Have DU, Will Travel
Special issue of the Lone Star Iconoclast newspaper of Crawford, Texas.

Here is an earlier Iconoclast interview with Leuren Moret that was not included in the DU issue.
http://www.lonestaricon.com/2005/News/2005/19news03.htm

Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium
June 2003 (?)

The CBC did do a feature story on DU for its flagship program, The National. This report recently vanished from the CBC Web site. But fear not; it was archived by the good folks at The WE News Archives.

The CBC page was still viewable through Google's cache as of May 8, 2006.

Exerpts:

...
In the Gulf War, the U.S. fired almost a million DU rounds, leaving a battlefield littered with 1,400 wrecked radioactive Iraqi tanks, crawled over by victorious GI's who were breathing in contaminated dust.

Jerry Wheat and the other Gulf vets were never told of the risks of being exposed to a DU campaign. But after the shooting stopped and back home in Los Lunas, New Mexico, Wheat -- now out of the army -- grew mystified as his health deteriorated. Military doctors had no answers.

Wheat with shrapnelThen a year after war's end, Wheat got startling evidence from his father -- a technician at the famous Los Alamos Nuclear Research Centre, who just out of curiosity tested the shrapnel that came from his son's body and gear. The shrapnel was radioactive. Today, eight years after the Gulf War, that shrapnel still lights up a Geiger counter. He also keeps other pieces.
...
The stockpiling of DU weapons is spreading. As depleted uranium is becoming more, not less popular with the world's generals, more than 20 countries now have DU In their arsenals. If the lessons from past eras are anything to go by, there is often great ignorance about the path being charted when new weapons come along. For example when atomic testing was all the rage in the '50s, or when Agent Orange was used in Vietnam. When revolutionary new technology is introduced on the battlefield, no one at the time has any real idea of the consequences.

Rokke"The next time we go to war, the enemy may fire uranium at us," Rokke says. "So whether or not we decide to have it or not, or decide to use it or not, somebody else may decide to use it. We need to make sure that everybody knows what medical care to provide and how to complete the environmental cleanup. Everybody needs to know."

Click here to view my request for an explanation from the CBC. I will post any reply that I receive.
(No reply as of 4 months later.)

Depleted uranium casts shadow over peace in Iraq
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition, 15 April 2003
Duncan Graham-Rowe, with additional reporting by Rob Edwards

Excerpts:
Wrecked tanks and vehicles litter the Iraqi countryside. Ruined buildings dominate towns and cities. Many were blown to pieces by shells tipped with depleted uranium, a material that the US and Britain say poses no long-term health or environmental risks. But many Iraqis, and a growing band of scientists, are not so sure.

...Given its low radioactivity and our current understanding of radiobiology, DU cannot trigger such health effects, the British and American governments maintain. But what if they are wrong? Though DU is 40 per cent less radioactive than natural uranium, Miller believes that its radiological and toxic effects might combine in subtle, unforeseen ways, making it more carcinogenic than thought. It's a controversial theory, but one for which Miller has increasing evidence.

See also this editorial on DU in New Scientist.

Depleted uranium: the health debate
By Andy Oppenheimer JCBW Editor 26 April 2006

However, according to a paper published in The Lancet medical journal in 1998, the death rate per 1,000 Iraqi children under five years of age increased from 2.3 in 1989 to 16.6 in 1993, and cases of lymphoblastic leukaemia more than quadrupled. It has been argued, however, that this was caused by the Iraqi Army's use of chemical weapons. Uncertainties remain about the levels of depleted uranium intake that could occur in different situations on the battlefield. There is a lack of good experimental data on the amounts that could be inhaled by people inside or near tanks struck by a depleted uranium penetrator, and an almost complete lack of any measurements of depleted uranium in urine samples taken soon after exposure to a depleted uranium impact aerosol. There is also a lack of data on populations affected by bombing.

Oh, look. Not enough research has been done. Tell us something we don't know.

Full Coverage: Depleted Uranium
Yahoo News

Most of these stories are from 2003 or before. That seemed to be the point in time when mainstream journalists collectively decided to stop pursuing the DU story. But it's hard to say what particular source of information led to the current media silence.

DU's global spread spurs debate over effect on humans
THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 1999 Christian Science Monitor, Scott Peterson BAGHDAD, IRAQ

Note the year of this article. It's pretty hard-hitting with a lot of military people and studies cited. It raises the issue of DU dust and the possibility for up-close alpha radiation. It acknowledges that some scientists insist DU dust poses miniscule risk and the Pentagon concurs. But it then gives a rundown of some pretty negative early opinions, studies and projections, mostly coming from the military itself (and not just the US').

Other early CSM stories on DU: (CSM covers DU a lot. Use their search feature.)

October 05, 1999 The Trail of a Bullet Scott Peterson
April 30, 1999 Pentagon stance on DU a moving target Scott Peterson
April 29, 1999 DU's fallout in Iraq and Kuwait: a rise in illness? Scott Peterson
>> Cool quote: "The Pentagon - which has yet to resolve a host of health issues raised by many Gulf War veterans - considers Iraqi claims about DU's effects "disinformation."
April 29, 1999 The Trail of a Bullet Scott Peterson
April 30, 1999 Where the Trail Should Lead
April 30, 1999 Tungsten: One alternative to a risky 'favorite round'? Scott Peterson
May 07, 1999 Letters Paul Sullivan, Mike Strub, and Ronald Frost Recommended!
July 21, 1982 The false alarm about plutonium Harry E. Lunt ( power engineer)
>> We could have used breeder reactors to turn DU into electricity, but Clinton killed the research.
June 01, 1998 Gulf Illness: First Heal US Tin Ear, Cold Heart Sanford Gottlieb
February 07, 1992 Gulf Fires Are Out, But Disaster Remains Saul Bloom and Ross Mirkarimi
July 24, 1997 Why US Lab Is Designing A Bomb No One Asked For Jonathan Landay
>> Sandia develops DU-tipped nuclear bunker busters back in the 90's.

December 20, 2002 A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy If US fights Iraq, it would use a weapon that left a radioactive trail in Gulf War. By Scott Peterson (on his better-informed return visit four years later)
May 15, 2003 Reporters on the Job PROCEED WITH CAUTION:
>> Monitor correspondent Scott Peterson will never forget the first time he tracked down depleted uranium (DU) ( see story) in the battlefields of southern Iraq in 1998

In Depth: Depleted Uranium

US using uranium WMDs in Iraq
rediff.com Newsdesk | March 31, 2003 21:29 IST

Reports say the Americans used depleted uranium shells, a sub-nuclear weapon, in Al Kifl, a small town on the Euphrates river south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Several newspapers and Web sites, among them MSNBC, The Independent of London, and the Sunday Herald of Glasgow, have reported their use.

"All you can see is burned out vehicles," NBC's Dana Lewis reported when he entered the town on Saturday.

Three days earlier, the 3rd Mechanized Infantry had tried to take the town, but encountered fierce resistance from Iraqi soldiers who set up sniper nests all along the main road, firing from doors, windows, market stalls, and patches of open ground, MSNBC reported.

A tank unit then fired "two 120mm high velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by the tanks," the Web site quoting the unit's commander, said.

The Balochistan Post of Quetta said the vacuum created had such intensity that the soldiers were not only sucked out into the open from their hideout, but their flesh and blood was also sucked out of their bodies.

U.S. Stocking Uranium-Rich Bombs?
By Elliot Borin, Wired News, Mar, 10, 2003

Here is an interesting story from Wired that suggests non-nuclear bunker-busters are most likely built with depleted uranium.

Quote:
The Pentagon has not confirmed the use of uranium or depleted uranium in the bunker-busters, and it has refused to identify the composition of the dense-metal warheads that enable the missiles to penetrate structures deeply buried under earth, steel and reinforced concrete. But critics such as British researcher Dai Williams contend that only uranium -- in one form or another -- possesses the density and other characteristics necessary to achieve the penetration levels attributed to such weapons as the 2,000-pound AGM 130C air-to-ground cruise missile, and the guided bomb unit, or GBU, series of laser-guided hard-target penetrators intended to pierce bunkers and other reinforced structures. ... "If they're really using tungsten, why keep it classified?" Williams said.

Does this mean that Iran is destined to become another target of DU munitions?

Radioactive Wounds of War Tests on returning troops suggest serious health consequences of depleted uranium use in Iraq By Dave Lindorff
August 25, 2005

The followup discussion to this article got 525 posts. (More evidence of the need for DUBBS.info I daresay.) (Recommended!) On the fifth page of comments, the author, David Lindorff ended his amicable relationship with In These Times over their refusal to print his letter of protest against an ITT decision to retract and apologize for publishing Lindorff's assertion that the US used 3000 tons of DU munitions during the Second Gulf Invasion. That is 2,721,554 kilograms assuming he meant short US tons. That's about a hundred grams for every person in Iraq.

In the letter, Lindorff attests to the credibility of Doug Rokke, a key figure in the anti-DU campaign. Lindorff claims that ITT apologized for the 3000 ton figure based on hazy "inside Pentagon sources" as reported by a known anti-anti-DU campaigner, Jack Cohen-Joppa, a man who, according to Lindorff, "claims to be opposed to DU weapons but who has been conducting a one-man campaign aimed at discrediting those who write about it."

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium
By LARRY JOHNSON SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR
Tuesday, November 12, 2002

This noted article has many related photos taken in Iraq.

New York Daily News April 27, 2004
Pentagon's Uranium Denial
By Juan Gonzalez

"The Pentagon says Jerry Wheat, a former tank driver with the 3rd Armored Division, is not sick from exposure to depleted uranium. Neither is Mark Zeller, who once loaded depleted uranium tank-busting shells onto Apache helicopters. And Doug Rokke, a retired Army major who first assessed the dangers of depleted uranium after the Persian Gulf War, is scientifically off-base, the Pentagon says.
..."

DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS America's big dirty secret
By ROBERT JAMES PARSONS*, Le Monde Diplomatique March, 2002

"The United States loudly and proudly boasted this month of its new bomb currently being used against al-Qaida hold-outs in Afghanistan; it sucks the air from underground installations, suffocating those within. The US has also admitted that it has used depleted uranium weaponry over the last decade against bunkers in Iraq, Kosovo, and now Afghanistan."

Chernobyl's 'nuclear nightmares'
By Nick Davidson, 13 July 2006

Although it doesn't mention uranium, this is an interesting article on radiation exposure and a questioning of the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model for ionizing radiation harm. (Sometimes refered to as No Safe Dose) Could all that DU actually be good for you? Some scientists are saying the animal life around Chernobyl is actually more resistant to cancer now. But how many animals had to die?

Veterans rail against Pentagon for Gulf War illness Traveling 'town hall' lets vets, families have their say November 21, 1997 CNN - includes video clips

SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- Kevin Walker came looking for answers for the mysterious ailments suffered by many Gulf War veterans, but he and dozens of other veterans left disappointed. They complained to Pentagon representatives Thursday during the latest in a series of "town hall" meetings set up by the military to hear accounts of their medical problems.

This is one of the early DU stories from when the movement was just starting to become noticed.