Statement of the Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium

Attack a village with an A-10 Warthog and leave a trench.

Attack a village with an A-10 Warthog firing depleted uranium and leave a poisoned graveyard -- the people dead, plants dying or sterile, the earth eternally toxic.

The A-10 is an aircraft built around a gun -- a 30 mm 7 barrel Gatling that can spew 3,900 rounds per minute. This criminal plane fired 95% of the depleted uranium deployed by the U. S. during the Gulf War, leaving behind 300-800 tons (Dutch Laka Foundation), poisoning humans and the elements in Kuwait and Iraq.

Sanctions (a crime against humanity) and depleted uranium (a war crime) have killed 2 million Iraqis since the war's end. Said Dr. Jannan Ghalib while showing Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star a photograph album of malformed babies: "This one, no head. This one, legs fused together. Another, no limbs and tiny buds on the misshapen chest. Then a face with no eyes, just flaps of skin over the empty sockets. Another with a huge water swollen head with no brain." (Atomic Veteran's Radiation News, Vol. 3, No. 6)

Depleted uranium is a delayed response weapon which burns its way through tank armor and oxidizes, throwing radioactive particles as far away as 25 miles. When ingested, these particles cause chemical and radioactive damage to the bronchial tree, to kidneys, liver and bones, causing somatic and genetic trauma. Cancer often results.

Iraq and Yugoslavia are template wars, blueprints for future imperial wars -- targeting the total of a society -- military, civilians, the unborn, the infrastructure, the ecology, the health and spirit of a people. These wars even overflow against the troops that fight them. 90,000 American Gulf War veterans are now chronically ill. A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs study of 251 veterans' families in Mississippi shows that 67% had children with severe illnesses or birth defects.

The U. S. has made another fatal mistake with depleted uranium -- it has given it away to a score of other countries, openly inviting them to make their own weapons, fight their own nuclear wars and infest the planet with more radiation.

December 19th ends Advent - a time of reparation and conversion. We mark this day by mourning the civilians killed in America's wars - nine civilians to every soldier, and by converting one hellish instrument of their death. They die forgotten and alone - no grateful nation to sorrow their passing - no flags nor official ritual. They are expendable; they are the true cannon fodder.

We come to the Maryland Warfield Air National Guard Base to convert the A-10, as Roman Catholic Christians, in obedience to God's prohibition against killing. Also, to embody Isaiah's vision of a disarmed world where hearts are converted to compassion and justice and the weapons are converted to the tools of peace. Finally, to atone for another nuclear war in Iraq, and a third in Yugoslavia.

So help us God.