US War Crimes and Depleted Uranium

The physics lesson is certainly very intesting. That just builds on my question as to how much actual damage we do with toxic and radioactive elements.

Again, lead is naturally ocurring, so are we changing things all that much except where we are creating heavy concentrations? Uranium is naturally ocurring, so as long as we are distributing low level stuff is it any more dangerous than being near the uranium deposits? Arsenic is naturally ocurring and there are areas where I have been warned not to handle rocks and then touch my mouth, etc., etc.

I am not anti tree hugger, but like to deal with facts rather than emotional hyperbole or the neurosis induced fears.
 
I just realized I need to edit my last post. I meant to say .05% U235, the isotope that is easily fissionable. While U238, the isotope they remove, is fissionable, it won't sustain a reaction by itself, and is much harder to split. Depleted uranium is U238, plus whatever impurities make it into the mix.
 
I am saddened by this thread.
I refuse to read any of it since it starts with the wording US war crimes.
I am very dissipointed at the statement.
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Are you suggesting the United States has never committed war crimes? Because this is exactly the type of short-sighted tunnel vision that we need to avoid, esp as freedom loving, patriotic Americans falling on the right of the political scale. It takes an incredibly skewed view of history in direct opposition to truth to hold such views and doing so only fools yourself. I love my country, and if they'll take me, when I graduate college, I will enlist in either the Army or Marines. I would kill and die for my country and hold that as an American, I am among the most fortunate on this planet. But I do not and will not hold that my country is perfect, without fault, and beyond error or repute. Quite contrary, I hold that we are fortunate to be able to discuss such errors as My Lai objectively and to learn from them to apply the lessons they teach us elsewhere. Furthermore, I consider myself in good company that the majority of Americans do not agree with such actions and consider it a good sign that such things do cause unrest in America because they are not in withholding the high moral standards and intregrity on which this country was founded and conflict directly with the moral values of the most of this country's citizens, and military forces. The day that it becomes acceptable to turn a blind eye to these events is a sad day for this country, the dream and values it represents, and the world.
I also do not hold that as a self-proclaimed Republican and Conservative in about everything but religious zealousy, I am likewise perfect. One thing I have learned in several years as a political science major is that politics is always about compromise. You claim absolute moral superiority if the values and beliefs which you claim are compromised. And I refuse to believe that any Republican can claim a moral high-road from the current President when it is his signature is on the PATRIOT Act. I do not claim to be an expert politician. I have never run for office and probably never will. But in my major, you have to study the stuff pretty intensively and in depth. You can not do so and hold the same cut-and-dried outlook on politics when you get out as you did when you went in.
I vote. I consider it a surpreme honor as a right I have as an American, and a human. But the simple fact of the matter is that I voted for Bush as "the lesser of two evils" and can forsee no time in the near future when I will have any other choice. I used to agree wholeheartedly with the war in Iraq, but the more I am presented with the opprotunity to think about it, the more I doubt my initial convictions. Right or wrong, my opinion on the matter now is that we are there with a publically stated set of objectives and can not withdraw with pride intact until these objectives are met. In the past, America and Americans were proud. Our country has alot to be proud of, mistakes aside, and I long for the times when America held its head high. Because I this, I hope that we will not withdraw from Iraq until we can do so head high, with goals met, obstacles overcome, and overwhelming opposition bested.
I find it encouraging that after events such as Tokyo and Dresden, the United States as led a movement away from the targeting of civilians and has spent billions to develop more accurate and sophsticated munitians to minimize civilian casualties. Non-combatants die in war. This is a sad fact of the current state of war. And while we can hope for a time when this will not be so, I find this to be as unrealistically oppomistic as hoping for an end to war in general. Innocent people have died in Iraq. Most of them have not been because of the US and indeed, when you hear of US Marines taking incoming fire from crowded streets and public buildings without returning fire so as to not to kill or injure innocent life, it becomes apparent that our fighting men and women are doing their best to minimize such "collatoral damage," even at great personal risk to themselves, and are doing a spetacular job of it. They have earned the respect, admiration, and gratitude of myself and the United States, and have done of excellent job in representing our country to the rest of the world. We should all be proud of them, and I find it a great source of pride that we can claim such fine men and women as our own.
Do I believe that George Bush is a war criminal harvesting ill-intent? No. I believe he was put in a situation that was extrodanarially difficult even for the man bearing the responsibility of the most powerful man on earth, or one of them, and that he made the best informed decision he could with what was presented to him at the time. This may or may not have been the correct decision and history shows us that only hindsight will tell us for sure. But this forces us to recognize that he is merely mortal and does not have a monopoly on either moral high ground or error and lapse in judgement. Simply put, George Bush, like Conservatism, is a necessary compromise. As much as we would like to hold a rigid and unwavering view of morality in the political landscape, we cannot. In politics, we must settle for some or go without--we must eat the bad with the good or starve and be forgotten. Just some compromises are better than others. And that is why I voted for Bush, twice.
 
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