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NEW VISION IV
War & Weapons of War |
Cyclops,
Odilon Redon, 1898
The single eye of the Cyclops reflects the belief that we, the human species, have the right to master nature and, if we so choose, use the elements of life to destroy life. Implicit in this is the idea that we are not part of nature. Yet, it becomes ever clearer that we need to grow beyond this one-eyed vision or risk self destruction.
Weapons, aggression, defence and war have traditionally been and still are the concern of men. Women have suffered, have lost their own lives and the lives of husbands, fathers, sons and daughters in war but in the past woman's voice has been inaudible. Even now, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, it is still inaudible. At the present time, woman's voice needs to be heard as much as man's. It is as much woman's concern as man's if violence continues to escalate, until, with the immense power of our weapons and our spiritual immaturity, we risk destroying not only civilisation, but the possibility of life on this planet.
New Vision, Introductory page
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Click hereThe Great Challenge of our Time
Click hereWar and Weapons of War: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical - This Page New Perspectives in Science
Click hereEcological Concerns
Click HereNew Perspectives on the Psyche
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The Pathology of Weapons of War - by Anne Baring
The Pathology of Weapons of War
"The world establishment is firmly entrenched in the business of war: The permanent Members of the Security council of the United Nations were together responsible for 81% of world arms exports from 1996 - 2000. Indeed, the world leaders who express deep frustration at the 'irresponsibility' of anti-globalisation protesters lead the countries that make the most money in this terrible trade. The G8 countries sold 87% of the total supply of arms exported in the entire world. and the US share alone has reached almost 50% of this figure. As much as 68% of American arms manufacture goes to developing countries." Amartya Sen (Published in Resurgence Magazine May/June 2003)
"The divine and the demonic are very close together; only a thin line separates them/us. We who are indeed capable of divinity are also capable of the demonic. And the deepest of all demonic activity is the use of our divine imaginations to invent destruction."
Matthew Fox, Original BlessingWe have made great progress in the last hundred years in the realm of science and technology, in the treatment of disease and the prolongation of our lives. But at the same time, we stand at the brink of an abyss into which we may be plunged through our enslavement to military technology. Weapons that were unimaginable a hundred years ago can now obliterate all life on earth, sending us back to the beginning of evolution. The drive for omnipotent power - to reach a position of "full spectrum dominance" (a phrase used by the Pentagon) - now threatens the planet and the life it sustains. However, it seems that the sheer madness of the escalation of the power to destroy passes unnoticed by the leaders of governments.
Fortunately, the very urgency of the danger is activating an initiative on the part of millions of people in many different countries to challenge their governments' addiction to war and weapons, and to call them to account for initiating wars that are embarked on in the name of self-defence, freedom and democracy but leave a legacy of further violence and a lethal trail of human suffering in their wake.
The theme of this website is that each of us is an expression of a vast sea or field of consciousness - invisible, and as yet barely recognised by us. We are part of a great living web of life. We cannot achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. The belief that we can continue indefinitely to act as if nations were autonomous units, developing the power to destroy life on a colossal scale without our demonic inventions returning to us in the form of an 'enemy', armed with precisely the weapons we have developed for our own protection, is not only an illusion but a pathology - a madness. But it is a madness that is very difficult to see because the drive for omnipotence and dominance is an unconscious behaviour pattern - that is deeply rooted in the pre-human layers (limbic brain) of the modern psyche Now we are threatened with destruction by weapons that may fall into the hands of individuals who will spare no effort to encompass the destruction of a hated enemy. (see The Struggle for Primacy and Dominance and the Roots of War under the section Comment on the Home page; also seminar 9 - the Dragon).
For over fifty years the concentration on the development of these weapons - first and foremost by the United States and the Soviet Union, but also the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and now Iran - has brought into being the very situation that was most feared - the power of a nation, group, or disturbed individual to destroy life on an apocalyptic scale. The general public is not aware that at the present time 16 states either possess, are developing or are attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. 20 states possess, are attempting to acquire or are preparing a system capable of using biological weapons. 26 states are in a similar position with regard to chemical weapons.
What has been hidden from the public over the last fifty years about the manufacture and stockpiling of biological and chemical weapons is now being revealed and suggests a scenario more horrifying even than that offered by nuclear weapons. (1) The propensities for evil in the human imagination exceed most people's grasp. Few can grasp the enormity of the fact that scientists and military personnel are capable, whether in the interests of self-defence or with the intention of destroying a feared enemy, of inventing and developing weapons which could unleash an irreversible catastrophe on the world. We did not witness the dropping of the atomic bombs on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the way that we witnessed the horrific attack on the twin towers in New York. Yet even as we discovered what had happened in Japan, we were barely able to take in the obscenity of that act, justified at the time as necessary to shorten the war with Japan. Now we are faced with the possibility of more such atrocities but on a vastly increased scale, not only through the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but of biological, chemical and genetically targeted ones as well.
We, the inhabitants of the planet, are not fully aware of the dangers of the continued development of nuclear, biological and other weapons because weapons are selected and funds (derived from the taxes we pay) committed to their development by governments and military experts without our knowledge. We do not know that these weapons are in existence until there is mention of their being used against us or until, (as in Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds or the use of depleted uranium by the United States and Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan), we hear of the victims of such weapons, which victims include members of our armed forces. Nor have most people the time to focus on these crucially important issues and the technological expertise or the power to challenge their governments.
What makes us, as a species, capable of engendering such evil and worse, incapable of recognising and acknowledging that it is evil? Why are we still so unconscious? What is the compulsion that drives us to imagine, invent and develop ever more demonic weapons of destruction? The arrow, the battleaxe, the sword and the gun once used in hand-to-hand fighting have been replaced by nuclear bombs, missiles tipped with deadly depleted uranium, cluster-bombs that act like land mines, biological and chemical weapons - even the technology to eliminate specific ethnic groups and, incredibly, to interfere with the upper layers of the atmosphere or the magnetic field of the earth (2) - all weapons of destruction which can be targeted at the 'enemy' without involving loss of life on 'our side'. Every twenty minutes someone is either killed or maimed by a land mine somewhere in the world. We rarely hear mention of the babies and children maimed and deformed by depleted uranium.
It is probable that we are contributing to the increase of aggression by the very fact of constantly preparing for war. The military obsession with the technology of war is the factor that makes its occurrence inevitable. Once the technology is imagined and brought into being, it is almost impossible to contain. It has to be "tried out" in action. We have reached the point where the continued anticipation of the need to defend ourselves against future enemies and the drive to invent ever more sophisticated weapons has become self-defeating. The leaders of nations and the military branch of governments are currently living in a mind-set that is out of date in relation to the needs of the planet and now threatens our very survival as a species.
Survival instincts married to the imaginative capacity for evil in the human psyche bring evil into being in the form of weapons of destruction and the suffering their use engenders. The enemy is now Hitler, now Stalin, now Saddam Hussein, now Osama bin Laden and, most recently, Iran and North Korea. There will always be a greater, more powerful enemy as long as we continue to produce ever more lethal weapons and as long as we continue to demonise our enemies as being the sole perpetrators of evil. The real enemy hidden in the shadow aspect of our own nature is our inability to see the enormity of what we are prepared to do to life and to each other in continuing down this path.
Three-quarters of all scientists work for industry or the military. Colossal sums of money are spent every year on the production of weapons - over $1 trillion on military expenditure world wide. Colossal sums of money are made through the sale of arms. We produce arms and sell them to countries which may be at war with their neighbours, yet may eventually involve members of our armed forces as victims of those same weapons. War and weapons of war cause devastation, pollute earth and water, create millions of destitute refugees (currently over 50 million) who are deprived of their homes and livelihoods. Land mines destroy the lives and limbs of thousands of children yet ever more continue to be laid. All this should arouse outrage but the majority of the world's population has only a minimal grasp of what is being done or of how it might affect them. Dr. Rosalie Bertell, in her book, Planet Earth, the Latest Weapon of War, writes,Wars result in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparation for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security'. (3)
After the Second World War, the expertise to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons spread from the United States and the Soviet Union all over the world (see below). Anthrax, one of the most deadly of these weapons, was recognised as "a winner" because it can wipe out the population of an entire city which will remain contaminated for generations. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, the United Kingdom, China, India and Pakistan have access to the expertise needed to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Via Pakistan's nuclear expertise and scientists supportive of his cause, Osama bin Laden and his followers have access to nuclear material and the power to make some kind of bomb - perhaps a 'dirty' bomb combining nuclear waste and conventional explosives, as well as biological and chemical weapons. Pakistan's "father of the bomb," the scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, has now sold the technology for developing it to Libya, Iran and North Korea (2004).
The facts given here can only give rise to the utmost revulsion that we - whether ourselves or an 'enemy' - can conceive of treating human beings in this way in the interests of our own self-defence or in the service of a religious ideology. There is hardly a country that is exempt from this catalogue of evil since each hurries to equip itself with the latest technology of war insofar as it has the financial means to do so. There is another aspect to this addiction: we could, for far less than is currently being spent on weapons and the War on Terrorism, eliminate hunger in the world and ensure that everyone was provided with the basic necessities of life. Why are we willing to spend so much more on weapons and war than on helping people to survive?
What fissure exists in the mind of a scientist working on these weapons or an individual giving the order to produce and use them that their dedication to their work, their ideology or their military agenda overrides the capacity for empathy with other human beings? What fissure exists in the mind of each one of us who accepts the furtherance and use of this technology because of the protection it seems to offer us or because we don't know what else to do. We are, in effect, by complicity, potential murderers on a massive scale. We may name this loyalty to a particular national group or a particular religion but what of a deeper loyalty to life that has brought us into being, or the possibility of life for future generations and for the planet itself?
What can be done? Since our present path is leading us to catastrophe, we have surely to look for another way. It seems almost certain that the insistence on the need for a new vision will come from individuals. Governments and politicians may be too locked into the struggle for power to heed the danger that people can clearly see. It is time that the production and proposed use of these weapons is named a crime against humanity as the Club of Budapest has done www.clubofbudapest.com. If enough individuals can find the foresight and greatness of spirit to renounce these weapons, they will eventually break the negative chain of cause and effect and help to dismantle the illusion that evil can be eradicated in an enemy before it is recognised and renounced in ourselves.
A letter to the Times (17/2/04) from the distinguished scientist, Dr. Joseph Rotblat (President Emeritus of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs) is worth quoting here (extract) because he has worked tirelessly for just such an outcome.:"Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agence (IAEA) hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that the onus is on the established nuclear powers to lead the way in nuclear disarmament. As long as some states, including the most powerful ones, believe that their security demands the possession of nuclear weapons, how can we deny such security to other states which consider themselves to be vulnerable?...The elimination of nuclear weapons, and the establishment of a safeguard regime to prevent the clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons, present extremely difficult problems, but they will never be solved unless an effort is made to tackle them. The body set up to do this, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, is prevented from doing its job by the continued refusal by the nuclear powers to put it on its agenda. Unless this issue is given high priority it is inevitable that other nations will seek security in keeping or acquiring nuclear weapons and eventually terrorist groups too will acquire nuclear weapons."
©Anne Baring
1. see BBC Documentary July 13th and 14th, and November 19th, 1998; Channel Four Documentary October 29th, 2001, UK.
2. Rosalie Bertell, Planet Earth, the Latest Weapon of War, The Women's Press, London, 2000. See review under Booklist.
3. ibid, p. 2.
The following data on biological weapons and warfare have been gathered from television documentaries. The information is drawn from the notes I made at the time. A more complete account is given in a recently published book called Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (see notes).
Biological weapons were developed by Japan in its war with China prior to the Second World War. (4) The Japanese military were trying to find efficient ways to kill people by methods other than conventional weapons. Biological weapons seemed a cheap and lethal weapon. Doctors and scientists were ordered to find ways of transforming disease into weapons. The Japanese developed a bomb that could carry anthrax and bubonic plague. They released plague infected fleas over the city of Ningpo in 1940. 500 people died and many more were infected. Only one survivor is alive today.
4. The atrocities in Pingfan are not the only ones that took place during this war. Iris Chang, an American woman of Chinese descent, investigated and chronicled the details of the barbaric acts inflicted by Japanese troops on the Chinese population of Nanking in 1937. Her controversial book was published in 1997. Deeply affected by the horror of what she was describing, she was hospitalised for depression. On November 9th, 2004, when she was in the midst of working on another book on the Bataan Death March, she committed suicide.
5. Professor M.S. Blackett, Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy, Blackwell Press, 1948.
6. Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad. Publisher: Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001.
A WAKE UP CALL - General Lee Butler
The public seems to have forgotten about the dangers of nuclear weapons now that the Cold War is over. But many high-ranking military officers are sufficiently alarmed about the possibility of their accidental use to urge abolishing all nuclear weapons, including those in the U.S. arsenal.
----- One Admiral, Noel Gayler, former U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific Command, puts it this way: "Does nuclear disarmament imperil our security? No, it enhances it."
----- Admiral Eugene Carroll, former director of U.S. military operations for all U.S. forces in Europe and the Middle East, states: "Nuclear weapons are the sole military source of our national insecurity. We, and the whole world, would be much safer if nuclear weapons were abolished."Recently, a full-page ad in The New York Times and other major newspapers called for the U.S. to take the lead in ridding the world of all nuclear weapons. Among those who signed the ad: Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Director of Central Intelligence and Commander-in-Chief, Allied Southern Forces, Europe; General Andrew Goodpaster, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Charles Horner, former Commander, Coalition Air Forces, Desert Storm; Admiral William A. Owens, former Vice-Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ad calls for immediately de-alerting the thousands of land- and sea-based missiles now ready to launch in minutes, and deeply reducing nuclear stockpiles.
One of the first high-ranking military officers to speak out for abolishing nuclear weapons was General Lee Butler, who, as Commander-in-Chief of United States Strategic Air Command, had planning and operational responsibilities for all of America's strategic nuclear forces. Butler retired from the military in 1994, fully intending not to comment publicly on national security matters. But two and a half years later, he could no longer stay quiet about "my deepening dismay as a citizen of this planet."
----- In Waging Peace Worldwide, the journal of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Butler tells about his experiences in the military and what led him to devote his life toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.-----I get a lot of questions like, "If you had been President Truman, would you have made the decision to drop atom bombs on Japan?" "Was this a revelation, was it an epiphany, what was the catalyst for your change of view?" The questions go to the issue of when I had the responsibilities as the commander of the nuclear forces, as a nuclear advisor to the President and, perhaps most particularly, as the person who devised the nuclear war plan…
----- The evolution of my views was not an epiphany, not some road to Damascus revelation. From the very outset, the nuclear arena was superimposed with a blanket of secrecy that was virtually impenetrable. Access to the knowledge and access to the levers of power that control this arena was reserved to a very small number of people throughout its history in this country and in the Soviet Union.
----- I was commissioned as a lieutenant in June 1961. I became the commander of the nuclear forces of the United States in January 1991, almost 30 years later to the month. Until the day I assumed those responsibilities, I had never been given access to the nuclear war plan of the United States in its entirety, even though in Washington I had policy responsibilities that directed the plans. I knew nothing about the submarine operations of the strategic nuclear forces of the United States, and I had no idea how the decision process took place that would lead to a command from the President of the United States to unleash nuclear war and retaliation for a presumed strike.Deepening Doubts
Up to that point I had developed a series of reservations and doubts that progressively deepened. I had no basis for understanding whether these concerns were based on lack of information and insight or whether they were rooted in the reality of bureaucratic processes run amuck by the intrusion of the self-serving profit interests of the military-industrial complex, by the collision of cultures and turf in the Pentagon for budget dollars, or simply by the towering forces of alienation and isolation that grew out of the mutual demonization between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over a period of 45 years. I just didn't know.
----- Beginning in early 1991, I went through a process that very quickly accelerated and confirmed my worst fears and my worst concerns. What we had done in this country, what I believe happened in the Soviet Union, and what I think will inevitably happen in any country that makes the fateful decision to become a nuclear power-to acquire the capability to build and employ nuclear weapons-is this: the creation of gargantuan agencies with mammoth appetites and a sense of infallibility that consume infinite resources in pursuit of a messianic vision of a demonization.A Chilling Ballet
In those responsibilities of commander of the forces responsible for the day-to-day operational safety, security, and preparation to employ those weapons, I was increasingly appalled by the complexity of this ballet of hundreds of thousands of people managing, manipulating, controlling, and maintaining tens of thousands of warheads and extremely complex systems that flew through the air, were buried in the bowels of the land, or patrolled beneath the seas of the world.
----- The capacity for human error, human failure, mechanical failure, misunderstanding, was virtually infinite. I have seen nuclear airplanes crash under circumstances that were designed to replicate-but were inevitably far less stressful than-the actual condition of nuclear war. I have seen human error lead to the explosion of missiles in their silos. I have read the circumstances of submarines going to the bottom of the ocean laden with nuclear missiles and warheads because of failures, mechanical flaws, and human error. I read that entire history, and when I came away from it-because I was never given access to it before-I was chilled. I was chilled to the depth of my strategic soul.
----- Secondly, consider my responsibilities as a nuclear advisor. Every month of my life as a commander of the nuclear forces, I went through an exercise called the Missile Threat Conference. It would come at any moment of the day or night. For three years I was required to be within three rings of my telephone so that I could answer a call from the White House to advise the President on how to respond to nuclear attack. The question that would be put to me in these conferences, and as it would be in the event, was "General Butler, I have been advised by the Commander-in-Chief of the North American Air Defense Command that the nation is under nuclear attack. It has been characterized thusly. What is your recommendation with regard to the nature of our reply?"
----- That was my responsibility, and about half the time that call came in the middle of the night as Dorene and I lay in our bedroom. I had to be prepared to advise the President to sign the death warrant of 250 million people living in the Soviet Union. I felt that responsibility to the depth of my soul, and I never learned to reconcile my belief systems with it. Never.
----- My third responsibility was to devise the nuclear war plan of the United States. When I became the Director of Strategic Target Planning-another hat that I wore as the Commander of the Nuclear Forces-I went down to my targeting room, many floors beneath the surface. I told my planners that we were going to get to know each other very well because I wanted to understand the plan in its entirety. I think this story is the most graphic illustration of the evolution of my views and my concerns and, ultimately, my convictions. When I began to delve into that war plan, I was absolutely horrified to learn that it encompassed 12,500 targets. I made the personal commitment-because I saw it as absolutely integral to my responsibilities and the consequences of that targeting-to examine every single one of them in great detail.Ending the Madness
It took me three years to complete this analysis but only three months to be convinced that it was the most grotesque and irresponsible war plan ever devised by man, with the possible exception of its counterpart in the Soviet Union, which in truth probably mirrored it exactly. Because what that plan implied was, among other things, in the event of nuclear war between two nations, in the space of about 16 hours 20,000 thermonuclear warheads would be exploded on the face of our planet, signing the death warrant not just for 250 million Soviets, but for mankind in its entirety.
----- The second thing that I began to grasp was that neither in the Soviet Union nor in the United States did any of us ever understand those consequences, because the calculation as to the military effectiveness of that attack was based on only one criterion, and that was blast damage. It did not take into account fire; it did not take into account radiation. Can you imagine that? We never understood, probably didn't care about, and certainly would not have been able to calculate with any precision, the holistic effects of 20,000 nuclear weapons exploding virtually simultaneously on the face of the earth.
----- That was the straw that tilted my conviction with regard to the prospects of nuclear war, and ultimately to an unavoidable responsibility to end this. To end it! And by the grace of God I came to that awareness and I inherited my responsibilities at the very moment the Cold War was ending and, therefore, I had the opportunity to end the madness.
----- So in those three years I did what I could to cancel all of the strategic nuclear modernization programs in my jurisdiction, which totaled $40 billion. I canceled every single one of them. I recommended to the President that we take bombers off nuclear alert for the first time in 30 years, and we did. I recommended that we accelerate the retirement of all systems designed to be terminated in present and future arms control agreements, and we did. We accelerated the retirement of the Minuteman II force.
----- We shrank the nuclear warplanes of the United States by 75 percent. By the time I left my responsibilities, those 12,500 targets had been reduced to 3,000. If I'd had my way and I'd been there a while longer, they would have been reduced to zero. Ultimately I recommended the disestablishment of my command. I took down its flag with my own hands.Creeping Re-rationalization of Nuclear Weapons
When I retired in 1994, I was persuaded that we were on a path that was miraculous, that was irreversible, and that gave us the opportunity to actually pursue a set of initiatives, acquire a new mindset, and re-embrace a set of principles having to do with the sanctity of life and the miracle of existence that would take us on the path to zero. I was dismayed, mortified, and ultimately radicalized by the fact that within a period of a year that momentum again was slowed. A process that I have called the creeping re-rationalization of nuclear weapons was introduced by the very people who stood to lose the most by the end of the nuclear era.
----- The French re-initiated nuclear testing at the worst possible moment, as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty hung in the balance. We in the United States have re-initiated the process of demonization of "rogue nations." What a horrible, pernicious misuse of language! What an anti-intellectual dehumanizing process of reducing complex societies and human beings and histories and cultures to "rogue nations." Once you do that, you can justify the most extreme measures to include the reintroduction of nuclear weapons as legitimate and appropriate weapons of national security.A Second Chance
That was my evolution. That's how I transitioned from the coldness of the Cold War years, when I became an officer in the United States military at the height of the Cold War just prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to someone today who simply sees himself as a citizen of this planet and who was given an opportunity to step back from the brink of nuclear catastrophe. I left office feeling that this process, this extraordinary and unimaginable opportunity, had been delivered to us by a Creator who forgave our transgressions and who gave us a second chance. Now we seem determined to fritter it away. I can't tolerate that. This is why Dorene and I have decided to devote the balance of our lives on this planet to do our best to save it.General Butler founded the Second Chance Foundation, 12020 Shamrock Plaza, Suite 105, Omaha, NE 68154.
A QUESTION OF VALUES - By General Lee Butler
When I speak to former colleagues about nuclear abolition, they often ask three questions. One of them is, "What are you smoking?" A lot of people are just utterly mystified. They simply cannot understand why, from their perspectives, my views have changed so dramatically. Some of my mail is pretty hateful. It has absolutely no impact on my conviction or my assessment, but I've had to learn to live with the loss of relationships that I treasure.
----- The second question is, "I understand what you're saying and I kind of endorse it in principle, but why in the world do you think this is really even possible?" I got a question from my friend Warren Buffet when I discussed this with him. He said, "Lee, I agree in principle with what you are saying. I endorse it and I want to do what I can to help. But don't you think that instead of zero we ought to have just one?" That is the kind of question that I get from most people. Shouldn't we just have one? My answer is very simple. "Warren, if it's just one, how is it that we get to have it, and who gets to decide that?" And then there's a long pause, and the response is, "I've never thought of it that way."
----- The third set of questions that I get really pose a challenge. That is, "Lee you've just lost it. Nuclear weapons prevented World War III. They are all that stand between us and the forces of barbarism, the terrorists, the rogue nations. We, above all people, have the responsibility to continue to provide the barrier, the shield that shelters civilization and all that we hold dear. Nuclear weapons are the answer."
----- My response to that is really very simple. I've thought about this for a long time. It is the very core of my belief system. We cannot at once hold sacred the mystery of life and sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it utterly. They are irreconcilable. If we truly claim to the values that underlie our political system, if we truly believe in the dignity of the individual, and if we cherish freedom and the capacity to realize our potential as human beings on this planet, then we are absolutely obligated to pursue relentlessly our capacity to live together in harmony and according to the dictates of respect for that dignity, for that sanctity of life. It matters not that we continuously fall short of the mark. What matters is that we continue to strive. What is at stake here is our capacity to move ever higher the bar of civilized behavior. As long as we sanctify nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict, we will have forever capped our capacity to live on this planet according to a set of ideals that value human life and eschew a solution that continues to hold acceptable the shearing away of entire societies. That simply is wrong. It is morally wrong and it ultimately will be the death of humanity.These two statements by General Lee Butler and the introduction to them were published in issue 55 of the Timeline section, the Foundation for Global Community website www.globalcommunity.org. and are reproduced on this website with the permission of Kay Hays, Managing Editor, Timeline.
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 123,---
Santa Barbara, CA 93108 www.wagingpeace.org
WAR BUSINESS
By Douglas Mattern
President, Association of World CitizensWe are now in the third year of the new century and we stand bewildered by what happened to the wonderful expressions of hope and joy that were expressed in the millennium celebrations. Today the world is a mirror image of the 20th century, which was the most brutal and destructive in human history. A major factor is the war business that promotes militarism and conflict while producing enormous financial profit. A tragic indicator of the values of our civilization is that "There's no business like war business."
Just think of all the missiles, bombs, etc. that will be replaced for profit by the armament industry after the current U.S. military assault on Iraq. In the first 14 days the U.S. dropped over 8,700 bombs, including more than 3,000 cruise missiles. This includes cluster bombs, which is one of the most barbaric weapons ever created by the human mind.
Cruise missiles cost over $500,000 each. The Apache Longbow Helicopter costs about 22 million dollars each. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle costs over 1.2 million dollars. Each B-1 Stealth bomber costs over $2 billion.
Today it's Iraq on the receiving end of U.S. bombing. This country seems to have a proclivity for bombing small developing countries. Over the past several decades the list includes: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, Indonesia, Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Bosnia, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Congo, and Iraq the first time around.
Since 1992, the U.S. exported over $142 billion dollars worth of weapons to states around the world. This macabre world market is dominated by the U.S., which accounted for nearly half of all weapon sales in 2001, more than $12 billion dollars for U.S. manufacturers. The Center for International Policy estimates that about 80 percent of U.S. arms exports to the developing world go to non-democratic regimes.
Of the active conflicts in 1999, the U.S. supplied weapons or military training to parties in 39 of 42 conflicts. Other leading nations in this "merchants of death" business include Russia, France, Great Britain, China, Germany, and to a lesser degree, Sweden, Israel, Belgium, Belarus, Italy, North Korea, and more.
For U.S. companies, even larger profit is in the annual Pentagon budget. Over $60 billion was allocated to purchase new weapons for 2003. The Pentagon spends over $30 billion annually in research and development for new weapons.
The U.S. armament industry is the second most subsidized industry after agriculture. The administration's FY 2004 military budget is a big increase over 2003 at nearly $400 billion when including funding for nuclear weapons that is under the Department of Energy (DOE) Budget. Moreover, military spending is scheduled to increase over the coming years with projections of a $502 billion budget in FY 2009.
Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, says, "We've come to the point where we're spending more money than we spent during the Cold War." This money is to pay for a new generation weapons, including the militarization of space, which is a dream of never ending profits for the weapons industry.
The top lobbyist for the 2000 elections was Lockheed Martin at $2.8 million. In 2001, Lockheed-Martin had $14 billion in sales of weapons to the U.S. and foreign buyers. Moreover, Lockheed Martin recently received a $3.5 billion contract to sell F-16 jet fighters to Poland. As a new member of NATO, Poland, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, agreed to modernize their military and purchase new weapons. For the Lockheed sale, the U.S. Government loaned Poland $3.8 billion. The expansion of NATO is a vehicle to sell U.S. weapons, and not surprising, the weapons industry is the biggest lobbyist for NATO expansion.
The small arms trade is also a lucrative business, totaling between 4-6 billion dollars per year. The leading exporters in terms of value are the U.S. and Russia. But this business is spread around the world with over 1,000 companies in some 98 countries involved in the production of small arms and/or ammunition. Small arms kill over 500,000 people a year in conflicts.
HANDGUNS & MURDERS
The violence and obsession with armaments goes down to rifles and handguns, with the U.S. leading the parade. There are more than 65 million handguns in the U.S., and some 192 million in total firearms. In 1998 alone, dealers sold an estimated 4.4 million guns in the U.S., nearly two million of them handguns. The result was 12,102 people murdered by firearms.The nuclear weapons industry may soon get a new boost as the Bush team is threatening to resume nuclear testing at the Nevada underground site to develop new nuclear weapons, including "bunker busters" for use against hardened underground targets.
The Cold War ended over a decade ago, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports the world nuclear stockpile in 2002 totaled over 30,000 warheads. In addition to deployed nuclear warheads, thousands more are held in reserve and are not counted in official declarations. Moreover, thousands of U.S. and Russian warheads are on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice. The Center for Defense Information reports the United States spends $27 billion annually to prepare to fight a nuclear war.
Today the war business is in full swing with thousands of scientists and engineers going to work daily with the task of building or developing new weapons, including space-based weapons that would turn the heavens above into a new source of terrorism for humanity below.
At the same time, UN Secretary General Koffi Annan reminds us that half of humanity lives in poverty, existing on an average of $2 a day. The Arias Foundation reports that world military spending increased from $798 billion in 2000 to $839 billion in 2001. Half of the world's governments spend more on the military than for health care. This expenditure is a monumental waste of our wealth, resources, and intellectual talent for the means of destruction and astonishing profits for the armament companies. The war business is the world's ultimate criminal activity.
BARBARISM TODAY
We are at a pivotal point in history, thus the decision by the U.S. and Britain to wage war on Iraq, rather than working tirelessly for a civilized resolution through the United Nations, is a step backward to the barbarism of 20th century warfare. Time is crucial! It's imperative that we do all that is necessary to initiate a dramatic change to end the violence and war that now threatens the very fabric of our civilization.This requires that we pull down the curtain on the "architects of destruction" and put the war business permanently out-of-business. And it means ending the foolish quest to establish an American empire. We must put our energy and priority into strengthening and building a new United Nations. As former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali puts it, a third generation UN.
The first generation, the League of Nations, represented governments only. The current second generation UN is also comprised of governments which have the power, but it also includes a tremendous input and dependence on Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). The third generation UN must be democratic and also include the representation of the world's people and NGOs, and with some corporate responsibility. This could include a two-tier Parliament. One tier comprised of governments, and the second tier comprised of civil society.
The imperative change in the third generation UN must be the ability to resolve conflicts between nations and peoples through the framework of world law. There is no workable alternative to end the war system with all of its political, economic, and cultural elements.
"The age of nations is past, the task before us now, if we would survive, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and build the earth." - Teilhard de Chardin
Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens (AWC); a San Francisco based international peace organization with branches in 50 countries, and with UN NGO status. The website for AWC is http://www.worldcitizens.org/"http://www.worldcitizens.org/ http://www.worldcitizens.org/
Sources for material in this article include: Center for Defense Information (CDI) Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIRPI) United Nations Development Program (UNDP) United Nations Department for Disarmament U.S. State Department
e-mail worldcit@best.comPlease see 'Booklist Page' for a review of Dr. Rosalie Bertell's recent book, Planet Earth - The Latest Weapon of War (The Women's Press Ltd., London, 2000).
NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE - General Lee Butler
Let me begin by simply expressing my appreciation to those of you who have laboured for so many years, understanding intuitively what took years for those of us, presumably experts in this business, to appreciate.
----- And that is, that at the heart of the matter, nuclear weapons are the enemy of humanity. Indeed, they're not weapons at all. They're some species of biological time bomb whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the Earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.
----- It took me almost forty years to grasp the truth. It required thirty years simply to reach the point in my career where I had the responsibilities and, most importantly, the access to information and the exposure to activities and operations that profoundly deepened my grasp of what this business of nuclear capability is all about.
----- What I have come to believe is that much of what I took on faith was either wrong, enormously simplistic, extraordinarily fragile, or simply morally intolerable. What I have come to believe is that the amassing of nuclear capability, to the level of such grotesque excess as we witnessed between the United States and the Soviet Union over the period of the fifty years of the Cold War, was as much a product of fear and ignorance and greed and ego and power and turf and dollars, as it was about the seemingly elegant theories of deterrence.
----- Let me just take a moment and give you some sense of what it means to be the Commander of Strategic Nuclear Forces, the land and sea-based missiles and aircraft that would deliver nuclear warheads over great distances. First, I had the responsibility for the day-to-day operation, discipline, training, of tens of thousands of crew members, the systems that they operated and the warheads those systems were designed to deliver - some 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads. I came to appreciate in a way that I had never thought, even when I commanded individual units like B52 bombers, the enormity of the day-to-day risks that comes from multiple manipulations, maintenance and operational movement of those weapons. I read deeply into the history of the incidents and the accidents of the nuclear age as they had been recorded in the United States. I am only beginning to understand that history in the former Soviet Union, and it is more chilling than anything you can imagine. Much of that is not publicly known, although it is now publicly available.
----- Missiles that blew up in their silos and ejected their nuclear warheads outside of the confines of the silo. B52 aircraft that collided with tankers and scattered nuclear weapons across the coast and into the offshore seas of Spain. A B52 bomber with nuclear weapons aboard that crashed in North Carolina, and on investigation it was discovered that with one of those weapons, six of the seven safety devices that prevent a nuclear explosion had failed as a result of the crash. There are dozens of such incidents. Nuclear missile-laden submarines that experienced catastrophic accidents and now lie at the bottom of the ocean.
----- I was also a principal nuclear adviser to the President of the United States. What that required of me was to be prepared on a moment's notice, day or night, seven days week, 365 days a year, to be within three rings of my telephone and to respond to this question from the president: "General, the nation is under nuclear attack. I must decide in minutes how to respond. What is your recommendation with regard to the nature of our reply?"
----- In the thirty-six months that I was a principal nuclear adviser to the President, I participated every month in an exercise known as a missile threat conference. Virtually without exception, that threat conference began with a scenario which encompassed one, then several, dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of inbound thermonuclear warheads to the United States. By the time that attack was assessed, characterized and sufficient information was available with some certainty in appreciation of the circumstance, at most he had twelve minutes to make that decision. Twelve minutes - for a decision which, coupled with that of whatever person half a world away who may have initiated such an attack, held at risk not only the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of humankind in its entirety - the prospect of some 20,000 thermonuclear warheads being exploded within a period of several hours.
----- Sad to say, the poised practitioners of the nuclear art never understood the consequences of such and attack, nor do they today.
----- I never appreciated that until I came to grips with my third responsibility, which was for the nuclear war plan of the United States.
----- In January 1991, when the Cold War had already been declared over, I went downstairs, on my first day in office, to meet my war planners in the bowels of my headquarters. Finally for the first time in thirty years, I was allowed full access to the war plan. Even having some sense of what it encompassed, I was shocked to see that in fact it was defined by 12,500 targets in the former Warsaw Pact to be attacked by some 10,000 nuclear weapons, virtually simultaneously in the worst of circumstances, which is what we always assumed.
----- I made it my business to examine in some detail every single one of those targets. I doubt that that had ever been done by anyone, because the war plan was divided up into sections and each section was the responsibility of some different group of people. My staff was aghast when I told them I intended to look at every single target individually. My rationale was very simple. If there had been only one target, surely I would have to know every conceivable detail about it, why it was selected, what kind of weapon would strike it, what the consequences would be. My point was simply this: Why should I feel in any way less responsible simply because there was a large number of targets? I wanted to look at every one. ----- At the conclusion of that exercise I finally came to understand the true meaning of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life. I was sufficiently outraged that I alerted my superiors in Washington about my concerns. The shortest version of all of that is that I came to fully appreciate the truth that now makes me seem so odd. And that is: we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and, I suspect, the latter in greatest proportion.
----- The saving grace was that the Cold War was ending at this very moment. I was faced with a decision of great personal consequence. Now having fully appreciated the magnitude of our nuclear capability and what it implied, when joined in an unholy alliance with its Soviet counterpart, what was I to do? Awaiting in my inbox were $40 billion of new strategic nuclear weapons modernization programmes, wanting only my signature. What should be our goals for the next rounds of arms-control negotiations? How hard should I fight to maintain the budget of strategic forces, to keep bases open? And what to do with the nuclear war plan in all of its excess? My conclusion was very simple: I of all people had the responsibility to be at the forefront of the effort to begin to close the nuclear age.
----- I withdrew my support for every single one of those $40 billion of nuclear weapons programmes and they were all cancelled. I urged the acceleration of the START 1 accords and that Minuteman 2 be taken out of the inventory at an accelerated pace. I recommended that for the first time in thirty years bombers be taken off alert. The President approved these recommendations and, on the 25th September 1991, I sat in my command centre and with my red telephone I gave the orders to my bomber troops to stand down from alert. I put twenty-four of my thirty-six bases on the closure list. I cut the number of targets in the nuclear war plan by 75%, and ultimately I recommended the dis-establishment of Strategic Air Command, which the President also approved. I took down that flag on the 1st of June 1992.
----- As you can imagine, I went into retirement exactly five years ago with a sense of profound relief and gratitude - the relief that the most acute dangers of the Cold War were coming to a close, and gratitude that I had been given the opportunity to play some small role in eliminating those dangers. You can also imagine, then, my growing dismay, alarm and finally horror that in a relatively brief period of time, this extraordinary momentum, this unprecedented opportunity began to slow down. Once again the creeping re-rationalization of nuclear weapons began. The START 2 treaty was paralysed in the US Senate for three years and now in the Duma for three more. The precious window of opportunity began to close, and now we find ourselves in the almost unbelievable circumstance in which United States nuclear weapons policy has reverted to that of 1984. That our forces with their hair-trigger postures are effectively the same as they were at the height of the Cold War.
----- What a stunning outcome. I would never have imagined this state of affairs five years ago. This is an indictment. The leaders of the nuclear weapons states today risk very much being judged by future historians as having been unworthy of their age, of not having taken advantage of opportunities so perilously won at such great sacrifice and cost of re-igniting nuclear arms races around the world, of condemning humankind to live under a cloud of perpetual anxiety.
----- This is not a legacy worthy of the human race. This is not the world that I want to bequeath to my children and my grandchildren. It's simply intolerable. This is above all a moral question and I want to reiterate to you a quote. I took this quote to heart many years ago. It is from one of my professional heroes - General Omar Bradley, who said on the occasion of his retirement, having been a principal in World War II and having witnessed the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: "We live in an age of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living."
----- We have a priceless opportunity to elevate, to nudge higher and to learn to live on this planet with mutual respect and dignity. This is an opportunity we must not lose. My concern was such that I could not sit in silent acquiescence to the current folly…This article is taken from Resurgence Magazine, Edition 200 (May/June 2000), and is an edited text of a speech given the previous year at the Canadian Network Against Nuclear Weapons. It is reproduced here with permission from Satish Kumar, editor, Resurgence.
General Lee Butler was Commander-in-Chief of the United States Strategic
Command, Offnut Air Base, Nebraska. He retired in 1994.
THE WAR TO END WAR?
Editorial, Fourth World Review no.108, August 2001
WHEN THE HISTORY of our time comes to be written it will tell us, no doubt, of immense public concern for the ecological perils we are so impetuously promoting, of the moves being made towards economic globalisation, of concern for human rights, of the mass-motoring mania being sustained by a constantly expanding consumption of finite fuel resources, of the non-stop expansion of human numbers in an already overcrowded planet and much else besides.
----- But what will surely amaze any future historian and his readers, assuming there will be any of either category living, is the incredible degree of passivity that currently prevails over the proliferation of monster weapons of mass destruction.
----- In 1945 the USA was the only country to possess nuclear weapons and it proceeded to destroy a huge area of two Japanese cities with them. Why did it not drop them at sea or in open country to show their potential, instead of on inhabited cities? One writer has suggested that the decision had nothing to do with the Japanese war but with a US intention to intimidate the Soviet Union. Stalin appears to have been duly intimidated, enough to proceed with production of similar weapons of his own.
----- Today twenty countries, probably more, possess these awesome weapons and even these have to be seen in the context of other weapons, such as microbiological bombs capable of obliterating the human life of a continent.
----- Governments, at least some of them, are alive, if only partly so, to the dangers; hence the non-proliferation treaty. Part of the monstrous passivity with which these developments are generally viewed springs from and assumption that the consequences of using them to the users are so terrible they will never be used. Another ingredient of this passivity springs from a conviction that there is nothing the ordinary citizen can do to halt such developments. Both assumptions have, of course, no validity, which in an era dominated by mass forms of reasonlessness, does nothing to lessen the grip they may hold on the untutored mind.
----- The treaty has in any case now been repudiated by the USA. And what doctrine now governs the USA? The mightiest war machine in all human history? On this we need to look at its own most recent enunciation of its objectives:
-----"The ultimate goal of our military force is to accomplish the objectives directed by the National Command Authorities. For the joint force of the future, this goal will be achieved through full spectrum dominance - the ability of US forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations.
----- 'The full range of operations includes maintaining a posture of strategic deterrence. It includes theatre engagement and presence activities. It includes conflict involving employment of strategic forces and weapons of mass destruction, major theatre wars, regional conflicts, and smaller-scale contingencies. It also includes those ambiguous situations residing between peace and war, such as peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, as well as non-combat humanitarian relief operations and support to domestic authorities.
----- 'The label "full spectrum dominance" implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air, and information. Additionally, given the global nature of our interests and obligations, the United States must maintain its overseas presence forces and the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance."'United States Department of Defence:
Joint Vision 2020. 30 May 2000.*This is not the utterance of an inebriated GI in some tavern, it is the considered view of the officials controlling the war machine! It needs to be seen against the global background of the Arab/Israeli conflict, the Indo/Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, or the confrontation of the US with China, to say nothing of the burgeoning military power of a united 'Europe'.
----- The cause of 'Europe' is being sponsored not only by business interests which seek to make a packet, but by numerous starry-eyed idealists who are convinced it will bring peace to the continent. Perhaps it will, as the US enjoys internal peace even as it becomes involved, as it has been involved, in every major war in the globe for well over 100 years. These and many other developments need to be seen against the general unpopularity of war, coupled with the prodigious expansion of what is politely called 'the arms trade'.
----- Trade? This is a trade in death. Death of countless mothers and children, to say nothing of horrible degrees of burning and maiming of millions more. So Britain sells tanks, guns, bomber planes, sophisticated devices of germ warfare, battleships, submarines, and other instruments of murder to all and sundry. After all it is all part of 'growth', it creates 'jobs' and results in a favourable balance of trade. What government seeking re-election could ask for more?
----- No doubt it is also busy exporting coffins, as well as medicines, blankets and stretchers for the injured victims, providing more 'growth', and more jobs and even better export figures. The USA does the same, so does Russia and other great powers, demonstrating that great powers can also be moral pygmies.
----- But when does 'trade' become war? 'A nation armed and prepared for war can no more help going to war than a chicken can help laying an egg'. So Russia sells arms to Arab powers, the USA sells arms to Israel. China sells arms to Pakistan and Britain sells arms to India.
----- What is happening under our noses is the creation of a global tinderbox in which madmen are wandering around with flaming torches. Madness on a gigantic global scale does not cease to be madness and this particular form of insanity cannot fail to create conditions which are unpredictable and uncontrollable and which may well result in the demise of the entire works of civilisation.
Inevitable road to war
As sure as mass motoring results in a high level of fatal crashes, so the mass development of weapons of death cannot fail to lead to war. At the dawn of a new century we have to face the brute fact that the third world war is an event waiting to happen as surely as storm clouds presage rain.
----- What do we do? A Pope doing his job would at once excommunicate every government official in sight, and Archbishop of Canterbury or of anywhere else would organise mass protests and lead them with a hunger strike, Jewish Rabbis and Muslim Imams would join forces to save the world from this commercialised infidelism, the Dalai Lama would be leading a global pilgrimage of protest and peace, accompanied no doubt by the leading dignitaries of the Sikh and Hindu communities. Perhaps the Zoroastrians and the Millennium Dome spiritualists might join them. Perhaps even the Quakers would disturb their organised silences and feel impelled to act…..
----- These people and others are the largely self-appointed moral spokesmen of mankind, but where are they? Here is the gravest moral crisis ever to have erupted in human history and collectively their impact on it has about as much effect as a damp lettuce leaf on a tornado.
----- Is there no fundamental sense of right and wrong which might prompt all of them to join forces to insist that this global march to universal death must stop? Beside the prospect of a general Armageddon what does it matter what absurd qualms people may have about the ordination of women priests, or disagreements about divorce, about family breakdown, about gay marriages, about adultery or a hundred other issues which absorb so much apparent moral fervour?
----- If morality has a function it is first to avert the all-too-human tendency for people to plunge into fratricidal forms of strife, and instead to promote peace and security; it is, secondly, to secure that base so that the way is open to the development of human nobility. On both counts all religious leaders today are betraying their own trust and that of their followers. Trade in war proceeds unchecked and governments everywhere are promoting a life-pattern which is wiping out of existence the remotest prospect of any form of human nobility. If the silence of religious leaders is not acquiescence what then is it?
----- Is there no move from any quarter anywhere that might alert all these leaders to the dangers now in train? A move which might bring them all together in a global moral crusade to halt the march to death and human degradation to which at present they are showing all the insouciant irresponsibility of professional strumpets? Perhaps enough to make them insist that their governments abandon insanity and take the path of peace? A collective voice of sanity from them would alert the peoples of the world.
----- How long, O Lord, how long?*Quoted by Ken Coates in the current issue of The Spokesman, the journal of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, obtainable from Russell house, Bulwell lane, Nottingham, NG6 OBT, England.
This editorial is reproduced from Fourth World Review,
The Close, 26 High Street, Purton, Wiltshire SN5 4AE.MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS (415)868-1600 - (415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924 April, 2005 Radioactive Uranium Nano-Particles Pinpointed As Major Issue in Gulf War Syndrome By Christopher Bollyn - American Free Press
Depleted uranium weapons and the untold misery they wreak on mankind are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. There are indications, however, that the media embargo is about to be breached. Despite being a grossly under-reported subject in the mainstream media, there is intense public interest in depleted uranium (DU) and the damage it inflicts on humankind and the environment. While American Free Press is actively investigating DU weapons and how they contribute to Gulf War Syndrome, the corporate-controlled press virtually ignores the illegal use of DU and its long-lasting effects on the health of veterans and the public.
In August 2004 American Free Press published a ground-breaking four-part series on DU weapons and the long-term health risks they pose to soldiers and civilians alike. Information provided to AFP by experts and scientists, some of it published for the first time in this paper, has increased public awareness of how exposure to small particles of DU can severely affect human health.
Leuren Moret, a Berkeley-based geo-scientist with expertise in atmospheric dust, corresponds with AFP on DU issues. Recently Moret provided a copy of her correspondence to a British radiation biologist, Dr. Chris Busby, about how nanometer size particles of DU-less than one-tenth of a micron and smaller-once inhaled or absorbed into the body, can cause long-term damage to one's health. Busby is one of the founders of Green Audit, a British organization that monitors companies "whose activities might threaten the environment and health of citizens."
Moret's letter was meant to assist Busby in a legal case being heard in the High Court in London where a former defense worker, Richard David, 49, is suing Normal Air Garrett, Ltd., an aircraft parts company now owned by Honeywell Aerospace, claiming exposure to depleted uranium on the job has made his life a "living hell."
David worked as a component fitter on fighter planes and bombers but had to quit due to health problems. He says he developed a cough within weeks of starting work. Today, David suffers from a variety of symptoms like those known as Gulf War Syndrome, including respiratory and kidney problems, bowel conditions and painful joints. Medical tests reveal mutations to his DNA and damage to his chromosomes, which, he says, could only have been caused by ionizing radiation. He has also been diagnosed with a terminal lung condition.
Honeywell denies depleted uranium was ever used at the plant in Yeovil, Somerset, where David worked for 10 years until 1995. David claims that DU's existence at the plant was denied because it is an official secret. David has asked the High Court for more time to gather evidence. The hearing is due to resume in April. "I don't have any legal representation," David said, "so I am representing myself. It is a real David versus Goliath case. "I am confident I will win. I hope to set a precedent for other cases of people who have suffered from the effects of depleted uranium."
Moret's letter on the particle effect of DU is based on research done by Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist and former scientist with the Manhattan Project and the National Laboratory at Livermore, California. Fulk, who has developed a "particle theory" about how DU nano-particles affect human DNA, donates his time and expertise to help bring information about DU to the public.
Asked about Fulk's particle theory, Busby said it is "quite sound." "DU is much more dangerous than they say," Busby added. "I've always said that it contributes significantly to Gulf War Syndrome."
When Moret's corres