As my first OP (and I'm not even sure I can get my point across properly)

[chknltl]

83. Interesting. My first OP was also about something we left in Iraq

Welcome to DU Jenny Red Eye. My name is chknltl. Normally I would add a waving smiley or some such and that would be that. Your first OP struck a nerve with me, it reminded me of my first OP. What I am about to say below is not nice at all. It would be understandable if you read no further. I admit to some bit of thread hijack but in reality it isn't. You discuss how we as Americans choose to fall apart at the seams over silly stuff but ignore something we left in Iraq. That is EXACTLY what I too am discussing below, but it is about something else we left in Iraq.

When first I learned of this 'something' we left in Iraq, it was early 2005, I told EVERYONE I knew into about it. Soon I began to feel like some kind of 'Chicken Little' because it was always a topic for me, I started telling even total strangers about it, strangers at the laundry, strangers at our local Baskins and Robbins Ice Cream Shop, strangers where I bought my pizzas, strangers at my bus stop and strangers on the busses I would catch. I wrote letters to my senators and my Congressmen. I even got a reply from Representative McDermott and he wasn't even my Congressman, Norm Dicks-Dem-6th district, Pierce County was mine but I can not recall if he replied.

Then I found the Democratic Underground. My name chknltl stems from this time because truly, I felt like one. I waited the allotted time and responses, I think one only needed 15 responses back then but that was a while ago....so much water has gone under the bridge and yet so little changed...(sorry I digress because I have not spoken about this in some time and the horror is flooding back now), I posted my first OP about that something we left in Iraq.

That topic, that nightmare to Iraq and arguably to our entire world is depleted uranium.

I am not a star member so I can not research our DU data base, that said I did find this online from 2005, it is a conversation I had with a fellow DUer named Burt Worm and the conversation was (I think) about how to write my first OP on depleted uranium or DU as we called it:
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3757049
Eventually I did write it, it drew some modest attention but it was pointed out to me then that other DUers had written similar articles before.

Sadly, by 2006 I grew pessimistic and with a great deal of sarcasm I posted something that I am alarmed to say got picked up and turned into something I could never have envisioned, (I just now found this online while trying to find that first OP btw), from: http://pantrydawg.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

"A Unabomber in the making???

You interpret this Democratic Underground post:

chknltl (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-07-06 05:22 AM
Original message
Are
there any laws about mailing sand?
...you know like the kind found around
old dead tanks over in Iraq.

What if the citizens of Iraq started doing
just that, mailed these samples off to...oh I don't know..maybe the arms
manufacturers who created depleted uranium munitions, the politicians who were
bought out by those same arms manufacturers and what the hell let's add faux
news on that list. Do you suppose they might be justified in returning the
favor? It's "only" sand ya know.
Just wonderin....


posted by Myra Langerhas at 5:38 AM | 1 Comments "

It is 3/16/2015 and I will add my own comment right now: I am not a unabomber Myra, do you deny what we did to Iraq? Do you deny the dangerous radioactive substance we littered their soils with or do you deny that this stuff is even dangerous? No, I do not wish this material on even my worst enemy! I don't live there Myra but the question I asked back in 2006 is of those who do live there. Let me ask you Myra, how angry would you be, if your loved ones, your children were so exposed because you happened to call Iraq your home? Would YOU Myra be angry enough to become a unabomber like you suggested I might be in your post? You, Myra Langerhaus, YOU decide what you would have done then, or even now if you and your family were stuck living in a contaminated zone over in Iraq. Would you like my solution? I think a lesson from WWII is in order. It wasn't the German troops that got punished after WWII. If I recall, the actual NAZIS who committed the worst crimes against humanity met a proper fate-one determined in a court of law in a city called Nurnberg. I am OK with courts of law Myra, I don't take the law into my own hands. That said, I recall a different punishment that occurred to civilians who lived around those death camps. Not sure if there were any courts of law used but those civilians were made to clean up what was left in those camps. I'm thinking I might be OK with seeing those who supported our manufacture and use of depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan be made to clean that up too, Myra.

Maybe Myra will see this? Maybe she will again turn it into something it was not intended to ever be.
Well, digression with Myra Langerhas over.

You asked here in your first OP what the world must think of us..... I have asked that one too.
No, I do NOT blame the troops. I was one of the troops myself long ago and I know for a fact, troops just do what troops are told to do. Often times they get stuck with a lot of unexpected consequences....well unexpected by them at any rate. Currently the numbers of our troops also suffering from depleted uranium affects is unknowable but astonishingly high for sure!

I can't look at this anymore, look at the video if you dare but I'll warn you, it is horrific! From my own experiences discussing it, Americans just aren't that into it. Maybe you will understand where my ugly thoughts came from towards my fellow Americans in that 2006 post when it comes to this particular 'stuff' we left in Iraq.