Sputnik
Washington's decision to supply depleted uranium (DU) munitions to Ukraine has been met with little if any criticism in the Western press, even though decades ago American and European journalists rang alarm bells over health and environment hazards triggered by the weapon. Why is that?
The Biden administration has announced it will provide Ukraine with depleted uranium (DU) anti-tank 120 mm rounds which will be used to arm the 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks expected to be delivered to the Kiev regime in the fall.
US media hastened to dispel anxieties associated with the use of uranium: even though rounds retain "some radioactive properties," but they "can't generate a nuclear reaction like a nuclear weapon would," AP wrote citing a RAND expert. Per the US media, depleted uranium is not that "radioactive", but rather toxic. And again, most of it would be excreted, and just some can enter the bloodstream and cause kidney damage.
At the same time, DU projectiles – which were developed by the US to destroy Soviet tanks during the Cold War, the media highlights – can easily and effectively penetrate the enemy tanks' armor. On top of that, the depleted uranium shells "saved the lives of many service members in combat," the media underscores, quoting a Pentagon spokesman. Nothing to worry about, it's just "an exotic metal dart fired at an extraordinarily high speed." That is, advantages outweigh the disadvantages, in the newspaper's view.
However, over almost three decades the US media has held a strikingly different stance.
In January 1993, the New York Times shed light on the sinister consequences of the use of depleted uranium projectiles during the 1991 Iraq War. The media cited a confidential report by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, written in April 1991 and leaked to the press, which estimated that at least 40 tons of depleted uranium were dispersed in Iraq and Kuwait during the war. The newspaper cast doubt on the Pentagon's assertions that depleted uranium is "very, very mildly radioactive", referring to the post-war increase in childhood cancer and mysterious swollen abdomens is at least in part due to the radioactive shells.
In 1999, the Western media repeatedly raised concerns over the use of depleted uranium munitions during the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. In March 2000, NATO confirmed to the United Nations that depleted uranium was used during the conflict in Kosovo, saying that "a total of approximately 31,000 rounds" of DU ammo was used during NATO's bombings of Yugoslavia.
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