[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5209-5210]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     TROOPS IN IRAQ WILL ONCE AGAIN BE EXPOSED TO DEADLY CHEMICALS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk on behalf of three 
doctors and myself. I was a physician during the Vietnam War. I was in 
Long Beach. I saw the troops coming back from the Vietnam War, and I 
saw what the war did to them. I also have been in government since then 
and have seen how our government for many years denied that Agent 
Orange had any effect whatsoever on the troops.
  In 1984 we settled a claim for all of the problems created by Agent 
Orange, which we finally admitted. Now we have a case before the 
Supreme Court at this very time where they are trying to reopen that 
claim on behalf of people who are suffering even 40 years after the 
war.
  It is for that reason that I raise the issue today of depleted 
uranium in Iraq. I was there. I was in Iraq in 1991, and I was there 
again this year; and the evidence is overwhelming of the impact of what 
Iraq has suffered from depleted uranium and what we, the United States, 
are about to suffer.
  Dr. Al-Ali said that before the Gulf War they had only three or four 
deaths

[[Page 5210]]

a month from cancer. Now it is 30 to 35 patients dying every month, and 
that is just in his department. That is a 12-fold increase, 1,200 
percent increase in cancer mortality. Studies indicate that 40 to 48 
percent of the population in that area will get cancer in 5 years. That 
is almost half the population.
  A woman doctor, Dr. Ginan Hassen, said, ``I studied what happened in 
Hiroshima. It is almost exactly the same here. We have an increased 
percentage of congenital malformaties, an increase of malignancy, 
leukemia, brain tumors, and the rest.'' Under the economic sanctions 
imposed by the United Nations Security Council, now in its 14th year, 
Iraq is denied the equipment and expertise to decontaminate its 
battlefields from the 1991 Gulf War.
  These are two Iraqi doctors talking. Let me quote an American doctor, 
Dr. Doug Rokke, who was appointed by Norman Schwarzkopf to go in as a 
part of the decontamination team and clean up what we did. We dumped 
300 tons of munitions with depleted uranium in this area that he was 
sent in to clean up. He says: ``I have 5,000 times the recommended 
level of radiation in my body. Most of my team are now dead.'' Eighteen 
out of 24 people, American soldiers sent in to clean that up, are now 
dead.
  Dr. Rokke says, ``We face an issue to be confronted by the people in 
the West, those with a sense of right and wrong.'' First, a decision by 
the United States and Britain to use weapons of mass destruction, 
depleted uranium. When a tank fired a shell, each round contains 4,500 
grams of solid uranium. What happened to the Gulf was a form of nuclear 
war. That was 1991. We are about to do it again. People are talking 
about 3,000 missiles into Baghdad in the first day and 3,000 on the 
second day, all with depleted uranium on the point. Why is that used? 
Because it is so penetrating, when it explodes, it creates a white 
dust, uranium oxide, and people walk around, it gets in their lungs and 
reproductive organs. Children died. That is where those figures come 
from for the children. That is why we have so many malformations at 
birth among Iraqi women. It is to the point today where Iraqi women 
say, Is my child normal?
  Mr. Speaker, we did that once to them, and we are about to do it 
again. We are about to do it again, and we are about to do to our own 
troops, hundreds of thousands of them, what we did to Doug Rokke. Dr. 
Rokke marched in there and did his duty. I am here talking for the 
veterans of our country and for the women and men who are on the line 
for us out there. I do not want them sent into that.
  We are going to march troops right through the very place where this 
happened to the Iraqi people. Will our government admit what they are 
doing? No. They will not talk about what is going on with depleted 
uranium.
  Here is the issue. The Secretary of VA, Mr. Principi, remember the 
Bush administration, writes a letter to the Department of Defense and 
says please do preservice evaluations on all of the men and women so we 
can look at, when it is over, what the difference is.
  How can we send 300,000 American people into war that kills Iraqis 
left, right and center with impugnity? This is an unjust war. There are 
many reasons to be against this war; but this reason, the soldiers and 
Marines and sailors of the United States are the major reason we should 
not be doing it. We are exposing our own people to something that we 
will not admit we are doing.

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