A Long-distance October Fauxprise

The left and Robert Fisk trot out the tired "uranium based" weapons mantra; this time criticizing the IDF for supposedly using munitions that had spread radioactivity across Lebanon's battlefields.  Perhaps realizing that the depleted uranium mythology has been thoroughly debunked many times over, Fisk and a Dr. Chris Busby of the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk speculate that the Israelis used,

"...some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker—busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium."

Got that?  The IDF has either miniturized a nuclear bomb or have devilishly substituted enriched uranium for DU in a bunker bustng bomb.  Why the Israelis would waste a perfectly good batch of enriched uranium in a conventional munition is left unexplained. Fisk does of course, conclude that it was done to simply make as many Lebanese civilians as sick as possible.

Also Fisk is very technically challenged, even though he wants the reader to think he is a weapons expert.  He mentions that DU is used in antitank missiles, but in reality it is not.  DU is used in conventional tank main gun rounds or in weapons such as the Apache 30mm chain gun that fire armor piercing rounds known as kinetic energy rounds. 

That is, they rely on mass and velocity (m x v = momentum) to punch through enemy armor. Anti—tank missiles use HEAT (high explosive anti—tank) warheads which are called chemical energy rounds, because they rely on a conventional high explosive that converts chemical energy into a focused explosion of blast and heat.  By design, these missiles don't rely on the velocity of the projectile to achieve its desired affect, since they are normally fired by infantrymen (RPG), light armored vehicles (BMP—1 smallbore 73mm gun; or M113 TOW), or helicopters (Apache Hellfire) who cannot handle firing a large caliber, high pressure, hyper—velocity round.

Read the entire article and have a good laugh since this shows the extent of the anti—war left's desperation to defend their terrorist allies.

Douglas Hanson  10 29 06

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