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Simple_Min · 06-04-2003, 05:27 PM

That is the whole point, no one knows what the radioactive substance in such a quantity can do.

Guardian Unlimited's various reports about DU:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uranium/

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml

Quote:

Also in 1999, a United Nations subcommission considered DU hazardous enough to call for an initiative banning its use worldwide. The initiative has remained in committee, blocked primarily by the United States, according to Karen Parker, a lawyer with the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project, which has consultative status at the United Nations.

Parker, who first raised the DU issue in the United Nations in 1996, contends that DU "violates the existing law and customs of war."

She said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law regarding weapons:

*Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle.
*Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion.
*Weapons may not be unduly inhumane.
*Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment.

"Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules," Parker said last week.

On Oct. 17, 2001, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., introduced a bill calling for "the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of certain studies of the health effects of such munitions. . . ."

More than a year later, the bill -- co-sponsored by Reps. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.; and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. -- remains in committee awaiting comment from the Defense Department.