who are "they"

[angelofdeath]

holy shit.

[WORDISM45]

avenge the lusitania!

[lord_casek]

 

[lord_casek]

Newt Gingrich Considers Political Opposition, American Citizens, to be an ''Insurgency''

http://progressivedailybeacon.com/more.php?page=opinion&id=1231

[lord_casek]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

* * * * *

 

Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1

 

"Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart

Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast"

 

By Ralph Blumenthal

 

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building

a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center,

and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting

harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after

the blast.

 

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb

and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by

an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer,

Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.

 

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of

hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his

talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as

being in a far better position than previously known to foil

the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.

 

The explosion left six people dead, more than a thousand people

injured, and damages in excess of half-a-billion dollars.

Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court

[on charges of involvement] in that attack.

 

Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used

by the Government [of the United States] to penetrate a circle

of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases:

the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy

the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other

New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the

second bombing case, but his work for the Government was

erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast,

he was feuding with th F.B.I.

 

Supervisor `Messed It Up'

 

After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an

undated transcript of a conversation from that period,

Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent

about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said,

 

"came and messed it up."

"He requested to meet me in the hotel,"

 

Mr. Salem says of the supervisor.

 

"He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn't

push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with

a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was

involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that."

 

The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to

complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the

Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by

an agent identified as John Anticev.

 

Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him,

 

"He said, I don't think that the New York people would

like the things out of the New York Office to go to

Washington, D.C."

 

Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute

Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it,

saying of the `New York people':

 

"Well, of course not, because they don't want to

get their butts chewed."

[Larry Pubes]

those paper clippings you posted above is some serious shit, i'll give you that.

i read quite a bit about that stuff a few years ago and it's fucking creepy.

[lord_casek]

there's no doubt about that. ever read how far up the ladder it went?

apparently the nebraska, as well as the d.c. fbi thought it went so deep

that they covered it up an arrested mr. king on numerous monetary charges.

 

ever see the video?

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3395321338401208062&q=conspiracy+of+silence

 

 

sex rings are nothing new, though. not to our govt. not to the saudis, etc etc etc.

[Larry Pubes]

i've actually read the book and numerous peripherally related articles.

eventually though, it starts spinning off into complete bullshit.

[lord_casek]

larry, like everything (and i'm guessing you are an avid reader, as i am)

turns into b/s after awhile. i think "conspiracy of silence" did a good job on exposing the heart of the problem. quite a wild story in itself. but true. hell, it was in the washington post more than once. alot more, as the interview at the end of cos points out.

 

 

you see how far the kennedy assasination has gone. i honestly believe he was taken out by our govt, a wing of our govt

[Larry Pubes]

have you read the book?

[lord_casek]

have you read the book?

 

haven't even been able to find it at the local bookshops. haven't searched amazon. i'm sure it's there. in fact, there are several boks (i just checked) with the same title.

[Larry Pubes]

no dude, the 'book' is called the franklin coverup.

[Kisama]

they deleted my other post.

 

no, i haven't read that book. does it get into the weird david icke lizard people rape conspiracy shit? cathy o'brian type deal? that shit is weird. i still contend that icke is a smart man.

just not about lizard people and ufo's. he needs to lay off the iboga.

[Some1]

shouldnt it be WHO THEY ARE

[Kisama]

shouldnt it be WHO THEY ARE

 

 

it could be either, i suppose. "who are hey" and then list who they are. ya know?

[Kisama]

Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=eed74d9d44c30493706fe03f4c9b3a77

 

 

Memos May Link Cheney to No-Bid Iraq Contract

http://www.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=31818&format=html

 

 

OAKLAND

Police spies chosen to lead war protest

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/28/SURVEILLANCE.TMP&type=printable

 

 

testimony on vote machine fraud by programmer

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5173816754727816515

[Larry Pubes]

heh, i've read the cathy obrien book believe it or not.

the book i was referencing is the book that john decamp wrote which the conspiracy of silence is based on. as far as i'm aware there is no book called 'conspiracy of silence' which has anything to do with those events. and it's not written by a total douche like icke either.

[Kisama]

haha have you? what'd you think of it?

 

 

as for the book, i'll check it out next time i go to the bookstore. thanks for the

title explanation, but could you clarfiy about what you meant with some of the stuff getting a little out of hand (as far as theories)?

[Larry Pubes]

have you read it?

it's fucked up of course. but whether it's "real" or not is completely unverifiable past personal hunch. neither of them are what i would call coffee table reading.

[Kisama]

have you read it?

it's fucked up of course. but whether it's "real" or not is completely unverifiable past personal hunch. neither of them are what i would call coffee table reading.

 

 

well, conspiracy of silence is a documentary produced for discovery channel.

they go through the motions of legalities, interviews, etc.

[Kisama]

http://www.theresistancemanifesto.com/audio/bgrovenixon.mp3

nixon on bohemian grove

 

 

 

Hunter S. Thompson $100,000 Snuff Film in Bohemian Grove

http://www.theresistancemanifesto.com/audio/corbingosch.mp3

[fermentor666]

Come the fuck on, Hunter S. Thompson? What a load of bullshit. This is the shit I hate most about these crazies. It ruins so much credibility and it's absolutely fucking offensive for them to say that shit about Thompson. That kind of shit amounts to A.) Jealousy, B.) Anger that Thompson probably snubs them, and C.) Desperate need for ratings/attention. Sorry, but Thompson definitly did not get off on watching 12 year old boys get murdered. Every ounce of the soul and passion that man put into his writings totally negates that "theory" and it's fucking offensive these two people would suggest that he killed himself over this nonsense. The man was in horrible physical pain for the last couple of years of his life. He also did a LOT of valuable political writing up until his death and was a huge fucking thorn in Nixon's side.

[Kisama]

Come the fuck on, Hunter S. Thompson? What a load of bullshit. This is the shit I hate most about these crazies. It ruins so much credibility and it's absolutely fucking offensive for them to say that shit about Thompson. That kind of shit amounts to A.) Jealousy, B.) Anger that Thompson probably snubs them, and C.) Desperate need for ratings/attention. Sorry, but Thompson definitly did not get off on watching 12 year old boys get murdered. Every ounce of the soul and passion that man put into his writings totally negates that "theory" and it's fucking offensive these two people would suggest that he killed himself over this nonsense. The man was in horrible physical pain for the last couple of years of his life. He also did a LOT of valuable political writing up until his death and was a huge fucking thorn in Nixon's side.

 

 

you knwo what? there's somethign to that (but i do agree with you).

i can't recall what i heard thompson say about knowing something

of the elites child sex rings, something. it was weird. he was very

connected. maybe it was about that other journalist? fuck. it's late.

 

 

edit: ever hear about his aid running off when the cops showed up?

i always thought it was to hide or steal drugs. haha.

[Larry Pubes]

there's a reference to a 'hunter thompson' in the franklin coverup. it was the name used by paul bonacci to identify the man who filmed himself and another boy being forced to rape another boy. he further alleged that the boy that was raped was murdered on film and that he and the other still-living boy were forced to have sex with his dead body and the guy who filmed it was the same 'hunter thompson'.

[Kisama]

that's right. thanks larry. it was in conspiracy of silence, too. somethough about that journalist who never got in any trouble for his alleged actions.

[WORDISM45]

any text info on this shit i couldnt be bothered listening to the audio that got posted

[casek1]

the hunter s. was two radio host? talking about hunter being paid $150k to doa snuff film. the nixon about bohemian grove...he says something to the affect of "those faggy guys at bohemian grove and their faggy activities"

[casek1]

A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation

 

1931 Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells. He later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. While there, he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients.

1932 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated.

1935 The Pellagra Incident. After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occured within poverty-striken black populations.

1940 Four hundred prisoners in Chicago are infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new and experimental drugs to

combat the disease. Nazi doctors later on trial at Nuremberg cite this American study to defend their own actions during the Holocaust.

1942 Chemical Warfare Services begins mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen. The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.

1943 In response to Japan's full-scale germ warfare program, the U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.

1944 U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.

1945 Project Paperclip is initiated. The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence, and the CIA recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret government projects in the United States.

1945 "Program F" is implemented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.

1946 Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word "experiments" to "investigations" or "observations" whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation's veteran's hospitals.

1947 Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Comission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.

1947 The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.

1950 Department of Defense begins plans to detonate nuclear weapons in desert areas and monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates.

1950 I n an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.

1951 Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.

1953 U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.

1953 Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.

1953 CIA initiates Project MKULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.

1955 The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.

1955 Army Chemical Corps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.

1956 U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.

1958 LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army's Chemical Warfare Laboratories for its effect on intelligence.

1960 The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) authorizes field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East. Testing of the european population is code named Project THIRD CHANCE; testing of the Asian population is code named Project DERBY HAT.

1965 Project CIA and Department of Defense begin Project MKSEARCH, a program to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs.

1965 Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.

1966 CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.

1966 U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.

1967 CIA and Department of Defense implement Project MKNAOMI, successor to MKULTRA and designed to maintain, stockpile and test biological and chemical weapons.

1968 CIA experiments with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting chemicals into the water supply of the FDA in Washington, D.C.

1969 Dr. Robert MacMahan of the Department of Defense requests from congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exists.

1970 Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the army's top secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biology techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.

1970 United States intensifies its development of "ethnic weapons" (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.

1975 The virus section of Fort Detrick's Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).

1977 Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirm that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.

1978 Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.

1981 First cases of AIDS are confirmed in homosexual men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, triggering speculation that AIDS may have been introduced via the Hepatitis B vaccine

1985 According to the journal Science (227:173-177), HTLV and VISNA, a fatal sheep virus, are very similar, indicating a close taxonomic and evolutionary relationship.

1986 According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (83:4007-4011), HIV and VISNA are highly similar and share all structural elements, except for a small segment which is nearly identical to HTLV. This leads to speculation that HTLV and VISNA may have been linked to produce a new retrovirus to which no natural immunity exists.

1986 A report to Congress reveals that the U.S. Government's current generation of biological agents includes: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.

1987 Department of Defense admits that, despite a treaty banning research and development of biological agents, it continues to operate research facilities at 127 facilities and universities around the nation.

1990 More than 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental.

1994 With a technique called "gene tracking," Dr. Garth Nicolson at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX discovers that many returning Desert Storm veterans are infected with an altered strain of Mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons. Incorporated into its molecular structure is 40 percent of the HIV protein coat, indicating that it had been man-made.

1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War .

1995 U.S. Government admits that it had offered Japanese war criminals and scientists who had performed human medical experiments salaries and immunity from prosecution in exchange for data on biological warfare research.

1995 Dr. Garth Nicolson, uncovers evidence that the biological agents used during the Gulf War had been manufactured in Houston, TX and Boca Raton, Fl and tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections.

1996 Department of Defense admits that Desert Storm soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.

1997 Eighty-eight members of Congress sign a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.

© 1998-2000 Health News Network

All Rights Reserved

http://www.healthnewsnet.com/humanexperiments.html

[casek1]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4701196.stm

Hidden history of US germ testing

[casek1]

Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers?

By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP

 

NEW YORK (Aug. 12) - It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills - morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.

 

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.

 

Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.

 

There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.

 

In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist. He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact a high price.

 

"I'm just a zombie walking around," he says.

 

Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon's arsenal of it - thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.

 

A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

 

Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous waste storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.

 

Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in July 2003, nearly unable to walk because of lightning-strike pains from herniated discs in his spine. Then began a strange series of symptoms he'd never experienced in his previously healthy life.

 

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.

 

"We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. "The doctors said, 'It's all in your head.'"

 

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.

 

But the medic knew something the others didn't.

 

Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.

 

"We got on the Internet," Reed said, "and we started researching depleted uranium."

 

 

 

Then they contacted The New York Daily News, which paid for sophisticated urine tests available only overseas.

 

Then they hired a lawyer.

 

Reed, Gerard Matthew, Raymond Ramos, Hector Vega, Augustin Matos, Anthony Yonnone, Jerry Ojeda and Anthony Phillip all have depleted uranium in their urine, according to tests done in December 2003, while they bounced for months between Walter Reed and New Jersey's Fort Dix medical center, seeking relief that never came.

 

The analyses were done in Germany, by a Frankfurt professor who developed a depleted uranium test with Randall Parrish, a professor of isotope geology at the University of Leicester in Britain.

 

The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks.

 

The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe, and not that worrisome.

 

Four of the highest-registering samples from Frankfurt were sent to the VA.

 

Those results were negative, Reed said. "Their test just isn't as sophisticated," he said. "And when we first asked to be tested, they told us there wasn't one. They've lied to us all along."

The VA's testing methodology is safe and accurate, the agency says. More than 2,100 soldiers from the current war have asked to be tested; only 8 had DU in their urine, the VA said.

 

The term depleted uranium is linguistically radioactive. Simply uttering the words can prompt a reaction akin to preaching atheism at tent revival. Heads shake, eyes roll, opinions are yelled from all sides.

 

"The Department of Defense takes the position that you can eat it for breakfast and it poses no threat at all," said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center, which helps veterans with various problems, including navigating the labyrinth of VA health care. "Then you have far-left groups that ... declare it a crime against humanity."

 

Several countries use it as weaponry, including Britain, which fired it during the 2003 Iraq invasion.

 

An estimated 286 tons of DU munitions were fired by the U.S. in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. An estimated 130 tons were shot toppling Saddam Hussein.

 

Depleted uranium can enter the human body by inhalation, the most dangerous method; by ingesting contaminated food or eating with contaminated hands; by getting dust or debris in an open wound, or by being struck by shrapnel, which often is not removed because doing so would be more dangerous than leaving it.

 

Inhaled, it can lodge in the lungs. As with imbedded shrapnel, this is doubly dangerous - not only are the particles themselves physically destructive, they emit radiation.

 

A moderate voice on the divisive DU spectrum belongs to Dan Fahey, a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley, who has studied the issue for years and also served in the Gulf War before leaving the military as a conscientious objector.

 

"I've been working on this since '93 and I've just given up hope," he said. "I've spoken to successive federal committees and elected officials ... who then side with the Pentagon. Nothing changes."

 

At the other end are a collection of conspiracy-theorists and Internet proselytizers who say using such weapons constitutes genocide. Two of the most vocal opponents recently suggested that a depleted-uranium missile, not a hijacked jetliner, struck the Pentagon in 2001.

 

"The bottom line is it's more hazardous than the Pentagon admits," Fahey said, "but it's not as hazardous as the hard-line activist groups say it is. And there's a real dearth of information about how DU affects humans."

 

There are several studies on how it affects animals, though their results are not, of course, directly applicable to humans. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations, and pass from mother to unborn child, resulting in birth defects.

 

Iraqi doctors reported significant increases in birth defects and childhood cancers after the 1991 invasion.

 

Iraqi authorities "found that uranium, which affected the blood cells, had a serious impact on health: The number of cases of leukemia had increased considerably, as had the incidence of fetal deformities," the U.N. reported.

 

Depleted uranium can also contaminate soil and water, and coat buildings with radioactive dust, which can by carried by wind and sandstorms.

 

In 2005, the U.N. Environmental Program identified 311 polluted sites in Iraq. Cleaning them will take at least $40 million and several years, the agency said. Nothing can start until the fighting stops.

 

Fifteen years after it was first used in battle, there is only one U.S. government study monitoring veterans exposed to depleted uranium.

 

Number of soldiers in the survey: 32. Number of soldiers in both Iraq wars: more than 900,000.

 

The study group's size is controversial - far too small, say experts including Fahey - and so are the findings of the voluntary, Baltimore-based study.

 

It has found "no clinically significant" health effects from depleted uranium exposure in the study subjects, according to its researchers.

 

Critics say the VA has downplayed participants' health problems, including not reporting one soldier who developed cancer, and another who developed a bone tumor.

 

So for now, depleted uranium falls into the quagmire of Gulf War Syndrome, from which no treatment has emerged despite the government's spending of at least $300 million.

 

About 30 percent of the 700,000 men and women who served in the first Gulf War still suffer a baffling array of symptoms very similar to those reported by Reed's unit.

 

Depleted uranium has long been suspected as a possible contributor to Gulf War Syndrome, and in the mid-90s, veterans helped push the military into tracking soldiers exposed to it.

 

But for all their efforts, what they got in the end was a questionnaire dispensed to homeward-bound soldiers asking about mental health, nightmares, losing control, exposure to dangerous and radioactive chemicals.

 

But, the veterans persisted, how would soldiers know they'd been exposed? Radiation is invisible, tasteless, and has no smell. And what exhausted, homesick, war-addled soldier would check a box that would only send him or her to a military medical center to be poked and prodded and questioned and tested?

 

It will take years to determine how depleted uranium affected soldiers from this war. After Vietnam, veterans, in numbers that grew with the passage of time, complained of joint aches, night sweats, bloody feces, migraine headaches, unexplained rashes and violent behavior; some developed cancers.

 

It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange - a corrosive defoliant used to melt the jungles of Vietnam and flush out the enemy - was linked to those sufferings.

 

It took 40 years for the military to compensate sick World War II vets exposed to massive blasts of radiation during tests of the atomic bomb.

 

In 2002, Congress voted to not let that happen again.

 

It established the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses - comprised of scientists, physicians and veterans advocates. It reports to the secretary of Veterans Affairs.

 

Its mandate is to judge all research and all efforts to treat Gulf War Syndrome patients against a single standard: Have sick soldiers been made better?

 

The answer, according to the committee, is no.

 

"Regrettably, after four years of operation neither the Committee nor (the) VA can report progress toward this goal," stated its December 2005 report. "Research has not produced effective treatments for these conditions nor shown that existing treatments are significantly effective."

 

And so time marches on, as do soldiers going to, and returning from, the deserts of Iraq.

 

Herbert Reed is an imposing man, broad shouldered and tall. He strides into the VA Medical Center in the Bronx with the presence of a cop or a soldier. Since the Vietnam War, he has been both.

 

His hair is perfect, his shirt spotless, his jeans sharply creased. But there is something wrong, a niggling imperfection made more noticeable by a bearing so disciplined. It is a limp - more like a hitch in his get-along.

 

It is the only sign, albeit a tiny one, that he is extremely sick.

 

Even sleep offers no release. He dreams of gunfire and bombs and soldiers who scream for help. No matter how hard he tries, he never gets there in time.

 

At 54, he is a veteran of two wars and a 20-year veteran of the New York Police Department, where he last served as an assistant warden at the Riker's Island prison.

 

He was in perfect health, he says, before being deployed to Iraq.

 

According to military guidelines, he should have heard the words depleted uranium long before he ended up at Walter Reed. He should have been trained about its dangers, and how to avoid prolonged exposure to its toxicity and radioactivity. He says he didn't get anything of the kind. Neither did other reservists and National Guard soldiers called up for the current war, according to veterans' groups.

 

Reed and the seven brothers from his unit hate what has happened to them, and they speak of it at public seminars and in politicians' offices. It is something no VA doctor can explain; something that leaves them feeling like so many spent shell rounds, kicked to the side of battle.

 

But for every outspoken soldier like them, there are silent veterans like Raphael Naboa, an Army artillery scout who served 11 months in the northern Sunni Triangle, only to come home and fall apart.

 

Some days he feels fine. "Some days I can't get out of bed," he said from his home in Colorado.

 

Now 29, he's had growths removed from his brain. He has suffered a small stroke - one morning he was shaving, having put down the razor to rinse his face. In that moment, he blacked out and pitched over.

 

"Just as quickly as I lost consciousness, I regained it," he said. "Except I couldn't move the right side of my body."

 

After about 15 minutes, the paralysis ebbed.

 

He has mentioned depleted uranium to his VA doctors, who say he suffers from a series of "non-related conditions." He knows he was exposed to DU.

 

"A lot of guys went trophy-hunting, grabbing bayonets, helmets, stuff that was in the vehicles that were destroyed by depleted uranium. My guys were rooting around in it. I was trying to get them out of the vehicles."

 

No one in the military talked to him about depleted uranium, he said. His knowledge, like Reed's, is self-taught from the Internet.

 

Unlike Reed, he has not gone to war over it. He doesn't feel up to the fight. There is no known cure for what ails him, and so no possible victory in battle.

 

He'd really just like to feel normal again. And he knows of others who feel the same.

 

"I was an artillery scout, these are folks who are in pretty good shape. Your Rangers, your Special Forces guys, they're in as good as shape as a professional athlete.

 

"Then we come back and we're all sick."

 

They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time, with no hope for relief from a multitude of miseries that has no name.

 

 

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