Radio Havana Cuba International News May 22 http://www.radiohc.cu/homeing.htm In Scathing Denunciation, US Senator Robert Byrd Says American People Lured Into Accepting Unprovoked Invasion of Iraq Under False Premises Washington, May 22 (RHC) - US Senator Robert Byrd has asserted that the American people were lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, in violation of long-standing international law and under false premises. In what is being called some of the most unvarnished criticism yet by Democrats of the US-led war on Iraq, Byrd said that the "costly and destructive bunker-busting attack on Iraq" seems to have proven to have nothing to do with what the Bush administration said was the urgent reason to go in, adding that this "house of cards built of deceit will fall." The most senior member of the US Senate charged that the Bush administration "assiduously worked to alarm the public and to blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, until they virtually became one," adding that "what has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the United States." Going even further, Senator Byrd said that the Bush team's "extensive hype" on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as justification for a preemptive invasion war "has become more than embarrassing," that "it has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power." He said Washington did not complete the war in Afghanistan due to its eagerness to attack Iraq, and that as a result, Al Qaida appears to be back with a vengeance and the entire Mideast region may well have been destabilized. The West Virginia Democrat also criticized as "spineless" his colleagues in Congress for voting to authorize the war. The senator's blistering attack coincided with a New York Times report asserting that the Central Intelligence Agency has begun a review to try to determine whether the American intelligence community erred in its prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons programs and links to terrorism. The Times affirmed that several CIA analysts have quietly complained that senior defense department and White House officials pressured them to produce politicized reports that supported the administration's positions on Iraq. Surveys Pointing to High Civilian Death Toll in Iraq - Well About Those of Gulf War Baghdad, May 22 (RHC) - Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to The Christian Science Monitor. The Monitor reported Thursday that researchers involved in independent surveys of the country believe that when completed the casualty tally will make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam. Though surveyors said that it's still too early for anything like a definitive estimate, the preliminary reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and homes point to a level of civilian casualties far exceeding the Gulf War, when 3,500 civilians are thought to have died. Haidar Taie, head of the tracing department for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad, said thousands are dead and thousands are missing - calling the scenario "a big disaster." The Monitor asserted that by one measure of violence against noncombatants, as compared with resistance faced by soldiers, the war in Iraq was particularly brutal. In Operation Just Cause, the 1989 US invasion of Panama, 13 Panamanian civilians died for every US military fatality. If the expected minimum of 5,000 Iraqi civilians died in the latest war, that proportion would be 33 to 1. Noting that US and British military officials insisted throughout the war that their forces did all they could to avoid civilian casualties, the report affirmed that it's becoming clear since the fighting ended that bombs went astray, that targets were chosen in error, and that as US troops pushed rapidly north toward the capital they killed thousands of civilians from the air and from the ground. The chaos of the war and the confusion that persists in Iraq have led one US human rights group with experience in counting civilian casualties in Afghanistan to launch a nationwide house-to-house survey of areas where fighting was fierce. The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, CIVIC, has mobilized 150 surveyors to carry out detailed interviews with victims of the war, recording deaths, injuries, and damage to property with a view to securing assistance from US government funds. A full accounting could take months, said CIVIC coordinator Marla Ruzicka, but its volunteers have already recorded more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the southern town of Nasariyah alone, and almost as many in the capital. Dr. Reuben Brigety, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said his colleagues in Baghdad are especially concerned about evidence they've uncovered of the massive use of cluster bombs in densely populated areas - contradicting US and British claims that such munitions were used only in deserted areas. Also waiting for clearer evidence are US government agencies mandated by Congress to assist civilian victims of the war in Iraq. At the instigation of Senator Patrick Leahy, the Iraq war supplemental bill, signed by President Bush April 16, directs that an unspecified amount of the 2.4 billion dollars appropriated for relief and reconstruction in Iraq should pay for "assistance for families of innocent Iraqi civilians who suffered losses as a result of military operations." Civilian victims of US military action in Afghanistan, however, are also supposed to receive assistance. But so far the US Agency for International Development has not disbursed any of that money, citing security risks and other problems in the parts of Afghanistan where the money is meant to be spent. Small Sample of Afghan Civilians Show "Astonishing" Levels of Uranium in Urine, According to Independent Scientist Washington, May 22 (RHC) - An independent US scientist has found what he called "astonishing" levels of uranium in the urine of a small sample of Afghan civilians. According to a BBC report on Thursday, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, of the Washington-based Uranium Medical Research Center, said that the symptoms suffered by the Afghans are the same as some veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Because there was no trace of depleted uranium, several scientists are reported to believe that new types of radioactive weapons may have been used in Afghanistan. Dr. Durakovic, a former US army colonel who is now a professor of medicine, sent a team to Afghanistan in May last year to interview and examine civilians there. The findings led the Uranium Medical Research Center, the UMRC, to state that: "Independent monitoring of the weapon types and delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces." It says Nangarhar province was a strategic target zone during the Afghan conflict for the deployment of a new generation of deep-penetrating "cave-busting" and seismic shock warheads. The UMRC says its team identified several hundred people suffering from illnesses and conditions similar to those of Gulf veterans, probably because they had inhaled uranium dust. To test its hypothesis that some form of uranium weapon had been used, the UMRC sent urine specimens from 17 Afghans for analysis at an independent British laboratory, which found that without exception every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium internal contamination. Dr. Durakovic's team said the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf veterans tested in 1999. It said that if the Nangarhar findings are corroborated in other communities across Afghanistan, the country faces "a severe public health disaster, with every subsequent generation at risk." It also said that troops who fought in Afghanistan and the staff of aid agencies based in Afghanistan are also at risk. Dr. Durakovic said he was "stunned" by the results he had found, which are to be published shortly in several scientific journals.