always on the ground in libya and she's going to bring us that report all new in just thirty minutes. now bag that has a for now for more on these stories and war that we've covered go to our t.v. dot com slash usa and check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america and of course feel free to follow me on twitter as well it's lucy at capital going to see you in a half an hour with more. of the impact. he needs. and the media radium invade. in similar numbers over the years because he's afraid that our. most dangerous. radiation that exists in the nature.

of the group in the vicinity of known difference he did so produce is so much of the engine then he changes. and suit. by being out of the deal since the fall. you don't have to have a college degree going to have to have a pretty education to understand. if you spread radioactive materials all over somebody's backyard that you've got a problem. hey

tom are in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. the official auntie affleck ation on the phone on called touch from the i.q. sounds to. watch all she lights on the go.

video on demand she's mine old girls and already just feet now in the palm of your . question on the call. here in the city it's. over. my wall and shrooms. i'm not sure i remember each and every one i was always tired headaches would never go away. the ferry sensitive to the my throat. and with the pain was just unbelievable to leave a lead up like you know let's see this is in the bed i. do have. a printer made her desires and we've lost all desire as a matter is that for this to be. you know that's

a bear some talk about that or. the green just couple surely there's niggling feelings now and again but a sort of permission to be entertained all the same of the tumour was caused by the depleted uranium there was a bit of truth. with prison officer to keep bringing up the issue that is not really. because they bring something else all you're getting all the guy or. girl words and they just tell you lies to cover up their worst.

film i want to be it was a cold morning. and you my soul was in finance and you for the never forget to sojitz make us on the way to held on to their families. and so much crime and the sadness. of. the. moon the moon result she said. take care of my kids as if they were you know most. folks you know i don't know how to fall back. very good thank god she's come back older even if she was. older because many of them didn't. know what's going on you ma this loss this seems. hector vega dina's husband lives in the bronx in new york city he was sent to iraq

in two thousand and three he was a sergeant and again serving in a national guard unit for over twenty years in iraq became a military policeman who never saw live combat. if this is. an error akki so does. everything fall off of if this is for a few months after being in iraq or started feeling ill suffering from intense migraine headaches and muscular pain he was declared unfit for service was discharged and he returned home the peace still suffers from severe headaches fatigue and pain for months the origin of his symptoms was a mystery he had some medical tests the results were he had been poisoned by depleted uranium a radioactive material that had been used in the war. more

of damage off has been arrested about fifty times it's always for the same reasons and he's about to do it again on this bitter cold morning in minnesota he's protesting for what he sees as a just cause he has fought many such peaceful battles in his lifetime he's even one son. i was a mom sachs. who ran a freedom rides. likes the. mess. we were asked to come back. and awaken later we were. on prime the most obese played prison and maximum security. i was lying there we. as people were singing freedom.

now is crying not because they were punishing us but because the now developing. every god the. size. i'm going to do the us. market i'm gonna look for the feeling. i'll try moderates me. oh mine. oh i am. three zero am and wrappings. they may owe her eating out. was the last. person our land mines it gives her all it's in the. south shore.

first thing every wednesday morning rain or shine for the past ten years more in a group of fellow pacifists demonstrate outside the headquarters of this local armament company they remind people invented key to do reining in weapons used in the war in arrests and that this company still manufactures them. depleted uranium ore dehumanisation have been the subject of heated debate because of the secondary effects they may have on the health of troops and civilians. because we want the change we want nuclear abolition way while we were against the weapons of mass destruction like it but if you're a pastor bob's chair for the drug of those duration ideally says we should not use any drugs less it is better to play safe had

a test that well what they played if you're ready and we do just the i was there we go and use those as always lie and our taste scientists are saying yes that is. radioactive. place top should be. whole. the human issues were one of the most deadly and effective weapons in the first gulf war they are a kind of metallic arrow or bullet and are called penetrators they were launched by american tanks planes and helicopters and the result was that saddam hussein's armor was destroyed in a matter of minutes. and. the

penetrators are not explosives they are flechettes or bullet like spindles of depleted uranium a very dense self igniting metal those characteristics and the enormous kinetic energy released by the penetrator on impact means do you rounds cut through tank armor like a hot knife through butter fragments of burning d.-u. penetrate the crew compartment and incinerate everything in their path. a few weeks ago at this veterans hospital in illinois doug and retired major in the united states army underwent an operation to remove cataracts from his eyes he's a veteran of both the first gulf war and the war in vietnam is very clear that uranium munitions will cause our injuries and our damage so what the expense of exposure is what i have and again the uranium dust settling on the i as

a consequence over the years of developing cataracts. in one thousand nine hundred ninety one when he was still in the army and after land combat in kuwait in a. jack was appointed to research the effects of the depleted uranium munitions that had been used for the first time officially in that war his unit's job was to clean out american tanks equipped with dehumanisation that had been destroyed by friendly fire i started getting sick and my team started getting sick within twenty four hours forty eight hours the first thing that showed up was respiratory problems u.s. department of veteran affairs of family diagnosed says react to bear when disease you'd occupational exposure to depleted uranium in my case and so we developed the rash on the rash is still with me in fact its rash right now is open and bleeding. was my guy started dying and i wish i would real serious medical problems that could get medical care. to part in

a study commissioned by the pentagon on the after effects of depleted uranium munitions but what the study found was at odds with the official line and ended up becoming an anti d.-u. activist. no i'm not a peacenik i'm a warrior awarded for finishing his job because as a person who was assigned the responsibility to clean up the mess and was assigned a responsibility to do the research he was assigned responsibility it right the army regulations which are formally adopted in absolute regard as you are sure who wrote the training programs i learned and what i learned scared. battlefields and fire are ok took part in the production of this video it was filmed in one thousand nine hundred five four years after the first gulf war record to train soldiers presented it sends conflicting messages and do you think in part

one it points out the risks of toxic contamination of dust from these substances is swallowed or inhaled and it describes the hazards depending on how much depleted uranium is in haled straw load or gets under the skin heavy metal poisoning may occur which can cause damage to internal organs and tissues. health effects of ionizing radiation depend on whether it is alpha beta or gamma and if the radioactive material is inside or outside the body alpha is the least penetrating but is the most hazardous if it does get into the body heavy metals bind to d.n.a. we know that for a long time and heavy metals cause cancer they probably cause it because of this binding to d.n.a. which disrupts the way the d.n.a. can behave in the cell so there sensually d.n.a. damaging agents. may be partially it is chemical and partially it

is radiation then raj these effects are why the u.s. army recommends strong protective measures for their troops even though the film ends up minimizing the hazards of depleted uranium remember depleted uranium is not an immediate hazard. bottom line unless you're involved in a detonation or fire with depleted uranium hazards are relatively small. some units of the new york national guard were called up and sent to iraq after the invasion of two thousand and three gerard matthew went there with his unit their job was to a score convoys. one of the ones who came home after the war and he started having headaches easily irritated by the slightest think that people may do has changed

a lot you let me say stop you you ever had a headache that you have six seven headaches a day and if you're tough wait almost fifty sixty i might i mean it's really debilitating and a headache that your house oh yes there they're short spaced but they come and go. all in another thing i get he said bumps and skin the rib here really here he. was eight years of letter from. my finally a matthew got in touch with other veterans like hector vega who had similar symptoms and all to test to see if they had been poisoned by depleted uranium the results were a surprise. he says. you have four to eight times higher than the other soldiers. which makes your being the person that has

the highest level. i said maybe that's the reason why my boy came out the way should be. the couple has a baby girl who was born with a birth defect on one hand her mother is convinced that it is on account of gerard's exposure to di you. so yes i mean yeah i mean what i saw deep down in my heart i knew that she was vuln like that even yesterday because of something he had about one of us and we started looking for answers on the internet i mean. i think i have the picture whose hand was identical to my daughter's when the money was an iraqi baby that had been exposed to depleted uranium as of i mean for me that's was the proof by baby's hand and the hands of that a rocket baby in fact schools that if you know you're in. natural uranium is made up of two isotopes ninety nine percent is you renamed to

thirty eight point seven percent is the more radioactive uranium to thirty five. the nuclear industry uses isotopes separation to produce enriched uranium which contains a higher concentration of uranium to thirty five this enriched uranium is more radioactive the natural uranium and its jews than the manufacture of atomic weapons depleted uranium is the byproduct of this process it is less radioactive but it still toxic and this is what's used to make anti-tank weapons. from. a weapons can also be made with you raney i'm already used by nuclear power plants but in the process it is contaminated with the highly radioactive elements generated inside nuclear reactors this is a cheap way of getting rid of many tons of nuclear waste which otherwise would be very expensive to store safely. tucked in

a barrel. the nuclear energy for ram is saying when millions of millions of pounds own gain rid of your nuclear waste. put the rates planed there this immoral no early is immoral. i believe it's illegal. for music makers it's highly effective to fly straight it's highly lethal up on. getting a first shot one shot kill so taking it off the battlefield is not a but is not a neutral act. it's an act that will cause will the loss of lives by taking away both protection and some per super weapon or the pentagon is kind of oversold the

importance of to put it right to defend the weapon if exaggerated the importance of it. but it was actually guided missiles had particular hellfire missile destroyed about a third of the iraqi tanks that were destroyed. bernard roster held several positions in the pentagon during the clinton administration and he spent a number of years directing research into the so-called gulf war illnesses. the kinds of symptoms that are seen in people with gulf or domus are totally inconsistent with exposure to if we don't hear any and so they came to the conclusions as has the united nations the e.u. . almost everybody who has looked at this in an unbiased scientific way that depleted uranium is not related to the unexplained illnesses that we saw in

the first gulf war. thank. you. this is the center of amman the capital of jordan among the shoppers are all and two iraqi cancer specialists today they are sightseeing but they have come to a monster take part in an on call article congress sponsored by a large american pharmaceutical company here they will find out about the latest treatments for cancer but they will not be able to use them in iraq. we are triple and we are looking to people dying with though any help from us or from others we could say we are crippled and owens are tied together because

we haven't got the first cell it sees to treat our patients. both doctors work in a university hospital and they are taking part in a study funded by german universities to examine the soaring number of cancers in that iraqi province. as the. boy is one concern. is that it is they and is contaminated as mother and father the urine is contaminated by depleted uranium as it is tested in joppa. of course we don't know whether the this which is done in japanese. we don't. but israel was the iraqi province in which you do you munitions were most heavily used. dr r. lease says the radioactivity still lingers in many places he's convinced that this

is what lies behind the increase in cancers some of which are very rare. cancers which are related to radiation. look him in his lymphoma as an soft tissue concern has. increased. two alarming number on them particularly so-called malignant fibrous is just sidetone which is close to related to radiation. and to low twenty five cases so is some something strange and could give us clues to the effect of radiation zero zero edition but we should prove it to.

another conflict in which depleted uranium weapons were officially used was the war in kosovo in one nine hundred ninety nine. in reprisal for ethnic cleansing policies against albanian coast of ours nato planes bombed serbian forces and yugoslav infrastructure. in that campaign serbian armored tanks in vehicles were attacked with dehumanisation. a few months later the media reported an unusually high rate of leukemia and other cancers in the european veterans who had served in kossovo talian french spanish and others the term balkan syndrome was coined several organizations began to call for

a ban on the us. nato had to call a meeting of the atlantic council to appease its allies once again the message was contradictory they had knowledge the risks but downplayed them. we're confident that there is little risk for the you munitions but we refuse to be complacent. the existing medical consensus is clear the hazard from defeated uranium is both very limited and limited to very specific circumstances but nature was doing everything it can to ensure that relevant information is made publicly available they will have encountered on experts have consistently denied that there is any cause and effect relationship between depleted uranium and the so-called balkan syndrome you have just pledged most need to authorities have agreed in the years since one nine

hundred ninety nine no indications have been given as to whether or not any medical follow up has been done on the soldiers supposedly exposed to depleted uranium in kosovo and member states about the precautions to be taken when it comes to depleted uranium in the gulf we have not been able to see any indication of any medical problem from those who had the highest exposure who were in or on to be able it was struck with acquited uranium they about half the crew survived those kids after and those that survived have not been able to see any medical problem now nine years later. and they had we know the highest exposure who pleaded uranium of anyone who served in world cultures that so much as i know it was recorded on it. drawing battle lines over collective bargaining puts america's

democracy dentals in the line of fire but is this move the red tape rolled back. wealthy british. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with much stronger were no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. download the official publication. called touch from the choose our. lunch all she likes on the go. all keys minefield calls and says feeds in the palm of your. question on the call. by tom hartman here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

is he.