From: "Mark" 

Sounds to me like they're wetting their pants with idle conjecture whilst
unintentionally(?) laying the groundwork to justify a future nuke attack by
Iran on Israel. 

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:45440f33$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Wonder is they'll let Harwell laboratory publish the results?
>
>
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=585
5&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
> But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam
> and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and
> Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions
> may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used
> against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British
> Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil
> samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated
> radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to
> the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the
> Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium
> isotopes in the samples.
>
> Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for
> the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was 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." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large
> clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.
>
> ..
>
> Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been using uranium-based
> munitions in Lebanon this summer, Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry
> spokesman, said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not authorised
> by international law or international conventions." This, however, begs
> more questions than it answers. Much international law does not cover
> modern uranium weapons because they were not invented when humanitarian
> rules such as the Geneva Conventions were drawn up and because Western
> governments still refuse to believe that their use can cause long-term
> damage to the health of thousands of civilians living in the area of the
> explosions.
>
> Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield
> University, who has reviewed the Busby report, said: "At worst it's some
> sort of experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component the purpose
> of which we don't yet know. At best - if you can say that - it shows a
> remarkably cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products."
>
> The soil sample from Khiam - site of a notorious torture prison when
> Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, and a frontline
> Hizbollah stronghold in the summer war - was a piece of impacted red earth
> from an explosion; the isotope ratio was 108, indicative of the presence
> of enriched uranium. "The health effects on local civilian populations
> following the use of large uranium penetrators and the large amounts of
> respirable uranium oxide particles in the atmosphere," the Busby report
> says, "are likely to be significant ... we recommend that the area is
> examined for further traces of these weapons with a view to clean up."
>
>

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