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[Loud Whispers]

If by heat you mean beheadings, don't worry we exchange cash for gold and beheadings for blessings
P.s. if you break it you buy it, gib shekels Obama

[Flying Dice]

Everyone knows that those attacks are false-flag ops run by ISIS. Steel rain can't melt unrefined jet fuel.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Steel rain can't melt unrefined jet fuel.

I want to sig this, but... You know, there's no good reason not to.

[Zangi]

If someone called DU ordinance tactical nukes, they're either trying to lie to you or idiots.

This is what a tacnuke looks like.

Now that is some fine artillery.  You will literally glass a metropolis with a volley from 3-4 cannons.

[Reelya]

DU is just a cheap way of reducing nuclear waste build up. Back in gulf war 1 I remember hearing about the number of veterans who were complaining of sickness, and they were mocked by the Army brass for being hypochondriacs and the military's "experts" were all saying what nonsense it was. It turned out many years later that Gulf War I was the first war in which the US deployed large amounts of DU ammunition and "gulf war syndrome" which was widely mocked at the time was nothing other than basic radiation poisoning, which the soldiers were lied to about and left untreated.

They actually knew about the risks beforehand and the military even produced proper safety handling manuals for the DU ammo, but these manuals were quietly trashed and the soldiers were never told they were handling known carcinogenic materials. It's the same thing as asbestos mines where the company denies asbestos is dangerous - you don't even hand out simple paper face-masks because that would be admitting you know there's a risk. So you let people be exposed to the full dangers rather than admit you knew about the risks the whole time.

Fucking thanks, Bush Senior, sneakily irradiating your own soldiers then lying to them and denying them needed treatment to maintain the lie. You couldn't make this stuff up, it's movie-level villainy.

[wierd]

The real villainy is that the government cannot be prosecuted for this. In fact, they can do all kinds of horrible, known inhumane experiments on soldiers and be untouchable.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

DU is perfectly safe, the shitty coverup attempt implying its toxicity is the actual coverup for the real cause of gulf war syndrome: Complications caused by the Genome Solider program in which thousands were secretly given gene therapy based off the genome of the legendary solider Big Boss.

[Strife26]

DU is just a cheap way of reducing nuclear waste build up. Back in gulf war 1 I remember hearing about the number of veterans who were complaining of sickness, and they were mocked by the Army brass for being hypochondriacs and the military's "experts" were all saying what nonsense it was. It turned out many years later that Gulf War I was the first war in which the US deployed large amounts of DU ammunition and "gulf war syndrome" which was widely mocked at the time was nothing other than basic radiation poisoning, which the soldiers were lied to about and left untreated.

They actually knew about the risks beforehand and the military even produced proper safety handling manuals for the DU ammo, but these manuals were quietly trashed and the soldiers were never told they were handling known carcinogenic materials. It's the same thing as asbestos mines where the company denies asbestos is dangerous - you don't even hand out simple paper face-masks because that would be admitting you know there's a risk. So you let people be exposed to the full dangers rather than admit you knew about the risks the whole time.

Fucking thanks, Bush Senior, sneakily irradiating your own soldiers then lying to them and denying them needed treatment to maintain the lie. You couldn't make this stuff up, it's movie-level villainy.

That's incorrect, like pretty much every sentence.

[Reelya]

Well, let's fact check

Gulf War Syndrome was a thing. You can google that. It affected over 35% of active personnel in Gulf War I, or 250,000 out of 700,000 active personnel (source: national academy of sciences) with long-running otherwise unexplained symptoms of "fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, rashes and diarrhea". Which is pretty much like the standard go-to list of radiation exposure. You also have some veterans who continue to piss out uranium a decade later.

http://www.ccnr.org/du_hague.html
http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16687268
http://www.pdhealth.mil/downloads/Env_Health%20Effects_DU.pdf
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/chapter6.html

Sure, there are some studies quoted that dispute the connections, but every single one of those I've read about was done by the US department of defense or similar official US army departments, who would basically be the accused party in this case. It wouldn't make any sense to say "well the person accused of doing this issued a statement that you're wrong, so we should take their word for it".

[Strife26]

Read a wikipedia page sometime. Gulf War Syndrome includes a ridiculously long list of symptoms, with a list of proposed causes that is nearly as long. Calling it a syndrome is largely useless, because it's not something simple like radiation poison.

[Lord Shonus]

Well, let's fact check

Gulf War Syndrome was a thing. You can google that. It affected over 35% of active personnel in Gulf War I, or 250,000 out of 700,000 active personnel (source: national academy of sciences) with long-running otherwise unexplained symptoms of "fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, rashes and diarrhea". Which is pretty much like the standard go-to list of radiation exposure. You also have some veterans who continue to piss out uranium a decade later.

http://www.ccnr.org/du_hague.html
http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16687268
http://www.pdhealth.mil/downloads/Env_Health%20Effects_DU.pdf
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/chapter6.html

Sure, there are some studies quoted that dispute the connections, but every single one of those I've read about was done by the US department of defense or similar official US army departments, who would basically be the accused party in this case. It wouldn't make any sense to say "well the person accused of doing this issued a statement that you're wrong, so we should take their word for it".

Depleted Uranium has been extensively used in other conflicts, none of which have GWS-type diseases associated with them, even in soldiers that have high levels of uranium in their urine during tests. There is essentially zero possibility that DU is a cause of GWS. The symptoms of GWS correspond most closely with chemical weapons exposure, and it is a confirmed fact that Iraqi chemical weapons storage sites were bombed during the Gulf War, exposing around 130,000+ Coalition troops to residues. Large levels  of pesticides, which are also nerve toxins, were deployed in an attempt to prevent disease outbreaks as well. Most actual experts consider these two sources to be the most likely cause.

[Reelya]

Read a wikipedia page sometime. Gulf War Syndrome includes a ridiculously long list of symptoms, with a list of proposed causes that is nearly as long. Calling it a syndrome is largely useless, because it's not something simple like radiation poison.

I took that list of symptoms directly from wikipedia's introduction to the topic, so it's an ironic request that I read a wikipedia article. But I'll go a better link:

A prominent condition affecting Gulf War Veterans is a cluster of medically unexplained chronic symptoms that can include fatigue, headaches, joint pain, indigestion, insomnia, dizziness, respiratory disorders, and memory problems.

http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/medically-unexplained-illness.asp
But they can easily test for chemical exposure, and they can easily protect soldiers from chemical exposure. Why was none of the common sense tests and stuff done then? It's the fact that they dropped the ball and haven't done anything like a proper follow-up that allows all sort of theories to spread. Basically a whole lot of people got sick, and the response was to deny that they were sick and refuse to do anything about it or properly look into the cause. That was the entire response for many years.

Lord Shonus: you're probably right, though .mil documents do state they massively changed how DU is handled after Gulf War I so the fact that there aren't any incidents after that could be related to that. But if it's just general chemical exposure then you'd expect many other wars to have high rates of this sort of illness too. So it has to then be explained why wars in general don't all cause the same level of illness. It's not like Gulf War I was the first war where they sprayed bug spray a lot or there was flame and smoke from burning stuff, yet you don't really see similar account on anywhere near this scale of soldiers getting sick in massive numbers. I'm sure the amount of toxins exploding all over the place in WWII Germany was much greater and more concentrated than Iraq in 1991, yet i've never heard of returning GIs getting sick in the same numbers. If they had been, well then Gulf War Syndrome wouldn't have been a thing since it would be just the expected rate of exposure.

[Lord Shonus]

Read a wikipedia page sometime. Gulf War Syndrome includes a ridiculously long list of symptoms, with a list of proposed causes that is nearly as long. Calling it a syndrome is largely useless, because it's not something simple like radiation poison.

I took that list of symptoms directly from wikipedia's introduction to the topic, so it's an ironic request that I read a wikipedia article.

Lord Shonus: you're probably right, though .mil documents do state they massively changed how DU is handled after Gulf War I so the fact that there aren't any incidents after that could be related to that. But if it's just general chemical exposure then you'd expect many other wars to have high rates of this sort of illness too. So it has to then be explained why wars in general don't all cause the same level of illness. It's not like Gulf War I was the first war where they sprayed bug spray a lot or there was flame and smoke from burning stuff, yet you don't really see similar account on anywhere near this scale of soldiers getting sick in massive numbers. I'm sure the amount of toxins exploding all over the place in WWII Germany was much greater and more concentrated than Iraq in 1991, yet i've never heard of returning GIs getting sick in the same numbers. If they had been, well then Gulf War Syndrome wouldn't have been a thing since it would be just the expected rate of exposure.

The Gulf War was the first (and so far only) war where the only chemical weapon exposure was residue from bombed weapon sites - previous wars either had no chemical weapons used, and thus no exposure) or people were exposed to the poisons directly and didn't develop a GWS equivalent because the poison killed them more directly.

As for pesticides, long-term exposure to high-concentration pesticides has caused GWS-like syndromes since the things were invented.

The. Cause. Is. Proven.

[Reelya]

The chemical weapons site thing is questionable, because then they'd just be able to show that people got sick if they were near those sites at the right time and the army would be off the hook.

Ok, I have a better theory than any of those we've brought up now. Source is a study from 2011:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2011-09-19/gulf-war-illness-study/50459462/1

1) Some soldiers got sick if they reported spraying pesticides on their clothes or directly on their skin. Which is sort of self-explanatory, you'd expect to get sick if you do that. But they're not the ones who got really sick. The #1 provable link is actually pills they gave to coalition soldiers on purpose:

They found Gulf War illness was most prevalent in the veterans who served in Iraq or Kuwait — or the combat zones — who took pyridostigmine bromide pills, which were small doses of nerve agent meant to help troops build up a resistance in case of a chemical attack. However, those troops did not report using pesticides on their clothing or skin. These servicemembers also reported being within one mile of an exploding Scud missile.

Ok, I was wrong about accidental exposure from DU, that they subsequently tried to cover up. The reality is FAR nastier: deliberate exposure to a known nerve toxin to try and toughen-up troops in the short term against nerve gas attacks. Some exposure they caused deliberately actually makes more sense than the accidental exposures theory: it explains why it's so widespread and can't be identified with any specific geographically located threats. And I guess it makes more sense that they'd want to cover up something they did on purpose, since they either knew or really should have known the medical consequences of any chemical they are dosing up the entire army with.

[Shazbot]

So who wants to tell Reelya about amphetamines, Panzerschokolade, "brown bombers", penal battalions, "Dutch Courage", pre-charge rum issues in WWI and Waterloo's mid-battle rum distribution?