AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González.

For six years, tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans have been fighting for their lives. Veterans have developed extremely high rates of previously unknown diseases, birth defects and deformities, cancers and leukemias. But the veterans say that official Washington, and particularly the Pentagon and the CIA, have been criminally negligent in dealing with their concerns.

Today in Washington, a group of veterans and activists, including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, will be holding a news conference to demand an independent inquiry into what they believe is a likely cause of Gulf War syndrome: the military’s use of depleted uranium weapons.

And joining us right now to talk about the news conference, as well as a book that’s just come out on the subject, called the Metal of Dishonor: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with Depleted Uranium Weapons, are two people. We’re joined by Dr. Michio Kaku. He is a theoretical physicist and professor at the City University of New York. We’re also joined by Dr. Helen Caldicott, an Australian physicist and anti-nuclear activist and founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. I got a chance to talk to both of them last night right before Dr. Caldicott headed down to Washington this morning to join Ramsey Clark at that news conference. And I started by asking Helen Caldicott about her entry in the book, Metal of Dishonor. I asked her about this new kind of nuclear war.

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: Yes. Well, in the past, nuclear war was when you blew up bombs with fission, and you had the most incredibly massive blast effects and radiation effects. Now, this nuclear war is different. The Gulf War was, in truth, a nuclear war. Almost 1 million depleted uranium shells were used. Now, uranium is radioactive. It’s a naturally occurring element. And when you remove the fissionable product of uranium, U-235, from the naturally occurring ore, you get a lot of what’s called U-238, which is not fissionable but is very dense. It’s about 1.7 or 1.6 times denser than lead. And so it’s terrific for shells, because if you use it for shells, it totally penetrates the tanks. But the problem with it is, is when it hits a tank and there’s a tremendous sort of impact, it spontaneously ignites, forming tiny aerosolized particles, which can be inhaled into a person’s lung. It emits alpha radiation, like plutonium. It’s not as deadly as plutonium, but it’s certainly carcinogenic. It’s a heavy metal, therefore it causes renal damage. And I’m quite sure that at least half the Gulf War syndrome impact has been caused by uranium which was used in the Gulf War area. And there are children now still playing with the shells lying around in the desert, the empty shells.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Dr. Helen Caldicott, you and Ramsey Clark today are calling for an independent inquiry into the use of depleted uranium in the Gulf War?

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: Yes, and it must be piggybacked onto the inquiry about chemical weapons that were apparently blown up by the Americans in the Gulf War. And I would like to see Philip Shenon and Matthew Wald from The New York Times writing about this — in other words, some good investigative journalism — because, as we know, the Pentagon for years covered up the chemical weapon situation, but the real, really secret one and the scary one for the Pentagon is the nuclear aspect of this war. And you may be sure they’ve covered that up big time, and maybe they’ve even shredded some of the documents. But all the evidence is there. It’s a very serious issue.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Michio Kaku, what does the Pentagon understand about depleted uranium? And what are they not telling us about what happened during the Persian Gulf War?

MICHIO KAKU: The Pentagon is not telling us the full extent of the contamination and the total tonnage of depleted uranium which was used on the battlefield. We have to — it’s almost like pulling out teeth. We have to use Freedom of Information in order to gain access to files to find the full extent of the problem.

Now, you realize that we are crossing a certain firebreak with regards to the use of nuclear waste on the battlefield. Documents released from the government have shown that during the Korean War General Douglas MacArthur had a plan to use nuclear waste to divide North Korea and South Korea for tens of thousands of years. The plan was to create a radioactive demilitarized zone separating North Korea from South Korea by dumping large quantities of nuclear waste, perhaps radioactive cobalt, between North and South Korea in order to create a permanent separation of those two countries. If that had been done, of course, perhaps thousands, tens of thousands would have been killed by the radiation, and we’d still be feeling the effects of it. So, the whole use of radioactive waste on the battlefield, I think, is a way in which we’re crossing a firebreak. And that is why many people have called for international controls on this, before other nations are also tempted to use their excess nuclear waste as a military weapon on the battlefield.

AMY GOODMAN: In the new book that’s come out, Metal of Dishonor, Depleted Uranium: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU Weapons — that’s depleted uranium weapons — you give a history of the use of depleted uranium, or at least the use of uranium.

MICHIO KAKU: That’s correct. We have to realize that we’ve known that uranium is carcinogenic for hundreds of years, going back about 300, 400 years, when the Bohemian uranium miners came down with what is called mountain disease, which we now know to be lung cancer caused by the emission of radon gas. And then, of course, near the turn of the century, when radium became very popular, radioactive products were dispersed into commercial products as being medicinal, and we now have horrible stories of people that were poisoned by radioactive products near the turn of the century. We now realize that instead of being medicinal, it actually created cancers on a large scale.

And then, of course, the use of depleted uranium is one more excuse to get rid of nuclear waste, this time on the battlefield. If you go to the American Southwest, you see hundreds of millions of tons of radioactive tailings, which are also byproducts of the nuclear fuel cycle. And many of these radioactive piles of tailings were used as landfill for housing projects. So, the same kind of depleted uranium wound up in people’s foundations. And the old Atomic Energy Commission, in a great embarrassment, had to come down to Grand Junction, Colorado, and dig up people’s foundations, because it was emitting radon gas. And radon gas is highly radioactive, and it goes right through gas masks, by the way. Even activated charcoal in a gas mask will not stop radioactive radon gas.

So, there’s been a long history of this, which many people are not aware of. Many people know of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, but they don’t realize that the byproducts of the mining and milling of uranium have also had a long history of creating cancers and causing injuries in the workplace and in the home.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is depleted uranium used?

MICHIO KAKU: Depleted uranium has a tremendous military advantage in the sense that it goes right through ordinary metals and penetrates tank steel. I was in the United States military for two years myself, and I fired anti-tank weapons. And I was very impressed with an — that with a handheld device, you can blow up a tank. But it’s very difficult to penetrate, you know, four or five inches of battleship steel. And the way you do that is with a very heavy element called uranium, which is quite heavy. If you put it in your hand, it’s unusually heavy. It just drops to the floor. And it’s strong enough to penetrate right through tank steel. And that’s the reason why we’ve now coated most of our shells with depleted uranium in order to wipe out heavy armor on the other side.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a horrifying question for pacifists, to say, “Well, what could be used instead?”

MICHIO KAKU: Negotiations and, I think, reason and, I think, the meeting of minds is the way, rather than the use of uranium in terms of strengthening the battleship steel of our tanks and what have you, because even depleted uranium didn’t solve the Middle East crisis. The Middle East is just as much in turmoil today as it was then. Some people think that the U.S. position has, in fact, eroded since the beginning of the Gulf War. So, I think, on the table, on the negotiating table, that’s where we really have to engage in engagement, rather than with depleted uranium.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the half-life of uranium?

MICHIO KAKU: The half-life of uranium, U-238, is the life of the solar system, which is about four-and-a-half billion years. So, we’re accustomed to thinking of half-lives in terms of eight days for radioactive iodine used in hospitals, up to 20,000 years-plus for plutonium, but the half-life for natural uranium is the age of the sun, the age of the Earth and the age of the solar system, about four-and-a-half billion years.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what can be done to get rid of it?

MICHIO KAKU: It’s going to be quite difficult to get rid of it on the battlefield, because we now know that there’s literally hundreds of pounds, perhaps tons, of the stuff in aerosolized form, micron-size form, that can be inhaled in the lungs. And uranium dioxide is not water-soluble. It’ll stay lodged in the lungs and will irradiate tissue for many decades. And it means that we’re going to have to decontaminate large portions of the Persian Gulf in the desert because of the widespread use of depleted uranium.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Dr. Michio Kaku, who is a theoretical physicist at City University of New York, at City College in New York City. We’re also joined by Dr. Helen Caldicott, who is a pediatrician, longtime anti-nuclear activist, founder of two anti-nuclear organizations. Dr. Caldicott, for years, in the 1980s, you were in this country — the 1970s and the 1980s, you were in the U.S. really helping to force a paradigm shift in the way people thought about nuclear power. It seems like that same kind of paradigm shift is necessary today. I mean, there are five congressional committees looking into what is making Gulf War veterans sick, in particular, and yet there’s tremendous amount of suspicion that these kind of things couldn’t make people sick.

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: I don’t think the committees investigating Gulf War sickness or illness have been investigating the depleted uranium part of the Gulf War. Certainly from my reading, there’s never been any mention of it. In other words, there’s a huge cover-up, Amy. And the other thing that worries me is that not only has America made millions of these depleted uranium shells, and also they cover the tanks with an apron of depleted uranium to stop the shells getting into the tanks, but that they are exporting all over the world depleted uranium shells to other countries. So, they’re exporting nuclear war, or potential nuclear war. I mean, it’s really — from my perspective as a physician, it’s evil.

AMY GOODMAN: Helen Caldicott and Michio Kaku. Helen Caldicott, an Australian physicist and anti-nuclear activist, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and professor at City College at the City University of New York. Dr. Helen Caldicott joins Ramsey Clark today at a news conference in Washington, D.C., calling for an independent inquiry into Persian Gulf War sickness. When we come back, we’ll be joined by a retired Army nurse and veteran of the Gulf War. Stay with us.