Aunty,
"JLH, Keep posting the stuff you dig up on DU. There's an aweful lot of ex military guys I know who are too young to have some of the illnesses they do, including my hubby."

Glad that you are following this very serious issue AM. It has been a concern of mine for some time now. The issue is real and people are suffering from exposure to radiation, one of the most toxic of contaminants none to mankind. The following will help to illustrate it.

Depleted Uranium
Kills Indiscriminately

By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
3-3-6


ORMOND BEACH, Florida -- An alarmingly high percentage of U.S.
military personnel who have served in Iraq have been afflicted by a
variety of health problems commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome.
Exposure to uranium spread through the use of depleted uranium (DU)
weapons is thought to be the primary cause of the high rate of
chronic ailments and mortality among Gulf War vets.

While initial casualties from the first U.S. invasion of Iraq were
light, long-term casualties from the 1991 war ultimately exceeded 30
percent, according to Terrell E. Arnold, former Chairman of the
Department of International Studies at the National War College. The
long-term casualty rate from the current war in Iraq, Arnold says, is
likely to be much higher.

Official statistics of killed and wounded from the 15-year long war
against Iraq do not reflect the veterans whose service-related
injuries only become apparent after they return from Iraq. The
official death rate of those killed and wounded in Iraq does not
include these vets, many of whom suffer slow and painful deaths as a
direct result of their service. Dustin Brim was one of them.

Lori Brim lost Dustin, her only child, when he died at Walter Reed
Hospital in Washington at the age of 22 on Sept. 24, 2004, after a
six-month battle with what was eventually diagnosed as Non-Hodgkins
Diffuse Large Cell B Type Lymphoma. When Mrs. Brim asked the doctors
how her young, healthy, strong son had contracted cancer all they
would say was ?bad luck.?

Her caseworker and nurses at the hospital were more forthcoming with
information. At different times during the six months nurses would
take Mrs. Brim aside and urge her off the record to do some research
on DU. Asked whose idea it was for Dustin to join the Army in summer
2002, Mrs. Brim said, ?It was mine.? As a single mother, Mrs. Brim
had approached an Army recruiter out of concern for the well-being of
her son. She thought the Army would be good for her son by giving him
some discipline and direction.

Dustin had not wanted to join the Army, his mother said. But Dustin
was never meant to be in a war zone, she added. The U.S. Army
recruiter had promised her, that as her only child, he would not be
sent to war. Mechanically inclined, Dustin became an Army mechanic,
an E-4 specialist serving in the 1st Maintenance Company under the
541st Maintenance Battalion from Fort Riley, Kan., and was deployed
to Iraq in August 2003.

Dustin?s work in Iraq involved working on disabled Army vehicles,
including tanks, which his unit repaired and retrieved, or if damaged
beyond repair, destroyed with explosives on the spot. Most of these
vehicles, having been in the battlefield, would have been heavily
laden with DU and other toxins. Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of
the U.S. Army?s Depleted Uranium Project, said that mechanics like
Dustin are not properly prepared or protected to be working on DU
contaminated vehicles.

Mrs. Brim said that her son had not even been equipped with a pair of
gloves, let alone a mask or protective garb. The Army?s failure to
inform and instruct its personnel about the dangers of DU exposure is
one of Rokke?s main concerns. At Christmas 2003, Dustin surprised his
parents with a visit home. It was the last time Mrs. Brim would see
her son in a healthy condition. A photo of Dustin taken in Iraq in
February 2004 shows him smiling and strong.

In early March, however, Dustin began to complain of abdominal pains.
He went to the doctors on his base 11 times during the month
complaining of severe pain and constipation that lasted for weeks. He
was sent back to his job and told to ?work it out.? During the last
two weeks of March, he wrote to his mother telling her that his pain
was unbearable.

On March 31 he passed out from pain and breathlessness. His sergeant
happened to be with him and took him to the doctors who thought he
had gall bladder problems and sent him to the hospital in Baghdad.
The next day, April 1, was Dustin?s 22nd birthday. After being
assessed and heavily drugged, the doctors allowed him to call home to
tell his mother that he had cancer.

In Baghdad, the doctors had discovered that Dustin had a huge
cancerous tumor on his esophagus, which severely restricted his
breathing, a collapsed lung, the loss of a kidney, numerous blood
clots and a tumor progressing on his liver. The doctors could not
believe that Dustin had been turned away so many times for medical
help and still manage to endure as long as he did in his magnitude of
pain while carrying an 80-pound pack on his back, his mother said.
Dustin was flown to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and
then to Walter Reed Hospital.

?The story of Dustin Brim is just one more avoidable tragedy of our
insane use of uranium munitions,? Rokke said. ?When I lost Dustin, I
lost myself,? Mrs. Brim said. ?This is something that should not have
happened. There is something going on but no one wants to talk about
it on the record. I am sharing my son?s story with you in the hope
that perhaps it will make a difference.?

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium_kills.html