My cancer is lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of the central nervous system, diagnosed back in December of 2004 and treated with chemotherapy and with radiation therapy in 2005.

Although remission was achieved, the cancer may, now, have returned; tests are underway to see if that is so.

It is against this background that I write, spurred into action by something seen on the Internet: Saddam Hussein is going to sue both George Bush and Tony Blair for war crimes.

According to a news report Saddam's lawsuit includes the claim that "coalition forces used internationally banned weapons in their military maneuvers in the country, including enriched uranium".

In subsequent debate, we will no doubt hear of "enriched uranium" being referred to as "depleted uranium", this being the anodyne term used to put a cosmetic mask on the true nature of the beast.

My thesis here is that, whatevery you think of Saddam (man-monster or monster-man?) in this case he does have a point.

Technically, both Bush and Blair are war criminals, in that their actions exposed innocent civilian populations to the fatal effects of radiation weapons.

However much the spin doctors play with this, the undeniable truth is that both the Americans and the British have used radiation weapons in Iraq which have caused cancer outbreaks in the civilian populations in contaminated areas.

And for this their war leaders, Blair and Bush, must stand responsible.

The war was a war of choice, and the side that chose to go to war had a free hand in the weapons they selected. In this war, napalm was not used. Too much bad publicity. Cancer burns in silence and out of sight, burns after midnight in someone's sickbed. No burning girl photo opportunities here.

So, without any qualms about public relations consequences, the cancer weapons were brought into play.

In cases of cancer, you usually only get one kind of cancer. Every cancer is a different disease, so developing one does not mean you are more likely to develop another.

In contaminated areas of Iraq, however, civilians not uncommonly develop more than one kind of cancer in a manner unseen in areas which are not similarly contaminated by radiation.

The villain of the piece is DU, "depleted uranium", the "depleted" being a misnomer in that it is heavily laden with radiation.

Great stuff for war, because it is heavy, making it good for tank-piercing. It burns on impact, creating a radioactive aerosol which spreads.

From the point of view of the actual battle, it is an impact weapon, a velocity weapon like a  bullet. From the point of view of the surivors (civilians downwind and troops who had the misfortune of becoming contaminated while in the combat zone) it is, in effect, a radiation weapon, even though neither the British nor the Americans classify it as such.

Some people take the attitude that anything's fair in war, as long as it gets the result, and why does it matter who gets killed with what?

The problem with some weapons, however, landmines and these radiation weapons being cases in point, is that they go on killing for years after the wars were fought. The elections have been won or lost, the campaign rhetoric forgotten, but the weapons go on killing.

Technically, both Bush and Blair are guilty as charged. It's nuclear war without the big explosion, the fallout delivered when the missile burns to an aerosol by the missile after it strikes the target.

It's Chernobyl delivered to the bystanders, the people who had nothing to do with acid baths, far less with the construction of imaginary weapons of mass destruction -- babies in the womb, toddlers, three-year-old kids not yet old enough to go to school.

This is no secret.

Back in 2003, back before I got seriously sick with cancer, back when I had more time and energy to worry about the rest of the world, I got interested in the depleted uranium issue, and organized some preliminary materials at:

zenvirus.com/diary/du

One of the first things I wrote was a piece at:

zenvirus.com/diary/depleted-uranium.html

which starts like this:

"Summary: first widely used on the battlefield in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, DU (depleted uranium) stands accused of damaging the health of both Iraqi civilians and American veterans. Conventional assessments of the impact of DU's radioactivity and chemical toxicity indicate that DU is innocent of the effects attributed to it. However, there is a body of both hypothesis and experimental evidence which indicates that the dangers of DU may have been seriously underestimated. Experimental evidence points to a damage-amplifying synergy between the radioactivity of DU and its chemical toxicity. Additionally, where chemical toxicity is concerned, similar damage-amplifying synergies may exist between DU and other heavy metals used on the modern battlefield, these including tungsten, nickel and cobalt."

Short version of this, seen from the perspective of 2006: this "depleted uranium" stuff is radioactive, and it kills you.

To me, writing now in 2006 and looking at the language I used back in 2003, my approach seems over-elaborate.

The truth is very simple. These uranium weapons kill. They contaminate the environment and they murder non-combatants. For years.

In debate, call them what they are: uranium weapons. Radioactive uranium weapons. Cut the "depleted", because in effect it's a lie masquerading as a technical description, because it suggests, falsely, that the uranium has been neutered down the harmlessness.

It is possible to buy, in Japan, a kind of "absolut" alcohol (I think it is from Poland) which is close to one hundred percent alchol. You can pick it up at the uspermarket. Legally.

If you "deplete" this stuff so the alchol content is only fifty percent, you still have a lethal concoction.

The crucial fact is that long before the war of March/April 2003, both the British and the Americans were fully aware of the Chernobyl outcome to be expected from of the radiation weapons which they had made a standard part of their inventories.

The war on Iraq was not just a war on Saddam the Monster (the true, genuine and unpardonable monster, the master of the acid baths) but a war, also (in the reality, as they experienced it in the flesh, as they experienced it in the cancer wards) of the people of Iraq.

For what purpose, one might ask?

There's a theological question I saw discussed once. If the devil exists, can the devil be thought to be absolutely evil, an absolute opposite to God?

The standard answer on this question is, apparently, no. Why? Because the devil exists, existence is good in itself, and therefore the devil, while malign, partakes of the good.

Existing as he does, Saddam Hussein is every bit as malign as the devil. Yet he does us a service by putting his lawyers into play. By doing this, he gives the radiation weapons issue a public existence, which it needs.

With the French talking tough about unleashing thermonukes upon the enemies of France -- which, if it happens, is going to mean a massacre of the bystanders -- it is a good time for the radiation weapons issue to win the headlines.

It is a good time to make the point, which has been demonstrated by the actual cancer outcomes on the ground, that it is not necessary to have a Nagasaki fireball to suffer from nuclear contamination. The radiation weapons, ten kilos of uranium here and ten kilos there, they're all you need.

My own brain, as I write this, is in a state of progressive evolution, changing constantly -- as it will continue to change, for the next ten to fifteen years, should I live that long -- as a consequence of the thirty grays of radiation that I received to the brain, the theory being that it would help keep my lymphoma from coming back.

My chances of dying from a recurrence of the lymphoma are extremely high, at least a sixty percent chance of dying in the next five years. Consequently, the fact that I have been told that the radiation to which I was exposed means that I have a one in a thousand chance of developing a secondary malignancy (possibly a hard tumor, but more likely a cancer of the blood) does not unduly concern me.

In my case, the risk of the lymphoma returning far outweighs the menace of the radiation.

Even so, radiation has done its work on me, and, if I doubt that, I have scans of my own brain on CD which I can fire up on my computer so I can take a look.

Consequently, I feel this issue in the flesh.

So here it is, then, after a long prolog, the first of the cancer poems of this blog.

        IN THE CONTAMINATION ZONE

In the contamination zone
Bush and Blair
Mingle their atoms with Iraqi flesh.
The cancer bonus is a double treat,
A gift from our democracy.
Finding the greater evil, finding Saddam,
They will break him down for consecrated bread,
And eat,
And be blessed,
And emerge,
Smiling,
Their lipstick burnished
Their smiling halos shining as they grin.