Text and Photos by Lance Holter

The use of  Depleted Uranium is nuclear warfare.  It should be forbidden under all international treaties and laws and by plain common human decency.

At the Waikaloa Community Church on Friday Nov. 16, I attended the first of a series of joint U.S. Army and Hawaii Health Department informational hearings on Depleted Uranium (DU) held at Kona,  Hawaii. The hearings were the result of Big Island citizens monitoring high background levels of radiation downwind from the Pohakuloa gunnery range during Army Stryker  maneuvers at the range, April 22. Normal background levels are in the area of 10 to 20 counts per minute (CPM) but on April 22nd the citizens’ measurements went as high as 93 CPM.

Public outcry and concerns over dangers from radiation prompted two front page stories in the Honolulu Advertiser May 11 and May 14.  The military only then admitted the possibility that DU had been used at Pohakuloa. Earlier on Oahu in 2005, the American Friends Service Committee obtained a U.S. Army email through the Freedom of Information Act.  The email referred to an ordinance clean up at Schofield Barracks Oahu.  It read as follows:We have found much that we did not expect, including the recent find of Depleted Uranium. The disclosure culminated in the release of the discovery of 15 M-101 rounds containing DU to the Honolulu media.

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Hawaii Superferry CEO, John Lehman,
Member of War Mongering Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal

Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence is just the latest outrage of this corrupt administration – but a sign that the U.S. has truly become am imperial dictatorship, where laws are trampled on and cronies are rewarded. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Everyone knows that he “outed” a covert CIA agent, which compromised US intelligence networks and likely resulted in the deaths of some foreign agents – an act of treason. The purpose: to get even with the agent’s husband who blew the whistle on the Administration’s lies regarding weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. So now Libby will not serve any jail time. Meanwhile, a black youth sits in prison, serving a 10-year sentence for stealing a bicycle.

It is important to note that Libby was a Signatory to the Project for a New American Century (www.pnac.info), the 2000 neo-con manifesto drafted shortly after Bush became President. It spelled out the invasion of Iraq and the establishment of permanent military bases in the Middle East. Other Signatories include trigger-happy war profiteers and lobbyists Dick Cheney, William Crystal, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, as well as convicted felons from the Iran-Contra Scandal Elliot Abrams and Caspar Weinberger, and the President’s brother, Jeb.

Unfortunately, these Imperialists have established themselves in Hawaii now. One of the key PNAC signatories is John Lehman, Chairman of the Hawaii Superferry. Lehman has 8 other companies, all involved in weapons systems, and spying for the U.S. military. Over the past forty years Lehman has been a consistent advocate of U.S. military supremacy and ever-increasing military budgets.

He was forced out of the Reagan Administration because of his preference for ideology and political agendas over fact-based intelligence. In a re-phrasing of the famous Lord Acton quote, Lehman once stated “Power corrupts, but absolute power is pretty neat!”

It is important to know all this if you are planning to ride on the Superferry.

By Lance Holter, Maui Democratic Party Chairman