with low level radiation
for the rest of your life and beyond. That radiation can lead to
cancers, genetic damage and eventual death.
Independent laboratories like Johns Hopkins have studied this and
made predictions of the harm it can do. The government says, as it
did with Agent Orange, “There is nothing to it, it is all in your
head.” Meanwhile, people continue to sicken and die and will for
generations.
Chernobyl was not a nuclear explosion. It was just a very hot,
stubborn fire in nuclear fuel. Chernobyl and a huge surrounding area
is uninhabitable for an estimated three to six hundred years. The
fallout from Chernobyl contaminated food and livestock around Europe
and Scandinavia for a long time, and the radiation is still
traceable in the earth and some living things.
I, and many thousands like me, worked for many years to end the
nuclear threat. Treaties were drawn up and ratified. The Peaceful
Uses of Space treaty which guaranteed that no nation would use space
as a platform for making war. That treaty is now derided by the
American Military Establishment as naive. We are ready to take full
control of the space around earth to provide a high ground for
attack on any “threat” to the United States hegemony. The Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was to keep nuclear weapon
technology from spreading around the world. Der Bush has narrowed
that down to anyone who could conceivably at some time in the future
be a threat to American domination. Our “friends” can build what
they want. We’ll even help them. The Arms Reduction Treaty between
us and the CCCP. That was a treaty to destroy nuclear weapons and
delivery systems on a mutual basis, with observers from each country
verifying the destruction. Der Bush and Putin decided to change that
to putting the weapons in storage instead of destroying them.
Storage means access by black marketeers who can bribe poorly paid
security guards and remove weapons and weapon grade material for
resale to the highest bidder.
Treaties mean nothing to this government, of course, if they
interfere with profits or power. The Geneva Conventions on the
treatment of prisoners is ignored, the international conventions
against torture are ignored, the tenets of our own Bill of Rights
and Constitution guaranteeing privacy and freedom of _expression to
its citizens are being canceled our by der Bush and his minions, the
United Nations Charter is ignored or derided. The Kyoto Protocols on
global warming and other studies are ignored by this administration
as they interfere with short term profits.
All of these breaches of humanity are overshadowed, however, by the
possibility of our using nuclear weapons. The effects of that will
be as earth shattering as global warming and pollution. This can be
avoided very simply by not using them, the one thing we cannot count
on der Bush doing unless we stop him by absolutely forbidding the
use of nuclear weapons. Even better would be to forbid him from
conducting so called “preemptive wars” with anybody who disagrees
with him.
Here are some links for those who wish to read a bit further into
the subject.
This is my page on the Atomic Veterans site. It contains writings on
my nuclear experiences. Then explore the rest of the site.
http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/osborn.htm
Downwinders are those who have been exposed to radiation through our
testing both here and in the Pacific.
http://www.downwinders.org/
There are a number of Chernobyl sites of interest, but these two
really bring it home.
http://library.thinkquest.org/3426/ Goes over the circumstances
and effects of Chernobyl on the world. The Kiddofspeed site is the
site of a courageous lady named Elena who has ridden her motorcycle
through Chernobyl and its surroundings, photographing what she found
there.
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html
Depleted Uranium is discussed at many sites including the following,
http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm Googling Depleted
Uranium will give you about five million hits, many of them
government apologia saying that DU is harmless, or nearly harmless.
http://www.cadu.org.uk/ is the
site of the Committee Against Depleted Uranium and well worth
reading.
http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html Is a site on DU and Gulf
War Syndrome, which also explores some of the problems with the
manufacture of DU armaments to the ecology in the vicinity of the
plants.
Please, do your own reading on the subject, then insist that the use
of nuclear weapons is unacceptable for any reason. As one who has
faced the nuclear dragon and survived, I can only say that “Ban the
Bomb” is not just a slogan, it is a necessity.
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