The Agonist - USA: Armed Forces

"suicide is painless"

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:52:47 -0800

A familiar anthem to many. And an anthem that has permeated the armed forces possibly.
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ABC.net.au - The Pentagon has responded to the massacre at an army base in Texas by deciding to screen all United States defence services for staff who are unstable and potentially violent.

News of the urgent review broke as the Pentagon revealed that soldier suicides this year would set another record.

Last week, 13 people were killed at Fort Hood in Texas when an army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire.

Now the military has to satisfy itself that there are not other potentially dangerous service members who could repeat the gruesome massacre at Fort Hood somewhere else.

And more broadly, the Pentagon is examining how all the military services keep a watch on potential problems in their ranks.

The Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, had announced his own internal investigation.

There were reports it would start with the Walter Reed military hospital, where alleged Fort Hood gunman army Major Nidal Hassan spent six years.

It would investigate how the military missed signs of Major Hassan's instability and potential violence.

But that investigation now looks as though it will include all defence services.

The massacre was to have been the subject of the Senate Homeland Security committee hearing on Thursday but the White House has refused to provide any government officials as witnesses.

The White House has also taken control of the congressional briefings on the massacre, with committee chairs all told briefings would be handled by the president's national Security Council due to the sensitive and high-profile nature of the case.

Mental illness, suicide
That case has also thrown a light on mental illness within the US military.

Today General Peter Chiarelli - the army vice chief of staff - released figures showing for the fifth year in a row suicides in the US army would set a new record.

"As of 16th November, the army has reported 140 active duty suicides, which is equivalent to our total in 2008 with a month and a half remaining in the year," he said.

Those statistics do not reveal the whole picture because they do not include figures on people after they have left the military.

A congressional research service report last year found that the real incidence of suicide among veterans simply is not known.

But based on figures from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Veterans Affairs estimated that 18 veterans a day - or 6,500 a year - take their lives.

General Chiarelli says the cause of the rising suicide rate among active service members is unknown.

About one-third of the suicides are among soldiers who have not been deployed to a combat zone.

"Over the past eight months, every suicide has been briefed to me," General Chiarelli said.

"And although we have made changes to army policy based on many of the lessons learned, we still haven't found any statistically significant causal linkage that would allow us to effectively predict human behaviour.

"The reality is, there is no simple answer. Each suicide case is as unique as the individuals themselves."

Preventing suicides
At the beginning of last month, the US army began what it called a comprehensive soldier fitness program.

In an era where US troops take multiple tours of duty with minimal breaks at home, Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum said there needed to be a greater emphasis on mental wellbeing.

"We have spent a lot of time historically on training physical fitness and technical excellence in the army, but not psychological fitness," she said.

"And all three are really essential in this era of persistent conflict."

Basic training now includes anti-stress programs as part of a broader effort to help soldiers deal with the after-effects of combat and prevent suicides.

Gates Bars Torture Photos' Release

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:11:19 -0800

Nick Baumann | Washington | November 13

Mother Jones - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has used powers granted to him by a controversial new law to block the court-ordered release of numerous photos of detainee abuse, government lawyers revealed in a court filing [PDF] Friday evening.

Gates' new authority comes from a law, signed by President Barack Obama last month, that gives the Secretary of Defense the power to rule that photos of detainees are exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act. Gates' action on Friday was the first use of the new FOIA exemption since it passed Congress last month. The photos in question are the subject of a years-long legal fight by the American Civil Liberties Union, which first filed a FOIA request for records pertaining to detainee treatment, rendition, and death in May of 2005. The case is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

The administration first sought to change FOIA in June, shortly after deciding to contest a ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the photos' release. The resulting bill, championed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), was specifically designed to nullify the effect of the appeals court's ruling. Since the court had ruled that the photos couldn't be withheld under an existing FOIA exemption, the Obama administration simply asked Congress to carve out a new exemption. Despite objections from liberal members of the House, Congress obliged.

The Great Atomic Film Cover-Up

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:26:28 -0800

Greg Mitchell | Nov 10 | Huff

Early this week, President Obama -- perhaps under new pressure as a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- said he would like to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his presidency. If he does, he will become the first sitting U.S. president to make that trip.

Yesterday, Veterans Day arrived, so here I'd liked to pay tribute to two of the most remarkable veterans I've ever encountered.

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, many newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The general public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I first probed the coverup back in 1983, and developed it further in later articles and in my 1995 book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and in a 2005 documentary Original Child Bomb. To see some of the footage, go to my blog.

As editor of Nuclear Times in the early 1980s, I met Herbert Sussan, one of the members of the U.S. military film crew. The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF. I have a VHS copy of all of it today.

When that footage finally emerged, I spoke with and corresponded with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.

"I always had the sense," McGovern told me, "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done -- at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because...we were sorry for our sins."

Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.

More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

In 2005, Editor & Publisher (where I am editor) broke the news that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. But suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world. The common view abroad, and among many U.S. historians, is that Russia's entry into the war (long scheduled and carried out on August 8) would have forced a Japanese surrender long before any U.S. invasion took place. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower himself later said it was not necessary to hit Japan "with that awful thing."

'Don't Ask' repeal may come in 2010 as amendment

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:42:23 -0800

Chris Johnson | Washington | November 10

The Washington Blade - The effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will likely come next year as an amendment to the Defense Department spending bill, rather than through a standalone bill, according to gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Frank said in an interview with the Blade that repealing the 1993 law barring gays from serving openly in the military would happen as part of the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill.

“The House will take up and the Senate will take up ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal,” he said. “That will again, like hate crimes, even more so, will have to be done, I believe, in the context of the defense authorization. You can’t do the standalone bill. It belongs in the defense authorization.”

Frank said lawmakers would seek to amend the defense measure to include a provision repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Such a move would mimic the way Congress recently enacted the hate crimes measure.

Drones scour the sea for pirates

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:57:18 -0800

Nov 10

BBC -

The US military has deployed its Reaper unmanned drones to scour the Indian Ocean with their all-seeing, infra-red eye.

Somali pirates are attacking farther and farther from home; previously safe areas are now very much within range.

The farthest attack from shore has just taken place, 1,000 nautical miles (1,850km) off Somalia.

In total, close to 200 crew members are being held hostage for ransom and hardly a day passes without news of another attack.

The drone is controlled remotely and can fly up to 18 hours at a time.

Its camera is capable of zooming in on suspected pirates from heights of up to 15,200m (50,000ft).

"It has multiple zooms and is very good for the mission for scanning very large areas," said Cdr Gregory Hand of the US military, as he watched one of the three grey drones taxi along the runway besides the turquoise waters of the Seychelles.

"These aircraft have the capability of carrying weapons, but there are currently no plans to place weapons on them," he says.

Gwynne Dyer: U.S. media overlook obvious explanation for Maj. Nidal's mass murder

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:08:37 -0800

Earlier this year, the Pentagon committed $50 million to a study investigating why the suicide rate in the military is rising. It used to be below the suicide rate in comparable civilian groups, but now it’s four times higher.

Thirteen American soldiers were killed by a gunman at Fort Hood in Texas last Thursday, but 75 others have died by their own hand at the same army base since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why?

To most people, the answer is obvious. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been frustrating, exhausting, and seemingly endless, and some people just can’t take it any more. But the Pentagon is spending $50 million to search for other possible causes, because it doesn’t like that answer.

http://www.straight.com/article-269513/gwynne-dyer-us-media-overlook-obvious-explanation-maj-nidals-mass-murder

"You Can't Pick Your Side in a Race Riot"

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:09:05 -0800

The title of the post is a quote from an inmate who survived the infamous Santa Fe Prison Riot in 1980. The sentiment is obvious, when the worst, most atavistic tribal impulses of human beings take over, people can't make rational choices about which side to take, and often don't even have the choice of remaining neutral.

This unfortunate reality of the human condition greatly complicates the internal politics of a polyglot nation like the U.S.

It's been that way since the American Revolution. Certain ethnic/socio-political groups remained more loyal to the Crown and many were driven out of the country at the end of the war. I'm familiar with this because my father's family were tories who migrated from New York to New Brunswick after the Revolution.

My home state of Texas infamously oppressed the Tejanos who played leading roles in the Texas Revolution once independence from Mexico had been achieved.

German-Americans famously suffered the brunt of an angry populace during WWI, from Wikipedia:

The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One man was hanged in Illinois, apparently for no other reason than that he was of German descent. The killers were found not guilty of the crime and the hanging was called an act of patriotism by a jury. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller) and limited their use of the German language in public places. Newspapers also printed blacklists of names of Germans, including their addresses, headlined as German Enemy Aliens.

During WWII, Japanese-Americans had it even worse, being interned in concentration camps.

It shouldn't be surprising that our current ~~wars to export freedom and Democracy~~ state of war with two Muslim countries is putting yet another subset of Americans in a very awkward spot. And when one individual snaps, rather than being seen as an example of aberrant individual psychology or criminal evil, the jingo-artists among us seize on this to make the situation even worse.

From TPM:

One conservative writer is already declaring -- without citing any evidence -- that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter who killed 13 at Fort Hood yesterday, was acting at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood.

and from Raw Story:

In the wake of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by a military psychiatrist of Middle Eastern lineage, the hosts at Fox News have begun suggesting that all Muslims in the military should be treated as potential threats.

"Do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers -- anybody enlisted?" Fox's Brian Kilmeade asked Geraldo Rivera on Friday morning. "Because if I'm going to be deployed in a foxhole, if I'm going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me."

I hope we can pull out of this downward spiral before it gets stupider and more deadly.

Some excerpts from an interview with a local newspaper editor near Fort Hood in the full entry. She takes a much more measured and responsible approach than the national media.

From Boing Boing's interview with Amanda Kim Stairrett, the military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald.

Besides the families, people really want to know more about the alleged shooter himself. What are you seeing in this coverage?
AKS: A lot of the news organizations are very much wanting to push his religion. Him being Muslim and the impact of that on the incident itself. We don't have anything with that confirmed yet, so I've been really hesitant to say that that played a big part in the incident. We did had a reporter who was at the shooter's off-Post apartment and talked to neighbors. They said he was outspoken about being Muslim and had a lot of pride in his faith. But right now, I've stayed away from saying whether that played a hand in the shooting. I don't know if it's a big problem that people are speculating. I think it's first instinct. But I don't know why new organizations are so prominently featuring surveillance footage of him in a convenience store in traditional clothing. They're building this background in case it turns out that his religion did come into this. But we just don't know right now. And we're not willing to go that route with our reporting at this time.

What's your take on the speculation that's running rampant on TV news with this incident, in general? How does that compare to the actual facts that you know?
AKS: It's been interesting. Very early after the incident yesterday, I was pretty amazed to stand by and listen to, mostly, TV reporters go on air and speculate and report on rumors they'd heard. Whereas, our newspaper is right next to Fort Hood. We have a close relationship and it's always been our policy where we find that it's best to wait for correct information rather than to speculate. Because there's a large family population that isn't necessarily on Post, and don't know what's going on. It's a dangerous situation to get those people worried and worked up for reasons that maybe aren't correct. It's been really frustrating to see all the speculation. I've even been avoiding watching the TV coverage too closely, because I don't want the speculation to accidentally influence what I write.

As many as 9 killed in Fort Hood shootings, officials say

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:41:45 -0800

11/5/09

CNN - (CNN) -- Two gunmen in military uniforms shot and killed as many as nine people and wounded as many as 20 at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday, officials said.

One of the shooters has been apprehended, Fort Hood spokesman Sgt. Maj. Jamie Posten told CNN.

"At this point we're looking for the other shooter," Posten said. Asked for a description, he said, "we're trying to develop that information."

The shooters were wearing military uniforms, but it was unclear whether they were soldiers, said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas

President Obama has been informed of the incident, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

New row over Colombia-US accord

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:03:29 -0800

Nov 5

BBC - Colombian opposition groups have reacted angrily after details of a controversial military deal with the US were made public.

Under the 10-year deal, the US military will not only have access to military bases, but also be able to use major international civilian airports.

US personnel and defence contractors will also enjoy diplomatic immunity.

President Alvaro Uribe says the agreement will help rid Colombia of drugs gangs and left-wing rebel groups.

But leading opposition senator Gustavo Petro, of the left-wing PDA party, said the deal amounted to a virtual US occupation of Colombia.

The accord was signed last Friday but full details were only made public on Tuesday.

Who is seeing the real Afghanistan?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:20:48 -0800

Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditure of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war…. The United States presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

Matthew Hoh has served his country bravely in combat and he has responded to a policy with which he disagreed by making the honorable choice to resign. His observations about the situation in Zabul province merit serious consideration. I wish that many others in the previous administration who had serious misgivings about policy but waited to reveal them until after leaving office had, instead, followed Hoh’s example.

Several days later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Washington Post from Benjamin Joseloff, an American serving as a fellow at the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. This initiative, started by Stanford Law students, is devoted to a helping Afghan universities improve the quality of their legal education. Joseloff writes....

continue reading Brian Vogt's post at http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/11/03/who-is-seeing-the-real-afghanistan/

"Cost Free War"

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:47:38 -0800

From The Guardian:

In Wired for War, author Pete Singer speculates the machines are harbingers of a new era of "cost-free war".

"It's an historic change," said Singer. "Going to war has meant the same thing for 5,000 years. Now going to war means sitting in front of a computer screen for 12 hours. Then you go home and talk to your kids about their homework."

Am I the only one who finds this method of war tantamount to terrorism? And despicable, to boot?

Oh yeah, they hate us for our freedoms. Sorry, I forgot.

Obama Signs Largest Military Budget since World War II

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:23:22 -0800

Earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the $680 billion FY 2010 Defense Authorization Bill, the largest such budget since the end of World War II. If you missed that aspect of the story, you weren’t alone. Many news stories chose instead to focus on the hate crime provisions tacked onto the bill.

I’ve often quarreled with the inclusion of superfluous legislative riders, and the hate crime provision is more superfluous than most. (Indeed, as my Cato colleague David Rittgers has pointed out, it might be worse than superfluous.)

But I want to focus on the president’s failure to halt the inexorable growth in military spending. His capitulation on a number of spending programs — even as he complains of rampant waste and abuse within the Pentagon — signals to American taxpayers that they should expect more of the same. It sends an equally harmful message to our friends and allies around the world: stand back, we’ll take care of it.

You see, most of the money we spend on our military is not geared to defending the United States. Rather, it encourages other countries to free-ride on the U.S. military instead of taking prudent steps to defend themselves.

The massive defense bill represents only part of our military spending. The appropriations bill moving through Congress governing veterans affairs, military construction and other agencies totals $133 billion, while the massive Department of Homeland Security budget weighs in at $42.8 billion. This comprises the visible balance of what Americans spend on our national security, loosely defined. Then there is the approximately $16 billion tucked away in the Energy Department’s budget, money dedicated to the care and maintenance of the country’s huge nuclear arsenal.

All told, every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on these programs and agencies next year. By way of comparison, the average Japanese spends less than $330; the average German about $520; China’s per capita spending is less than $100.

The massive imbalance between what Americans spend on our military, and what others spend, flows directly from our foreign policy. Several decades ago, Washington opted to be the world’s policeman, and has ever since discouraged other countries from spending more on their own defense. President Obama has tacitly questioned this approach in the past, and has called on other countries to step forward and do more. But by signing this monstrosity, his actions drown out his words.

The president has defended his support for continued bloated military spending, with additional monies going especially to a larger conventional army, as a way to reduce the strains on our troops and their families. This is a noble impulse. But a far better way to relieve the burdens on our overstretched force is to rethink all of our global military commitments, and align our strategy to our means. A new grand strategy, predicated on self-reliance and restraint, would relieve the burdens from the backs of our troops and from taxpayers. That new strategy would compel other countries to finally assume their rightful responsibilities in defending themselves and their respective regions.

The governing class in Washington has consistently resisted such a change. It is enamored of its ability to manage not just the rest of the country, but indeed the rest of the world, and sees no reason to change. Neither, it would seem, does President Obama. By embracing a military budget explicitly geared toward sustaining the status quo, the president virtually ensures that other countries will not share in the costs of keeping the world relatively prosperous and at peace.

I’ll be discussing our massive military spending and other aspects of U.S. national security policy next Friday with Daniel Wirls, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, and the author of a forthcoming book on U.S. military spending that looks terrific. The event is sponsored by the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and will be held at the UC’s Washington Center from 10:00 to 11:30. To learn more and to register, visit their web site.

By Christopher Preble. To read more, visit http://blog.psaonline.org

Military refines a 'constant stare against our enemy'

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:53:51 -0800

Julian E. Barnes | Washington | November 2

LAT - The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles.

The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles.

Military officials predict that the impact on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan will be impressive.

"Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," said a senior military official. "The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary."

[...]

Computers will take the Gorgon Stare images and "quilt" them into a mosaic that shows a large swath of territory, military officials said. That will enable the Defense Department to keep unblinking watch on a midsize city or village -- turning the Reapers into a kind of heavily armed traffic camera.

Such "pattern of life" intelligence is considered crucial for analysts who are trying to hunt down members of an insurgent network. Using the video feeds, analysts will be able to zoom in on different parts of the city, or follow the movement of particular people.

[...]

Predator and Reaper drones also can intercept electronic communications from radios, cellphones or other communication devices.

Last year, the Air Force overhauled how it organized its intelligence analysts. For the first time, video-feed analysts worked side by side with those listening to the audio.

"It is not just video resolution, it is not just signals, it is not just access to analysts," said the Defense official. "What has really evolved is the fact we can integrate a variety of information and analyze it in real time."

The number of Air Force unmanned drones available for deployment has increased significantly. In 2006, the Air Force was able to fly six drones at a time. Now operators are able to keep 38 aloft at once -- and the Air Force hopes to reach 50 by 2011.

With the wide-area surveillance technologies, the number of video feeds collected at one time is due to expand exponentially -- from 38 today to nearly 3,000 by 2013.

"This is Buzz Lightyear technology," said a military officer. "This is an unprecedented amount of information in warfare."

Hope wanes for finding survivors of Coast Guard-Marines crash

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:57:06 -0700

Jeanette Steele | San Diego | Oct 30

San Diego Union Tribune - As rescuers plan to search into the night for nine service members missing after a Thursday aircraft collision off San Clemente Island, aviation officials are looking at how a hulking Coast Guard plane crashed into a Camp Pendleton helicopter in good weather.

“All of our available assets are on the scene searching,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Allyson Conroy of the Coast Guard. Two helicopters and six cutters are scouring a 644-square-mile area around the island, which is about 70 miles west of San Diego.

But the chances of anyone surviving through another night in the 50-to 60-degree ocean looks increasingly dim, and the Pentagon has said it's unlikely anyone survived.

The Coast Guard has found debris, including aircraft wreckage, in a stretch roughly 12 miles long by 5 miles wide. No bodies have been recovered, Conroy said.

Pentagon Dirty Bombers: Depleted Uranium in the USA

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:16:37 -0700

Dave Lindorff | Washington | October 26

The Public Record - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold hearings tomorrow and Wednesday in Hawaii on an application by the US Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu.

In fact, what the Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.

But that’s only a small part of the story.

The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover all the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator shells that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on impact, turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide.

[...]

Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:

Ft. Hood, TX

Ft. Benning, GA

Ft. Campbell, KY

Ft. Knox, KY

Ft. Lewis, WA

Ft. Riley, KS

Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD

Ft. Dix, NJ

Makua Military Reservation, HI

Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:

China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA

Eglin AFB, Florida,

Nellis AFB, NV

Davis-Monthan AFB

Kirtland AFB, NM

White Sands Missile Range, NM

Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

An application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM Inst. Of Mining and Technology claimed that that site’s test area was “so contaminated with DU…as to preclude any other use”!