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Ahriman-Publishers, FAIR-USE ONLY, with Courtesy of AHRIMAN-PUBLISHERS, www.ahriman.com.
Speech for the “Conference on the Effects of the Use of Depleted Uranium Weaponry
on Human and Environment in Iraq” during 26th/27th of March 2002.
Beate Mittmann and Dr. Peter Priskil: Depleted Uranium Weaponry and the Western
Propaganda Warfare
We understand our participation in the ”Conference on the Effects of the Use of
Depleted Uranium Weaponry on Human and Environment in Iraq” in Baghdad as a sign of practised solidarity
from our side with the Iraqi people and with the political leaders of the country. Considering the long
history of U.S. war crimes during the 20th century, those criminal acts committed against Iraq
are singular in various aspects:
For the first time in history, a world power reigning without any restrictions –
U.S. monoimperialism – has subjected all other states to its dictates in order to wage war against an
independent nation, thus breaking international law as well as the law of nations;
for the first time in history, this criminal aggression – the aim of which was not
only the destruction of the economy and the infrastructure of a country from one border to the other, but
also the elimination of the cultural identity of a people: Iraq is not only a modern and, compared to its
gloomy medieval Islamic neighbouring countries, exemplary secular state, but also the cradle of human
civilization – was committed after the global streamlining of war propaganda – lies had become the
world´s public´s daily bread – had been completed;
- finally, for the first time
in history, a whole people has been taken into custody as hostages by the aggressor: the embargo imposed on
Iraq has placed the whole country into the Paria-like status of a ghetto for more than ten years now, its
inhabitants are robbed of their most fundamental rights -including their right to live.
We therefore demand:
- The immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of the embargo!
- The acknowledgment
of Iraq as an independent nation with equal rights!
- Reparation payments
to Iraq by any state participating directly or indirectly in the aggression covering the total of the
damages caused by war and embargo!
It has to be noted that these are the minimum demands, that result from the obvious
principles of national self-determination and of human rights, but it is these very "human rights" that have been shabbily abused and perverted in Orwellian manner for a decade now,
in order to procure a pretext for the neocolonial invasions by the U.S.; they are minimum demands, because
they will not bring any Iraqi citizen killed by bombs, any old man, who died of hunger because of the
embargo or any child who died from deficiency disease back to life again.
As participants in this conference, which supplies a platform for numerous
international experts, we are painfully aware of the fact that it is taking place in the home
country of the victims. Such a conference could never be held in those countries where the perpetrators
live – whether it is the U.S., Great Britain or Germany. In those countries, which love to boast about
their ”freedom” and which eliminate the last remains of freedom in the name of freedom, neither lecture
nor public funds would be procured, no Iraqi scientist and no Iraqi victim would ever be allowed to inform
the public without being hindered; no big newspaper and no TV station would be ready to report about these
facts. The ”free Western world” is a fiction which is spread in order to mask the totalitarian character
of the global U.S.dictatorship and in order to hold the population of one´s own country at bay by means of
a mixture of suggestion and threats and force them into obedience and loyalty. The most important
instruments for achieving this goal are the media, organized in a monopoly and brought in line all over the
world to serve the interests of the United States.
This leads us to today´s topic – but before dealing more closely with the question
as to which relative importance reports about D.U. ammunition have in Western war propaganda, by what means
and in what successive stages it blurs peoples´ minds and thus serves the interests of US imperialism by
vindicating the crimes of the past and helping to prepare the crimes of the future, I should like to make
another important remark.
War and embargo have by now cost the lives of 1.5 million Iraqi citizens; the former
U.S. Secretary of State, Albright, brazenly stated that this was ”worth it”. Let us just give a vivid
impression of what this number means: it is, as someone once justly said, ”the inconspicuous equivalent to
ten U.S. atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. In our opinion, another comparison seems to be even more
pertinent: the first genocide in modern history, the massacre among the Armenians, organized by the Turkish
government at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, cost nearly
the same number of victims. No one, apart from the Turkish government, will doubt the fact that this
genocide has been committed; the American government of our days is guilty of having committed exactly the
same crime against Iraq in terms of both the base notices and the dimension and the consequences. Many of
those 1.5 million people died under the hail of bombs, the greater part of them, however, fell victim to the
consequences of the embargo, from exhaustion, hunger and deficiency diseases, exactly like those unfortunate
Armenians did during their ”death marches”. The crime of the United States therefore does not consist so
much in the use of malignant weapons of a new type but in their effort of enforcing their strategic goals by
means of mass murder, in whatever way.The Nazis would be not a bit better if they had ”only” slain and
shot their victims or hunted them to death by means of forced labour and trained dogs; the atrociousness of
fascist crimes results not only, and not even primarily from the use of cyankali as a means of mass murder.
Analogously, the use of radioactive and therefore toxic D.U. projectiles resulting in
long-term devastating consequences for the population of Iraq characterizes the inhumane policy of the
United States. These projectiles had been developed for the purpose of penetrating steel armour plating
because of their great penetrating power: Is accepted the contamination of civilians as well as that of one’s
own troops without the slightest scruple – between 30,000 and 100,000 veterans of the Second Gulf War are
now suffering from the "Gulf War Syndrome". No reasonable person could, however, deem it less
atrocious, if 1.5 millions Iraqis had ”only” died of untreated diseases, infections resulting from
contaminated drinking water, lack of medicine, hunger and physical weakness. The use of radioactive
projectiles is one aspect - though a characteristic one – of the criminal policy of the United States, who
will stop at nothing, not even at heaps of corpses, in order to achieve their goals; as we shall see, the
use of D.U. projectiles serves the purpose of preparing further crimes, which, with the help of the media,
are to be worked up to achieve the desired psychological effect on the masses and are to be realized in the
future.
Let us now describe in what stages and by what means this has been enacted.
First stage: Complete media censorship and repressive measures by the state against
the spreading of information about the true facts
To have proven the radioactive remains of D.U. projectiles, of which about 300 tones
are scattered on the territory of Southern Iraq, to be the cause of the initially mysterious ”Gulf War
Syndrome” is owed to the work of a single person, the German physician and humanist professor,
Siegwart-Horst Günther. When he travelled to the devastated Iraq in order to distribute humanitarian aid
supplies, he discovered a hitherto unknown syndrome in dead animals and dying children and was able to prove
that the sick individuals had , to a greater or lesser extent, previously been in contact with the
projectiles. When returning to Germany, Professor Günther carried the core of such a projectile with him in
order to have its radioactive emission examined, and German state authorities took action at once: When he
presented the evidence for the first time in Germany, a Berlin district court fined the scientist 3,000
deutschmarks plus legal costs on January 15th, 1993. The reason: violation of the ”Atomic
Energy Law”. At the same time, Professor Günther's pension payments were frozen and he was refused
admission to the German pension and health insurance scheme. The scientist's post was repeatedly
intercepted, his telephone tapped. On June 22nd, 1995, Professor Günther was arrested on some
pretext and held prisoner in inhumane conditions; during the ensuing hunger strike, which lasted nearly four
weeks, he lost 16 kg in weight, before he attained freedom by raising bail. Since then, he has found several
important personal documents missing, including an important Polish order of merit. Since October 1995 the
German state authorities have refused to issue him with a valid passport; this means that Professor
Günther's humanitarian aid is being put under serious threat. Robbed of the basic right of freedom of
movement, Professor Günther then turned to the European Parliament. At the same time these repressive
measures by state authorities were taken against him, his documentation published by us showing photographs
of dreadfully deformed victims of radioactivity[1] was passed over in silence by all media throughout Germany for years – until about
1997. This was also true in our case as the authors of the documentation of American war crimes against
Iraq, which was for a long time the only one in existence and, apart from Ramsey Clark's publications, the
most comprehensive one[2]: the fact that our book had been published was not mentioned in the media, no
newspaper reporter attended our lectures; on the contrary, we were insulted by so-called ”Iraqis in exile”,
paid from a special fund of the American secret service CIA, and were called ”Saddam Hussein´s agents”.
This was the situation in Germany, and it has to be taken as a representative example
of the situation in all states of the ”free Western world”. The most important insight drawn from these
events is: censorship and violent repression always serve one purpose, namely the suppression of the truth -
while those in power are perfectly aware of its existence - in order to keep their own people in ignorance
and to make them submissive executors of their criminal policy. Censorship and violent repression are thus
to be taken as indicators of a criminal intention, which in our case consists in bringing about not only the
destruction of Iraq but also the painful death of hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants. In order to
achieve this base goal, Western media are using special methods that have been developed from psychological
experiments carried out for purposes of the police and that work perfectly. To put it in a general and
illustrative way, the media's method is to have suggestion associated with the notion of violent repression;
the specific finding of the police's psychological methods, which are to warrant the subjects' obedience –
it is summarized under the technical term ”reduction of cognitive dissonance” - is the following: in
case two contradictory or incompatible perceptions or ideas come up at the same time (dissonance), the
individual will eliminate the one that is more easily eliminated (reduction); and in the course of this
inner conflict the opinion that is presented by a ”strong sender” will prevail – usually this sender
is an offspring of state power and this is the case with the media. Let us illustrate this fatal process by
means of a concrete example: after the military aggression against Iraq it becomes publicly known that
thousands of soldiers from the aggressor's side have fallen seriously ill, that their children are severely
deformed and courageous individual speakers – that is, according to our definition a ”weak sender” –
prove that this illness is related to the use of radioactive ammunition, furthermore, that the contamination
rate in Iraq is thousand times higher than officially claimed and the same applies to the extent of the
sufferings of the people there. At this point, the "strong sender" – represented by physicians of the army, bribed civil physicians and "medical experts" - speaks up in the mass media: there
is "no proof whatsoever" of such a context, such statements are "mere speculation" and "not tenable"; on the contrary: the effects described are nothing but the side-effects of a
vaccination the soldiers had been given to protect them against highly toxic poisonous gas used by Iraqi
troops. What appears to be a cheap tit for tat to the observer at first glance takes effect nonetheless: the
media consumer, weak on grounds of his being atomized, isolated, decides the inner conflict "criminal use of radioactive ammunition" versus "protective measure against poisonous gas attacks" in favour of the "strong sender" and comes to the conclusion that the one being attacked is the aggressor, the victim
is the perpetrator.This calculation has, as is unfortunately so often the case, worked and has cost the
lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people. The media's crime is: aiding and abetting mass murder.
We mentioned earlier the rulers criminal intent to lie while being well aware of the
true facts and their context, and meanwhile we are able to prove this positively, since the American
military staff and politicians knew about the ultimately lethal dangerousness of D.U. ammunition right from
the start. Here is some evidence:
- As early as in 1979, U.S. army staff
carried out thorough experiments with D.U. ammunition on Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Their findings: almost
half of the uranium oxide released when the projectile hits the target is dissolved as toxic particles in
the pulmonary fluid; persons who inhaled the toxic particles may even catch leukaemia several years later.
- In October 1993, the
US Military Headquarters in Washington strongly warn their combat troops in Somalia of the dangerous effects
of D.U. ammunition. Comprehensive safety measures are proposed, including the decontamination of D.U.
ammunition under special safety precautions and the transportation of specimens in radiation-proof
containers.
- In 1998, scientists
of the U.S. military forces publish a study proving the carcinogenic effect of the remains of used D.U.
ammunition.
- In their circular of
July 1st, 1999, the general staff of the U.S. forces expressly warn of the dangerous effects of depleted
uranium ammunition. The wearing of protective clothing and masks was "absolutely" necessary, they
point out.
But what was to be learned in the media at the same time? "It's nothing but
hysteria", "no evidence whatsoever", "no reason to worry". NATO's Secretary-General
Robertson issued the order of the day to the press: "We have to convince people that there is no
long-term damage". And the press made a thorough job of it.
Second stage: A few admissions, playing down the dangers, and continuation of the
crimes
Hiding the facts and suppressing the truth served quite a concrete and practical
purpose, for, after the aggression against Iraq, the U.S. military continued to use D.U. ammunition, namely
in Somalia in the year 1993 - a fact which became known only in 2001 (I refer to the aforementioned warning
circular). This was followed by the use of D.U. ammunition during the war against the Bosnian Serbs in
1994/95: 10,800 projectiles corresponding to about three tons of uranium were fired upon Serbian positions
in the environments of Sarajevo and the entire Bosnian territory. During NATO's colonial attack upon
Yugoslavia in 1999, 31,000 projectiles making a total of 10 tons of uranium were fired upon targets all over
Yugoslavia. Five Serbian regions, including Southern Serbia, Montenegro, the towns of Niš, Leskovac,
Bujanovac and notably Belgrade, remained contaminated up to the present day. Recently, D.U. ammunition was
widely used in the US colonial attack on Afghanistan; some sources speak of "several times more"
ammunition being used than against Iraq.
This had severe consequences - primairily for the respective population, of course,
but also for the United States' vasall troops that subsequently marched into defeated Yugoslavia as
occupation forces - the "peace-keeping forces" as they are called in the media. After a short
time, seven Italian soldiers had died of cancer and another 23 were suffering from leukaemia; further cases
were reported from Great Britain, France, and the Czech Republic. Tumults were reported from the Portuguese
Parliament when it became known that Portuguese soldiers were suffering from contamination with D.U.
ammunition, and Prime Minister Antonio Guterres felt compelled to declare that he would "no longer
believe NATO's assertions". In Norway, 400 soldiers of the elite batallion, "Telemark",
refused to follow an operational order in Kosovo. - In short:: something had to be done.
And it is exactly for such purposes that those in power own the media. Since the
harmful effects of D.U. ammunition could no longer be denied - any further suppression of the facts could
have resulted in an erosion of the loyalty of the masses - reports appeared here and there - quite
selectively and presented as rare individual cases - and it was admitted that there was a
"possibility" that D.U. ammunition could "perhaps in certain situations" cause serious
diseases. The importance of such statements - which, besides, always have a markedly hypocritical and
mendacious tenor - lies not so much in this forced admission of a bit of the truth - but in its
psychological effect, i.e. to make people believe that any news is to be learned from the media, always and first-hand; the greatest good of the
"free Western world" is the masses' belief in TV and newspapers. And, as a matter of fact, the
aforementioned media manoeuvre had no enlightening effect at all - if this had been intended, the
information would have had to be spread quickly and with determination; instead, the content of the message
can be summarized as follows: "Look and see what lies we have been presenting you all the past years -
and we will do so also in the future". The media's belated pseudo-disclosure of the fact that Iraqi
soldiers had never killed Kuwaiti babies in their incubators, too, did not in the least arouse an uproar
among those that had been so brazenly deceived but only increased their feeling of resignation even more (I
should like to mention in this context that we ourselves had immediately pointed to the false assertions of
such news at that time, but we were only a "weak sender"). This resignation is caused by the
threatening undertone that always accompanies this kind of "news". As far as reports about D.U.
ammunition were concerned, the statements which appeared to be some admission of the truth were combined
with news about "findings" that these projectiles also "generally contained plutonium" -
a substance that is 56.000 times more toxic than depleted uranium -, and "expertises" were
ordered, the findings of which were soon to be heard: "Exonerating evidence and 'all-clear'
signal", "no danger", everything had been nothing but "scaremongering and media
sensationalism".
Indivuals with common sense, reason and the capability to handle reality may have
doubts as to whether it is actually possible to produce such a state of mental deformation and fear-induced
brainlessness in human beings, i.e. beings with the potential capability of thinking. It certainly is, and
the examples presented here are ample proof. It is therefore worth the effort to acquire the knowledge and
understanding of at least the most important mechanisms of Western war propaganda in order to render them
ineffective. Otherwise, the dimension of the crimes to be enacted in the future will by far exceed that of
the past and present ones. As regards D.U. ammunition, this would be:
Third stage: Getting people accustomed to the use of nuclear weapons by the United
States:
We should bear in mind: of all states in the world, the United States has been the
first and up to now the only one that has ever used nuclear bombs. During the Korean war in the early
fifties, the United States, on various occasions, considered using nuclear weapons against North Korea; what
prevented them at that time from doing so was only the existence of the Soviet Union - themselves trying
hard and at extreme and finally fatal sacrifices to keep up with the United States' armament - and the
interventions of the then Prime Minister of Great Britain – if there had been a clash of the two nuclear
powers, Europe would have been turned into a radioactively contaminated field of ruins. Today, the Soviet
Union does not exist any more, and the European governments have let themselves be degraded to completely
submissive puppets of the Pentagon, to undignified creatures of the U.S. Caesar electus. Every Iraqi citizen
can confirm this to be correct each and every day when being alternately terrorized by U.S. combat aircrafts
or British ones.
The historical ultimate victory of monopoly capitalism having been achieved, the
United States no longer requires a gigantic arsenal of nuclear weaponry by means of which it would be able
to destroy entire regions and wipe out large towns; well-aimed nuclear missiles with small war heads will do
now to eliminate the leading political and military bodies of their enemy states, the so-called "rogue
states". This exactly is the background to the United States' redesigning its nuclear warfare
equipment, as is currently to be observed. A high-ranked Pentagon official made it quite clear what purposes
these weapons are to serve: "The goal is to blow up Saddam Hussein's air-raid shelter without setting
the whole city of Baghdad on fire". No one should ever say they were keeping their intentions secret;
Hitler, too, had announced the attack upon the Soviet Union several years beforehand.
In order to be able to enact such crimes, however, the effective manipulation of the
masses by the media is necessary. As far as the military aggressions against Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia and
currently against Afghanistan are concerned, they have made a thorough job of it. Regarding the use of D.U.
ammunition, which is neither a merely convential nor a strictly nuclear weapon, the media have achieved the
fatal effect of getting people accustomed to it:: the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of
radioactively contaminated victims no longer shocks those who are permanently exposed to the influence and
effects of Western war propaganda. Hence there remains only one final task to be fulfilled: to lower the
threshold of the public's acceptance of the use of nuclear weaponry by the United States, and that is
exactly the stage we are currently undergoing.
In order to prevent such a crime against mankind, Europe, but particularly the United
States, need a political opposition - that is yet to be formed - which, above all, will distinguish itself
by two characteristic traits: it has to be under no illusions and must have the will and the patience to
inform and educate the public with unsparing frankness in order to erode the masses' loyalty towards a
political system which, because of its inexorable hostility to freedom and self-determination, because of
its inhumane aims and acts, has forfeited the right to exist in its present form once and for all.
Copyright: Ahriman-Publishers, FAIR-USE ONLY, with Courtesy of AHRIMAN-PUBLISHERS, www.ahriman.com.