Here is a note and awesome piece written by Dr. Doug Rokke, a tireless warrior against the use of Uranium weapons. Dr. Rokke is also a fearless champion of truth.
James Freeman said, "Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience."
I encourage you to read Dr. Rokke's words and ask you to join me today in contemplating: What exactly does our conscience dictate that we do concerning the use of toxic, radioactive Uranium weapons of war that weaken, sicken, and kill large numbers of people indiscriminately?
How does our conscience speak to us when we consider that large numbers of Americans, Afghan, and Iraqi citizens are succumbing to disease - and eventually, demise - because of the so-called "Depleted" Uranium we are firing, burning, dropping, and exploding inside our own country and the Middle East, too?
We are not powerless! There is always, always something we can do! Forward this along. Tell the person at the grocery store checkout counter. Mention it to your friends, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousins, and next door neighbor. Call your House of Representative's legislator and also both members of the US Senate from your state and chew their ears off about their full complicity in these crimes against humanity!
Ask to get on the agenda to discuss this topic at your next local anti-war/peace/justice group. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Start your own blog to educate others. Call your state legislators and deliver information to them. Attend a meeting of your local veteran's group and offer to be a guest speaker there. Go to a anti-war protest and hand out literature on DU and educate others and ask them to spread the word.
Stand outside your local military recruiters office and make the young people promise not to enlist until they read ALL of the material you provide them about DU that they will never, ever be told about once inside the recruiting office. Call your local radio station during call-in time. Better yet, get on a progressive radio show as a guest. See if your local cable network will give you your own cable TV show or ask to be a featured guest on an already-established program. Talk to your church's compassionate social justice group and offer to do a presentation for them. Write emails like this and send them to many many Internet groups. Form a group dedicated to raising monies and send out copies of Beyond Treason. Join all the Yahoo groups you can and do massive educational postings!
The possibilities are endless! There is so much we can do if we just look around us and see all our opportunities - and then seize them!
I am sure that I have missed many more things we can do. Please share whatever I may have missed. Certainly there are better, more creative ideas out there than the few things I have suggested!
Not any one of us has all the answers. Only you know what your time, talents, abilities, and resources will allow you to do. The only thing that is important? Let your conscience be your guide - and get busy DOing something today!
Please know that I am nobody special. I'm just like anybody else... another average, middle aged, suburban person who used to read The Washington Post and believed all it said, supported the President (thinking I was being patriotic) and this whole "war on terror" (not knowing at the time that it is all bogus fiction!) .... until I started studying 9/11 for myself and realized that there were so many lies and anomalies in the "official story" that I realized we have all been "taken" for fools, and that we are ALL victims of nothing but massive lies and misleading propaganda for - quite literally - decades!
I never even HEARD OF Depleted Uranium till probably sometime in mid or late 2003. And back then, I used to think, OHhhh what a pity for those poor people in Afghanistan and Iraq! But certainly (I mistakenly reasoned) there is nothing that me, just one little person, can do....
HOW WRONG I WAS! We can and must ALL be the voice of truth and conscience! Our small actions seem so small, but together we ARE making the difference - as is clearly evidenced by the media that is being forced to cover DU now because WORD OF MOUTH - by people like me and you - has gotten around... and the truth is now too big for them to ignore any longer!
If I can do this, anyone can. Small local grassroots efforts that each one of us can do may seem like nothing because they may impact very few... But when you add them all up? Our small actions are going to be the thing that will stop these illegal amoral wars of aggression - and the Uranium weapons used to wage them!
I can not even TELL you how many times something I have written and/or forwarded widely and wildly reached JUST the right person who had a blog or went on to write their own piece or tell their friends about it!
In essence, when we speak the truth to the best of our ability with love and a clear conscience? The world, absolutely filled with good people just like ourselves, HEARS our message! And, once hearing the message and doing some research of their own, people who possess a heart, compassion, and a conscience can not keep this to themselves, and thus go on, in their own way, in their own fashion, in their own circles, to help spread the message.... that we must demand that Uranium weapons use is dis-continued, and that all other necessary things - dictated under current US law (see below) are done to the best of our ability to remediate the damages, and also care for and treat all those adversely affected!
Never ever underestimate your own personal power! Every single thing you do - no matter how tiny - has a massive impact that you do not even know about! Only if we are lucky does someone share with us how something we have shared got forwarded onward... or sometimes even one of our quotes is used somewhere else.
Good people of conscience - and Dr. Doug Rokke is a primary example for this - may *think* that they are just ordinary average folk... but such individuals' beautiful inner beings reach and touch other people of compassion - the humanitarians all around us - and inspire us to be more, do more than we ever dreamed possible.
If one can do this, so can another. If Dr. Rokke can be so fearless? Then so can you and I! And if we can act boldly and courageously? Then we, in turn, go on to inspire others and show them that yes, if we can do this, so can others, too!
I used to look at activists and write to them and ask, How can you be sooo brave? And what they used to say to me was always very similar and was usually something to the effect, "I see the wrong, I can not live with that wrong, and I do whatever I can. I know there may be a risk, but that does not stop me. I just do what seems to be the right thing to do".
Never underestimate your own personal power. Your actions - no matter how small or insignificant you may think they are - are far more important than you even know. And right about now, our troubled, crying, suffering world needs each and every one of us to act, to do something, so very badly - far greater, I suspect, than we even realize.
Thank you for all you aleady do and will do in the future.
Here are some important words from Dr. Doug Rokke below.
In peace and love,
Cathy Garger
We must ensure that already mandatory medical care for du exposures is provided and ensure that already mandatory environmental remediation is completed,. dod- da- mod- cnd, rand, nato, and cdc folks are always in a tizzy to cover up the reality of du----
sadly while they lie about all of us with confirmed exposures and serious medical problems we suffer and have to fight for our earned medical care because they simply lie- deny as required by both the 3-91 Los Alamos memo and the 12-92 AEPI directive to ensure continued use of uranium weapons while ignoring all liability for the adverse health and environmental effects.
doug rokke
217- 643-6205
Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens Requiring Immediate Action
By President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert
Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD.
Major, retired, U.S. Army
former Director, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium project
July 23, 2007
I have served our nation in the military since 1967 during Vietnam, during Desert Storm, during planning for OEF / OIF, and during many other operations. As an Army officer I was tasked by name by General Schwartzkopf to clean up the friendly fire mess caused by uranium munitions during Desert Storm.
Consequently, based on my-our team reports I was recalled to active duty as the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project director to develop congressionally and Pentagon mandated but currently ignored Depleted uranium munitions operations training, currently ignored U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 specifying environmental remediation procedures, and currently ignored soldier common task training - Task number: 031-503-1017 RESPOND TO DEPLETED URANIUM/LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS (DULLRAM) HAZARDS, STP 21-1-SMCT: Soldiers Manual of Common Tasks, Headquarters Department of the Army, Washington, D.C.. Consequently I became exposed, ill, and now fight along with over 400,000 other ill, wounded, and injured veterans (
http://www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/docs/GWVIS_May2007.pdf) to obtain prompt and effective medical care from the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, and Department of Veterans Affairs. Therefore I must provide this call for action my story to ensure that all military personnel and their families know of the adverse health risks, environmental problems, and mandatory but ignored actions associated with the use of uranium weapons. What I have learned, observed, and recommend to be completed follows:
The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States t and their use by Israel against Lebanese targets has resulted in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east. Israeli tank gunners are also using depleted uranium tank rounds as photographs verify.
Today, U.S., British, and now Israeli military personnel are using illegal uranium munitions- America's and England's own "dirty bombs" while U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, and British Ministry of Defence officials deny that there are any adverse health and environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material - depleted uranium.
The use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the world and all governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use. I must demand that Israel now provide medical care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU contamination.
U.S. and British officials have arrogantly refused to comply with their own regulations, orders, and directives that require United States Department of Defense officials to provide prompt and effective medical care to "all" exposed individuals. Reference: Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93, Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004, and section 2-5 of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. Israeli officials must not do so now.
They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive Contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48: "Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin- TB 9-1300-278: "Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., JULY 1996). Specifically section 2-4 of United States Army Regulation-AR 700-48 dated September 16, 2002 requires that:
(1) "Military personnel "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE" (radiologically contaminated equipment).
(2) "Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible."
(3) "Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment" and
(4) "All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48" (Note: Maximum exposure limits are specified in Appendix F).
DOD leaders are not showing the DU training tapes to military personnel. These three video tapes: (1) "Depleted Uranium Hazard Awareness", (2) "Contaminated and Damaged Equipment Management", and (3) "Operation of the AN/PDR 77 Radiac Set" are essential to understanding the hazards from the use of uranium weapons and management of uranium weapons contamination. DOD leaders must show these tapes to all military personnel involved in the use of uranium weapons and the consequent management of uranium contamination.
The previous and current use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment, and releases of industrial, medical, research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposures. Therefore, decontamination must be completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations.
The extent of adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan but includes facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured or tested including Vieques; Puerto Rico; Colonie, New York; Concord, MA; Jefferson Proving Grounds, Indiana; and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Therefore medical care must be provided by the United States Department of Defense officials to all individuals affected by the manufacturing, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions.
Thorough environmental remediation also must be completed without further delay.
I am amazed that fifteen years after was I asked to clean up the initial DU mess from Gulf War 1 and over ten years since I finished the depleted uranium project that United States Department of Defense officials and others still attempt to justify uranium munitions use while ignoring mandatory requirements. I am dismayed that Department of Defense and Department of Energy officials and representatives continue personal attacks aimed to silence or discredit those of us who are demanding that medical care be provided to all DU casualties and that environmental remediation is completed in compliance with U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. But beyond the ignored mandatory actions the willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is illegal (
http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf) and just does not even pass the common sense test and according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is a dirty bomb. DHS issued "dirty bomb" response guidelines,
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html, on January 3, 2006 for incidents within the United States but ignore DOD use of uranium weapons and existing DOD regulations. These guidelines specifically state that: "Characteristics of RDD and IND Incidents: A radiological incident is defined as an event or series of events, deliberate or accidental, leading to the release, or potential release, into the environment of radioactive material in sufficient quantity to warrant consideration of protective actions.
Use of an RDD or IND is an act of terror that produces a radiological incident." Thus the use of uranium munitions is "an act or terror" as defined by DHS. Finally continued compliance with the infamous March 1991 Los Alamos Memorandum that was issued to ensure continued use of uranium munitions can not be justified.
In conclusion: the President of the United States- George W. Bush, the Prime Minister of Great Britain-Tony Blair, and the Prime Minister of Israel Olmert must acknowledge and accept responsibility for willful use of illegal uranium munitions- their own "dirty bombs"- resulting in adverse health and environmental effects.
President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert should order:
1. medical care for all casualties,
2. thorough environmental remediation,
3. immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who demand compliance with medical care and environmental remediation requirements,
4. and stop the already illegal the use (UN finding) of depleted uranium munitions.