Getting some traffic from a new site (as in it’s new to me), No Rock and Roll Fun, who pointed to my February bit about the Charlatans UK. (Permalink on their site broken, I don’t know why I even bother since Blogspot never gets archives right, but it’s still on their front page.) The rest of the articles appear to be a mix of music links and scandalous gossip—excellent late Friday afternoon reading if things at the office get a bit slow. Which they won’t for me, as I get the afternoon off to do an early start on Memorial Day weekend.
Day: May 23, 2003
Greg: War on war
Greg points to a BBC report that a Canadian scientist has found “astonishing” levels of uranium in the urine of two samples of 17 and 25 Afghan civilians. The conclusion the scientist, Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Canadian Uranium Medical Research Center, reaches is that a new kind of uranium weapon was used during the war in Afghanistan.
I’m not saying Dr. Durakovic is wrong. Levels of uranium 100-500 times higher than those found in veterans suffering Gulf War Syndrome, after all, are awfully suggestive (the mean concentration was 315.5 nanograms per liter, while the US allowable is a mere 12). But I would like some information about the general background levels of uranium found in the Afghan population. Two samples is a seriously alarming indicator, but it’s not a smoking gun yet.
And I want a smoking gun. This administration has built such a wall of secrecy around itself and its policies that it’s been impossible to make any of the charges about inhumane and unAmerican conduct during wartime, let alone infringements of civil, legal, and Constitutional rights at home, stick. If this is real evidence, it needs to be bulletproof.