Per another website, I learned that today – August 2 – is the 18th anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait.

Some of the other ex-pats at work and I walk through the parking lot after lunch and, if the day was somewhat dusty, they would joke about feeling the uranium in the air. I laughed but was not really sure what they were referring to. Last night the topic came up again and finally I asked “what uranium?” It seems that when your country is in a war, many bit and pieces of weaponry are left lying about in the aftermath. Certain areas of Kuwait were known to have dead Iraqi tanks littering the ground. Most of these tanks – I’m told – have big holes in them, as if something just melted through the hull of the tank and then exploded. Indeed, that is what had happened. Because the shells we Americans used to stop tanks were made of depleted uranium. These were 30 millimeter shells – items you can hold in your hand or soldiers could pick up and load into guns. Then – boom. Uranium splattered all over the place. Still used by both the US and the UK in the latest “conflict”.

But not to worry. The gov-ment said that THIS type of uranium wasn’t hazardous to anyone’s health. And they don’t lie, right?

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