Soon the Pentagon was forced to admit that plutonium, which can kill even in minute amounts, and other highly dangerous elements were found in the supposedly depleted uranium. So great is the public outrage that after the NATO cover-up several European countries embarked on their own studies of the sweeping health problems of their former peacekeepers, and the European Parliament called for a halt in the use of depleted uranium munitions. Britain even had to reverse its refusal to screen its soldiers for medical problems. A UN study last May concluded that Kosova groundwater may be so contaminated as to be unfit for drinking. Children and adults have unwittingly collected bits of radioactive shells, and dairy cows graze in contaminated areas.
Doctors there report a massive increase in leukemia, which they attribute to depleted uranium.
The U.S.-led embargo denies Iraq the medicine to treat the illness. Also, U-236 has been found in the urine and bone tissue of some Gulf War veterans. And just as the military tried to deny there even is a Gulf War syndrome, there is not one word, much less a study, of what is happening to workers who produce, pack and load these shells. Capitalism's anti-human nature is revealed even in its technological advances, creating weapons that keep killing a decade after the shooting stops.