FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006

RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.

The results from testing stations at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston and four other stations within a 10-mile radius were obtained by Chris Busby, of Liverpool University’s department of human anatomy and cell biology.

Each detector recorded a significant rise in uranium levels during the Gulf war bombing campaign in March 2003. The reading from a park in Reading was high enough for the Environment Agency to be alerted.

Busby, who has advised the government on radiation and is a founder of Green Audit, the environmental consultancy, believes “uranium aerosols” from Iraq were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and blown across Europe.

“This research shows that rather than remaining near the target as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) countered that it was “unfeasible” depleted uranium could have travelled so far. Radiation experts also said that other environmental sources were more likely to blame.

The “shock and awe” campaign was one of the most devastating assaults in modern warfare. In the first 24-hour period more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad.

During the conflict A10 “tankbuster” planes — which use munitions containing depleted uranium — fired 300,000 rounds. The substance — dubbed a “silver bullet” because of its ability to pierce heavy tank armour — is controversial because of its potential effect on human health. Critics say it is chemically toxic and can cause cancer, and Iraqi doctors reported a marked rise in cancer cases after it was used in the first Gulf conflict.

The American and British governments say depleted uranium is relatively harmless, however. The Royal Society, the UK’s academy of science, has also said the risk from depleted uranium is “very low” for soldiers and people in a conflict zone.

Busby’s report shows that within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003, higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though within safety limits. The report says weather conditions over the war period showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Brian Spratt, who chaired the Royal Society’s report, cast doubt on depleted uranium as a source but said it could have come from natural uranium in the massive amounts of soil kicked up by shock and awe.

Other experts said local environmental sources, such as a power station, were more likely at fault. The Environment Agency said detectors at other sites did not record a similar increase, which suggested a local source.

A MoD spokesman said the uranium was of a “natural origin” and there was no evidence that depleted uranium had reached Britain from Iraq.

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Is the problem weather, or is it war?

By Robert Fisk
Something more serious ishappening to our planet which we are not being told about
25 February 2006

Back in the Sixties, a great movie was released called The Day the Earth Caught
Fire. Leo McKern, I recall, played a Daily Express reporter along with the then
real-life editor of the paper, Arthur Christiansen. What the Express discovered
was that the British government was erecting showers in Hyde Park to keep people
cool when in fact it was still winter. Investigative reporting eventually
revealed - and this, remember, was fiction - that the US and Soviet powers had,
without knowing of the other's activities, tested nuclear weapons at exactly the
same moment at opposite sides of the earth.

I'm not sure that our present-day colleagues on the Express would discover any
of this but that's not the point. In the movie, our planet had been blasted off
course - and was now heading towards the sun. The governments, of course, tried
to cover this up.

Now I remembered this creaky old film early this week when I woke up at my home
in Beirut shivering with cold. This is mid-February in Lebanon and early spring
should have warmed the air. But it hadn't. Up in the Christian mountain town of
Jezzine, it was snowing fiercely. I walked to my balcony over the Mediterranean
and a sharp, freezing wind was coming off the sea. Well poor old Bob, you might
say. Better install central heating. (Most Lebanese exist like me with a series
of dangerous and cheaply made gas heaters.)

But right now, flying around the world to launch my new book - travelling more
than the average air crew - I'm finding a lot of odd parallels. In Melbourne
last autumn, for example, the Australian spring turned out to be much colder
than expected. Yet in Toronto at Christmas, all the snow melted. I padded round
the streets of the city and had to take my pullover off because of the sun. It
was the warmest winter in the records of a country whose tundra wastes are known
for their frozen desolation.

I should add that those Canadians who welcomed this dangerous thaw seem at odds
with reality; it's a bit like being cold and then expressing pleasure that your
house is burning down on the grounds that you now feel warmer.

Then there are the air crews I was talking about. Out here in the Middle East,
for instance, pilots have told me that head winds can now be so fierce at high
altitude that they are being forced to request lower altitudes from air traffic
control. As a flyer who knows how to be afraid on a bumpy flight - I am - I can
tell you that I haven't encountered as much turbulence as I have in the past 24
months.

Now a deviation - but an important one. A British scientist, Chris Busby, has
been digging through statistics from the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons
Establishment which measures uranium in high-volume air samples. His suspicion
was that depleted uranium particles from the two Gulf wars - DU is used in the
anti-armour warheads of the ordnance of American and British tanks and planes -
may have spread across Europe. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but here's
something very odd.

When Busby applied for the information from Aldermaston in 2004, they told him
to get lost. When he demanded the information under the 2005 Freedom of
Information Act, Aldermaston coughed up the figures. But wait.

The only statistic missing from the data they gave him was for the early months
of 2003. Remember what was happening then? A little dust-up in Iraq, a massive
American-British invasion of Saddam's dictatorship in which tons of DU shells
were used by American troops. Eventually Busby, who worked out all the
high-altitude wind movements over Europe, received the data from the Defence
Procurement Agency in Bristol - which showed an increase in uranium in
high-volume air sampling over Britain during this period.

Well, we aren't dead yet - though readers in Reading will not be happy to learn
that the filter system samplings around Aldermaston showed that even they got an
increase. Shock and awe indeed.

Back to our main story. I'm tired of hearing about "global warming" - it's
become such a cliche that it's a turn-off, a no-read, a yawn-cliche. As perhaps
our governments wish it to be. Melting ice caps and disappearing icebergs have
become de rigueur for all reporting. After Unesco put the Ilulissat ice fjord on
the World Heritage List, it was discovered to have receded three miles. And
there's a lovely irony in the fact that the Canadians are now having a row with
the United States about shipping lanes in the far north - because the Americans
would like to use a melted North West Passage which comes partly under Canadian
sovereignty. But I have a hunch that something more serious is happening to our
planet which we are not being told about.

So let me remind you how The Day the Earth Caught Fire ended. Russian and
American scientists were planning a new and joint explosion to set the world
back on course. The last shot in the movie was set in the basement printing
rooms (the real ones) of the Daily Express. The printers were standing by their
machines with two headlines plated up to run, depending on the results of the
detonation.

One said "World Doomed", the other "World Saved", As that great populist
columnist John Gordon of the Sunday Express used to write: makes you sit up a
bit, doesn't it?