Soldier’s new mission is exposing risk of depleted uranium

The children resemble fictitious, freakish figures
better suited for a
horror movie than ordinary life.

One child’s enormously bloated stomach prevents it
from doing anything
but lying in bed.

Another child lies in its mother’s arms. It’s
impossible to tell if the
child’s smiling or crying. Its mouth, which is a huge,
purple, scarred,
messy hole, is so disfigured it doesn’t change from
its permanent
position: wide open.

Perhaps the most disturbing picture is one of a
uniformed American
soldier holding his young son in his arms. The child’s
wrists are
attached to his elbows and his legs are so bowed it
looks like he was
born on a horse.

These pictures are just a few examples of what happens
when humans are
exposed to vast amounts of depleted uranium, said
Dennis Kyne, a former
U.S. Army sergeant.

Depleted uranium, or DU, is a by-product of uranium,
which is the
earth’s heaviest metal. During the first Gulf war, the
U.S. military
used DU to coat missiles fired at opposing tanks.

Once DU penetrates a substance, it burns everything
around it,
disabling enemy weaponry and omitting deadly
radioactive particles.

Dennis Kyne, a sergeant and medic during the Gulf war
is concerned
continued DU use will effect the men and women that
will return from
Iraq.

Kyne recently recounted his horrific experiences with
DU in a speech at
the Blue Acacia in Glenwood.

An effective agent of war, DU is extremely deadly and
is responsible
for the deaths of more than 9,600 veterans of the
first Gulf war, Kyne
said.

"I know people who came home and their skin literally
melted away from
their bones," Kyne said. "The military told men they
had pneumonia, and
two days later they’d tell their wives they died of
cancer. How does
that happen?"

During the Gulf War, soldiers were exposed to large
amounts of depleted
uranium particles. Unless cleaned up by professional
teams, the
particles are radioactive for 4.5 billion years, Kyne
said.

In many cases, Kyne’s soldiers were exposed to the
particles for more
than five days. When they came home, they suffered
psychological
disorders, tumors, unexplained cancers and other
physical ailments the
government labeled "Gulf War syndrome," Kyne said.

"We started seeing sergeants picking their noses and
eating their
boogers," Kyne said. "You’d walk into a tent and a guy
would be sucking
on his big toe."

After the military loosely defined Gulf War syndrome,
it did little to
find out why soldiers were dying, Kyne said.

Capt. Doug Rokke, who was part of the DU cleanup team,
blew the whistle
on the use of DU and its fatal effects. The military
removed him from
his rank and Rokke became a schoolteacher.

"People who know about it get railroaded out," Kyne
said.

The military, which is still using DU, doesn’t want to
acknowledge that
it’s killing its own people, Kyne said.

Any scientific study on DU that doesn’t support the
military’s agenda
is brushed aside and considered invalid, Kyne said.

"The army does whatever they do, and they say whatever
they say without
any empirical evidence," Kyne said. "The soldiers are
the greatest
study group in the world."

In a documentary about DU, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick,
deputy director of
the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support
Directorate, said
DU does not cause any of Gulf War Syndrome’s symptoms.

"It cannot hurt your body," Kilpatrick said in one
clip.

A moment later he said, "It has to be ingested to be
harmful."

The Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War
Illnesses works in
conjunction with the Defense Technical Information
Center. In a report
issued by the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf
War Illness, a
report said DU is a "heavy metal that’s slightly
radioactive" and as
long "as it remains outside the body, it cannot harm
you."

Misconceptions concerning the health risks from DU
radiation are over
exaggerated, according to the report.

"They made us feel safe," Kyne said. "Feel safe,
soldier; come, walk
into anything. It can’t getcha."

But soldiers were far from safe. Most of the soldiers
ingested DU while
kicking around sand covered in DU particles, Rokke
said.

Soldiers spread the contamination to their families by
bringing war
souvenirs such as duffle bags into their living rooms.
Covered in
particles, the souvenirs immediately infect the
families, causing death
in infants, retardation in younger children and
infertility in parents,
Kyne said.

According to the Gulf War Resource Center, more than
250,000 of the
700,000 men returning from the war asked for health
care for DU
symptoms.

Many of the men are turned away or told their symptoms
are "nothing,"
Kyne said.

Kyne has made it his mission to expose what he
considers the deceit and
betrayal the U.S. Army offered soldiers who risked
their lives for the
sake of their country.

Many commercial aircraft use DU for balance, Kyne
said. DU particles
are found all over the United States including
California and Colorado,
he said.

"I would have been a professional musician by choice,
but this is what
I have to do," Kyne said. "I’m begging for someone to
prove me wrong."