"The U.S. military is the most profligate polluter on the planet."

[JohnyCanuck]

How 6,700 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended Up in Idaho

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted September 17, 2008.

SNIP

On April 26, 2008, the BBC Alabama arrived in Longview, Wash., carrying 6,700 tons of Kuwaiti sand. The sand had become contaminated with depleted uranium when U.S. military vehicles and munitions caught fire at Doha Army base in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. The depleted uranium was being repatriated. The sand was a gift of the Kuwaiti government.

SNIP

Rumsfeld, coyly switching metaphors, referred to them as "lily pads," which is about as convincing a euphemism as "American Ecology." Lily pads may sound greener and friendlier than, say, "footprint," which makes one at least think of boot heels, but it is safe to assume -- because there has never been an exception -- that every one of those bases is an environmental disaster area. The U.S. military is the most profligate polluter on the planet.

The Thule base in Greenland, for example, was sort of a pioneer lily pad. In the '40s, it was a convenient hop, skip and a bomber run to Berlin, and later it was part of the Cold War surveillance network. In 1953, the U.S. Navy sailed into Thule Harbor and informed the local Inughuit community that they had 48 hours to leave. Sorry for the inconvenience, folks, but there are houses 100 miles north of here with your names on them. We promise.

"Everyone packed what they could on their dogsleds and set off north across the ice," remembers Aron Qaavigaq, who was 12 at the time. "After a while, my father stopped and looked back. He and my mother were crying. ... We were young and very excited to be going somewhere new. But they kept crying, so we knew there was something wrong."

There were no houses. Qaavigaq and his family spent the winter in tents 695 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The hunting and fishing was lousy, and now the ice is melting. After 55 years, Qaavigaq and the rest of the Inughuit still want to go home. But first they want the United States to clean up the mess they have made: thousands of barrels of toxic chemistry, rubbish heaps, electrical equipment contaminated with PCBs, and one whole hydrogen bomb -- serial number 78252 -- which was never recovered when a B-52 crashed upon landing in 1968.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/98950/how_6%2C000_tons_of_radioactive_sand_from_kuwait_ended_up_in_idaho/?page=2

[poverlay]

1. After Desert Storm, and likely every other military "adventure" in recent history, they just

bury everything they don't want to pay to ship home. I.e. trucks, tanks, humvees etc.. What an incredible amount of waste. It blew me away when I found out how much they buried in Kuwait/Iraq after Gulf War I.